Its all about money honey

This is the text of the email I sent out to a few of my friends, a few days back:
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We live in interesting times. Not a single day passes by without one hearing or reading about the word "crunch". It is all over the place - I can't think of a single soul who might not have been affected by this catastrophe - directly or indirectly. The key word is "affected" - for some the situation might be good but in general, the clouds look dark.

It is at these times that we need to look out for the silver lining, for that flicker of hope, the tiniest of ray that shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel. No, I don't know when this is going to end, but I thought I would use this time to collate some of my experiences of how to save more out of what we do daily. There are numerous websites out there which give out this information and probably do it better so what I am about to say is not something out of the world. I don't know the magic secrets of an alchemist but I do like to share what I know. This article is based on my passions - helping others and sharing.

All recipients have been blind copied and the reason why you find this in your mailbox is because I consider you a friend and thought that you might benefit from some of the things in here. If that is not the case, probably the best course is to delete this email as a one-off. Please don't mark it as a spam - I would like my email address to be in your good books....until the next email may be..:)

Right - so for all those who have decided to read on, because of the way things operate in this country, I would like to place a few general disclaimers below:
1. I am not selling you anything. I am just sharing my experiences with you.
2. I am NOT regulated by the FSA, so if you loose any money by doing something that I have mentioned below, it is wholly and completely the fault of your star's alignment in the Martian space. For this reason, you cannot claim any compensation under the FSCS scheme nor can you hold me liable.
3. I do not earn any commission from the companies that are mentioned below though I won't mind if you use my name as the referrer in some cases - which might help me make some money on the side as a referral bonus - any extra income is so much welcome - the whole point of such an article..:)

Ok..lets get serious now! In this busy world, we are increasingly reliant on the Internet for our shopping - even clothes and grocery. How about saving 3-4% of the total bill from such shopping? As it is - we are anyway looking out for the best price deal and most often end up comparing the prices using sites like www.pricerunner.co.uk and www.dealrate.co.uk. If you haven't done this before, next time before buying your new hi-tech gadget - at least use these sites to compare the prices available on the Internet from different retailers. Most of these comparison sites also have expert reviews about the product as well - so it does not harm to do your home work before you buy.

Coming back to the key point of Cash back - there are sites which can save you some money while you do your shopping. These site are called Cash-back sites and the only thing that you have to do before opening your retailer's site is to go to this cash-back site, login with your account and then just click through to your target site from within there. What happens then? Well, technically, the cash back site records the transaction based on cookies. On the business side, the cash back sites act as middlemen and provide the leads to the Internet Retailer sites and in return the retailers pass on some of the benefits back - which comes in the form of cashback. So how do these cashback site work? Most of the times they keep some nominal money out of your earnings as administration charge.

So which are these cash back sites? The best one that I personally like is www.quidco.com as it looks very professional and you find a good variety of retailers there. But there are others as well - some of which I like:www.greasypalm.co.uk (this also offers some high street shopping retailers but the list is small)http://www.topcashback.co.ukwww.wepromiseto.co.uk

What I like about these sites is that sometimes retailers come up with trial offers and give cashback for these trials. For example, I took out a one month free trial for BlockBuster movies which was offering a cash back of £16.00 - and the cash back is valid even if you cancel before the end of your one month trial. So why do sites do this? There should be some catch you would think. Well, in general, these companies play on human tendency of getting hooked on to something or probably the hope that you will at least subscribe for a month after being bitten by a pang of guilt, or probably that you will almost forget to cancel and then end up paying some money as subscription. So, you have to be very careful when you take out a trial offer.

Another such hard-to-resist offer that most of these sites have is for betting, poker or bingo sites. The offer would be something like this - Open an account and pay-in £10 and you will get a cash-back of £12.50. Most of the betting sites also have their own offers like if you open an account and add money to it, they will give you a free bet of double your joining amount. So, assuming you open an account with £10, you get a bet limit of £30 and also a cash-back to cover your initial investment. These sites thrive heavily on getting you hooked, so unless you have strong resistance, stay away.

