Posts Tagged ‘bills’
Many people are caught into a bad debt situation by borrowing money from one source to pay the minimum payments on other items. Or, they put their living expenses into credit cards, and use their income to pay the minimum payments for these credit cards. When these spending habits cycle month by month, something will usually happen at some point that causes the plan of robbing Peter to pay Paul to crash down. So, what you should do if you can’t pay your bills?
When you find it is getting harder to pay your bills each month, don’t let the situation becomes worse, the earlier you try to resolve the financial problem, the easier it gets resolved. Below are a few immediate actions that you should put in place in order to recover your financial situation:
1. Stop spending with credit cards
In fact, credit cards should only be used for convenient purpose, when you have no problem in paying your bills. If you have problem in making monthly bill payments, the first thing you should do is to stop using credit cards. It might be hard to get rid of credit card usage since you have been enjoying the convenient of cashless purchases, but you have to do it while you sort through the mess.
2. Know where your money should be spent
Most people trapped into debt mainly due to uncontrolled spending. Therefore, you should know where your money goes so that you can make sure it goes into the right places. List down all bills that you need to pay each month including the debt you owe, every utility bill, etc. Then, look for things that are optional, which can be cut or reduced, for example cable subscription, electricity usage for air condition, etc.
3. Assess whether your earnings are enough to cover all bills
After cutting and eliminating optional expenses, calculate whether your earnings are enough to pay for bills that are necessities. If you find that your earnings are less than the amount of bills needs to be paid, then you are creating debt, which may burden you one day when you have difficulties to pay the minimum payments.
4. Get help if necessary
If you know you can’t afford to pay our bills, actions need to be taken in order avoid it from going worse. You may need to contact your lenders to negotiate for a finance reconstruction for credit card payments and/or refinance your home to reduce the monthly payment. If you have no confident to handle your debt problem, then finding helps from credit counseling agency might be a good option. The counseling sessions offered by credit counseling service help you to understand your options to handle your financial problem. It is important to understand the available options for debt relief so that you can choose the best option that fits your financial situation.
Summary
You may get into a debt problem if you find you can’t afford to pay your bills and you let the problem as is it. On the other hand, if you do all the above steps to recover your financial situation, then your financial will back to order fairly quickly.
No one likes getting any bill in the post, but with a recent survey finding that energy bills confuse a massive 75% of the public, it seems that gas and electricity bills may be least popular of all.
Three quarters of those polled by YouGov on behalf of independent price comparison site uSwitch said that they find their energy bills confusing, while only 39% thought that their energy bills were written in plain English.
The survey also revealed the worrying statistic that only four in ten (40%) find it easy to work out how their energy company has calculated their bill.
With the average household spending £1,243 a year on energy bills, and uSwitch predicting that energy bills could quadruple over the next ten years, the quality of energy bills is of particular concern.
Gas and electricity account for a significant proportion of the average household’s budget, and poor bills could leave customers at risk of falling in debt to their energy company, and also make it harder for to find and understand basic information like consumption, spend and tariff details, which are essential for people who want to compare gas and electricity prices and check that they are getting the best deal.
Energy suppliers seem to be lagging behind other sectors in terms of billing, for example, 72% of those polled said that they find bank and building society statements straightforward and easy to understand, and just 41% found credit and store card bills confusing.
Ann Robinson, Director of Consumer Policy at uSwitch.com, commented: “Nobody likes bills, but they do play a fundamental part in the relationship between a company and its customers. A well-written, clear and concise bill should leave consumers feeling empowered and in control, not bemused. This is why it is so worrying to find that three quarters of us are confused by our energy bills.”
She added: “Ofgem has signalled its intention to work with suppliers on improving energy bills. This is a vital piece of work if we are to see well-informed consumers taking full advantage of the competitive energy market. If Ofgem is to succeed in making energy bills simpler, clearer and easier then it has to look outside of the energy industry for ideas on best practice. Judging by our research, it could do far worse than look to banks and building societies, which seem to be leading the way in providing consumers with bills and information they can easily understand.”
With the every rising cost for the electricity bills, many people have contemplate turning to solar panels as an option to reduce their utility cost as they realize that they were literally paying over half of their money to the power company every year.
Solar panels definitely are an investment that you should consider to invest for your house as it will save you a lot of money in the long run. It can easily slash down your electricity bills by 50% to 80% if you are doing it right.
Just imagine what you can do with this extra money. Improve your overall lifestyle with these extra money definitely is a something that everyone loves. We are talking about saving thousands of dollars in years.
But majority of peoples usually have to scrap down the idea of having a solar panels once they learned about the price of a pre-built solar panels and the installation costs. It can easily cost up to thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the house and which it means that is not affordable for any average house owners.
So, the alternate solution would be building your own solar panels. There is a reason why people always prefer the Do It Yourself projects over pre-built stuff because it is cheaper and have more control over your project.
An average do it yourself panels usually only cost you around $200 to $300. Compare to the pre-built solar panels, it is literally a steal.
You don’t have to be a handyman or an engineer to build these panels. As long as you can read, follow the instructions or diagram, tell the difference between the hammer and nails and willing to dirty your hand, you are qualify enough to start this projects.
That is why you should get yourself reliable instruction guides of building a solar panels before you start. Building a solid fundamental is always important. It would make your whole project easier to start off.
It is normal for a beginner to take more than one day or a week to build one solar panels but once you done with the first one, the rest will be easier and you will get hooked in no time. You can always treat it as a weekend activities with your family for fun.
So, start taking the action to lower down your electricity bills with a home made solar panels and save the utility bill money for something else.