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 😂

We don't eat a huge amount of meat as a family- but have just come across this- some recipes look good-
www.bbc.co.uk/food/collections/1_dinners#xtor=CS8-1000-%5BEditorialPromo_Box%5D-%5BNewsEditorial_Promo%5D-%5BNewsEditorial_Promo%5D-%5BPS_FOOD~N~~P_pounddinnersnews%5D

@MakingNBaking please could you tell me the model of your solar powerbank?
I've read so many reviews that sometimes contradict eachother I'm still undecided about which one to buy.😀

I do all my shopping on a credit card with 3% cashback, and pay it off in full before any interest is charged.

3% saving on everything I buy adds up to quite a bit over a year.

This is not true. I've done it a few times by accident - poured the water on and then forgotten to turn on the hob. The water cools very quickly, losing energy through the sides of the pan, the pasta might be cooked a little round the edges but will still be raw in the middle.

If you've got kids of a toy age, swap toys and books with friends. This only works if you have decent friends, so that stuff doesn't get returned trashed beyond repair.

Vodafone. There was a cheap deal via MSE last year.

You could also encourage teenagers to do a clothes swap too...that depends on your teens a bit.

Charging your phone at work (unless it’s a Company phone) is actually an offence (certainly inEngland and Wales: it even has its own name - Abstraction.

This offence is created by section 13 of the Theft Act 1968:[4]

A person who dishonestly uses without due authority, or dishonestly causes to be wasted or diverted, any electricity shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

While unlikely to be brought to court, it’s a good excuse for an Employer to fire someone without risking unfair dismissal claims being brought against them…

Frozen carrots are ok in smoothies or soup tho. Lidl do £1.50 boxes of fruit and veg. I wash, peel if necessary and chop and freeze everything , even grapes for smoothies.

Make the most of what you have.

my gym membership is £39 a month. But I go probably twice a week. Payg gym is £8.70 a go. Classes £9. So I’m getting my moneys worth.

we are trying very hard not to waste food. I freeze a lot. Worked out ages ago that freezing a sliced loaf of bread meant that it lasted longer (duh).

I buy coffee on subscription from the nice shop near me. Takeaway is £2.90 a cup. Or £2.80 if you bring your own cup. I get the ground beans delivered for £65 every two weeks for 6m. Can make about 18 coffees per bag. I’d get 22 ish takeaway coffees for that price. So massive saving and I still get what I like.

I do charge my phone at work. But I’m expected to use it for work. So makes sense that I charge it there. Work also reimburse for calls. I could have had a seperate work phone but couldn’t be arsed to carry two with me.

i try and do a food shop maybe 3 of every 4 weeks. I usually find that by the 4th week we have enough to get by on. So don’t bother.

this week is week 4. Today I’m attempting eggless pancakes for breakfast.

I have yoghurts to use up for toppings and frozen berries.

I bought this book about 15 years ago and I use it all the time. It tells you how to prep a gazillion things to make sure you preserve the quality of everything you freeze.

How to Freeze: Everything You Need to Know about Freezing and Freezer Management

Book by Carolyn Humphries

Ahh man!! wish i had seen this before I answered the " cringiest thing seen on social media" post

When our hoover broke I bought a eubank from Amazon for about £17. Now I use that mostly and just hoover once or twice a week. With 2 young kids and a Labrador I used to hoover at least twice a day. It's actually surprisingly good!

I save any milk the kids don't drink and use that for tea/coffee.

When the kids are in the bath I let them wash my hair. To them it's a fun game but it means I can let my hair air dry in the evening and have a shorter shower the next day.

No pets

No TV license, very little is worth watching anyway

Eat 5 days a week, fasting is really great for the majority of people

Do free exercise such as running and walking. Plenty of gym-like exercise can be replicated at home

Remember that Christmas is a social construct, it is not compulsory. Christians who want to celebrate it can go to church and say prayers for free

Stop using a second fridge freezer - they are very expensive to run.

When cooking veggies and potatoes on the hob turn the heat off 75% through the cooking time and they will continue to cook in the water anyway.

Turn off the heat completely for pasta when it boils and it will cook fully if left.

Don’t eat meat or fish

Don’t own a horse or have more children than you can afford. This one is specific to a relative.

But if she scrapped the gym membership and went for a jog instead she'd save even more

@starray
Our Giveaway Group was set up via church, but the idea could be used between friends or work colleagues etc.
If any group member has anything to give away, they post a picture and the first to reply can take it.
There are a couple of rules;

• only offer things that are in good enough condition to be still sold;
• no money is to change hands;
• only claim something if you have a genuine need.
• You can also make requests for items, but only to borrow them, not to keep.

The Group is based on friendship and trust and works brilliantly for us.

My sheila (ceiling dryer) is a godsend and is used every day. It's much warmer up by the ceiling.

Not running a car.

I don't think it'd be raw, but when you add the pasta, the water temp will drop - what does work is to put pan of boiling water on hob, add pasta, bring back to boil and then let it sit with lid on.

When you buy your fruit and veg, check the price per kilo tag. Often smaller bags are cheaper per kilo than the larger bags. Sometimes the ‘value’ veg are more per kilo, which is illegal so can be taken to management and it is removed immediately. It used to be , disgustingly, that bagged fruit and veg were cheaper than loose, but that seems to have pretty much stopped.

Washable sanitary pads. I still occasionally use tampons when flow is heavy, but several days I can manage with just the pads.

Using sourdough starter instead of yeast - I'm not a lentil weaver, I promise, but accidently got into baking sourdough before Covid and continued from there. Never have to buy yeast now. I bake maybe twice a week. Another tip I got when baking bread is to heat oven to 250, stick bread in (covered), then turn oven off for twenty minutes, before sticking back on and cooking uncovered loaves for 15 minutes. I also then use oven heat afterwards for baking cake or dinner or something. And of course, bread is sliced and frozen.

I also scour online for deals for butter and fill my freezer with it. Butter is so expensive that I save a fortune this way by buying it on offer every few months.

Some great tips on this thread that I will be trying.

Mine are:

• Use white vinegar for cleaning. Cheaper and more environmentally friendly when it goes down the sink/into the sea. You can buy 5 litre bottle cheaply from Amazon and they last ages.
• Collect the cold water that runs while the shower or taps heats up. The first shower of the day in our house gives out 3 litres of cold water! I then keep these bottles in the kitchen for filling up the kettle or saucepans.
• Use the Olio app for free food. Top tip for that is that the Tesco collections are usually at around 8.30pm. If you log on at 9pm you should get some bargains, mainly 'use by' items that must go by midnight. Also log on around Bank Holidays/Christmas/Easter etc when Tesco have probably over ordered and have lots of excess food. If you become a Food Waste Hero to do the collections from Tesco yourself get to keep 10% of anything you collect before giving the rest away (plus anything 'use by' that doesn't go by midnight).
• Freeze everything you can rather than throw away. I once got 10 pots of Houmous on Olio and it freezes really well.
• Look out for Community Fridges (different to food banks as you don't need a referral). Again there will be food that supermarkets would otherwise throw away.
• Try some weird food combinations to avoid waste. To avoid complaints from fussy family members, put it all out in 'help yourself' bowls and call it a buffet!

@ohffsomg - yes in soil. I just used a small pot from a herb which I had managed to kill.... lol.

When I use one of the spring onions I just snip it and as it's already planted no need to replant.

If you like a stronger onion flavour you can plant an onion that has sprouted and use the shoots from that in a salad or a dish.