Thrift is a big part of our day to day life here. Partly because I don’t like waste, partly because with six of us at home every pound has to be persuaded to go that little bit further. So reading on Tattooed Mummy that Money Supermarket are looking for £30 ways to save a pound, and they’ll pay for tips meant I was reaching for my keyboard.
- Use cash. When you carry just the cash that you actually have to spend, it’s much easier to keep within a budget. Credit cards are just far too tempting
- Check the reduced shelves in shops. Our coop plays a game and moves these around, but they are always worth tracking down. And our local greengrocers is fabulous – I got 5 bananas, a huge head of broccoli and a pepper for 80p the other day.
- Make lunches from scratch. That broccoli from point 2? added a £1 worth of stilton and got four days worth of high quality, healthy soup.
- On a similar theme, I use this fabulous recipe from utterly scrummy for home made muesli bars now. They taste way better and cost less.
- When you’re going out and about, take the home made snack bars, and a reusable drink bottle of tap water with you. Much cheaper than buying while you’re out and about.
- If you’ve got to buy big things, use cashback sites where possible. I particularly like Top Cashback. And if you sign up through my link I make £10, and then you can get your own link to get people to sign up through 🙂
- An alternative is daily deal type sites like Groupon. Though don’t let those tempt you into spending money on things you don’t actually need. That’s not saving money.
- Need new clothes? Charity shops. Fabulous places. Pair of jeans round here usually around £3. Maybe £4 if you want a brand.
- Freshen up old clothes? Dye them. Tim bought a bunch of linen shirts reduced at Sainsbury’s a couple of years ago. When he’d worn them for a while they started to look a bit faded. We chucked them in the washing machine with a pack of Dylon, and they look good as new.
- Kids’ clothes got a few tears in them? Clothes plasters. You iron them on and they look like decorative patches, and they hide the holes.
- Learn about local networks for recycling – freecycle, freegle or local facebook pages. People are often giving away the stuff you want, and you might be able to get rid of clutter that way too. Win win.
- Saving money with babies – use cloth nappies. You can often get them very cheap or free via freegle. (see point above). And then each usage saves you money that instead you’d be throwing away.
- Disposable baby wipes will actually survive being washed several times, and thus cut down on cost and waste.
- For women, reusable san pro will also save you money. Look up mooncup or divacup.
- Hand me downs for kids are fabulous – cultivate friends with slightly bigger children 😉
- Want to make some money out of your clutter? Use Gumtree to sell things on.
- Instead of buying sensory toys for babies, recycle fabrics you are fond of but don’t need any more into a memory based texture book.
- Walk to local attractions where possible. It’s good for you and the environment and saves both fuel and parking money.
- If things are too far for walking, consider a bike. Again with the good for you, and again with the savings.
- Instead of going on costly foreign holidays, consider camping.
- Or house swap with a friend 🙂
- Save money on books by using Read It Swap it to send your old titles on to someone else, and get different things for yourself.
- Reuse fabric items around the house. Teatowels with holes in become dusters. And so on.
- Don’t buy expensive dry shampoo for perking your hair up between washes. Use ordinary bicarb. It’s much the same apart from being lots cheaper.
- For things that you do often, look into membership schemes. So if you often visit stately homes, join the national trust as members get in cheaper.
- Consider direct debit payment schemes – they often offer better rates than paying when bills are due. But make sure there’s always enough money in your account, if one bounces it will cost you.
- Check whether your bank will text or message you if your account is getting low – avoiding overdraft fees is definitely a money saver.
- Sign up to newsletters from local cheap supermarkets so that you can take advantage of deals that are best suited to you.
- If you drink regularly in cafes or so on, check whether they have loyalty cards to give you free drinks every so often. Our leisure centre gives you a free drink after every six you’ve had.
- Set off five minutes earlier for appointments to see if there’s somewhere nearby you can park without having to pay for parking. So here, instead of parking in the leisure centre carpark, there are a couple of roads just an extra two minutes walk away that are free to park on. Every little helps after all.
I hope those tips have been useful to you. And if you join in the competition and put together your own tip list, do let me know in the comments – I’d love to pick up a few more tips too.