Save-a-quid-or-2 thread

[Whiternoise]

Guys


Please keep this thread serious - a mass prune will happen otherwise


DR

The cinema one is very true though!

It costs under £1 to buy the popping corn, and that'll fill a sizeable bag. We always smuggle it into the cinema - they've never complained so far - and take a bottle of water with you and you'll easily save £5. Given how much tickets cost at the moment it's a pretty good saver - especially if you go regularly and feel that it's not a film without nibbles!

I also do the change thing. Buy one of those smashable pots and dont' put anything under 10p into it. Fill it with all your loose change when you come back from the shops - since otherwise you'll either lose it or waste it. Once it's full, you should have well over £200 - especially if you put the odd note in too! Buy a new pot with the money and start over again. It's really worth doing.

Read up on this site: www.instructables.com , loads of tips on reusing rubbish around the house and how to make things that'll save you cash The obvious one is the duct tape wallet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7486417.stm Interesting article on the beeb about this

[staffsMike]

I know my brother and flat mates grow their own Vegetables (not magic mushrooms ) They have a nice little system going after a few months of food ready to be eaten each week. Very good way to have lots of healthy food of your choice on tap. Saves them a bundle as well.

Obviously shopping late at night gives you access to many bargains and tescos and asda etc..

I always found leaving early for work was a good one. You spend half the time in the car, saving you bundles on fuel as you can drive at normal speeds, not 2mph. By the time work has started you are really quite relaxed not so flustered as you have had time to settle. Win, Win apart from having to leave a bit earlier lol. Probably won't work for everyone but try it some days if you are like I was, getting in by the skin of yoru teeth.

Also with regard to the +women = profit thing.. what planet do you live on where anything +women = profit!?

[TeePee]

I've been working hard to improve my fuel consumption, to the extent of a few basic aerodynamic mods to the car.

Food is cheap here, but by eating in and buying in bulk from the cash and carry I've reduced that a bit.

Otherwise, just cutting back on spending on non-essentials, and finding ways to fill my time that doesn't cost anything. For example: We used to go to the cinema on Sundays, now we go geocaching, so $15 a week saved there.

It's hard to cut back much further, as most of our regular bills are fixed or pretty small. Our last electric bill was $38, for example.

[SiM]

For cinema tickets: go on wednesdays and get someone you know on Orange to text you a buy one get one free code
I always eat before I go and I always bring a water bottle in
Only once I gave into ice cream at the cinema

Also with regard to the +women = profit thing.. what planet do you live on where anything +women = profit!?

P.I.M.P

[manwithnoname]

Don't recharge stuff at home, I charge my phone and ipod at work. I also charge my phone in my car. But I've no idea how much money this saves.

[SiM]

AFAIK Charging phone in car costs more than charging it in the house... think of the petrol prices!

[Nick]

Minimize your borrowing costs.

Having £600 sitting in a savings account for a rainy day is all well and good, but if you're running an overdraft you're very likely to be paying more in interest charges on that than you are earning in the savings account.... so use the savings to reduce the debt you're paying interest on. If the rainy day comes then use your overdraft if you have to.

Rearrange your finances.

Now is not a good time to re-mortgage or to take out a loan to consolidate debt, so line up your debts in order of COST per month... and then attack them in turn. Ignoring a mortgage, it's likely a loan is the cheapest debt, followed by an overdraft, then credit cards and finally store cards.

Check out exactly HOW the relevant companies will pay off your debt with the money you give them. For example, a loan is just a straight payment whereas a credit card company will use your money to pay off the CHEAPEST interest balance first.

For example, say you have a credit card with £6000 on it. £1000 is a balance transfer at 5%. £2000 is from a promotion at 10% and £3000 is normal purchases at 27%.

You lob £2000 pay-off into it and they'll first take off the £1000 balance transfer, then half of the £2000 special offer leaving you still paying 10% on £1000 and 27% on £3000, even though the last purchases made were at the top-whack rate...

So the easiest way is to kill the card totally in one massive lump sum payoff... Which I know seems like a bloody daft thing to do but saving up and then pummelling the card in one go is far, far easier than trying to ease it down a bit each month with monthly payments, unless you can afford to lob significantly higher amounts than the minimum payment each month.

Switch insurance/energy suppliers
First, energy suppliers: If you already have a debit balance, DON'T SWITCH. Try, if you can, to pay a manageable monthly amount, one that gradually reduces what you owe as well as covering what you're using. Thankfully, most energy companies do not charge interest for debit balances so owing them a bit doesn't cost you anything... if you can, leave it until you have your expensive borrowing cleared and then clear this debt... But whatever you do, until you've cleared the debit, don't switch as the company will want the account settled immediately...

Insurance: When comparing insurance, only use those comparison sites as a rough guide... invariably there's options missing from their quotes that you have on your policy... but they're worth looking at to get a rough idea... and Confused.com actually fills in the respective insurers online applications for you, which is handy.

