The start of a new year is always a good time to make changes  – and with cuts in child benefits and the new household charge – many people will have less to spend in 2012.
Below   we have highlighted a few suggestions  to help you save money and cut bills and spending  in 2012.

Switch Electricity Supplier
If you are still on the old ESB rates you could easily save around €100 a year by switching to Airtricity or Bord Gais for Electricity. You could save money by just paying by Direct Debit and opting for electronic billing.
See our  Electricity Price Comparison

Switch Gas Supplier
If you are still with Bord Gais for gas – you could save  as much as €150 a year if  you switch to Flogas for your natural mains gas supply. See Gas Prices Compared

Switch Your Current Account :
Many people in Ireland are still paying  fees to their banks for operating a current account.
Bank fees are easily avoidable – just switch your account to a bank that doesn’t charge transaction fees or doesn’t make you jump through hoops to avoid them.   Some BOI customers could save around €200 euros a year in bank charges by switching to a fee free bank   See more here about Current Account Fees

Get Grants towards Insulation or new Boiler.
Grants of upto €4000 are available for insulation of your property.
Grants of €560 are also available to replace a central heating boiler with a more efficient one and upgrade the heating controls at the same time.  Most old boilers could be costing you hundreds of euros a year in higher fuel bills – so replacing it will save you money in the long run too. (Condensing  boilers could save as much as 18% in oil costs for heating and hot water)  See more here about Grants for New Boilers and Insulation

Shop Online to get lower prices. Use discount codes and vouchers for online shopping – See some Discount Codes here

Switch Your Savings Account.
Ifyou have savings you should check if you are getting the best interest rate.
See our regularly updated list of the Best Interest Rates Here.   Some deposit accounts are paying rates as low as  0.01%  – but you could get a rate as high as 4.1% . On a balance of €20,000 – that would be an increase in interest of   €818  a year (before DIRT )

Switch Phone and Broadband
You could save about €70 a year by switching your landline and broadband provider  – see more here about the cheapest broadband providers.    (This is for anytime calls and 8Mb broadband)

0%  Interest  Credit Cards

If you have a credit card balance that you are finding hard to pay off -  you could try and transfer the balance to a credit card  with 0% Interest introductory offer. On a balance of €1000 -  going interest free for 10 months could save you as much as €80 in interest charges.  See our list of 0%  Interest Credit Card Offers

Prepaid Mastercard -  If you fly on Ryanair more than twice a year – you should get a Prepaid Mastercard.  If you are booking flights from Ireland – paying with a prepaid mastercard will save you €12 per return flight in admin fees.  Find out more here about How to Get a Prepaid Mastercard

Get cash for your old Mobile Phones.
You might be pleasantly surprised at the amount your old phone is worth.
See our page about cash for old phones here.  It might not be a lot – but every little helps !

Online Surveys
Don’t waste all your time on Facebook – you could try and make a few Euros doing online  market research surveys . You won’t make loads  -  but it’s fun . Register here for  Online Surveys

Happy New Year to all our visitors – and don’t forget to keep coming back for more financial tips in 2012. You can keep up to date with Moneyguide Ireland on Facebook too .

January 2012:

What are the Cheapest Options For Gas and Electricity

If you are “dual fuel” -  electricity and gas the cheapest  overall option will depend on your actual usage – but based on a fairly high usage  of 14219 Kwh of  Gas and 5600 kwH of Electricity a year – we have calculated the lowest   annual costs from the combinations of various providers…

The cheapest option is to use  Airtricity ( Direct Debit & Online Billing)  for Electricity and  using Flogas for your Gas (Pay by DD) . This would work out at a total of  €1784  for the year.
BUt – the Airtricity price involves you signing a 2 year contract with a €70 fee to break out of it – if that sounds a bit risky then the  next best option is probably  to go for a combination of Electricity from Bord Gais (DD and eBilling too)  with gas from Flogas (dd) – the overall total for both fuel bills would then come to €1796 a year

If you want to get both fuels from the same energy provider – then the cheapest bundle is from Airtricity –   but it also has a 2 year contract and  works out at a total of  €1819  a year for the usage shown above.
If you don’t like the idea of being tied to Airtricity for 2 years – then the next best priced dual fuel bundle is from Bord Gais  – which would work out  at €1902 – which is   €83 more than the cheapest option from Airtricity.

Avoid :  The most expensive dual fuel option from one provider  is the Airtricity bundle  – (Not DD and postal bills) costing  €2055  for the usage shown.

The most expensive combination is to have Gas from Bord Gais  at their standard rates and Electricity from ESB  at standard rates – that works out at €2071 a year – which is  €289 per year  more expensive than the cheapest option in this example.

