According to a study by Moneyextra, Britons can save on an average £4,678.60 every year, if some of the less worthy financial products are replaced with more competitive ones. If consumers are able to get good deals on debt management products they can actually make some worthwhile savings. Alliance and Leicester claim that a staggering £285 million are lost because borrowers end up choosing uncompetitive loans. The study by MoneyExtra revealed that by simply choosing the right credit card, the average Briton could save up to £825 every year.

In this modern age, we are all busy people. We run around at a hectic pace and few people find spare time. Computers and the internet are making it possible for all of us to accomplish more, but at the same time, we have to take on more work to keep up with everyone else.

This makes is all the more important for each of us to value our time and make wise decisions about our time allocation.

In business we look at decisions from the perspective of will it make a profit or not first. Then we evaluate whether or not a chosen action will cost us the opportunity of pursuing a different action that may be more lucrative or worthwhile. We also look at marginal opportunities. Maybe we can create 50 widgets in an 8 hour day, but how many widgets can we make if we put in an extra 30 minutes? an hour? or 5 hours? This would be considered the marginal cost of doing more.

In our personal lives we can apply the same principles. We should evaluate whether something is profitable or not for us to proceed. We should insure that we are doing the most financially profitable opportunity over less profitable ones, and we can always look at the benefit of doing a little extra work.

Now, I’m not saying that we should give up the non-monetary things in life or that everyone should work 40, 50, or 80 hour weeks. However, we should have a good understanding of what our time is worth from each of these perspectives as we attempt to make the optimal decision about what we are going to do next.

Too often, especially at work we get caught up in business and getting the job done for our employer. We need to take a step back and make sure that we are getting the job done for ourselves as well. So as we head into the weekend, when hopefully your job and career are less amplified, take some stock of your self and your situation and consider what opportunities are presenting themselves to you and which ones will reward you the most effectively. Also, do not neglect to look for those marginal opportunities. Sometimes these opportunities can turn into new jobs, promotions, a new business and more. If we keep tunnel vision working that prevents us from seeing the world around us, we may miss something that could make all the difference in the world!

This sounds absurd, but according to a report from Reuters it appears to be true. Are you sitting down?

An Australian bank has issued a cat with a credit card. The Bank of Queensland was found lacking after a security-conscious customer, Katherine Campbell, decided to test their security system that controls who is eligible for a bank account based on identity. I assume that the Bank of Queensland employ the usual money laundering checks, but they slipped up on this!

Soon after applying for a secondary credit card on her account under the name of Messiah, her cat, the credit card came through. Since Mrs. Campbell went public with her story the credit card has since been canceled.

“I just couldn’t believe it. People need to be aware of this and banks need to have better security,” said Mrs. Campbell in an interview with local media on Thursday.

I think the takeaway from this is not so much the security slip-up, but it is indicative of just how keen the banks are to get credit cards into our wallets.

If you are a Mac-enthusiast like myself you’ll probably have no nails by now because MacWorld is just round the corner.  This time next week we’ll have trawled through all the new releases and spent far too much time posting on forums about how much we want the new gadgets.

Think Secret has uncovered pictures of the new spreadsheet application from Apple to be called Numbers or Charts, a bit of a moving target.  It’ll come as part of the iLife 07 suite of productivity apps, the working counterpart of Apple’s award-winning iLife suite.

I’m looking forward to this release a lot, finally I’ll be able to manage my finances without the need to fire up Excel.  Apparently the application will be able to import and export Excel formatted spreadsheets with ease, which also comes in handy if you want to use online services such as Google’s excellent AJAXified Spreadsheet.

Keep your eyes peeled, it’ll be an interesting few days for you as a Mac user and for your bank account! ;-0  Anyway, here’s a picture for you to enjoy courtesy of Think Secret.

I read a great article the other day in Entrepreneur magazine.  A CEO of a burgeoning company made the statement that he never throws away anything.  Its a concept straight out of the old days in the US straight out of the depression.

