Selfish plug

Hello,

How are you today?

I'm fine thanks, been keeping myself busy (although my bathroom is still not finished, story for another day!).

So you think you've got life pretty summed up at the moment, you have your financial life under control, you save plenty each month.

Okay, let's step it up a gear. There are some expenses you just can't get away from (or shouldn't), death and taxes they always say. Well there are some others  as well. Home insurance, life insurance, food shopping, the occasional treat (woah there, are we going a little too far now?). Insert your own list of "needs".

As these costs cannot be avoided it's often cited to look around for the cheapest deals. But sometimes the cheapest isn't good enough. Another casual saying is "buy cheap, buy twice"!

So you may want to look elsewhere, this is where a new idea has come forward to me, Cashback.

I've heard about it before but never utilised it fully. My sister was the first to point this out when she bought her home insurance. She told me her renewal was X, she used a comparison site to find the best deal for her, then went through a cashback site and basically halved the cost to her of the insurance.

Pretty snazzy I thought, but maybe too good to be true?

So I checked it out, there does seem to be some pitfalls, the cashback isn't instantaneous, it is never guaranteed until it's in your bank and it scares me a little too.

By scaring me what I mean is, I've used it so far to reduce the cost of my home insurance by £70ish which is pretty good, but I was never 100% sure I would be getting that money until it hit my bank account.

Therefore I would only ever recommend using sites like this when you definitely want the exact service that the company is offering cashback for. To clarify, it seems some service providers have very similar products, with similar names, with one being available to earn cashback on and the other you cannot. The pricing on the products can differ wildly, so make sure you double check before signing up for any new products.

Always remember spending money on anything other than necessities is a luxury! You will always be better off keeping the money in your pocket!

Even with these warnings I still think cashback sites are worthwhile and definitely worth a browse, if you'd llike to help my blog then you can sign up though my affiliate link for Topcashback here,

PS goodbye winamp, you served us well :'(