Household…….Deals, Deals, Deals

Anybody who knows me in the “real world” or has been following the blog knows im the “Queen of the Deal” when it comes to finding cheap flights, hotels or anything holiday related in fact. Travel is one of our big passions so squeezing in as many trips as we can requires hard work and research however…….one of the things which I hadn’t been good on was what I term “household admin”. That is comparing providers, seeking out value on utilities and considering other providers. Observing the status quo was the default position.  Not this year! Ever on my quest to squeeze a little more out for the holiday fund I have turned my attention to saving money on household bills.

“The Month” 

July is “the month”. Every house I think has one – you know that month where all the utility contracts expire, the one off bills fall due, motor tax, insurance etc. We moved into our house in the month of June so consequently every July falls “the month”!!! In preparation I have been doing my homework and I was really excited too find that there already exists a  a very user friendly site that compares deals on TV, broadband, mobile contracts and sim only deals.

Delighted to see that all the main providers available there including; Sky, BT, SSE, Vodafone and many more. There really is so much choice out there and it can be so difficult to choose when you have to be flicking back and forth on different pages having them in coherent, easy to read and follow list is incredibly handy.  Having a really quick look and taking account of our usage and preferences Virgin are offering one of the best deals out there for us at the moment. A combined TV and broadband package coming in at £29 a month. Really great value. Also what is really great about the site is that it links you straight through to the deal no messing around trying to recreate it, takes you straight there.

Survey

The numbers nerd in mine was drawn to an interesting survey which compared the average price of 1GB of data in 230 countries. Could be very handy to know for those who travel for either work or pleasure. So where do you think has the cheapest data???

• Cheapest appears to be around the Eastern European countries
• More expensive being North America, Africa and Western Europe.

Hovering over an individual country in the link will bring up its associated data. This includes country name, its ranking out of the 230 countries measured, its cheapest available 1GB of data, its most expensive 1GB of data, how many plans were measured to create the average, and on what day the snapshot was taken. Really interesting stuff but then again I am unashamedly a numbers geek!

Comparison website such as Cable can really help save some extra on the household bills, as the saying goes every little really does help and it makes no sense why you would pay extra for essentially the same service, particularly if like me you are the average user and don’t require all the bells and whistles some plans come with.

Using the tool it looks like I will save almost £200 by changing my provider. Its  a no brainer really. Now the next important plan ….where too next as £200 will go a long way for our next family trip.