It's fair to say that everyones biggest outgoing is their mortgage or rent! Rent we just cant change unless we go hustle the landlord, who will 99% of the time tell us to beat it. However, if you have a mortgage, now is the time to change your mortgage provider. (pretty much regardless of your current circumstances.) It's probably even worthwhile paying a get out fee if you are tied in to your current mortgage.
Without going into specifics because lets face it, everyone is different, my advice would be to contact your independant financial advisor immediately, and see what they say. Without doubt, if you've had the same mortgage product fot any length of time (more than 2 years) you ought to be moving NOW. Interest rates are at their lowest for hundreds of years, and it's time to take advantage! I know I took advantage very recently, and it will save me £150 a month! Money saved on your mortgage is as good as money earned, and it equates to increasing my online earnings by 15% with no effort.
The one caveat ill add to this are the problems with negative equity! This is when you mortgage is for more than the current value your home. If you've been caught in a negative equity bubble, you may have to ride out the storm, with the small comfort that your mortgage payments may well have fallen even without moving due to the base rate drop.
Similarly to your mortgage, where you could be paying too much, is any credit card debt that you currently hold. If your credit rating allows it, you should take a low interest personal loan and pay off the credit cards immediately. This alone can save you thousands of pounds a year, with the added advantage that you'll have a date in the future where it'll all be paid off, unlike with your credit cards! Some of the sites listed below are a great place to start and they'll be fit to compare your options.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Welcome!
Hello and welcome to my blog. Its the start of a new year, and economically things aren't looking good! I realised this around this time last year, and decided it was time to supplement my full time income. I'd often heard of folk, both locally (In Northern Ireland) and nationally who made their incomes online, and decided that I would have a go at that. I basically spent hours researching different methods, and spent a few pounds, some extremely worthwhile, some extremely badly in finding different methods of securing a second income online. I was in the fortunate position where I didnt have to make it big in the first week, so I muddled through various ideas, and built them up as I went along. That is where this blog comes in. I want this blog to serve two purposes. Equal puposes, and I mean that honestly. Firstly, I will demonstrate many of the methods, and there are quite a few that I've come across in the past year. I show what worked for me, and what didn't. I show you where I messed up, where I got lucky, and what I could have done better. The second purpose came to light whilst I was researching alternative income streams, and that is to monetize a blog, i.e. gain another source of income solely from this blog. Will it work, who knows, but either way, this time next year ill do a little review and post it here! On another note (thats just come to me), ill be interested to see the systems and methods that my readers use to make that few extra quid!
What i'll also do is to have a look at how to SAVE money, i.e. cut expenditure, without cutting quality of life. This was the first thing I did when embarking on this project, and the money saved I used to invest (wisely or otherwise) in my new online income project. Don't worry if you do not have any money to invest at present, ill show you some ways in which you can generate an income from nothing. They do take a little time, but hey, its free money!
Feel free to post your comments, and keep checking back over the next few days to see my entries. Ill try go through it in a sensible order, starting with some savings, then some free cash generating methods, then some better ones! This time next year, we'll see how we all got on!
Jeff
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