By Megan Harwood-Baynes, cost of living specialist

One broken phone and one speeding ticket was all it took.

My and my husband’s car insurance were both auto-renewing last weekend – and both, due to those two mishaps, were going to cost us a lot more than last year.

Using a comparison website is the easiest way to find the best price, but with a couple of additional clicks, I was also able to save almost £80 across both policies – and you could too.

Cashback is so easy, I genuinely cannot believe I only started earning it this year. I use TopCashback for most big purchases, and then an app called JamDoughnut for everyday spending. Across the two, I’ve earned around £200 this year on things I was buying anyway – such as £20 cashback on airport parking and £19 back on travel insurance.

While often the returns are just a couple of quid, it’s on insurance policies you can really make some money. 

TopCashback currently has an offer on £42 cashback if you purchase car insurance through Go.Compare (a site I was probably going to use anyway) and £36 if you use Confused.com for home insurance. All I had to do was log into my account, click on their link for the website, and complete my purchase as normal.

In about six weeks, the money will hit my online wallet and I can cash out – just in time for Christmas,

How does it work?

It seems too good to be true, but it’s really easy (and not a scam).

Explaining how it works, TopCashback says: “Every time you click through and purchase something from one of the 6,000 major retailers featured on TopCashback, the retailer pays us a commission for referring you to their website. We pass 100% of this commission back to you as ‘cashback’.”

The site makes money by getting a referral fee. Sometimes it can take a while for your purchases to track through, but you can always submit a claim if it doesn’t track properly.