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A Beginners Guide to Financial Products
When you leave school it's rarely made immediately clear which financial products will be best for you. A lot of the time, school leavers can be quite apathetic towards such deals. However, getting the right financial product can either save you money, or get you some good benefits. Of course if you're heading off to university then you'll want to change your standard current account into a student account, and most banks will give you an incentive for this. However, there are plenty of other products you might want to consider if you're young, whether you're heading to university or not, so here's a quick guide to help you understand financial products.
Credit Card
You might hear about credit cards and plastic being used to pay for things, but you might not actually know how to use them. Effectively a credit card is a fairly expensive small loan obtained from a bank. Whenever you make a purchase on a card you will add to your balance, which will need to be paid off at some stage. You will have to pay a minimum fee once a month, which is normally quite low, but anything you don't pay off will accrue interest, typically at around 15%. In that case, if you get a credit card that has a typical APR of 15%, and you spend around £1000 and only pay the minimum amount in the year, you'll probably get an extra charge of around £100 or more pounds. Just make sure that when you're offered a credit card, or when you apply for one, you check the APR. These can be very high, and masked in small print. The highest APR on credit cards are normally on store cards, so make sure you stay clear of them unless you know you can pay them off. The good thing about credit cards is that you can get benefits, such as store points if you shop at a particular supermarket. ASDA and Tesco currently offer 0% credit cards that will give you a number of in store benefits.
Personal Loan
If you're a student with no income then you probably won't want to consider this. You'll be able to apply for a student loan with a very low rate of interest to sustain you through student life. If you're not a student, however, you might see getting a personal loan as a worthwhile enterprise to purchase a car or go travelling around the world. Typically you'll have to apply for a loan of £5,000 - £10,000, and if your application is accepted you'll have to pay a monthly fee in order to pay it off. If you take a look at the personal loans calculator by ASDA Finance a £7500 loan taken out over an 84 month term will mean you will have to pay £113.32 a month, which will equal £9518.88 repaid. In the long term, the faster you can pay off a personal loan the better, because you will accrue less interest.
Insurance
Insurance is a contract in which one party agrees to indemnify or reimburse another for loss that occurs under the terms of the contract. For instance, if you own a car you will have to pay car insurance, and in the event of a crash, providing your claim matches the criteria of the insurance policy, you will be reimbursed by your provider. You can pretty much insure anything you own if you find the right provider from home insurance to pet insurance, but at a young age you're most likely to need car insurance more than any other thing. The easiest way to shop for this is to go online and take a look at a variety of price comparison websites, such as Money Supermarket.com.
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