Skincare budget

[BooSaidTheGhost]

Change in financial circumstances means I need to economise a bit and my fancy Clarins day and night creams need to go! I've no problem with this, but want to get as much bang for my buck as possible. I'm 40, fair skinned and freckles (so SPF a must). What would you recommend around the £20-25 mark?

Seriously, moisturizer is the last thing you need to spend on wrt skincare. Moisturizer does what it says on the tin, adds moisture. So though Nivea, Olay, Garnier, Aldi etc won't look, or probably smell, as nice...they'll do just the same job as the Clarins.
I use Clarins Double Serum- and currently Nivea Q10 cream, because it was on offer. When I'm feeling flush I treat myself to a Lancome Hydra Zen cream (esp after Christmas when the gift sets are half price!) but realistically, I know the Hugh street stuff for moisturizer is just as good.

Btw, do you buy direct from Clarins? If not, sign up. They have amazing offers- often 30% discount across the board and freebies. A couple of months ago, I got 30% off my serum (and the cleanser I'm a sucker for despite knowing that that too is no better than any high street cleanser that goes down the sink in 30 seconds!) and 5 "samples". All the samples were at least 8-10ml of stuff (a 5ml of eye cream which is 1/3 of a full size if you think about it) except for one, which was a 200ml cleanser! Really worth signing up.

You should be using spf separately from moisturiser or makeup if you want it to be effective too.

Inkey list and the Ordinary both sell effective products at a reasonable price. You might also want to look at Beauty Pie - you have to pay for membership but then the products are significantly below mainstream prices.

Oh, yes, missed the SPF comment and agree. SPF 50 separate. No cream contains enough. (or rather, you don't put enough cream on)
Biore watery essence spf50 is good. While I was waiting for some this summer I tried the Garnier face spf50 recommended by Nadine Baggott. That's good too, but I prefer the watery lotion of the Biore.

I'd avoided a separate SPF in the past as I found them feeling heavy on my skin under a moisturiser but will definitely have a look at the ones recommended, thank you. I have had freebies of the Lancôme hydra zen stuff before and loved it! Signing up so I can get discounts for treats every now and then sounds like the way to go and then pick something from Olay / Nivea etc for every day.

TK maxx is always worth a look, I've had some great brands from there

One recent bargain I've tried is Rejuvelate spf30 day cream from Aldi, surprisingly good.

I don’t use it myself, but some of my close friends have started using Tropic. Even the ones who used to use very expensive brands and swore by them have decided Tropic is better, an also cheaper