We all try our best to manage our household finances effectively. We squirrel away what we can in savings, we try to trim back on the luxuries and we use technical solutions to track our spending… But all too often it isn’t enough. In an era of great economic uncertainty, however, where there is a growing discrepancy between wage growth and inflation, managing expenditure is often easier said than done. The bad news is that you may be paying through the nose for some of your everyday household items and services. The good news is that in most cases, it’s fairly quick and easy to remedy this.

Here are some ways in which you can save money on the household basics while still enjoying the exact same quality that you’ve become accustomed to.

Phone tariff

In the scramble to get the best and newest handsets many of us find ourselves jumping at the first tariff we see and unfortunately this can lead to us paying through the nose for an inferior service that doesn’t even match our needs. It’s important to realise that there are ways for you to change tariffs quickly and easily and in some cases without even having to wait out your existing contract.

If your credit is less than stellar, you may think that this prohibits you from accessing the best deals, though this is far from being the case. Check out www.zaggor.com and you’ll see just how accessible the best handsets and tariffs are to you, whatever your credit score. Why pay more when you can get the exact same handsets with a better bundle of minutes texts and data to suit your needs.

Internet Service Provider

Very few homes can get by these days without a broadband internet connection, and if you have teenaged children then that number plummets to zero. Chances are you’ve been with your ISP for a while now and you probably have little idea just how much choice in service providers you have. The bigger providers know this, which is why they’ve probably made very little (if any) effort to keep your business. You probably need your internet for everything from streaming movies to running a business from home but that’s no excuse to pay over the odds for it. Recent years have given rise to a greater range of alternative service providers popping up offering perks and bundle deals that put those of the bigger companies to shame.

Utilities

Your gas won’t smell worse if you change your provider. Your electricity won’t start spontaneously leaping out of the sockets. In fact, if you change your gas and electricity provider you’re still getting the exact same utilities. The only thing that changes is the price. Sounds like a no brainer, doesn’t it? Then why do so few families do it?!? Switching energy suppliers is way quicker and easier than you might expect and you can do it while getting a pretty fair idea of what you’ll be saving so long as you have a rough idea what your annual usage is.