How to cut your broadband costs
BY READERS DIGEST
1st Jan 2015 Managing your Money
Today nearly every household relies on an efficient broadband connection, but staying connected can be expensive. Stay savvy with our guide to saving money on your broadband package.
Four ways to cut the cost of your broadband
- Only pay for what you need From the speed of the connection to your download limits, it’s easy to be upsold for a package you just don’t need. If you’re a light user, ask to downgrade to a cheaper, capped service. If you’re getting your internet access in a combo with pay TV, take a look at all the channels you have and cut out any you don’t watch.
- Change how you pay With most internet connections you still need to have a landline, and you can often get a discount for paying for 12-months upfront. Paying by direct debit is usually cheaper, while a couple of high street banks offer 3% cashback on household bills.
- Haggle with your supplier The best deals often go to new customers but that shouldn’t stop you seeing if you can get a better price. Phone up and say you’re planning on leaving unless they can match or beat a deal elsewhere. Often you’ll be given a discount to stay.
- Move to a different supplier If you don’t get the deal you hoped after calling up, then it’s simple to move to a new provider. Hunt for the best deals through comparison sites like this one. Remember that some special offers will end half way through your new contract so what you pay will jump up.
- Before you switch, check if you can claim any cashback through sites such as Quidco and TopCashback—though don’t make your decision purely based on these discounts as they aren’t always guaranteed.
The special offers that aren’t that special
As a nation, we love getting a discount. Recent research by SunLife found nine in ten of us always look for a deal, helping us get more from our money. But are they always a bargain? Here are three ways you could be better off just not spending at all.
- The deals that make you spend more Money Advice Service research found we overspend by £11.74 each time we go to the supermarket. In part this is thanks to multi-buy deals tempting us to buy more than we need.
- The deals we don’t really need There’s often a temptation to get something in a sale or when it’s on special offer because it’s a bargain. And it probably is. But will you use it? Or will it sit in its box, hidden under the bed for a couple of years before you eventually throw it away? There’s no real saving if you’re spending money on something you don’t really need.
- The deals that take too long to find Before the internet, options for shopping around for the best price were pretty limited. Now you have hundreds of online stores to search, voucher codes to find, cashback to earn. Doing this can bring down the cost of your much-wanted purchase, but what about how long you spend doing this?
If you manage to save a few pennies or pounds on something—but only as the result of an hour of surfing the web—you might want to consider if your time could be better spent on bigger savings such as switching your energy, where it takes around 30 minutes to save an average of £300.
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