Please share your best money saving tips

[SouthernNorthernGirl]

We are now in what is deemed the 'squeezed middle', after having spent years trying to drag ourselves out of the 'poverty' area.
For some reason, I thought it would be a much better place to be

Paying my bills aren't the problem any longer, getting to do any living beyond that is. Reducing bills somehow may free up some money?

I'd love to hear tips on how to get by on this!
Days out / in with the DC, ideas for DH & I to have for date nights (I know the term isn't popular, we would still like quality time that's not gawping at the telly though)
Clothes are a big one for us, with 3 DC too. And of course, Christmas is looming.

I guess just any tips for general day to day living expenses.

[Badgertastic]

We so as pp suggested and freeze milk too (though not in 1 pint containers we always freeze the 4 pint ones as we go through it quickly). It really does help reduce the top up shop issues.

We follow a budget. At the start of the month there are all our bills on it and then estimates of spending on other areas such as food, petrol etc and I adjust to actuals as we go along. I know how much we have left to come out of the account and how much our balance will be at the end of the month.
Also do the savings on a standing order. Work out how much you need to be saving for different things like Christmas and birthdays, split it in to 12 and have the standing order come out after pay day. It suddenly becomes a bill and after a few months you don't notice the money not being there as you adjust your budget to suit what is left in the account. I do the same for car and house insurance, MOT and service costs too. Makes the big expenses like that much easier to handle and does not leave you absolutely broke when the time comes round. It has been a game changer for us.

[Badgertastic]

Also batch cooking and using the slow cooker to cook cheaper cuts of meat is really good. If I do a slow cooked stew I always do more and freeze it. Cheap, healthy ready meals.

[EssentialHummus]

Use your freezer- batch cook, and buy discounted meat /meals to shove in there for later use.
Aim for 2 (at least) low spend meals a week - veg soup and bread, jacket potato and beans, omelette etc.

[Queenofthedrivensnow]

Badger I like the standing order idea for yearly costs etc I’m going to implement that.

Never browse shop. Give it up you won’t miss it. I buy lots of nice things especially for the dc but they are planned purchases. Usually online with a code.

Have reasonable conversations with your kids about saying no. My kids want magazines at the checkout but because of the tat on the front. The mags are 3.50. I have firmly explained they could have that cash and choose some jewels in Claire’s if that’s what they truly want but I am not buying something that will disintegrate in minutes. They have got a lot better about this now!

[Queenofthedrivensnow]

Teach your kids to live baked spuds. They was a game changer for me! Next on the list is slow cooker food

[SouthernNorthernGirl]

I've meal planned, and the shopping is coming today. However, it's so expensive. £95 for the delivery, plus DH picked up the household cleaning ( powder, washing up liquid, bleach, toilet rolls etc) from B&M which he spent £30 on. Including 'a few snacks for his work'.
Then £25 at the butchers and we're on our arse before the months pay has even started
I've done something massively wrong right? Our menu plan is things like spaghetti bolognese chicken enchiladas etc. Hardly caviar and quails eggs.

[SouthernNorthernGirl]

Oh, an also I did only buy own brand, and it's Asda I got delivery from. Thought they were super cheap?

[confusedofengland]

For activities & date nights, it pays to be a bit of an Internet tart,depending on where you are in the country. We are near enough to London to go for days/nights/weekends out & rarely pay for drinks. Youngs & Fullers pubs all give you a free drink for signing up to their newsletters (one per pub per customer) then also on birthdays etc & there are lots of those close together. You can get 2for1 cinema deals easily, perhaps on Groupon or through insurance.

If you are with 3 mobile download their Wuntu app - I had a free Costa through them last week & they are currently offering a meal at Bella Italia for £5.

Also, Tesco clubcard vouchers can be exchanged for meals out, day trips & more.

[BikeRunSki]

Never leave the house for long without a drink and snack/packed lunch. Especially with children!

It may not apply to you, but I work for a public body (not nhs or emergency services) and am a member of the Civil Service Social Club (although I am not strictly a civil servant). £4/month. Free entry to English Heritage and Cadw sites - briiliamt for days out and stops on long journeys. Also discounted cinema entry. Lots of other stuff, but those 2 are what we mostly use.

[RandomMess]

Reduce your portion sizes for meat, eat veggie at least once per week. Jacket potatoes with topping once per week...

[ScrubbyGarden]

Eating prime meat for most meals is a bit of a luxury, even if it's not caviar, in our house meat happens once a week or less. For spag Bol, you can stretch the mince with veg (a handful of red lentils helps too) to make two rounds at once and freeze half.
Set your budget, and shop to that. So this week you spent 150. Is that affordable? If so, you are golden! If not, the beauty of online shopping is you get a running total, so if it's too high you can take things off as you go. Swap your chicken enchilada night for a bean enchilada night, cut out a treat (what are those work snacks??) , see if you can push something into next week. Keep an eye on what is on offer and switch your meal plans accordingly.

We spend 100-120, but it's all organic from "ethical(ish)" retailers. You can live high on the hog from Asda for 150 a week!

[SouthernNorthernGirl]

No, it was not an affordable food shop for us. I was actually wondering how or if I can stretch my meal plan out to 2 weeks or longer, so your ideas are helpful Scrubby, thank you.
Snacks for DH work is lots of chocolate, crisps and cola.