But its also a very practical suggestion.

When you keep all the stuff that you buy, make, build, acquire, inherit and more, you have a constant reminder of all of things you possess.  To control clutter, you build up a natural incentive not to buy more things that you do not need.  Plus, by keeping all of this stuff, you have lots of potential material to solve future problems or challenges with tools already in your possession.  That saves you money, it saves you from spending your cash and its very useful.

In this modern day and age, many people recycle a great number of items, from cardboard, newspapers, plastic, and aluminum cans to cell phones, cell phone batteries, clothing and more.  From the perspective of the global economy and environment this is good.

From the perspective of your personal finances however, why should you give this stuff away?  Take some time to find recyclers that reimburse you for these items as opposed to giving it away for free or paying to have it recycled.  The stuff usually has value.  If you find out how to extract this value, you might earn a little extra money.  Might pay for the fuel in your car a couple times of year.

Set it up as a chore for your children, let them learn the lesson of saving for financial reasons, and then these funds can offset their allowance or supplement it.  The price of aluminum along with many metals is very healthy right now, so don’t just kick the cans to the curb in a recycling bin.

Some paper can be recycled, but much of it can not.  Don’t just throw it away, if you have a wood burning stove, save it for the winter months and burn it.  Its going to be better for the environment to turn the paper to ash, than it will be to fill of a massive landfill with paper that will not biodegrade quickly as its mixed in with lots of other non-degradable garbage.

Plus, you will be helping the environment by using just a little less electricity or heating oil and reducing your heating bill too!  I find that a short fire during the winter months will take the chill off the house, and this decreases my motivation for notching the thermostat up an extra degree on those extra chilly days and nights.

So remember keep it for yourself, don’t throw it away and if you are going to recycle it, make a buck or two for your family in the process!

After just a few trips to the store, your list becomes a functioning piece of consumer shopping intelligence. Every time you go to the store, you have more information about prices. This creates a continually updating and improving price list. You took a big step forward to protect yourself against cross selling by creating and sticking to the list.

Now you have the greater advantage by having a price history in your list. You can instantly recognize when prices go up or down. You will now know be able to recognize a good deal when you see it and have the certainty of fact to know it for a good deal.

Tips for using this to best advantage:
1. When you see a good price for something on your list, buy it.

2. If the price is wrong and the item is on your list, consider buying it at a later time, when the prices might come down, or buy it and note the price and be prepared.

3. Build into your lists the option to buy bulk on certain items. Mark each of the items that you would not mind stocking up on if you find a good price. When you see that good price on those items, then buy a lot of it. Many retailers move their prices around on different products. The prices go up and down, knowing a good price from a bad price and being prepared to take advantage of lows will save you even more over the long term.

4. If you go to a non-preferred store, and see a better deal, buy it. But also note the price and the store. Over time, you might determine trends that will enable you to stock up on certain items from once source and other items from other sources.

5. There are many PDA’s and smart phones that can run simple software list programs to help you manage all of this activity and keep all your lists for all of your stores with all of the prices in one place. On your phone you are more likely to be prepared to update your list, and use your list!

6. New bar scanning tools are on the horizon and can turn your phone into a scanner. In the near future, you will not have to write the products nor the prices, just scan it and your phone will become a pricing database to help you find and use the absolute best price when and wherever you happen to be.

Wrapping up the Shopping Maximization Section

In this most recent series of articles we have covered the benefits of shopping with a list and detailed the advanced techniques and strategies you can employee to save money and recognize truly good spontaneous deals. In our final series on controlling Cash Flows we will cover the concept of recycling and re-using or utilizing our extra stuff to get extra mileage out of our past purchases. Afterall it does no one any good to save money at the store only to throw it away once they get it home. We look forward to sharing more on this strategy in the next article.

A good list like a good plan requires focus, planning, testing and revisions. You have years of experience shopping, and you can use that to your advantage. Wal-Mart may have selling experts on staff, but you are a buying expert. Here’s how you can level the playing field.

