Become A Smart Spender – Researching Mobile Phone Contracts

Spending money isn’t bad, but it can seem when you’re reading money-saving online articles all the time.

What is bad, however, is spending money without having awareness, because there are so many demands on our money and spending it without being conscious of value is wasteful.

You don’t have to aspire to be super-frugal to meet your savings goals, instead try to be more of a smart spender.

A big part of being a smart spender is having a budget.

I recently updated my budget – my spending plan that I write down each month. No month is the same so I find it important to redo my budget each month to take into account what’s coming up. I admit that a lot of the time the plan is more fiction than reality, but it’s an exercise I’ve found helpful to gain clarity on my spending priorities and what matters to me. A budget isn’t about telling yourself you can’t spend on something, but rather its a way to reassure yourself that you can spend money on things because you’ve planned it out. And a saving in one part of the budget can go towards something else, something that matters more to you.

If you’ve never written a budget before, start by recording your spending for a week…

…or a month to give yourself an idea of your normal spending habits.

Having it written down or typed up in a spreadsheet can be eye-opening, and raise your awareness of where your money is going. When I did it a couple of years ago I saw how big my mobile phone bill was in comparison to some other spending categories and seeing the numbers led me to becoming determined to get my mobile phone bill lower when my contract expired.

Mobile phone contracts are a great area to look at if you’re looking to trim your budget…

…because they can be relatively large and the bill comes around every month so a small saving monthly can add up to a lot over a year or two. A study by HandsetExpert has found mobile customers losing £92 on the wrong contracts.

I recently upgraded my phone and went through the process of researching the current deals. There are so many options and it can be overwhelming.

To make your research more simple, it’s worth calculating the total cost of ownership (TCO) and then deciding if the package of data, calls, texts, and the actual handset is worth it.

Sometimes, switching to SIM only deals could save Brits a total of £3.4 billion per year according to the research!

Courtesy of: HandsetExpert

You don’t have to feel bad about spending money on your phone, after all for many of us it’s an important tool that we use every waking hour of every day, but, as with all purchases, it’s best to understand what you are paying for and determine if it’s worth it for you, particularly for a mobile phone contract that will take a chunk out of your budget every month for two years.

Curious to know what I ended up going for in my mobile phone contract search?

Even before this research came out, my own analysis came to the same conclusion, and I decided to by my new phone outright and continue with my current SIM-only deal.

Maybe you could benefit by doing the same.

Happy smart spending!

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