Friday, January 27th, 2012
A colleague of mine at work has recently had the news that her partner is about to be made redundant and like so many people her age had been spending virtually all their combined income without saving anything for a rainy day. I suppose they are relatively fortunate that she still has a job and that he’s quite prepared to do anything to bring in some money and believes he can pick up some temporary shift work in a factory but it won’t make up for the shortfall. They were faced with a scenario of having to save a few hundred pounds a month if they were to remain with their heads above water and stay solvent so they have had to sit down and analyse their entire spending to see what could be cut back on, what could be cut out all together and what they needed to prioritise like rent.
There were a few quick wins; Sky was cancelled as was gym membership and direct debits to lottery syndicates etc. Charities have been shelved temporarily as have anything that wasn’t vital. She then used the comparison websites to source better deals on the home insurance, car insurance and permanent health insurance. In most cases she was able to save a few pounds to chip away at her shortfall.
Source: http://www.permanenthealthinsurance.uk.com/blog/2012/01/27/permanent-health-insurance-one-expense-we-had-afford/
Tags: Car Insurance, Charities, Colleague, Direct Debits, Gym Membership, Health Insurance, Home Insurance, Insurance, Insurance Car, Insurance Health, Lottery Syndicates, Many People, Permanent Health Insurance, Permanent Insurance, Quick Wins, Rainy Day, Rent, Shift Work, Shortfall, Sky
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Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
My wife and I are both in our fifties and the newspapers describe us as Dinkies, because we have a double income and no kids. Or rather to be completely accurate about this, our children have long since left home which I’m sure makes us empty nesters; or is that the children? I’m not sure. We both have reasonably well paid jobs. That is to say, compared to the national average wage we do, but compared to our friends we are about normal. Perhaps if they had a survey that compared you with the people you wanted to be compared with more people would take notice and read it. Whilst they are at it, it would be helpful if they could explain exactly what defines an empty nester and I’ll start to sound like I know what I’m talking about! Anyway the reason for me penning this was to say that there are probably many others in our situation. Once they find themselves in the years between kids and retirement they probably tend to think of their pension as their priority and they would be right to prioritise this, since if they don’t do it then they will never do it. However, most people are likely to have had a mortgage and may even have switched from a repayment type to an interest only. They may even have forgotten to switch their life insurance or mortgage protection insurance so they may have left themselves with a shortfall should the worst happen before the mortgage is paid off. It’s probably worth checking as we have done and we did have to put some more cover in place. Clearly we could’ve chosen not to do so, as we do have additional life cover through our employers. However, as the economy is in a state of flux at the moment, who knows if our jobs are likely to be there in a year or two’s time and as our state of health is reasonably good at the moment it makes sense to do it now as we never know what’s around the corner.
Tags: Economy, Empty Nester, Empty Nesters, Fifties, Health, Insurance, Insurance Protection, Jobs, Life Insurance, Mortgage Insurance, Mortgage Protection Insurance, National Average Wage, Newspapers, Priority, Retirement, Shortfall, Shortfalls, State Of Flux
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