While there are many things that we can do to try to save money when we make purchases or try to live frugally, there are also ways to keep better track of our finances. Maybe some of what we consider to be immutable expenses are actually a lot more flexible, or perhaps we have spent money somewhere that we can claim back. By restructuring our monthly plans, we are actually able to save money with very little effort. Here are two things we may have overlooked when crunching the numbers for that budget.

Claiming Money Back

Sometimes we end up spending for something but are actually due a lot of that money back. PPI is an infamous example of the way many people ended up spending money on something they didn’t need to. Another common area where people miss their opportunity to claim money back is air travel. Flightright offers air passengers online legal advice for claiming compensation for disruption to their travel stemming from things such as bad weather, strikes, flight cancellations and flight delays. This legal advice is easy to follow, transcends complex jargon, and 99% of cases have been successfully won in court. This works with airlines such as easyJet, which is referred to by some as Britain’s most unpunctual airline. What's more, train companies in the UK such as LNER, offer delay repay, which promises to refund the price of tickets if the train or its alternative was delayed by more than 30 minutes. Claiming money back when the services we expected haven’t been up to par isn’t just part of our consumer rights but could actually make a significant difference and can change an inconvenience into a welcome relief.

Claiming money back when the services we expected haven’t been up to par isn’t just part of our consumer rights but could actually make a significant difference and can change an inconvenience into a welcome relief.

Change Your Provider

It can often seem paralyzing: We sign up to a contract service and are forced to stay with them because shopping around and cancelling the contract seems too much hassle, or seems to incur additional fees. However, long-term contracts with necessary services such as internet providers, phone companies, energy providers and even banks may not be giving us the best deal; in fact, they may be costing us more than their competitors. How much you pay for a service depends on many factors, but shopping around and seeing what you should be paying could result in you clawing back a significant amount of your monthly budget. For instance, according to Martin Lewis at Money Saving Expert, your energy bills could be cheaper if you investigate cheaper tariffs and other methods of making payments such as a direct debit. Even threatening to cancel or swap could sometimes shock your current provider into giving you a better service or cheaper deal, so it pays to go down that route as well.

How much you pay for a service depends on many factors, but shopping around and seeing what you should be paying could result in you clawing back a significant amount of your monthly budget.

By making sure that you recoup any unnecessary payments and collecting all money owed to you, you will find that you could be making greater savings each month. Similarly, by shopping around for all your providers and being savvy about it, you could be spending less each month. As a result, your outgoings are decreased with very little effort on your part.