If you’ve been maximising the frugal lifestyle and slaying the debt or saving for your dreams holiday, then go you!  You rock!   But at some point, we must confront the next stage of truly managing our finances, and that is getting a pension and looking after it.   I speak from experience when I say that pensions are confusing.  It feels like they designed that way so that you don’t ask too many questions and accept the decisions that these finance-y people make.   Personally, I like to be a bit more involved.  I like to know what my pension is doing and how it is going to support me when I am no longer willing or able to work to support myself.   Why do you need to need to nurture your retirement funds? There might come a time in your life when you no longer want to…

There is no doubt that you’ve heard that Amazon’s Prime Day starts today.  And this year it is not just one but two days.   Every year there are big savings to be had and it is bound to be the same over the next two days, so it is natural to get a bit excited.   However, with many of us trying to stick to a budget and manage our less than obedient willpower, these two days could have the potential for disaster too.   With this in mind, I thought I’d write a list of steps you can take to get the most out of the next two days and stay in budget.   Make sure you are a Prime member In order to access the deals, you’ve got to have Prime.  Now, there are a couple of ways of going about this.   First up, if someone…

First up, IFISA stands for Innovative Finance ISA (Individual Savings Account).  They are a newer, alternative type of ISA that was introduced in April 2016.  They offer another choice to more traditional Cash ISAs and Stocks and Shares ISAs and provide access to a slightly different market.   How do IFISAs work? The way IFISAs work is by lending your money to borrowers in exchange for an interest rate.  Sometimes called peer to peer lending, you will be providing loans to businesses or individuals in a similar way to banks.   When you invest, you will be matched with individual borrowers and they will make payments back to you with that additional interest payment.   Who is providing these services? In the UK, RateSetter is leading the way in peer to peer lending.  Created in 2010, by two guys who wanted to fill the gap between low-risk, but low return…

I love travelling by train!  It is brilliant with kids.  You grab yourself a table, take a picnic and spend the entire journey playing games and looking out the window.   If someone needs a wee, you get up, wander to the toilet and then come back.  It is all really simple!   However, I do think that the process of buying train tickets is confusing.  Obviously, I love a bargain and shopping around is the way to do that.  But there are so many options out there.   How to save money on train tickets? One of the best ways to save money on train tickets is to split your tickets.  This means breaking the whole trip down into shorter journeys and paying for these separately.   There are many occasions when taking this approach will save you money, but it can take time to find these money saving…

When it comes to the food shop, I’m really lazy.  I love having my food delivered straight to my door.  Even though it doesn’t necessarily align with my frugal lifestyle.   Having two small children means that physically doing the food shop is a complete nightmare.  They both want to sit in the trolley.  They get upset when you say they can’t have something.  Then the stress of it all means that I spend a fortune on junk because I deserve it after that.   The downside to this is that you can’t use the cheap places like Lidl and Aldi.  This meant that to save money on grocery deliveries I had to get a bit more creative.   What do I normally do? Tesco is my go to.  I started using Tesco years ago because I loved their Clubcard scheme.  I’d buy all my food and then every few…