[ScrubbyGarden]

If you are on an economy drive I wouldn't have thought cola and chocs would be a priority- but obviously if he's going to end up using vending machines, bringing them in is better!
I'd buy that sort of stuff out of my "pocket money" (weekly personal amount to fritter, or spend on non essentials)

You can definitely stretch your meal plan- I bet there is all sorts in your cupboards and freezers which you can press into service too. Those packets of this and that can end up making quite a few meals.
Our cupboard/freezer stalwarts are: Egg fried rice with peas and sweetcorn and odds and ends (can add scraps of meat- so you could split your chicken into that, a little bit into your mostly bean enchiladas, and a little bit into a risotto, also with peas).
Pasta with tomato sauce, back-of-the-fridge soup (whatever veg is rotting in there-even salad!- and a tin of pulses of some sort), roast back of the fridge (same principle, but in the oven, with potatoes and often with a few sausages cut up into bits- so a packet will make that and have some left for sausage pasta); back-of-the-fridge and chickpea curry with rice... you get the idea!

[EssentialHummus]

For chocs, cola and snacks Aldi and Lidl are your friends (if nearby).

[Unescorted]

We had a really restricted budget for about 6 years. Your weekly budget would have been for most of the month. To make it to the end of the month no saving was considered too small. It all came down to being super organised.
Bills reduced to the lowest to the lowest amount possible. We ran one car, this was a huge saving (over £1000 pa). My employer did a season loan saving £20pm. We had 1 mobile between us. No subscription TV, lowest internet subscription we could get.
Change to internet banking - by knowing how little money was available was a spur to not spend.
Put some money into an emergency pot this saves you having to sign up to expensive pay monthly schemes to get the boiler fixed. Or putting a new washing machine on a credit card.
If your kids catch a bus to school see if you can get a bus pass . At this time of year you may strike lucky if the budget hasn't been spent up. We have one child with a bus pass and the other isn't eligible - we applied for the first a bit of the way through term. But the saving of one is £20pw.
For food, as others have said, meal plan. Work out what you like eating and see if it is possible to do it cheaper. Our big savings came from replicating the treats and expensive ingredients - takeaways, bought lunches, beer, marinaded olives, tarts & quiches, beer nuts, salted lemons, spice mixes, dressings, sourdough bread ect. That way it didn't feel as if we were missing out.
Look for opportunities when you are shopping -that sad under ripe mango is mango chutney. That duck left on the shelf at 2 min to closing on Christmas Eve is crispy Peking duck. Lemons on special buy in Aldi - crystallised chocolate dipped lemon peel, salted lemons for Xmas presents and posh cordial. Pork went through a really cheap phase so we made our own bacon, name and sausages (including salamis).
Eat seasonally.
Grow expensive things - herbs, soft fruit, peas, sprouting broccoli - do varieties that you can't get in the shops. We have purple beans, caugettes to put the flowers in tempura, yellow raspberries. I also have a cut flower section to give as gifts -you are more likely to get a second invite for dinner! If you don't have the room to grow your own - buy 2 cheap bunches mix together. Tie just below the flowers- cut them off shortish and re wrap in one piece of the plastic and a sheet of brown paper - instant expensive looking flowers.
The other big savings were learning how to sew and pattern draft simple clothes, knitting, crocheting,car maintenance, electronics (to fix kettles, toasters etc by replacing fuses and compacitors), decorating.
Be creative and it doesn't have to be all drudgery and denial.

[ScrubbyGarden]

Yes- totally agree you need to replicate the treats somehow! Otherwise you will crack and run screaming into M&s one rainy day for chocolate coated caviar on the credit card!

[SouthernNorthernGirl]

These are great tips.
The amount we spent on our food shop, was too much. I really have to make it stretch for at least an extra week.

Really like the ideas for days out too, along with the household budget ideas.

[ScrubbyGarden]

You can do it! MNers are great at suggesting meals, if you post a list of what you've got in.
Maybe hide half the treaty things (biccies...) or you will have a nice week and a gruel week which is grim.

[Queenofthedrivensnow]

Disagree that work snacks arnt a priority. I work long days opposite a bloody Tesco express. I need to have planned and bulk bought otherwise this is a cash drain. You could probably get him a weeks worth of gear for about 6 quid. There were 10 packs of coke in aldi for 3.85 last week. So 38.5p a tin which is as cheap as it will ever be. Multi packs of chocolate bars are less than a quid I think in there. I think a sustainable budget is having what you need the cheapest route possible.

[Queenofthedrivensnow]

I would ditch the butcher immediately too. Aldi and lidl for meat. Lidl is amazing for meat

[ScrubbyGarden]

Butchers can be excellent value- and tap water is cheaper than any cola.
But totally agree that you need snacks.

[charleyfarleysaunt]

I work out my monthly budget - everything possible on standing order

Work out largish annual costs (car insurance, MOT, Xmas etc) and divide it by 12 - DD that into a savings account

See what is left and then divide it by 52 and DD that in to a cash only (no OD) account each week and then only use the that card for weekly spending if that makes sense? Basically I have weekly pocket money - much easier to last a day at the end of the week than a week at the end ofthe month!

If I can get the weekly spend down after a few weeks (it gets easier over time to get in to a habit of spending less I find) I then reduce the weekly DD to up the balance in my main account, which is then transferred to savings every couple of months or left as a buffer in case a DD goes up

[Chestervase1]

Do you bake cakes from scratch. What about some evenings having cheese and crackers or olives, bread and antipasti. I don’t think meals have to be meat and two veg. The Sainsbury’s magazine has lots of lovely recipes. Yogurt and granola for breakfast. When money was in extremely short supply when I was a child we had a tray of eggs. Egg on toast, omelettes with cheese or mushrooms, etc.

[ScrubbyGarden]

Cheese, olives and antipasti are on my list of expensive treats!
This is getting a bit monty python...

[Chestervase1]

ScrubbyGarden Lidl or Aldi?