1. Create individual lists for each store you frequent for replacement items. A replacement item is anything you might buy more than once in a 2-3 period, and of course includes things you buy every day or week too.

Setup a list for your preferred grocery store, your preferred hardware stores, electronics stores, clothing, shoes, etc. You get the idea.

2. Make copies of these lists (either in software or printed on paper).

3. Each time you go to the store, take the list and place a box by each item you intend to buy up front.

4. While there check off those items as you buy them, and

5. Write the price listed on the item on the list. If you don’t have time to get the price at the store, take the receipt from your purchase and add everything purchased to the list with all prices.
Wal-mart has one of the most advanced information (intelligence) gathering systems in the world. You make a purchase and the information from the cash register is ready to be tabulated at corporate Wal-mart in 15-30 minutes. That information is used for months and years to analyze how to sell more to you in the future.

When you take a few minutes to review your own purchases and figure out how to spend a little less, you are taking a very big step towards maximizing your savings when shopping. Wal-mart isn’t expecting this. You have the benefit of better information and surprise.

This article is the next part in the series on Controlling Cash Flows: Maximizing your Savings when Shopping. In the last article we discussed the overall situation of using advanced lists to compete with major retailers. We now start to get down to business and detail how to achieve this goal.

In our last article we described how simple lists can form a strategy to help you obtain your objective of minimizing your spending while shopping.

Last time we mentioned that modern day stores are setup to optimize their cross promotional opportunities against you the shopper. If they set up a camping aisle, they will include flashlights and a mini battery section. If they sell turkeys, they will sell turkey bags.

Their goal is to provide the things you are looking for and put a host of related items near those things so that you will stop and consider, I needed nails, do I need a new hammer too? How about a plastic Nail Holder Gizmo so that I don’t smash my thumb, now that sounds like a good idea! (While you are there in the store, but when you get home and hit that plastic Nail Holder Gizmo once with the hammer and it smashes to pieces, you are now out $5 and the store has taken money out of your pocket that you never intended to spend!

Retailers have very advanced systems and many very intelligent people working to sell you when you walk into the store, lengthen the amount of time you spend in the store, and get you to keep filling up your basket, and switch to a cart and get a second cart if possible. You can go into the wilderness unprepared or you can make a plan (simple list) and even get some survival gear to prepare yourself (advance list and advanced list tools).
In our next article we will cover the details of preparing an advanced list and soon after that how to use it!

This article continues the series on Controlling Cash Flows and sets up the simple theory and practices you can utilize to compete head to head with entire corporate sales teams run by retailers like Wal-mart to entice you to spend more than you intend, want or can afford. This second segment in this series can help you to level the playing field with corporate retail marketers.

There is a key to shopping that can make a major difference in the results you achieve. The key is extremely simple to understand, implement and benefit from for just about anyone. It does not require technology, but technology can help make it work more efficiently. Its a simple tool that delivers reliable results.
Its a Simple Shopping List.

It may sound almost too simple to be true, but when applied correctly it can make a huge difference in maximizing your savings when shopping especially from a cash outflow perspective. A shopping list is not just a memory jogger to help you not to forget the eggs or milk.

A shopping list is an action plan, a strategy that includes a list of objectives to obtain. Your strategy should include an objective to minimize cash expenditures. As an example,

• Eggs
• Milk
• Butter
• Save Money
• Don’t spend more than necessary
• Don’t buy anything not on the list

Shopping Lists can do even more for you than remind you to buy the right things, it can help remind you not to buy all those useless, frivolous extras that you never intended to buy when you left the house for the store.

In our next article we will take this simple concept one slight step further and apply the use of lists to managing our purchases at multiple stores for a wide variety of needs. Stores are setup to cross sell you many products that you may not normally associate with that specific store. This is a great bonus for the store. They increase their revenues and that means you have increased your spending so we will look at ways to make sure that this works in your favor next!