How to cut the cost of bills and insurance at uni

If you can cut the cost of the dull things in life, you’ll have more money to spend on exciting things.
It’s worth spending a few minutes shopping around for cheaper utilities and insurance if it will save you enough for a night out. Here’s how:

Paying bills
Halls of residence and some student houses include most of your bills in your rent, but if you live in private accommodation that you share with others you will need to share the bills too.

To make it fair you could use a service like Split the Bills. Everyone in the house makes one monthly payment, and they use this to pay your bills and cover their costs.

You could set up a joint current account to pay your bills from instead and all pay enough into the account to cover the bills each month. This would create a financial association on your credit report with your housemates, so you would need to be able to fully trust everyone.

Electricity, gas and water
If they are not included in your rent you can save on your gas and electricity bills by cutting how much you use, sending meter readings to your supplier and switching to a cheaper deal – here’s how.

Although you can’t change your water supplier to save money, here are five easy ways to cut your water bill.

Broadband, phone and TV
Make sure you get a good enough internet connection to handle everyone in the house sharing it. You can find packages that are affordable and have a high enough download limit and speed by comparing student broadband deals here.

You can also get bundles that include a home phone line and TV package, but don’t pay extra for free landline minutes if you only ever make calls on your mobile. Here is how to get the best deal on a broadband bundle.

Some packages have a minimum length of a year, so if you’ll only be living somewhere for nine months, find a deal with a shorter contract.

Other bills
You don’t need to pay council tax if everyone you live with is a full-time student. You will need a TV licence if you watch programmes as they’re being shown, whether you watch it on a TV or another device.

Insurance
The best way to get value for money from insurance is to work out exactly what you need.
You legally have to have some types of insurance (like car insurance if you drive). For others, weigh up if the cost is worth it or if it would be cheaper to replace what you are insuring yourself if something went wrong. This will avoid wasting money on expensive cover or policies you don’t need.

There are lots of ways you can cut your car insurance costs like paying upfront, fitting an alarm or getting black box – here are the ten best ways.

Although you don’t have to get contents insurance, it can pay out to replace your possessions if things go wrong, including fire, floods or accidents. It can be worth getting a policy that covers theft as well because students are more likely to be victims of property theft than other adults. Here are some tips on picking a policy that will pay out if you need it.

Alternatively, you can get a separate policy for an expensive gadget like a phone, laptop, tablet or camera. Here’s how gadget insurance works.

Source = money.co.uk