Have people round for tea! No, seriously, I mean it. As long as they have you round for tea the following week, what have you got to lose? Actually, make that dinner and make an evening of it. You can get all your chatting done face-to-face and your phone bill won’t end up half as distressing. And in the winter you’re doubly a winner because you can switch your heating off if you’re spending an afternoon or evening with a friend, just as they can when they visit you.
If you gradually begin inviting more friends along to these evenings, for every person added, more money gets subtracted from all your fuel bills. You could even draw up some kind of rota so that no one dodges their turn. If you’ve got a group of, say, seven friends, and you each take a turn once a month to be the host, that’s a week’s worth of heating costs you’ll each save. It’s that simple. Hire a DVD and the cost of that gets divided too. Revive some old Victorian parlor games. Play cards or chess, and so on.
Under the Buy a computer link I also point out the financial advantage of communicating by email rather than by phone. But of course you can also use your PC to talk on the phone, usually more cheaply than with a conventional phone, and in some cases for free. (note to Richard – create a link to PC phone companies?)
But supposing all this advice is coming, after the horse has bolted, as we say in the UK. Well, don’t panic if you are already in debt. You are certainly not alone! It starts when the phone bill gets accidently chucked out with the junk mail. Then there’s the electricity bill which you are going to pay tomorrow (except for the fact that there’s always another Tomorrow!) And before you know it, you’re having nightmares about big burley blokes smashing in your front door. But, stop! Calm down. Take a deep breath. It’ll be OK if you take things a step at a time.
For example, if you finding it impossible to get credit, there are people who can help you find out why. Things such as County Court Judgements and bankrupsy will obviously effect your chances of getting credit. But there are actually less obvious and less serious things which can also be damaging. For example, in the UK anyway, if you are not registered to vote, or you’ve been late be as little as a week in paying some household bills: all of these things count against you, and might result in you not being able to borrow money or put a downpayment on that Jaguar you’ve hayour eye on for years (although why you would want to buy a wild North American cat, I’m not sure.)
The main thing to concider is that experts in the field of credit repair – of which many can be found on the Internet – can vary dramatically in what they charge for their service so it’s strongly adviced that you shop around before commiting yourself.
But the fact of the matter is, that the majority of people who are refused credit are on the boarderline of acceptence. So if there are just one or two out-of-date or inacuate bits of imformation on your credit file, these can be legally removed and your magic piece of plastic will once again be able to give you the illution that you are getting stuff for free! Or, to put it another way - you will once again be able to purchase as many huge undomesticated felines as you want.
