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Recent research has suggested that nearly three quarters of all households
will be considering making spending cuts in the next 12 months.
To a certain extent this is not particularly remarkable news. With the
current state of the world, uncertain news reports are coming in every day
and a generally cautious approach has been
adopted. It's not surprising that most households would tell a survey
that they are considering cutting costs. The
break down of the results provides more interest.
Most worrying 8% of individuals responded to the survey by suggesting that they
would not renew their insurance cover. If there was a greater sign of how
bad things have become for some then surely that is it, although it must
also be considered that it is more a sign of people not rating the value
of insurance as highly as perhaps they should than anything else.
Also interesting was that 11% of households reported that someone had taken on
an extra job in order to deal with issues relating to a lack of finance.
Others have reported that they are planning on cutting the amount of money
that they put aside into personal savings or the amount that they
contribute to their pension plans.
The usual suspects were blamed for the need to cut costs, high housing prices
that have translated into mortgages with high repayment rates, or at least
repayments that constitute a large percentage of salary were amongst the
factors most blamed. There was also the matter of servicing other debts
such as loans.
Remarkably, the group that demonstrated the most strain were those with above average
incomes. Traditional high costs of living were cited as one particular
reason, but more alarmingly was the suggestion that most households simply
do not have the motivation to sort themselves out financially and protect
themselves from the difficulties posed by fluctuating markets.
A lot of improvement can be made simply by careful savings plans, checking
around for great value current accounts, savings accounts and loans.
Many financial institutions offer credit
cards that have 0% on balance transfers which you can transfer into a
current account – meaning you can say goodbye to an expensive overdraft
in a flash.
It's simply a matter of taking a little time to order everything and make
certain that you have the best deals and a lot of the cost cutting
mentioned above can be done for you. It's easily done, and if the very
real prospect of defaulting on loans and suffering genuine financial
misfortune isn't motivating enough then what is?
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