Frugalising the cost of that basic essential - home insurance!

Frugaldom recently received its reminder letter that the house insurance is due for renewal in a month. The renewal quote wasn't all that good, so I guess they don't expect too much by way of loyalty. Time to ditch the Co-op, despite their basic contents quote amounting to only £45 and their added Co-op dividends points. As a frugaleur I CAN do better than that. Cue a rummage through the cashback sites. As usual, www.topcashback.co.uk has proven to be the supreme leader for me.

TCB offers to pay you 50p just to do an insurance quote comparison via 'comparethemarket', so that's what I did. It threw up about a dozen choices, the first few all around the £45 mark, so I took a note of those named and closed the search. It's sometimes better to clear the cookies from your machine at this point, to avoid any confusion with the tracking. I forgot to do so but luck seems to have been on my side - phew!

A further search of all financial services & insurance companies linked to TCB showed 'Budget Insurance' was offering £35 cashback for a new policy, so I sat patiently and fed all the same details back into their site. Again, luck was on my side! It threw up the worldly sum of £44.63 and, seeing as I had already 'compared the market', I could, theoretically, deduct the 50p cashback that had already been earned. Looking good for a contents insurance quote - £44.13 - so I took my chances and paid the policy up front using my debit card. It saved wasting precious money on extra credit card or monthly installments charges!

That was last night. This morning, I checked all the details online then called the company to have the automatic renewal clause removed - it appears in the small print, so be careful about these irritating conditions; they cost nothing to remove if you spot them soon enough. Coincidentally, I HAD ticked the box on the application for 'no automatic renewal' but it seems to have failed to register. Anyway, their customer services department was quick and easy to access and I was able to understand the accent on the other end of the phone - a blessing in itself, as I hate feeling like some sort of racist having to ask a foreigner to repeat everything. As it turns out, my budget insurance deal is with none other than Lloyds TSB, so I was quite pleased about that, too.

Now, I have just checked my Topcashback account and can confirm that the £35 cashback from 'Budget' and the 50p cashback from 'Comparethemarket' has tracked and both are now pending payment. I won't be able to claim this for a few months but it is still there waiting for me, ensuring that the contents of Frugaldom, sparse as they may be, are fully covered for yet another year when the current policy runs out next month. And all for the princely sum of £9.13 and a little bit of researching time. It by no way comes close to the 2008/9 policy, but I've accepted that those days have now gone. That year, my policy cost £47.50 but the cashback amounted to £70.70, so the company actually PAID ME £23.20 to insure my contents. That's been my best financial services bargain yet!

I cannot rate Topcashback highly enough. No frugaleur should be without free membership. To date, it has neeted me an amazing £504.73 in cyberdosh and nobody can afford to sneeze at that! Especially when that cyberdosh can be transferred as REAL CASH directly to your bank account. :)

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