Nursie It should hit your account Have you got the app?
Plinky & Tarriance* welcome both! I am always up for frugal things.
So, first of all hit the bills.
Use money saving expert energy club to compare tariffs, ring your supplier to get exact readings and go from there.
Water, can’t be switched yet but check you’ve got the free water saving devices for your areas. Usually shower heads, shower flow restructures, cistern water saving bags. Grab what you can. Check your not paying surface water change unnecessarily & that your account isn’t in credit.
Leccy & gas. Check if your in credit. Make sure the temperature on the hot water tank or boiler isn’t over 60c & time the hot water. I put mine on for 20 mins before dh is due home & as it’s insulated it’s enough for me to have a bath next day too. Lag all the pipes that get hot. Check the tank doesn’t have a switch to be heated on the immersion too, ours does and the builders left it on. It’s off at the fuse unit now.
Council tax, ask to pay it over 12 months. It’s less to find each month.
Time the heating, only heat the room your in & not the whole house. Close the curtains to keep the heat in. I hitch mine up on the windowsill.
Led bulbs, cheap in home bargains etc now. Replace the most used bulbs first, especially any halogens. It saves you much more than you’d imagine.
Cooking, slow cookers & halogen ovens are very cheap to run & they come up cheap on eBay. We hardly use our main oven now.
Use my supermarket to compare shopping lists so your always using the cheapest shop. If you haven’t shopped online before you can take advantage of the introductory offers. It’s worth it for things like meat, bulk buys etc. Then set up accounts in your partners name and use them all again. Monitor the waste, lots of veg can be frozen or made into soup/roast veggies. I freeze most things on the day, I portion up big joints of meat etc & get 4 weeks main meals into a three drawer freezer. You can bulk buy staples in lots of supermarkets now, oil in 5l bottles, huge bags pasta, tea bags, spices, sugar. I know I’ll need loads of gravy over winter so I bought 12 Tesco smart price ones @ 20p each. I can’t tell the difference between branded tea & smart price so I buy loads of that instead. I go to the farm shop for spuds but the supermarket “ugly” veg is just as good. The crops rubbish this year so they’ll all be blemished anyway. If you do get a brand you can’t give up look for it in home bargains or the pound shop. You can save loads shopping there. Dh only likes Dolmio and unfortunately can tell the difference so I buy big 750g jars in Poundland and portion it up. Squash he can’t tell one from another so he has smart price 🤷🏻♀️. Frozen meat can save you money or using muscle food. There’s a Facebook page called feed your family for £20 a week and they are legendary.
You can set up price alerts on my supermarket, useful for booze if you buy it as a present at Christmas.
Do try the smart price version if there is one, keep the receipt and return it if you don’t like it. Checkout smart/ green jinn/click snap are the shopping apps to use for freebies and money off, Shopmium too.
Laundry, use the own brand. It’ll be made by a big company like p&g or lever anyway but won’t be tested on animals. Aldi cleaning stuff all has the leaping bunny logo now 🐰. Break your dishwasher tablets in half and check manuals for the cheapest cycles. A lot of stuff can be washed on cold if you only wear once. If you don’t have manuals they’ll be online in pdf format. Don’t use faddy add ons like dw cleaner or washing machine cleaner. Soda crystals clean dw, citric acid from Wilko’s will clean your washing machine. Caustic soda will keep the sink trap clear/shower trap. Washing up liquid will remove a lot of stains on clothes.
Dry outside if your patios dry or drying. If you have to bring it in it’ll still dry quicker for being outside.
Toiletries, own brand all the way. Cheap mouthwash with a bit of hydrogen peroxide in it will clean stains off teeth as well as anything else. Tesco smart price shampoo cleans well & their £1 hair serum in the red bottle is better than John Frieda ever was (I am old enough to remember it coming out). Superdrug do good conditioners, the avocado & honey one is good.
Lists. Always have a list. Research everything on it, buy in triplicate so your not constantly nipping out.
£1.90 on butter
£9 petrol.