There are two extremely good reasons to conserve energy in your home. The first is certainly to save money. In a world that seems to get more and more expensive, saving energy within your home is one of the easiest and most efficient means of cutting back on your expenses. Secondly, conserving energy is a great way to do your bit for the environment, and is the easiest way of decreasing your carbon footprint. In fact, there are very few reasons against; even the cost of the bits of home improvement you’ll need to do will quickly be recouped by the savings you’ll make. ‘What must I do?’ I hear you chorus. Well, here are a few suggestions, ranging from the obvious to the obscure.

The most common means of cutting your energy bill is surely the telesales favourite, double-glazing. According to the NEF, this can save you about £30 a year on your heating bills, with the added benefit of increasing the security of your home. A survey of insurers including Legal and General confirmed that this could also potentially reduce your home insurance – and not to mention shutting out any intrusive noise from next door. This is, predictably, the most popular energy conserving improvement made to homes in the UK.

Insulation – whether loft or cavity wall – is perhaps the best way of making savings on your energy bills. One third of the heat produced by a central heating system can be lost through the roves and walls of a building, creating a combined wastage in Britain annually that could heat up to three million homes for an entire year. Loft insulation alone could save you just under £300 a year, and cavity wall insulation a further £100.

Installing a new boiler is another great way of reducing your bills by about £180 per year. Again, ensuring the condition of your heating a plumbing systems could save you a considerable amount on your home insurance, too. A combi boiler, which effectively removes the need to store water by only heating water as and when you need it, will go some way to making your home significantly more energy efficient.

Energy saving bulbs and appliances – such as kettles, washing machines, dishwashers – rather than their standard counterparts is another way. Also, turning off your TV (rather than leaving it on standby) and your mobile phone chargers when not in use is another slowly cumulative means of saving money.

There are other ever increasing rewards for those conscientious enough to pursue energy efficiency in their homes. British Gas currently offers decent rebates on council tax, not just to its members, via Defra. It is of exceptionally high priority to the government to encourage people to be as energy conscious as possible, and so it seems almost inevitable that they will continue to incentivise these sorts of home improvement.

For the sake of the planet and your wallet, it really does pay to save energy in your home.

Recent findings appear to highlight the possibility of a return to near Victorian levels of inequality in the UK. It seems that however much we like to imagine that the wealth divide is a diminishing issue in British society the growth of the housing market, amongst other factors, is actually causing an increasingly pronounced gap to appear between the haves and the have-nots.

This divide also seems to be measurable in starkly geographic terms; unsurprisingly it’s the southern half of the country that has become increasingly prosperous whilst the north fares rather less well. Despite only accounting for 39% of households those living south of Watford own a disproportionate 51% of the nation’s assets. This shift is partly attributable to a massive increase in the proportion of the country’s wealth held in housing to 42% –nearly double what it was 30 years ago – and means that a housing divide between the wealthy areas that have seen the most pronounced growth and poorer areas where growth has been relatively tiny has become more significant than ever.

These regional wealth divisions are also evident in recent savings statistics taken from a survey conducted for Alliance & Leicester Savings – even amongst the poorest Londoners (the poorest half of the local population) savings average £1,015, a figure that dwarfs the £186 average for poorer people in the West Midlands. For an even more dramatic disparity compare this figure with the average savings of the richer half of London’s population, a figure which currently stands at £93,963.

The governments preferred measure of economic prosperity GVA (Gross Value Added) which measures the contribution to the economy of each individual producer, industry or sector only serves to reinforce the impression of a growing divide; where London has seen an increase between 1997 and 2005 from 129 to 136 the West Midlands for instance has witnessed a decline from 93 to 89.

Findings like these have recently prompted a left of center think tank – Institute of Public Policy Research North (IPPRN) to claim that the government is ‘in denial’ about the divide and have called for Gordon Brown to set tougher targets to tackle the growth of this perceived inequality.

Savings statistics sourced from the Bank of England, the DCLG, the CML and Alliance & Leicester survey data for an Alliance & Leicester Savings survey.

Changing your finances, steering clear of debt, and trying as hard as possible not to go out, they’re all obvious ways to save money during the coming year. However, there’s also a way to slice outgoings massively if you just shop well for your groceries. You could save a couple of thousand pounds a year if you shop more conscientiously in 2008, so here are a few ways how.

Create weekly menus

Incredibly, around one third of food purchased in the UK is thrown away each year, at an estimated collective cost of some £8 billion. The reason for this is people not considering their food for the coming week when they make their shop, and then buying things that are surplus to requirements. Bearing these facts in mind, you should carefully consider your requirements for the coming week – you’re sure to reduce waste, food and fiscal, if you do this.

Pick your own

When you head to the supermarket don’t buy packaged vegetables. There’s usually no difference in the quality of produce if it’s in a packet or just in a pallet for you to pick out. It takes a little extra effort to go around selecting each vegetable and putting it in a bag, but it’s certainly cheaper. The same can be said of buying meats from the butcher’s counter or buying them in a packet. At the butcher’s you can specify as much or as little as you want, so it also reduces the risk of food waste.

Become a vegetarian

This one isn’t so easy if you’re an avid carnivore, but it certainly is a way to save money. Some people simply can’t go a meal without meat, but there are both health and financial benefits from weaning yourself off it. Meat is usually more expensive than other proteins, while red meat has a high fat content. Try and have a few evening meals a week without the meat, such as a pasta dish or vegetarian stir fry, and you’ll probably see your wallet get fatter and your waste get thinner.

Don’t always go organic

‘Organic’ produce in supermarkets has soared in popularity over the last few years. It is often a way of shopping with a conscience, but it almost always works out as more expensive. There’s also often no difference to the production of produce you find in crates in the supermarket and within an organic packet – both broccoli’s are grown in a field and then picked – and they will more than likely taste the same! For meats you might want to be more conscientious, and there are definitely benefits of buying organically raised birds and eggs.

