There are hundreds of frugal suggestions in our Money Saving blog – remember to use the ‘search’ to find specific ideas.
As a quick money saving resource we have made a short summary of good and bad, funny and serious, weird and clever ideas – all sent in by our readers:
- Avoid buying glasses from high street shops. You can buy them online for as little as £20 if you know your prescription
- Look for ‘reduced for quick sale’ items especially meat, fish and bread
- Eat the seasons. The supermarket air-freighted items will always be expensive as well as harming the planet
- Work out how much you spend on food shopping per week and set yourself a target of trying to save 20% – they work out how much this will save you in a year!
- Visit you local market stall. They don’t have supermarket overheads and are often much cheaper (especially fruit and veg,)
- Dont buy ready meals. Cook you own. This is much cheaper, healthier and far more tasty
- I stopped wasting money on designer labels a long time ago
- Spend time looking round charity shops. Can be very good for finding dirt cheap designer labels
- Guys, save a fortune, avoid getting divorced (or married!)
- Organise a car share, visit www.liftshare.org
- On a long car journey buy food/drinks/petrol in advance thereby avoiding the opportunity for a motorway service station to commit highway robbery
- Booking things at the last minute can save money. I don’t just mean holidays and flights, but what about theme parks, theatre tickets and car hire
- Walk or cycle to the station or your place of work and give up your expensive gym membership!
- Give up smoking. This could save you over £1500 per year – www.gosmokefree.co.uk
- Dont buy lottery tickets, the odds are against you winning
- If you must play the lottery try and be a part of a large syndicate
- Make sure you claim any benefits that you are owed. These include Working tax credit, Child benefit, Child tax Credit and other employee-related tax benefits
- Before I buy anything I check the price online or on Ebay
- Dont buy an ipod, use the music player on your phone
- I stopped drinking bottled water 1 year ago. This has probably saved me £200 and I believe tap water is less likely to have bacteria in it
- Grow your own food. Salad, fruit and veg are all easy to grow. Punish the supermarkets for their ridiculous air miles that most produce seems to travel… you can’t even buy UK apples in the height of the apple season…
- There are quite a lot of things that are cheaper if you pay by direct debit… worth looking out for
- Thanks to the withdrawal of the ‘block exemption agreement’, motorists do not now have to have their cars serviced with a branded dealer. I now use a local garage and can save between 20% to 80% of service and repairs costs
- If you are moving home and need some extra storage simply kit out a garage, loft or cellar with some shelves and workshop storage benches
- I recently started taking a packed lunch to work. I have calculated that this has saved me about £3.5 per day or around £800 per year
- If your are going on a night out, make sure you are the last person in the round to buy a drink!
- I make a shopping list so that I’m not so tempted by all the other things that the supermarket wants to sell me
- Don’t buy books, just visit the library where they all seem to be free (don’t know how they make a profit!)
Please send your suggestions to MoneyMoz