Look after the pennies

I'm about to embark on my annual money-saving exercise. I think I go through this rigamarole most years. It's like my regular mid-year crisis. I take a look at my finances and decide too much of my money disappears on random direct debits that seemingly have little benefit.

Foolishly I currently pay a fortune for mobile phone insurance, yet have no contents insurance. Coupled with the amount I am about to pay for seldom-used breakdown cover and even more rarely used travel insurance I'm trying to consolidate the pain. Those neatly packaged, yet paid-for current accounts with loads of freebies are actually starting to look quite appealing and I'm trying to negotiate the ever more confusing list of gold, silver, bronze, platinum, diamond etc options to see which might save me a bit of cash and mean I can finally afford to insure all my worldly goods.

Either that or I'll just blow the money I've saved on some bit of electronic gadgetry I don't really need!