Leverage the saving benefits

Saving a little is good but saving more is even better.  I like to call this leveraging the saving benefits in that I use a few techniques to increase the amount of money that I can save.  I will give you a recent example to explain what I mean by leverage saving.

My car insurance is up for renewal and so my current provider wrote to me detailing what I would be paying for the next year.  It is worth mentioning at this point that I currently pay for my car insurance by monthly direct debit.  Interestingly in the renewal letter I was told that my monthly payment would be increasing by £3.50 giving a yearly increase of £42.  I am not happy that as a careful driver with 9 years no claims that I have to pay more so I decide to have a look around to find a cheaper quote.

One interesting tip that I was not aware of until recently was that for things like car insurance it is better to be selective over which price comparison website you use.  If you are a careful driver you are better off using Gocompare.com whereas those that are deemed medium and high risk should use Comparethemarket.com and Moneysupermarket.com respectively.

Using this tip I did my checks and found a cheaper quote saving me £73.  However, if I wanted to continue to pay by monthly direct debit I would have to pay £39.41 for the privilege.  This is where I can start to leverage the savings benefit.  I have a credit card that allows me to make new card purchases currently at a special rate of 0% interest for six months.  So if I pay for the insurance in one instalment using the credit card I have six months, with no interest being charged, to pay off the debt.

The final part of the leveraging process is to go back to Top Cash Back (see my earlier post about this site) and see if the new insurance provider is a registered vendor.  Thankfully they are and if I go through the Top Cashback site I will get £42 back.

So in total I have saved £73 by finding a cheaper insurance provider but I have further leveraged the savings that I make by a further £81.41 by using a 0% special offer on a credit card and the Top Cashback website.  In total I have saved £154.41 and I am a lot happier.