That said, still check what you get with your insurance as though you might punch it into a search, that might not be what you're being quoted for. At the same time, think about what you are adding onto your policy... have you ever actually USED the legal protection which costs £29.99 (or more like £35 when they've added in credit interest for monthly payments)?

And don't just switch for the sake of it unless you're going to make a significant saving... many insurers will charge you cancellation fees if you're not up for renewal and probably interest charges too is you were paying monthly.

For example, my car insurance is £438 a year fully comp with legal, windscreen, breakdown and protected no claims. LV were quoting £202 according to moneysupermarket.com. Except that had no frills and was ONLY fully comp and with an excess over twice what I already had. Once I added in windscreen, breakdown and protected no claims, it came to £383... and seeing as cancelling my current insurance would cost around £40, it wasn't worth it.

The same goes for house insurance... the only way you'll really save money is to reduce the cover you're getting and so it AT renewal time.

That said, there's an awful lot of frivolous stuff in house insurance that you should trim out if you can. Personal property insurance is a good one... when was the last time you claimed on your insurance when you lost your wallet with £50 in it? Especially with an excess of £60 to make a claim... likewise, theft or loss on holiday... take out travel insurance maybe?

Oh, and on final thing, don't be fooled by double-up or cashback deals. The Post Office is running a car and house insurance sign-up offer with £50 cashback and online discount... but the premiums are hardly cheap and certainly cost more than the £50 cashback.

Go through ALL your old financial stuff
Guess who found an ISA he'd forgotten about and hadn't paid a bean into for the last five years... If it weren't for an old statement, I would never have thought of it and that was me £117 better off.

I found some old shares too, issued when a building society I used to have an account with switched to being a bank. I'm waiting to see what I'll get from selling them, then I'll put that money to good use.

Got an old pension? See if you can merge it with your current one... perhaps the merge will allow you to skip a few payments and put that money to use elsewhere...

And finally
Don't be at all afraid to go into your bank and talk to them about how to manage your finances. Believe me, they'll damn well appreciate you going to them and asking for help rather than sending you snotty letters. You can't ignore debt and the only way to tackle it is to man-up, admit you're were a bloody fool and then just get on with dealing with it.

Also, don't let pride stop you shopping on a budget. Value and store-own brands are perfectly edible and yes, I know only Hob-Nobs taste like Hob-Nobs, so don;t buy any at all.

Want to know the best secret about value brands? For fruit and veg especially, there's NO difference in quality between value and store-own label... it's purely down to size and shape grading... The easiest place to see it is in the mushroom or carrots... and I pretty much defy ANYONE to tell me the difference between a spag bol made with a tin of value chopped tomatoes or a tin of Napolena tomatoes with basil and garlic at five times the price.

Anyhoo, that's my mammoth post for the evening... hope it helps!

[FifthFreedom]

Don't recharge stuff at home, I charge my phone and ipod at work. I also charge my phone in my car. But I've no idea how much money this saves.

Yeah lol a great way to save money = rip off work as much as possible.

e.g. "borrow" stationary, charge your crap at work and make calls on their line.

Works every time.

And @ Staffsmike, Not all profit is monetary ^^

[manwithnoname]

AFAIK Charging phone in car costs more than charging it in the house... think of the petrol prices!

That's not my understanding, as long as the engine is running it will charge the car battery if the battery is full then the "charging energy" is wasted - if you drive does the idle speed on your engine go up when you put the full beam on. (But put the air con on, then the idle speed on my motor goes up)

edit:
@FifthFreedom work actual provided the USB charger to put into my PC for my phone but I am taking liberty charging my ipod

... thanks for reminding me to grap a few pens tomorrow

[Whiternoise]

Ah that's the same old story in chocolate shops, why pay a tenner for a small bag when you can get a hundred genitalia shaped offcuts for a fiver

[schmunk]

Ah that's the same old story in chocolate shops, why pay a tenner for a small bag when you can get a hundred genitalia shaped offcuts for a fiver

Like in the butcher's.

[TheAnimus]

Got a water meter installed.

a two bed + two bath flat dosen't use nearly the £650 a year i was previously been charged. They even offered a garrentee that if i used more than i was currently paying, the meter would be turned off for as long as i billed with them. Not sure how much use it would of been in 5 years time, but it was a nice show of confidence.

Put my savings in a high performing hedge fund thats managed 11% in the last month

[schmunk]

Put my savings in a high performing hedge fund thats managed 11% in the last month

Sounds awfully risky. Be careful.

[0iD]

Never just renew your inurances, get a new deal every time, that way you get max vfm

[0iD]

and recharge your phone/ipod & batteries at work

[TheAnimus]

Never just renew your inurances, get a new deal every time, that way you get max vfm

about 15 minuites and saying "no i'll go elsewhere" contents insurance re-newed at £175. Best price i found elsewhere was £280+. But yes, blindly renewing is silly.

Sounds awfully risky. Be careful.

Yes, espesually given the type of arogant bankers who run it