I have found these cash back sites useful when shopping for:
1. Trial offers, provided you cancel before paying
2. Energy switches - changing your energy provider
3. Car Insurance and Breakdown cover
4. Grocery and Gadget purchases (Tesco gives 4% at quidco and John Lewis is also there)
5. Flight purchases and holidays (usually 1%)
6. Cash back for opening Savings account - get a £10 for opening an eSaver account.
7. Special offers from time to time

In general, some pointers and observations about these cash back sites:
1. Register with a few of these at most 2-3. Don't go on adding spam emails to your mailbox. Also as many of them take some money out as Admin charges it is better to have more money with less of these as compared to small change with all of these..
2. Most of these take your bank account details to refund the money back to you, so be careful when giving out the details. I don't need to stress on the connection being secure...you all know that...
3. Cash back is never yours until it is paid back into your account..:)
4. It typically takes about 3-4 months - so be patient. At least you don't have to keep worrying about the administration.
5. Although most of the times the cash back is paid out, sometimes retailers do reject some of the payments - so don't rely exclusively on these for your purchasing decision
6. Initially you might have an urge to buy just for getting increased cash back..but resist this. Wait for the right time and always assess whether you really have to buy that something.
7. Don't be bogged down by small amounts of cash back....they may all add up to a big amount so keep saving...
8. Always use your home email id for registering. You won't like your email-sniffing-employer to be checking your cash back details...:)

Another such thing (not exactly cash back) is the Nectar card - which I guess most of you have already heard about. Many retailers dole out nectar points (2 points for each £1 spent) and sometimes nectar eStores offer double or triple points on some of these stores. As amazon.co.uk is not on quidco or greasyplams - when I shop at amazon, I always make sure I click through via the nectar store to save that 1%....;) If you are with EDF energy you can build up a huge nectar point as they give out almost 150 points each quarter if you submit the meter readings. In the same league is the store loyalty cards - like Tescos or Boots...always bag the points with those...you never know how soon they build up to give you some free cash....

Even paypal now offers cash back offers whe you pay via paypal and there are cash backs for making purchases on ebay - so keep looking.

Another good and additional way of saving (or making) money while spending it..is to use cash back credit cards. There are credit cards which give upto 5% cash back on your purchases (Amex for the initial 3 months). In general you will always find credit cards which give a regular 1% cash back on your purchases (sometimes this is in the form of vouchers) - and this cash back would be on top of any cash back that you have had from the above mentioned sites. And if you can time your purchases, you can get a 50 day free credit, a minimum of 1% cash back from the credit card company and let your money earn interest in the bank. However, please note that credit card companies are becoming extremely stringent on their criteria. One thing that I found weird in this country is that - you haven't taken loans, you don't have a credit history and that means company will refuse giving you loans...classical case of self-feeding cycles...;) People who can't repay back their loans are the prime targets of these credit card companies because that is how they make money perhaps...but that again is a topic of another discussion....

Ok, there were a few other things that I wanted to talk about, but even this has become quite long so I will keep those things for my next email....which will go out to only those who reply me back with their feedback on this mail...that will help me gauge if you really are interested in the next one...:) If you know of other better ways to save money, please let me know and I will send an update to all others as well...:)) Also...some cash back sites above do have friend referrals (greasypalm.co.uk) so keep that in mind when you spread the word around...although the referral is only given out when the friend earns a certain amount (£15 in case of GP). Greasy Palm also offers a £2.50 initial joining bonus for every new joinees- so if you decide to join it, use the link http://www.greasypalm.co.uk/r/?l=993774

Anything that I have mentioned above is not a secret - its all out there...so please feel free to forward this email to your friends who may be benefited....(if you can make out whom to send this out to - as this goes out as bcc..:))

So, in general, what comes out is that before you buy, do you home work. May be all this looking around will make you ditch your original plan of buying - thus saving you more money...after all - most of our purchases are things that we "want" rather than things that we "need"..:)

Happy Shopping......Cheers......Vikash