Give yourself a financial check up

Last week a colleague at work showed me a website - Money Saving Expert.  This site has lots of information on all sorts of different financial matters.  Along with advice from ‘Martin’ who runs the site, there is a very active forum of people who are taking control of their finances.   Many of the people who post to this forum record their progress in their signatures.  ‘Debt free by September 2009′ ‘Proud to be dealing with debt’ and such like.  I find such statements inspiring and strangely moving.   These people are taking control of their lives and working hard to get back to where they want to be.

I also came across something known as the “£2 coin savers club”.  This virtual society is made up of people who have pledged that whenever they are given a £2 coin in their change, they will put it aside and save it.  For some this is just a controlled way of saving in general, for others it is for a specific reason such as a holiday or Christmas.

I’m going to give it a go and see how I go.  People tell stories of manipulating their purchases to try to engineers a £2 coin in their change and being disappointed when they don’t get one.  I’ll see how I go.  Current total : £4.  I think when I get to £20 I will change it up and put it in my savings account.

Talking of which… all this money talk encouraged me to take a look at my savings online.  I opened a savings account when I very young (10, 11 maybe) and I’ve had a few hundred in it since then.  When I opened the account it was the best one on the market in terms of interest, so I have just sort of assumed that I was still getting a reasonable rate.  I took a look today and saw that the interest rate was now 0.96% - that is ridiculous! 

Within a few minutes I had opened an internet based account with the same company which gives around 5% interest, and transfered all but the dregs of my old account over.  It was ridiculously easy to open the account and do the transfer as I was already set up for online banking and now my money will do something rather than just sitting there.

I went through the same process for my other main savings account - although the difference in interest rates was not quite so extreme!  Over the next few weeks I’ll sort out the admin and close down these old dead-dog accounts.

So, yes, it’s worth taking a look every now and again at just what is going on in our bank accounts.

…I’ll admit it, though I’m not entirely sensible with my money - I’ve recently got a little addiction going on the old premium bonds.  I’ve only got a couple of hundred pounds worth, so the addiction is under control, but I continue to dream of that big win.  Well, it beats doing the lottery!