Do you watch your bils?

One way to keep a tight rein on the household budget is to periodically check whether you’re getting the best prices and deals for all those essentials in life. This includes comparing utility suppliers and telecomms prices for the telephone, internet and TV.

It also includes looking carefully at how much you are paying for insurance – whether it’s home insurance, car insurance or things like pet and travel insurance.

Home insurance is a pre-requisite for anyone with a mortgage, as the mortgage lender will not provide the mortgage unless you have buildings insurance in place. While home contents insurance is not a requirement for a mortgage, most people tend to have at least the minimum contents cover as you often get combined contents and building insurance quotes. In fact, this is one way to save on the cost of home insurance, as a combined policy is usually cheaper than separate buildings and contents policies.

There are other ways to make sure any home insurance quotes you get are kept to a minimum. Make sure that you aren’t being quoted for any optional extras such as home emergency cover, accidental damage cover or personal possessions cover. While all of these options have attached potential benefits, it may be that you are more interested in lowering the annual premium cost than the benefits they may bring in case of a claim.

Some insurers offer a discount for multi-policy holders, so if you have your car insurance with one company and the house insurance with another, it’s worth asking if either would offer a better deal if you put all your insurance policies with them. Maybe neither of them would, in which case you might move to another insurer altogether.

Changing your utilities suppliers and telecoms and insurance providers may seem like a hassle, but at the end of the day, every £1 you can knock off the monthly household budget will help. With the ease of getting quotes from comparison websites and the simplicity of actually switching from one supplier to another, it’s well worth a bit of effort on your part.