supporttheunderdog.co.uk

Personal Finance: Search and Save Moneynet.co.uk

If you go on to the Independent site and click on personal finance down the left side, in the money section you will see a small banner in moneynet's distinctive green and purple livery inviting you to check the best deals. The site includes details of mortgage products and investment products from over 100 lenders, banks and building societies plus details of many more credit card and personal loan providers, all updated daily.

These are grouped under savings, personal loans, pensions, mortgages, credit cards and insurance, with a miscellaneous section covering utilities, calculators, home telephone and inheritance tax. The calculators are particularly useful, as they can be used as the basic tools for huge areas of your personal financial planning, such as mortgages, budgeting, inheritance tax or how far you are falling short on your pension.

The utilities section shows how you can save up to pounds 150 on your gas and electricity bills, and by comparing phone suppliers, moneynet reckons you could save up to 90 per cent on your call charges. On the mainstream comparison sections, there is a best-buy page for different types of savings.

On the downside, moneynet seems prone to those irritating pop-ups that are triggered when you move onto a new page. The main site, reached by going direct to www.moneynet.co.uk rather than the Independent site, has the same information but in a different format. The main categories, saving, borrowing, insurance and services, are strung across the top of the page for click- throughs.

It also has a My Portfolio facility, enabling users to manage investment portfolios across several countries, together with global news, and you can create watchlists for stocks. The site, launched in 1997, claims to be the first to have published a comprehensive, independent and impartial overview of personal finance products. As such, it laid down a template.

Moneynet's companion www.moneynetinternational.com concentrates on mortgages for overseas properties. It is avowedly aimed at high net worth individuals looking to invest or relocate abroad, business travellers and expatriates, but there is plenty of other information which could be useful simply for organising a holiday.

Source: findarticles.com