Just Four Quid

Because today is a bank holiday, I’ll be giving our usual weekly fundraising progress report tomorrow, once the charities have opened again and sent me the figures.

So instead of that, I’ll round off the week with the final household bill I’ve tackled. Yesterday I looked at my council tax, specifically whether my flat was in the correct band. Amazingly, all properties were originally valued for council tax by estate agents driving past and making a guess! Not suprisingly, many people have been able to successfully challenge their valuation and get rebanded, saving hundreds a year. It’s even backdated to when you moved into your property (to 1991, when council tax was introduced), so whether you own or rent, it’s worth looking at!

The details of how to check are on Martin Lewis’s MoneySavingExpert council tax pages (you can also read there about discounts for single person occupancy and other things), including an entertaining short video clip about a spectacularly successful claimant (but note that this is for England and Scotland; see Martin’s site about Wales and Northern Ireland).

Around one in ten people are estimated to be in the wrong band. Was I one of them? First, I went to the Valuation Office Agency site and entered my address. All of the flats on my street were in the same band as me except one; a couple of doors away, the top floor flat was in the lower band. The top floor flats are all smaller than the other flats, so that wasn’t likely to help me.

Next, following Martin’s instructions, I look at Nethouseprices.com, a site that shows the price that flats in my street have sold for, and when they sold (this is a bit galling; I can see that someone next door bought a lot more cheaply than I managed at the same time!). You find a similar property (or your own), the sale price and date, and go to the Nationwide House Price Calculator to work out what that was worth in 1991 when the bands were created (because this is what your council tax band is based on).

Using my own flat’s sale price and date, I find its 1991 value and look it up in the table on Martin’s page: it falls splat in the middle of the council tax band that I am already in. It’s not looking promising, but I decide to do the same check on the other flats on the same floor as mine down the street, just in case I massively overpaid when I bought compared to everyone else and what I paid doesn’t indicate my flat’s real value.

Unfortunately, Nethouseprices.com chooses this time to be unavailable due to high demand (I hope it was all Just Four Quidders!) so I can’t continue my checks. I’ve also decided to look into whether that top flat down the road got its lower band due to a challenge because if so, telling my neighbours about it could save them some money; and a friend round the corner has asked me to check up on her flat, so that’s all something for another day.

So, no saving for me today but I’ve managed to save £75.28 on my next year’s bills on other things this week of which I’ve donated £42.40, and I may yet save something on my water bills and possibly on other people’s council tax so I’ve had a good week.  Also, a friend just gave me a £3 donation for a partly used bottle of hairstyling stuff that I don’t need since I had my hair cut short so at least I’ve raised a bit today!

If you’ve tackled any of your bills this week, please let us all know how you’ve got on! Meanwhile, our next project starts tomorrow and it’s an easy one…

Money I’ve raised today: £3.00

Money I’ve raised so far: £124.40

Onwards with my marathon of bills. Yesterday I decided to tackle my gas and electricity. I had a capped dual fuel deal with E.ON (what sort of name is that?) with a penalty of £35 if I switched before October. I had a discount of 6% because I paid by direct debit and a further 3% discount because it was dual fuel. I even got Tesco clubcard points (I seem to have organised this bill much better than my phone/broadband account).

Could I do any better? Well, looking at Martin Lewis’s MoneySavingExpert gas & electricity page, it’s not clear whether this is the time to switch, although it probably is (his site helpfully recommends when to switch, depending on when companies are cutting their rates).

Just because I’d have to pay an exit fee, it didn’t mean I shouldn’t switch – according to Martin’s site, if I went through the comparison websites, there were cashbacks and vouchers to be had that would wipe out my penalty.

So, following his instructions I went to energyhelpline.com, where I had to identify my current supplier and tariff, my current payment method (monthly direct debit rather than quarterly) and my annual usage in kWh. Some of my old bills were missing so I had to phone E.ON to ask how much I’d used, but even if you don’t know the information, you can still complete the form with some details that allow your usage to be estimated.

