the richest man in atherstone

In line with my plan to reduce expenses, I have looked into the services of a company called Call18866 who charge just 2p per telephone call to any landline and 12p/min to mobiles. This can be used in conjunction with my existing BT package which allows free calls at evenings and weekends but requires a 5-digit code to be dialled before the number.

I did some sums using my previous phone bill and discovered that with our existing package, 289 landline calls (both on and off peak) cost £18.58 (117 of them free).

With call 18866 they’d cost just £5.78.

25 mobile calls cost £3.02 with BT.

With call18866, they’d cost £3.48 but this doesn’t include the fact that weekend mobile calls would have been just 3p/min.

I spoke to my wife and she said that she has no problem with dialing the extra digits, so I went ahead and registered with Call18866.

The second cure for a lean purse is Control thy expenditures. Having made the commitment to save 10% of my salary, I expect I will have to make some changes to my lifestyle. After all, I've spent around 100% of my paycheck every month since the day I became a working man!

Now that my paperwork is organised, I have made a list of all my monthly expenditures that I could reduce and will tackle each of them one by one over the coming weeks. Each expense is listed below:

1. Gas and Electricity
2. Telephone
3. Internet
4. Internet Service Provider
5. Water
6. Miscellaneous cash purchases (groceries, beer, cigarettes etc.)
7. Petrol
8. Mortgage
9. Water

I will update this journal with each expenditure-reduction task over the next few weeks.

In my previous journal entry, I decided that I needed to open a Savings Account to separate my savings from the cash in my current account, which is used for my living expenses.

I did a little research and found a number of accounts that offered good interest rates from 4.5% to 5.0% APR. The only problem is that it would take the standard 4-5 working days to transfer money between accounts. I envisage that I will probably be moving money between my current and savings account fairly regularly, so I decided to open an Online Saver with Lloyds TSB. Because both accounts are with the same bank, transfers will be made instantly. The Online Saver offered the following advantages:

• Immediate money transfers - Cash between my current account and savings account would be moved instantly
• Immediate opening - The account can be opened online and be available immediatly
• Lloyds TSB is a bank that I have used for many years and I've recieved great customer service from them during that time

Unfortunately, the interest rates that this account offers (around 4.2% AER) are poor in comparison to others I've seen. This rate includes a 6 month bonus. After this introductory period, it drops to just below 4%. I don't see this as a problem as I can always transfer the money to an account with a better rate at some time in the future. As this is the first time I've saved 10% of my income, I need to be sure that if my calculations are incorrect I can transfer cash back into my current account at a moments notice.

Upon opening the account, I immediately transferred £2600 to it. This is now money that will be used for profitable investments as advised in Clason's third cure for a lean purse :- 'Make thy gold multiply'.