Electricity Only Comparison

If you only have Electricity  – then the lowest price is  from Airtricity (But On a 2 year contract) . The cheapest  non-contract electricity price is from Bord Gais.
See  more details here on our page :   Electricity Price Comparsion

Figures  were calculated  January 2012  using published tariffs and standing charges on suppliers websites and including the PSO Levy on Electricity  and Carbon Tax on Gas.
The prices given are for new customers. It may be possible that your current energy supplier  tarrif is cheaper than the ones mentioned here – especially if you signed up to a deal within the last 12 months.

You could also  save more money on your electricity bills by doing things like switching to these Low Energy Bulbs (Savings as much as 90%  compared to Halogen 50 watt!)

Prepay Mobile phone  charges in Ireland  – which  network is the cheapest ?

Everyone reading this probably has a mobile phone  -  we are in constant touch with friends and family – but this convenience has  a price.
A sizeable portion of the Irish population use pre-Pay or Pay as You Go phones – but  it is very easy to keep getting those €10 Euro top ups at the supermarket and lose track of exactly how much the phone usage is costing you.

The cheapest  pre-pay deal at the moment for people who like to use their mobile to make lots of calls  – is from Meteor.  They have a PAYG deal – where if you top up by €30 in one go – you get FREE calls to any network all month.
This “Meteor Anytime Choice Free Any Network Talk “  is “for life” – but you need to sign up by  January 31st 2012.   You can join Meteor Online Here
( There is a cap of 5,000 minutes of calls per month – - but that is 166 mins a day – so it would be hard to reach that limit).
The €30 credit can then be used for texts and internet. You would get 300 texts for that or you could use  50Mb of data every day for 30 days. (i.e 1.5Gb)
Someone making 30 minutes of calls a day and sending 10 text messages a day would just need to top up by €30 a month on this Meteor plan.

The same  usage on some other prepay networks would cost anything from €200 a month to €470.
The cheapest bill pay deal that would give you 30 mins talk time a day  on any network and 300 texts a month would be from Tesco at €50 a month.

See our article about  Lowest Prepay Data Charges on Mobiles in Ireland

A recent comparison of car insurance premiums in Ireland was published by the Financial Regulator in November 2011.
Many people are renewing car insurance in January – so we thought it would be a good time to analyze the results.

The comparison showed once again that the price of car insurance premiums can differ by large amounts and households can save significant amounts by shopping around.
If you get a renewal notice – don’t just accept it – get a few more quotes.

In the survey – the high cost of insurance for learner drivers was highlighted – with prices as high as €2550 a year for a provisional licence holder.
Some insurers didn’t even quote for learners.

Getting young drivers named on a parents policy can reduce costs a bit – but they can still be pretty expensive (€1490 a year for a father and his 20 year old son )

The biggest price difference in the comparison survey was for a 20 year old student driving a 2003 Seat Ibiza  who had  recently obtained a  full licence.
The lowest quote for fully comprehensive insurance in this case was for €1250 from AXA. The most expensive quote was €2424 from RSA – a difference of  €1174 a year (almost double).

Overall – the comparison survey obtained 28 quotes each from 8  insurance companies.  They covered both comprehensive and third party insurance for males and females.
Axa Insurance and RSA came out best – both had  the lowest price in 8  of  the 28 scenarios .
Quinn was next best – with the lowest quote in 7 cases.
Aviva had the lowest price in 5 cases and FBD for just 1 (same price as AXA )
Zurich, Allianz and Chartis Direct didn’t provide the cheapest quote for any of the scenarios in the survey.

Chartis Direct performed the worst in the comparison – they provided the most expensive quotes in 10 cases  and refused to quote on 16 cases!
Zurich  insurance also did badly with the highest price in 8 cases.

The survey only used direct insurers. You may well get even cheaper prices from online Brokers such as AA Insurance - they will get quotes from several insurance providers.

Ref – http://www.itsyourmoney.ie/costcomparisons

How much does it cost to get car insurance in Ireland  for a provisional licence holder ?

A recent survey of  eight insurance providers found that quotes for learner drivers ranged from €1076 to  €2550 a year.

Several insurance companies wouldn’t even provide a quote for a 20 year old student driving  a 2003 Seat Ibiza with a  provisional licence and no previous driving experience.
Allianz, Chartis Direct , RSA (through 123.ie) and Zurich would not provide cover.

For a male – the lowest quote for fully comprehensive cover was €1888 from AXA – this included a €600 excess. The highest fully comp quote came from FBD at €2550 with a €350 excess.

Female provisional licence holders were quoted lower prices for insurance in all cases  – with the lowest quote for comprehensive insurance coming in at €1233 from AXA. This is €655 cheaper than the quote for a male in exactly the same car and with the same circumstances.
In one case – the quote for a female was  €1083 cheaper than that for a male . Quinn insurance quoted €2384 for a male and   €1301 for a female.