The E.ON lady who gave me my details asked if I was shopping around and told me that I wouldn’t find a cheaper provider because I had taken out a capped deal early, before the major price rises last year. However, she is a saleswoman so I decided to ignore that and entered my details on the comparison site anyway. She was right, though; I was already on the cheapest deal.

While I had been on the phone with her, I asked her whether there was a cheaper deal available with E.ON (there wasn’t) or a social tariff that I would be eligible for (there wasn’t). It’s worth asking about these tariffs, though; last year the government put pressure on energy providers to provide special tariffs for the “fuel poor” – those spending more than 10% of their incomes on fuel or who were long-term ill or disabled.

In practice, different companies use different criteria (for E.ON, for example, you don’t qualify for their tariff if you’re under 60, no matter how broke or ill you might be). They’ve been criticised for leaving great swathes of the fuel poor untouched and for not advertising the existence of the tariffs. Also, some of the social tariffs are not the companies’ cheapest deals! Still, it’s worth checking to see if your company (or one you might switch to) offers a worthwhile social tariff.

So, no saving for me today. Not for want of trying, though!

Money I’ve raised today: £0.00

Money I raised so far: £121.40

So, all aglow from having managed to save some money on my contents insurance on Wednesday, I decided to tackle phone/broadband yesterday. I decided to start out on something that I thought would be easy; finding a saving for my parents, who have had a phone-only deal with BT since it was a nationalised industry and Continue reading ‘The phone & broadband’

As part of our Week of Bills, I decided to tackle my home insurance first this week. My flat’s management company cover buildings insurance, so I can only save on contents insurance.

It’s already pretty low. When I did my first big review of bills in Autumn 2006, my contents insurance was £160. After following the advice on Martin Lewis’s website, it went down to £70 Continue reading ‘Insured!’

Because I’m asking you to contact as many people as possible with ME/CFS about Just Four Quid this week, I thought I should tell you what the charities have already been doing to promote the campaign.

The summer issue of the ME Association’s newsletter is landing on doormats all over the country about now and features us prominently both on the cover and with an article on the first page. MERUK’s e-newsletter also includes us and is about to start pinging into inboxes. Between them, they will reach about 11,000 people!

Tony Britton, the publicity manager for the ME Association, handles publicity for Just Four Quid on behalf of both charities and spent most of last bank holiday weekend sending out press releases and letters to editors.

Charity fundraising campaigns need to have something special about them to be newsworthy, so we decided to emphasise the novelty of the “save a bit to donate a bit” strategy, which was designed with the recession in mind and so is very topical. We also suggested that our campaign could be a model for other charities during the recession, because many of them are receiving fewer donations as the economy worsens.

Tony therefore sent the press release to personal finance columnists at the Sunday Times, Observer, The Times, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Daily Express, The Independent and the News of the World and will be chasing them up this week. I hope we might get a mention in some of those columns.

He also sent the press release to the Press Association and to 88 regional daily and evening papers. The Dundee Courier scooped the worldwide exclusive and published our story last week (great things, acorns, etc.).

We thought it would help our chances of getting “Letters to the Editor” into the weekly papers if each letter was made specific to each paper’s location. So we got tables of population statistics for UK towns and cities and worked out how many people in each would, on average, have ME/CFS. Tony edited each of the 73 letters to include that information. We know for sure that it will be in the Buckingham Advertiser this week (more great things, more acorns etc.)!

Tony also sent the press release to the “trade press” for charities –  Charity Times, Third Sector magazine (we appeared yesterday), Third Force magazine (appeared there too) and Disability Now.  He says, “Eventually, I gave up when my eyes had hollowed out so much that they felt as though they were coming out the back of my head.” Thanks, Tony!

Many of these approaches will take a while to show up in print but it’s very encouraging that we’re seeing things appearing already. If you spot any, please let us all know. Oooh, just got an email from Tony to say we’re in the Basildon Echo (things, acorns, childhood dream realised, etc.).

Tomorrow, as we continue to try to reach other people with ME/CFS,  I’ll be talking about how we’re all connected…

Money I’ve raised today: £0.00

Money I’ve raised so far: £79.00

Happiness that someone else handled the press launch: 10/10