It’s one of the worst feelings out there, you keep telling yousrself it’s not going to happen again, chances are it will, of course we’re talking about the feeling of being skint, the feeling of not being able to pay for the bus into Uni, the feeling of not being able to afford a packet of super noodles for your tea, you just feel stuck.  Don’t let this happen again, even if you only follow a couple of the 5 point below, you can leave yourself better off month on month.  We would love to hear from you if you have any other easy cutbacks for instant results.

1. Smarter Food Shopping

The weekly shop usually puts a big dent in your budget, changing your food purchasing habits can have a big positive impact on your wallet.  Before throwing something in your trolley, always ask yourself ‘do I really need this?’, once you get used to this state of mind, you won’t even pick things up anymore, only buying the essentials and cutting back on the chocolate and crisps over the period of a month can leave a surprising chunk of change.  Another tactic is to drop the big brands, shopping supermarkets’ own brand foods are usually much cheaper and doesn’t always mean a drop in quality.  Even changing your supermarket can save money, there are websites such as mySupermarket which will analyze which products are the cheapest at which supermarkets.

2. Downgrade your Mobile Phone Contract

Are you stuck paying £35 a month for a mammoth mobile phone contract giving you unlimited texts, Internet and calls?  What are the odds of you needing all those minutes and calls?  After a certain period of time, mobile phone providers allow you to downgrade or re-negotiate your contract.  Before you make the call, analyze your bills and find out how much calls, text and data you are REALLY using, based on those figures you can negotiate the best deal with your contract provider, realistic saving here can be up to £10-£20 per month.

3. Switch Utilities

It doesn’t pay to be loyal, especially when it comes to utility companies, head over to comparison sites such as Uswitch or moneysupermarket and find out if you can find a cheaper provider for you gas, electricity, water or even home broadband.  It’s quite competitive out there and using the sites mentioned above making it so simple to find the offers, substantial savings are out there.

4. Non-Essential Stuff

Write a money diary over the course of a month (or a week), detailing every penny spent over the period of time.  Do you notice anything that jumps out as being excessive?  Something that’s a non-necessity?  Now you are aware of it your are in a better position to cut them out, biggest culprits here are cigarettes, booze, clothes shopping, eating out/takeaways, cinema etc.  We’re not trying to see you should cut out EVERYTHING, just moderate them, for example visiting the cinema once a month, instead of once a week, also make use of offers such as Orange Wednesdays.

5. Use public transport

We have previously discussed the cost of taking your own car versus public transport, so it would be worthwhile to read it here.  Basically, after declaring your vehicle off the road, you will save on car tax, car insurance and fuel, that’s a pretty hefty amount of cash.  Instead, take public transport, look into bus and rail passes or even cycle around town and campus.

Your Tips

We would love to hear you thoughts in the comments box below, if you have any easy steps to cut back on costs such as bills and costs, even if you have any suggestions on how you cope with expensive socializing events, you can get in touch via the comments box, Twitter or Facebook.

Music plays a huge part in most of our lives, whether it’s to keep you sane, get you in a certain mood, relax or even used as a study aid.  CD’s are now a thing of the past and we have long since moved on to MP3 downloads, mainly due to the huge popularity of MP3 players such as the iPod and smart phones.

A recent study found that around 80% of 17-24 year olds own some sort of MP3 player, and with the integration of music downloads into the weekly official music chart, it has created a huge digital download market.  The very same study also found that the average legally downloaded music collection stands at around 800 tracks.  In fact the digital downloads market grew 35% just from 2008 to 2009. and in 2009 over 140 million units of single tracks were downloaded.

Because of this popularity, it has created competition, with different sites varying in price, so would you stick with one site if you found out that the same track was available at a much cheaper price from another provider?  Didn’t think so.

The Main Players

Here’s a list of the main providers of digital downloads in the UK:

• Itunes
• Amazon
• cdWOW
• Play.com
• zaavi
• 7digital
• hmv.com
• we7
• Tesco
• Tune Tribe

Example

Let’s use the current no. 1 album this week as an example, 21 by Adele.  It is available for the price of £7.99 from iTunes, but the very same album is selling for a much cheaper £5.99 over at Tune Tribe, that’s a full £2 cheaper.  Let’s say you make that saving of £2 on every album you purchase using the comparison site, and you purchase around 2o albums, that’s a saving of £40.

Using the official no. 2 as another example, we found the most expensive weighing in at £8.47 and the cheapest at £4.99, that’s a difference of £3.48.

How to find the Cheapest Price

To find the cheapest music downloads, you could just manually search each site for the album you want, but that would be very time consuming, so your best bet is to use an MP3 music price comparison site.  The best I have found so far would have to be TuneChecker.  It is extremely easy to use and is the brain child of Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis.  Try it out and let us know what you think.

Remember to leave a comment below, let us know if you know of any other services regarding saving money on music downloads.  Alternatively, visit us on Twitter or Facebook!