How to reduce your overall debt

In its simplest terms the best way to reduce your debt is to ensure that you have more money entering your bank account than leaves it. Simple to say: and of course very obvious. The first very obvious thing to do is look at your bank statements and credit card statements. It is really surprising how many people either ignore their bank and card statements or just give them a casual glance and move on to something less scary! So, now actually read your statements in detail, they will help you understand what needs to be done to reduce your debts. The remaining question is how can this actually be achieved?

Controlling your day to day spending is key. Reduced daily spending will have an almost immediate positive impact. Start with the little things. Reduce unnecessary spending. Even a cup of coffee bought from a high street café two or three times a week can add up to a surprising amount of cash. When you really look at your bank statement and start to question yourself on where the money really goes you’ll be surprised at how it all trickles away! Check every entry. If you see that you take cash regularly from the ATM but can’t work what you spent it on then there that is another area to focus on. Stop buying big lunches and take lunch to work with you. It is usually much more healthy anyway and saves you a ton of cash. Walk rather than drive when you can.

One method that I have found to reduce weekly spending that works (at least for me anyway!) is to give your self a weekly spending allowance. Start by calculating your monthly household budget. Then at the start of every week give yourself a realistic amount of money in cash to last the whole week. You can decide on how much and what it should and should not cover. It is important to pick a budget that you are comfortable with. Everyone’s situation will be different. It is the goal of reducing unnecessary spending that is important here. In my case I hold just enough cash to cover a few items for my week at work (mostly just snacks and drinks). I don’t include fuel or travel costs in this allowance as that comes out of my monthly budget. At the end of the week I just top up back to my weekly allowance. I don’t keep accumulating more and more cash as that just encourages spending. If I run out of money during the week – tough! In that case I have to be very disciplined with myself and re-assess my budget. If I can justify an increase then the next week I will adjust my budget accordingly. More likely I was just too extravagant and need to be more restrained!

Remember this is just one method that can be used, other methods my suite you better.

Now look at other regular larger bill payments. Think about changing suppliers for gas, electricity, tv, phoneline, broadband and other services. If you pay monthly you may also have built up credit with one or more of these. Call them up and find out if you’re in credit. If so you can get a double bonus. Firstly ask for them to refund you the credit amount. Secondly as you had built up a credit amount you therefore must be paying too much each month, they should agree to reducing your monthly payment so they don’t end up owing you money! Remember, utility suppliers are not banks or credit companies, they are not required (or encouraged) to hold customers money up front.

By just doing the simple things stated above you will feel far more empowered and in control of your finances. Having a plan helps your confidence and understanding your finances will allow you to continually improve your position from week to week.

The information above provides an overall guideline and logic to managing your money rather than specific advise. If your situation is rather more urgent or if things are so bad that you may loose you house or possessions please seek professional advice immediately. Please checkout our links section or contact your bank to seek help. It is also vitally important to realise is that your physical and mental health is more important than any debt you may have. You are no good to yourself or your family if your end up too ill to solve the problems. So, be positive and don’t let your situation get you down. Solve it now….please don’t hide from it.

Upcoming topics for discussion

Here are a few of the Topics that will be appearing in this blog.....

 

In no particular order.

How to reduce you overall debt
 

0% credit cards the real costs

 

I don’t have any debt – what next?

 

Paying off credit – the right way to do it

 

Low cost loans - is this the way forward?

 

Paying off credit early – good or bad

 

Mortgages - Useful information

 

How much should I have in savings?                                   

 

Car finance / car loans

 

Where to seek financial advice for free            

 

How much should I save?

 

Avoiding gambling            

 

List of government agencies / ombudsmen financial services authority

 

Where else can I get help?

Welcome to the Urban Financial Advice blog

In recent years nearly every person on earth has found that the day to day cost of living has become greater and greater. Many people find that they have to worker longer hours, find a second job, sell their possessions, sell their car just to make ends meet….sometimes failing or at the very least struggling to get by from month to month. On top of the daily struggle to survive they have to contend with lower wages, no pay rises for years at a time and suffer high food inflation prices. Quite a depressing start!!

So….Let’s be positive and improve your financial position

We are here to share our thoughts and experiences with anyone and everyone who would like to investigate or research financial products away from the pressures of having a financial advisor in your home. We focus more on common sense advice rather than buying ever more expensive financial products such as consolidation loans, re-mortgages. car loans and credit cards.

The main aim is to find ways to continually improve your financial position by reducing or paying off debts, payback loans early and find 0% credit card deals. In addition we investigate other ways to improve for credit rating, find real world financial solutions. We also investigate techniques that can be used to reduce your outgoings. There are also simple and (perhaps more importantly) free ways to reduce your car insurance, reduce your monthly bills, reduce your internet costs, reduce your food bills. In fact once you learn some of the simple techniques you will find many ways to reduce your overall spending from your household budget to really make a difference to your life.

Finally we like to run regular and interesting experiments to see how anyone can  make extra income from the online world, perhaps starting an online shop or setting up their own blog (such as this one for instance). Find out how to get revenue from online advertising, and get revenue from affiliate marketing. We will always provide all the information from the research results up front and for free. For some of these we may invite followers of this blog for some ‘audience participation’ to see what can be accomplished together. We pride ourselves in total transparency so everyone can learn see and learn from our achievements and go onto really improving their own situation by achieving whatever goals they need to set themselves. This will include financial statements relating to the experiments we undertake and to track the monitisation of this blog itself.

Around this blog you will see some sponsored links and adverts. Mostly these are included to show relevant products and services on that page. You will also find some affiliate links of our own. In most cases these will be highlighted (or obvious). In all cases the affiliate links are strictly vetted by ourselves and are appropriate to the topic shown in that section of the blog.

We always welcome constructive feed back on all topics and unless they are offensive they will not be censored or removed. If you don’t like what were saying then let us know but also let us know why you don’t like it and how we can improve it.