It’s well-known that the credit crunch and rapidly rising costs of living are affecting spending power, as well as the ability to obtain credit – but what about the other side of the coin? According to a new report from Scottish Widows, one in three UK citizens who are in need of debt help feel they can no longer afford to put aside any savings for the future.
The survey of 6,381 people, carried out by YouGov, also showed that half were not saving enough for a comfortable life after retirement.
Why are so many people ‘unable’ to save?
The report suggests that the credit crunch is encouraging more people to save rather than spend their money. But for those on lower salaries or with bigger commitments, it can actually limit people’s ability to save. “Rising costs of living are a constant pressure on people’s finances,” says a spokesperson for debt management company Gregory Pennington, “and this means many people are left with very little once bills and other commitments have been paid.”
The rising numbers of people in debt may also have an impact. “We’re seeing increasing numbers of people struggling with debt, which automatically shifts priorities away from saving money,” he says. “A few years of easy access to credit cards, loans, et cetera, are starting to take their toll.”
But are we really unable to save?
The spokesperson for debt management company Gregory Pennington says that many people may underestimate their ability to save. “A lot of people are hesitant about saving these days, because they never know when their costs will go up and they might need the money.
“People often feel that once they’ve got their bills and other essentials out of the way, which are rising all the time, they are entitled to spend whatever’s left.
“Rising costs of living are limiting what people are able to save, but the truth is that most people are able to save at least something – and even a small amount each month is worthwhile.” There are plenty of ways to cut costs without compromising lifestyle, he continues – changing utility/telephone/broadband providers, for example – and the money saved can be put aside for the future.
“Even a few minor compromises can make all the difference,” he says. “Cycling to work instead of taking the car or bus, buying fewer CDs and DVDs, or only buying clothing when it’s needed – all of these can make a difference”.
“Life would be no fun without these things, but it doesn’t take a lot to save. Buying one less shirt a month, for example, could save you around £20 a month, which is a perfectly good amount to start out on.
“It doesn’t sound a lot at the time, but over a year that’s £240 plus interest. In a good savings account, that could really add up over the years,” he says.
“There’s a snowball effect with savings. The more you have in your account, the more you will get back in interest, so you could find your money growing faster than you think. We would recommend anyone to get saving as early as possible to give themselves the best possible start.”
When you have created your blog or website you come to a stage where you want to add different extra features to your site. Widgets can help you here, but first a little more background for it. You will have a need for additions that make your site or blog more lively and attractive. Attractive sites are the kind of websites visitors want to return to. A certain level of attractiveness is also an indication of the level of professionalism of the webmaster and of the content to make use of on the site.
A lively website is opposite to a dead website signalling that it is updated with fresh stuff that fits to the theme of the site. Especially for blogs it is so important to keep updating all the time. For the blogger this can be something like a never ending job to keep up with that. Where to find new information for the blog and how to have time to write it up properly?
Here is a new widget for every type of website or blog installed at Island Vacation Tips that shows the most popular pages of the website today. As visitors pass by this widget will record the exact pages in use and keep a running statistics of all these. This means that it is functioning as a dynamic content creator that helps the webpages to stand updated in the eyes of Google.
Below you will also find another widget Blogup that helps to create links between different blogs and in that way add to the traffic of your site.
From the point of internet marketing and search engine optimizing (SEO) some other features of the Feedjit widgets are even more important. For any website it means a lot to have links from other websites and the higher rank these websites have the better. It is therefore a very useful function that Feedjit is having the full live traffic record on their own website, and include the text Popular Feedjit Blogs Today
The feedjit widget is not only showing a nice small map on your site with the location of your visitors as you saw on the above mention website but this Feedjit widget is also linking to a full interactive Google map with the geographical locations for the latest 1000 visitors to your website displayed, as seen here at these interactive world maps listed after ‘Interactive map with visitors to‘ - scroll down the page.
Remark that these urls (internet addresses) has been cut off after map/ because in that way you get immediately a view of the whole interactive world map. The interaction means that you can zoom in and out of different locations and move around on the map. When you click on one of the displayed flags you will get information about the webpage the visitor had been at. All in all an amazing collection of widgets from Feedjit.
There’s something about having a tan that makes people feel good about themselves. It’s no wonder that so many of us are keen to prolong the sun kissed look of summer.
One way to do this is by using a sunbed. With just a few minutes once or twice a week it’s easy to top up the tan that reminds us so much of our happy summer holiday abroad. Sunbeds are also great for those going on holiday if you don’t want to spend the first few days of your vacation showing off lily white skin.
Like most things moderation is the key to using sunbeds and by sticking closely to the guidelines sunbed manufacturers lay down, you will be able to have the tan that you desire without risking damage to your skin. A few sunbed tips are -
Know your skin type. The fairer your skin the longer it will take to build up your tan. Slow and gradual are the best ways to go.
Always use the goggles. They may not look particularly glamorous but they’ll help protect your eyesight and preserve the delicate skin around your eyes.
Use sunbed lotion rather than ordinary suntan cream. Sunbed lotion has been especially formulated to help speed up the tanning process when using a sunbed. This will mean that you need to spend less time using your sunbed.
Don’t spend “extra” time on your sunbed hoping for a deeper, faster tan. You risk damaging your skin and that is never attractive.
By using a good moisturising cream afterwards you’ll help prolong your tan between sunbed sessions.