Avoid the easy options

If you’re concerned about your wallet and your health, then steer clear of takeaways and ready meals and cook from scratch. Unless you find a particularly good offer, ready meals normally cost over £2.50 per person, which is quite expensive compared to a meal made from scratch. Meanwhile, you won’t find a curry house that gives a decent portion for under £5 per head in a hurry. You don’t always know what’s in a takeaway meal either.

If you’re looking to save this year then it might also be time to reconsider your finances. Alliance and Leicester offers a number of great rates for savings options, with savings accounts having as much as 12 per cent APR if you also open one of their Premier current accounts.

Most people in Britain have some form of debt, be it from mortgages or credit cards. The unfortunate thing related to this, however, is that banks consistently profit from consumer apathy. One of the most common ways that they do this is through credit cards. Most credit cards have bonus offers on them, but after this runs out the level of interest is most often charged at around 15% AER. If you don’t pay off your card in full every month, then the bank gains money through charging at this rate. A lot of people don’t pay off their card, even though they could, and then accrue more and more debt on the card until they’re not able to pay it off in full. When this happens, the bank is constantly making money until the credit balance returns to zero. This might take months or even years to do on a card with a balance of £3000.

There are a couple of ways to avoid getting into a situation of paying for your credit card debt in the first place. One way is to use a 0% on purchases credit card. HSBC offers one that offers 0% for 12 months. However, you must be confident that after this bonus period you can pay the card off in full, otherwise you will start paying for any outstanding debt on the card.

Another way to avoid paying on your credit card is to use your current account to pay it off in full every month. This won’t work, however, if you are into an overdraft facility that you pay for, because this will charge you around the same rate, or higher. If you can’t pay off in full without going into your overdraft, then perhaps you should consider getting a current account that has a free overdraft facility. Alliance and Leicester’s top ranking current accounts offer a 0% overdraft facility of up to £2500 for twelve months. What’s more, they also offer 8.5% AER if you’re in credit, which is much better than most savings accounts.

If you have acquired credit card debt then there are also a number of ways to stop paying for it. The first is to get a 0% on balance transfer credit card if you don’t have too much outstanding debt. One of these will enable you to switch outstanding credit card debt to a new card your outstanding debt will be at 0% for a limited time. Currently the longest bonus period for a 0% balance transfer card is from Virgin Money, which lasts for 15 months.

Alternatively, if you have a large amount of outstanding credit card debt across a number of cards, then you should probably consider a personal loan. Alliance and Leicester currently supply cheap loans at some of the lowest rates on the market, and you can borrow £7,500-£20,000 without owning a house. While rates for loans fluctuate, they are almost certainly going to remain under the rates for credit cards, so you can take out a loan, use this cash to pay off a 15% APR credit card, and then pay off the loan at a lower rate of between 6-10%.

Put simply, life Insurance is a legal contract between the insurance company and the policyholder. The policyholder agrees to pay a set sum at regular intervals to the insurance company. They, in return, agree to pay a set sum of money to stipulated beneficiaries in the event of the policyholder’s death.

There are many different types of policy available and premiums will vary considerably depending on variety of factors.

One important factor in deciding to choose a life cover policy is the state of your health. Smokers are likely to pay around 50% more in premiums as non-smokers of the same age. However, someone who has not smoked for at least a year can then be defined as a non-smoker and the premiums reduce dramatically.

Other factors are also worth considering – the age of the policyholder and even the nature of their employment can drastically alter the size of the premiums available.

Some policies, known as Mortgage Term Assurance policies, are designed to cover the cost of a mortgage in the event of the policyholder’s death. However, these policies do not provide any further income in that event: they are there simply to ensure that that continuing debt is paid off. If you are hoping to use a Mortgage Term Assurance policy, an insurance broker will be able to find a policy that covers your mortgage and pays out a fixed sum to beneficiaries, if that is what you require.

The most common form of life cover is Level Term Assurance in which a fixed sum is paid out. The policyholder takes out this policy as insurance for a fixed number of years – usually until dependants reach school-leaving age or, in the absence of children, when the policyholder’s partner is old enough to receive a pension.

Some life cover policies offer critical illness clauses in which a pay out is awarded in the event of a specific illness or injury. However, these clauses are very specific as to which illnesses or injuries they are insurance for and policyholders can come away feeling short-changed as a result. It pays to check the extent of your coverage and it what circumstances pay outs will be made – many illnesses that were once covered as standard are now no longer included in some policies as they are no longer classified as life-threatening (ie the recovery rate is far more favourable). In many cases Critical Illness Cover is available as an add on to your Life Insurance policy for an extra cost and is often classified as distinct from Terminal Illness Cover which is often (life assurance from Legal and General for example) included at no extra cost.

There are also joint policies available to couples, which can reduce the cost of repayment premiums. These are designed to pay out a fixed sum in the event of the first death in the relationship, but they tend to work on the assumption that each party earns a similar wage.

A basic rule of thumb is to remember that the shorter the period of time you are insured for, the less the repayments will be – and that the fewer risks involved in your lifestyle, including things such as smoking and general health, the more likely you are to find an affordable life insurance policy.

As with any type of insurance policy it pays to ask your insurance provider if there are any measures you can take to reduce your premium – regular health checks and lifestyle changes may affect your premium positively.

As with any form of insurance it’s a good idea to shop around for the best deal. These days however a number of big insurance providers will effectively search the market for you – Asda Finance for instance source their life insurance products from a wide range of insurers so that when you get your quote you know it’s the best deal from a diverse pool of policies.