To ask for your most ingenious money saving tips

[Toothiehurtie]

my Best one is…

a visit to the card factory for cheap cards and gift bags and then picking up presents from car boot sales or charity shops. I have got some brilliant kids party presents for 50p so with the card and a cheap gift bag I have brought the cost of a present in for a pound before.

looking for any tips at all, obviously you can buy porridge oats in bulk cheaper than buying expensive kids cereal etc but anything clever or that people might not have thought of before.

don’t know how bad the fuel crisis will be but considering charging battery packs to charge phones at work and taking a thermos of boiled water home 😂

I haven’t bought cleaning products for years, and I’m a very clean/tidy person.
I put a good squeeze of washing up liquid ( kills grease) with a splash of bleach ( kills germs) into a spray bottle.

That's a top tip 🏆

Using this if husband delays divorce for much longer and dies while we all wait. Great tip.

Possibly a simple one. I was bad for picking up packaged veg such as onions that come in a pack of 3 in netting. I checked prices this morning during my shop. That 3 pack is £1. Buying 3 similar sized loose onions was 39p.

I also take bananas out of the plastic wrapping if our store has no loose ones left.

I agree with Vinted for clothes and not buying new, I've had some brilliant stuff off there. Last year I spent £25 on DD1's winter coat from Mountain Warehouse......this year I bought one on Vinted (also mountain warehouse) for £5 and it's in perfect condition.

Eating cheaply and mostly vegetarian has saved us a fortune. Jacket potatoes with beans, soup and bread, egg on toast, pasta and pesto etc are all perfectly decent dinners and keep the food shopping bill down. Instead of takeaways on a Friday night we make something at home .. often cheaply and eating that in front of a film on Netflix still feels like a treat. Things like frozen supermarket pizza, making nachos with some cheap tortilla chips, sour cream, cheese and salsa, breaded fish and oven chips instead of going to the chip shop are all very cheap per person. I also make 3 bean chilli out of mostly tinned store cupboard stuff and have that on potato wedges or cook some plain egg noodles and make a quick and easy sauce for them out of soy sauce, garlic, honey, chilli flakes and peanut butter. With some frozen veg thrown in I can make a quick and easy dinner out of things I have in the cupboard or freezer.

What's the difference between filling a flask and the 4 or 5 large mugs of hot water I have when I'm in the office? Surely it's just extra drinks.

Anyway, as work expect me to use my electricity to work from home they can give me a bit back when I'm in the office!

F

@Discovereads

"Who says you need a funeral? It’s £1000 to direct cremate and £7 for a scatter tube. Can skip the scatter tube even and bring your own container. See, just saved you £6k."

LOL !!

I'm with you on this, @martinsmoneysaver . I got one of those toilets that directs hand washing water into the cistern but it's not as wonderful as I'd hoped.

Now, I use my bath water via a bucket to flush with and water the garden. It's good exercise carrying buckets up and downstairs. I'd not thought of using it for mopping floors though and think I'll give that a miss if I've used conditioner. Otherwise yes, you've inspired me.

Something you didn't mention, if it's still hot you can fill the washing machine with it and save on heating costs as well.

Jobsworth

You don't need a funeral if you donate your body to the nearest university anatomy school...

Taps which are mostly used for handwashing can be converted to spray taps to use less water while being more effective.

You can buy little tap aerator inserts which fit most modern taps.

plumbing4home.com/tap-aerators-sprays/
www.savewatersavemoney.co.uk/products/view/744/tap-inserts-twin-pack.html

I had a sophisticated one which would override the "spray" mode and go into "fill" mode if you turned the tap on far enough.

Love it! All part of the enjoyment of doing it!

Talking about the “leave the potatoes in the pan” idea…

A relative who lives off-grid came to stay and I asked a lot of questions. They have solar power, batteries and a petrol generator, well water and a pump that takes it to a tank on higher ground, then it comes to taps in the house and fields by gravity. Buckets to flush toilets and a flow-off septic tank. All fascinating stuff.

For cooking they have bottled gas to the hob and an AGA style wood-fired oven. They swear by cast iron pots for all cooking. Preferably Le Creuset.

Q: Aren’t they really expensive? A: We get them on eBay for a tenth of the price.

Q: Don’t you have to fire up the AGA to high temperatures hours before?
A: No, start them on the hob, then into a low oven and they retain the heat.

Q: Aren’t they just for stews and soups? Hearty but boring?
A: No! They make the best bread ever. Roasts, paella, frying pan to oven….

I’m a pressure cooker fan (traditional, not Instant Pot) and use stainless steel every day but I thought I’d give it a try.
I got a red 1970s style 23cm Le Creuset pot by Enzo Mari, a joy to behold, for €45 including delivery.
It hasn’t been the easiest thing to learn. My bread has been “meh” so far and I left my parboiled rice to steam too long and it came out huge.
But by using the heat retention properties I’ve made excellent pasta sauce with only 20 minutes of power and soups with half the power needed for even a pressure cooker. Made stuff like mash in advance and kept it piping hot for over an hour.

Stainless steel still has its uses (especially fast reaction cooking) and I have a repertoire of pressure cooking recipes that I could do in my sleep.
But I can see that cast iron is a power-efficient way of cooking.

Some of the buses round here have chargers, I'm going to make sure I use those

Bars of soap last a lot longer if you leave new bars to harden before using. Unwrap and put them somewhere dry for a few weeks (or longer). If you have an airing cupboard that's a deal, we don't have one so I pop them in my drawers which also means I get faintly perfumed clothes.

We have smart plugs on everything, and smart bulbs in all the lights. We’ve set up a routine on Alexa that switches them all off with one command so we never forget any of them. It’s amazing how low the smart meter goes when everything’s off.

To ask for your most ingenious money saving tips

turn 50% of your radiators off, this in turn will save you a large % up to 40% of your gas consumption and thus reduce your bill. Turn off the radiators in rooms you are not actually sitting in or using. Leave the heating on at 18 degrees in the rooms you are using.

close doors of rooms you are heating and sitting inside

A 5 watt led is equal to a 60 watt old one so plenty bright enough

The spring onions I tried in water went manky - window sill gets too much sun. The ones in soil can also be regrown several times, will grow bigger and be kept in full sun.

But apparently you can jump start it by putting in water and then planting in soil - will try that next time.

I believe there's no cap at all for businesses or charities so their fuel charges will be higher than ours.

It's not daft at all. I think it's very responsible to save so much water! I have been inspired by the OP to save more shower water.

Def sell all your old stuff where you can. Recently sold 2 car seats/bases for £60.

saved all the kids Christmas outfits/jumpers and will list those near Xmas

thst said, I do find normal baby clothes don’t sell well

If you like garlic put a couple of cloves of one in the ground to grow your own. I did it with one from tesco.

The vinegar for cleaning works. I get an old jar, fill it with orange peel (when we have eaten oranges that day! - works with any citrus peel so lemons/lime peel as well), cover it with white vinegar (cheap from aldi), add a couple of drops of orange essential oil, leave to soak for a week, sieve and dilute about 1/5. and it is the best cleaning spray I ever used. And it can be good for allergies as well. You have the initial outlay of spray bottles/jars - but you can start collecting jars and easily reusable spray bottles (i.e. you can take the top off easily, and it's easily washable - which you aren't always able to do!)