Working Lunch financial expert Gillian Lacey-Solymar was on hand to give viewers some tips on how to survive the credit crunch and save money, by doing a financial spring clean.
Gillian said you should first ask yourself 2 questions. Firstly, are you financially safe? Both in the short term, and the long term. Secondly, once you’ve established whether you’re financially safe – are you financially smart? ie are you making the most of your money?
Financial safety in the long term according to Working Lunch expert Gillian is down to a good pension. But how much should your pension contributions be? As a rule of thumb, the age you are when you start contributing to a pension, divided by 2, gives you the percentage of your salary you should be contributing towards a pension each month.
Insurance is another key to financial safety – are you covered by adequate life insurance, contents insurance, travel insurance?
Finally, try to pay your mortgage off as quickly as possible and make it a priority over credit card debts – you could lose your house if you don’t pay your mortgage.
How to be financially smart:
There are several ways to be financially smart. First, if you have been on a tracker mortgage and benefitted from low interest rates, how about using some of that extra money to pay back some of your mortgage, lowering your mortgage repayments even further.
Shop around for the best savings rates – there are savings rates of around 3% still out there, so you should not accept a 0% or close to 0% return on your savings.
Finally, haggle. Especially in today’s climate, haggling should be tried more to get bigger discounts off items, and retailers should be more receptive as they look to stimulate business and get things off the shelves.
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