Quotes for Third Party, Fire and Theft  (TPFT) are normally cheaper because this does not cover any damage caused to your car in an accident that is your fault.
The difference in price between fully comprehensive and TPFT for a 20 yr old provisional licence holder was around €300 euro – but strangely with Aviva it was cheaper to get fully comp instead of Third Party insurance. (€96 less a year).

The survey was carried out  in November 2011 by the fiancial regulator and covered the following insurance providers (not brokers)

Allianz , Aviva , AXA , ChartisDirect , FBD , Quinn Direct , RSA Insurance, Zurich

As part of Budget 2012 – it was mentioned that the amounts paid out in Rent Allowance would be reviewed in 2012.  (It is also known as Rent Supplement) .

Rent Allowance / Supplement is paid to people living in private rented accommodation who cannot provide for the cost of their accommodation from their own resources. In 2011 – €465 million in Rent Allowance was paid  to over 96,000 people.

The government have set new figures for the maximum rents payable by Rent Allowance  this week – and many landlords will not be happy. (That is assuming they reduce rents in line with these caps). WIth the €200 NPPR and the new Household Charge – the profits of landlords are being reduced.

The government  expect to make €22 million is savings a year from these cuts.

The new limits will apply to all new claimants from January 1st 2012. The lower  limits will only be applied to existing claimants when their claims are reviewed or if they move to new accommodation.

The rules for Rent Allowance / Supplement state that the  total rent paid by tenants to landlords  must not be above the maximum rent level set for your county or area. The local Community Welfare Office may also set lower rates within these limits.  If your actual rent is higher than the local maximum, you may be refused Rent Supplement entirely.

This advice was given to Welfare Officers in Dec 2011

Welfare staff may use their discretionary powers and pay Rent Supplement based on the rate quoted within the lease agreement for up to a period of thirteen weeks.

Welfare staff may also wish to use their discretion, and extend the thirteen week period as outlined above, in circumstances where:

(i) the lease agreement is, within a reasonable timeframe, about to expire, or;

(ii) the termination of the lease agreement may give rise to onerous penalties payable by the applicant, or;

(iii) the minimum notice within the lease agreement, that a tenant must provide a landlord to vacate the property, is in excess of the thirteen week period.

Monthly Maximum Rent Payable Under Rent Allowance / Supplement Scheme

There are different figures for people in shared accommodation – the figures above are for people who don’t share a home with other non family members.

The new rent figures have dropped by as much as €230 a month in some places (Wicklow).
The biggest percentage fall was in Roscommon (45%)  – for couples with or lone parents with 2 children.

Sky Ireland have a special offer that is available online only from Jan 6th to Feb 12th 2012. If you join   Sky Ireland Online you  get a free Sky+ box and free setup .

A Sky Plus box allows you to record up to 185 hours of TV programs to watch when  it suits you-  and you can even pause live TV .

Visit Sky Ireland to find out more .

You might also be interested in  finding out about Saorview – the Irish Digital TV service which is already up and running.
In 2012 – the old aerial  signals from RTE will be switched off and all their transmissions will be digital. You may need to buy new equipment to recieve the digital TV channels. Some people may need new aeriels and a digital TV receiver.
Sky customers will not need to do anything or buy anything – they will continue to watch digital TV via their satellite.
Find out more about Saorview Here

 Irish Banks Still Want your Money.
You might think that the Irish people  have already given the banks  too much money in the form of  the bailout – especially when you consider the massive profits of Irish banks in recent years .  The banks in Ireland are  still trying hard to  get us to deposit  our money into their savings accounts.

On our page of  the Best  Savings  Rates in Ireland   – you will see that you can get rates as high as 4.1% at a time when the ECB rate is just 1% .

If you are lucky enough to have some savings – then you should check if you are getting the best interest rate. Some deposit accounts pay as little as 0.1% a year !  If you had just €4000 and moved it to an account paying 4.1% – you could get enough extra interest in a year to pay the Household Charge and have a bit left over even after the 30% DIRT.

See more of our 2012 Money Saving Tips.

A few of the Irish and non Irish banks are trying to attract deposits with newspaper and online advertising .

Just today – a  Google search  for  “best irish interest  rates ” resulted in quite a few  adverts from banks. Rabobank , Nationwide UK (Ireland) and  KBC had the top 3 advert slots.
The government backed State Savings were also advertising their 3% rate. years.

The choice of banks in Ireland  has narrowed – with several recent takeovers  – the latest one being Northern Rock Ireland – it has been transferred to PTSB – and their 3.25% rate is no longer available to new customers.

Best Interest Rates