Apparently, in Britain alone, people are spending £5bn each year in goods and services that they no longer need. Simple examples are services ordered and paid for by direct debit, maintenance contracts for equipment long since scrapped, and duplicated insurances (where one will often refuse to pay out because the other is covering the risk and vice versa leaving you with NO cover at all)!
Having stumbled across this little scrap of information, I thought I'd do a quick check to see what I could save. Now, being brutally honest, I arrogantly thought I was quite sharp about this kind of thing, so the result was quite a surprise.
Staggeringly, I have found nearly £400 per year being spent unnecessarily. The biggest contributors to this are three subscriptions to breakdown services that amount to a staggering £200 in excessive premiums on vehicle insurance. The worse thing is I didn't even realise that two of them were included in the premium and were optional!
I discovered that £50 was being paid yearly on a maintenance contract for a PC that was given to charity nearly three years ago.
My mobile phone is covered for breakdown (rather than theft) under three different policies and I'm such a long term subscriber that they'd be stupid not to give me a replacement if it was stolen, so the £60 a year on 'insurance' is practically redundant.
I relish my gym membership as it gives me access to the 'serious swimmers' lane at a pool at almost any time, but apparently the typical member is paying £600 for just four visits! Now THAT is indulgent - let's face it you could hire a villa for a week for that much.
So, give it some thought, you never know - you could just pay for a holiday to escape this dreadful weather.
Best wishes
GRAHAM WILSON
London + Oxford - 07785 222380
Helping Organisations & People Achieve Things They Never Dreamt Were Possible
grahamwilson.org; inter-faith.net
