Money Saving Tips When Moving To UK

Electricity can be extremely costly in UK and there are various ways to save both on the usage and on the bill. If you are using electricity for heating, you absolutely want to make sure that you minimize the heat loss by your flat or house. The most common ways include installing insulation in your walls and also having double glaze windows. Since electricity is sold at different rates at different times of the day, you can save on your bills by adjusting your usage pattern. For example in the popular “Economy 7” plan, the electricity rate is reduced for 7 hours a day and it can sometimes be 3 times cheaper than the standard rate. These 7 hours usually starts from 12 midnight to 7 in the morning. Therefore, if you can shift your electricity usage to these 7 hours, you can pay a lot less on your electricity bills. For example you can set your washing machine to start during these hours or use a storage heater that heats up during these cheaper hours. Due to intense competition between the different utilities companies, they will sell you electricity at a lower rate if you take out a contract with them, very much similar to subscribing to a mobile phone plan. If you know you will be staying in UK for more than a year, it is worthwhile to sign on to one of these annual plans because there are often freebies and you get to enjoy a lower electricity tariff.

Check out cashback websites such as Quidco which offers cashback on basically everything including electricity or mobile plans. The amount of cashback can be quite significant. For example if you sign up for a Vodaphone 12 month sim only with £25 monthly tariff through Quidco, you can get cashback of £150. I didn’t know about such cashback websites when I moved to UK or else I would have used this to get my Internet and maybe also my mobile plans.

Since you will very likely spend quite a fortune on groceries unless you eat out for every meal, you may want to look up on the different loyalty reward schemes offered by the various supermarkets. Sainsbury’s offers shoppers Nectar points while Tesco offers their customers Tesco Clubcard vouchers. Even though each has its own selling points, Tesco offers better value when you redeem their vouchers for Clubcards rewards at 4 times their worth.

Websites such as gocompare, moneysupermarket or confused.com offer price comparison tools across a wide range of products. They compare prices for all kinds of insurance and even utilities. I would like to stress that these sites may not give you the absolute cheapest deal out there since they do earn commission, but their tools provide a good benchmark on the prices. Other popular money saving websites are moneysavingexpert.com and hotukdeals.com which offers news and information on the latest bargains. A lot of content there is generated by consumers which covers a wide scope of products and services.

When you first try to settle down you probably have to make a large number of phone calls, such as setting up your utilities and Internet, getting a place and buying insurances for your home and your car. You will encounter lots of phone numbers starting with “0845” or “0870”. The cost of calling such numbers usually starts from 12p a minute with most of them at 20p a minute. If you think the cost is pretty reasonable, you have yet to spend half an hour with technical support trying to get your Internet up. Overall I think that this is a huge scam as the customers are paying for such hidden costs but it seems that this is the way here in the UK. Therefore I highly recommend you use this website saynoto0870.com to search for an alternative number which can be much cheaper. Sometimes you may not get to the correct department but you can always ask them nicely to transfer you.

About the author: A Singaporean couple presently in the UK for a working holiday who is about to embark on an eye-opening tour of Europe starting in Norway with the Northern Lights. Travel with them as they bring you personal reviews of attractions visited, accommodations stayed in and even travel gear used!