Making the Most of Your Money in 2023
It’s not called the January blues for no reason!!
According to a report from Reuters in December last year, “British public borrowing unexpectedly jumped last month to hit its highest for any November on record, reflecting the mounting cost of energy subsidies, debt interest and the reversal of an increase in payroll taxes, official figures showed on Wednesday”.
With all this doom and gloom reported in our media on an almost daily basis how can the average person hope to get by?
The price of almost everything has risen since last year, leaving many people struggling to pay for everyday essentials required to support themselves and their families.
In response to this in September 2022, the Irish Government announced a series of short-term supports to support people across a number of areas.
These include a reduction in public transport fees until the end of 2023 and a once of measure to offer assistance with the cost of being a student for the academic year 2022/3. There are also electricity credits spread out over 2022 and 2023 and once-off social welfare assistance payments. Full details of all the supports can be found on the Citizens Information website.
And with many having overspent during the Christmas period, they may now be suffering the consequences and facing a bleak month or two.
It’s all very well to cut down on things we don’t really need, or the things we can do without but what happens when an emergency arises?
Suddenly the laptop you need for work breaks, or the boiler blows up and you are left without heat, sometimes we have these unexpected bills that have to be sorted.
If you don’t have an emergency fund to fall back on, then borrowing may be your only option.
There are many free resources available to support people setting themselves up to have emergency funds. For example, you can set up a budget plan for free at the MABS site. Their budget tool will help you work out how much money you have coming in and how much is going out. You will be able to ascertain from that how much you can put away for those rainy days when emergencies pop up. Even £10.00 a month can add up over a couple of years!
However, If borrowing from a third party is your only option then another support you can look into is a company like Money Mutual. This allows you to fill in a no-cost application form in order to get in front of various lenders. Should a lender contact you, you can go through the finer details they are offering you and decide whether or not you want to proceed with them or not. It makes borrowing easy!
AND of course, one question many people are asking is “How long these financial hard times will last?”
In January 2023 on a world scale government and business leaders are meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with the purpose of addressing the state of the world and discussing priorities for the year ahead.
On that, a report issued by online source Mint.com stated that “Almost two-thirds of chief economists believe a global recession is likely in 2023, of which 18% consider it extremely likely, more than twice as many as in the previous survey conducted in September 2022. A third of respondents consider a global recession to be unlikely this year."
So, for the foreseeable, it is likely that we are all faced with tightening our belts as we ride the present wave of economic uncertainty.
But remember to check out the existing supports that are out there for you, and if borrowing is something you need to do, then ensure you are making borrowing easy for you.