{"id":1640,"date":"2010-01-06T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T14:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/79.170.44.80\/livingwithkids.co.uk\/the-m-word\/"},"modified":"2013-06-24T13:12:32","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T13:12:32","slug":"the-m-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kidstart.co.uk\/blog\/the-m-word\/","title":{"rendered":"The M Word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  OK, so I know it&rsquo;s the thing none of us like to think about, but we all know that if you want more disposable income in 2010 (and beyond), you&rsquo;ve got to face up to your finances. So to help you (and me!) sort money out I asked the experts for their Top 3 Tips:   <\/p>\n<p>  <strong>*Give yourself a financial health check.<\/strong> &lsquo;The most important financial test of all is a simple one,&rsquo; says TV&rsquo;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moneysavingexpert.com\" target=\"_blank\">Martin Lewis<\/a>.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you spend more than you earn?&nbsp; If so, you&rsquo;ve got a serious problem. It means either you&rsquo;ll eat up all your spending or rapidly build up debt.&nbsp; If not, then you can relax a touch, and know that you&rsquo;re financially stable. To find this out requires a REAL budget &ndash; by that I don&rsquo;t mean willy-nilly looking at a month&rsquo;s expenditure that misses out things like Christmas, summer holidays or buying a sofa. I mean looking at your finances across a year. To help, I&#39;ve designed a free tool that&#39;ll do the health check for you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moneysavingexpert.com\/banking\/Budget-planning\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.&#39;   <\/p>\n<p>  <strong>*Make sure you are getting all the money you are entitled to.<\/strong> &lsquo;A large percentage of benefits go unclaimed by those who most need them, simply because people don&rsquo;t know they are there,&rsquo; says Sam Thewlis from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mumsclub.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">mumsclub<\/a>. &lsquo;It doesn&rsquo;t help that the Government keep changing the names of benefits so you don&rsquo;t know what to claim even if you wanted to. Check out really helpful sites like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.entitledto.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">entitledto<\/a>.&#39;   <\/p>\n<p>  <strong>*Pay off your debts.<\/strong> &lsquo;Tackle those debts head on before you do anything else,&rsquo; says LivingwithKids money saving expert <a href =\"http:\/\/www.kidstart.co.uk\/livingwithkids\/page\/panel-of-experts.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Alison Hunt<\/a>. &#39;Try and move expensive credit card balances to a 0% card such as Virgin Money card (offering 0% for 16 months subject to a 2.98% fee) and give yourself some breathing space to clear that debt.&rsquo; For more tips and advice, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lovemoney.com\" target=\"_blank\">lovemoney.com<\/a>.   <\/p>\n<p>  And don&rsquo;t forget if you shop through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.KidStart.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">KidStart<\/a>&nbsp; you get money back for your kids which you can save towards their future.<br \/>  <strong>*What are your top money-saving tips?<\/strong>   <\/p>\n<p> written by Liz Jarvis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Expert advice on sorting out your finances and getting everything you&#8217;re entitled to in 2010","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3503],"tags":[880,881,882,883,150,884],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-great-family-life-tips","category-parenting-advice-from-parents","tag-budget","tag-clear-debts","tag-credit-cards","tag-entitledto","tag-kidstart-2","tag-martin-lewis"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - 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