Fuel prices are rising, house prices are falling and the credit crunch is biting. Now here’s your chance to help share your best tips to save, and make, money.
Use the comments box below to share with our thousands of online readers the special tips you are using to help make ends meet.
Are you growing veg in your back garden, taking fewer car journeys or making your own clothes?
From the inventive and obscure to the mundane, no saving is too small, so share your top tips today.
28 Comments
Do not waste your time on the computer and do more work = make more money.
leave the country and move to canada.
I dont wash my pants and wear the same ones each day. Saves a fortune.
If it looks too good to be true then it IS!
and (whiners please leave the country.. leave it for us to prosper in
.. and don’t be whiney ex-pats who harp on about how bad the UK is.. if you leave - please shut up or come back and help try sorting it out.
You could use the same tea bag over and over again.
Get rid of the car, get sacked from your job, and have a couple of kids. The benefits system is what made Britain Great, I’m considering exploiting this option as most of the people I know in this situation seem to have a higher disposable income than us hard working, single, mortgage payers.
Crime doesnt pay….. ever seen a drug dealer driving a Ford Fiesta?
1 : Try to drive economically (not going above 60 should knock 20 per cent off your fuel bill)
2 : Don’t be afraid to hunt out bargain clothes and accessories in places like Oxfam and Sue Ryder - for mens and womens clothes. Way cheaper, and often you can find really stylish pieces - there are always gems in the rubble.
3 : Don’t drink when you go out - stick to water/juice as it’s cheaper, then invite a load of people to bring their own booze round to your house one night instead.
4 : Make as many of your own meals as you can. Buying your lunch from M&S / the supermarket is ridiculously expensive and they’re not even that tasty.
5 : Flog everything you don’t want on eBay, or better still a car boot sale. I always find the one on the Rabbit Run on Saturday mornings is the busiest.
6 : Holiday off season wherever possible i.e. Switzerland in summer is surprisingly affordable but winter, forget it.
Have to agree
Get sacked, live on benefits, move into a council house and you will be well away - even better if your have 4 kids.
I happen to live next door to someone in this position.
I work 9 -5 6 days a week to pay my mortgage while my council tax is used to pay for his kitchen to be done up, decorarting, tiling on the roof
all while he sups away the benefits in the betting shop and down the pub.
My suggestions are:
1. Go on holiday to places outside the Eurozone, eg. Turkey, USA as you will get a better exchange rate against the pound (or wait until the pound gets to 1.40 Euros)
2. Maximise your income by becoming self employed or forming your own limited company.
3. Fix your energy bills until 2011.
4. Buy small items on ebay, eg batteries, bulbs, CD’s etc
5. Don’t waste time driving miles trying to save 1p per litre of petrol - it’s not worth it!!! - you can save much more by buying special offers on food - maybe involving going to more than one supermarket to cherry pick the best offers.
If we all spent nothing on anything, there would be nothing for anyone to spend anything on.
(anything multiplied by zero = 0)
and that’s the problem.
You push it in one place, and it pops out somewhere else.
We can’t ALL save money on “everything” - the economy will fail … which is EXACTLY what its doing now !
A proper “balanced economy” would discourage the scroungers, as big matty rightly points out, and encourage all of us to contribute to a productive economy. That is: where all would prosper, and not have to worry about “needless” economies on the one hand, whilst not being wasteful on the other.
to ad - try australia it’s warmer
to devilschair - if the uk is so good why should we come back and help sort it out?
to matt - already doing that.
MY TIP - SELL YOUR HOUSE AND RENT FOR A YEAR OR TWO THEN BUY IT BACK CHEAPER (150,000 HOUSE NOW = 110,000 IN TWO YEARS MAKE 40,000 )
We should all opt for communism, at least then we would have a theoretical collective ownership and equal social standing.
fake a illness, get DLA, get a free car, insurance, a new car every 3 years, free car tax then claim income support rent free, council tax is free, school dinners (i have 5 kids i would save over £200 a week if i didnt work thats without DLA ) what is going on in Britain….i often question not working my kids could go ice skating free saving me £5.50 each every time we go and swimming would be free !
Exactly Linzi - we both work and at times it seems like WHY???
People who don’t work and have no intentions of working whatsoever - get everything given to them on a plate.
It makes you really wonder.
If the Government gave people on benefits food vouchers instead of cash to spend on whatever they won’t to - it would get the majority of the people off benefits and back into work.
And lets be honest here - how many of the people on benefits actually use the money on luxuries which they should not be having if they do not work.
Basically the system should work this way
Instead of cash being given in form of benefits
Rent should be paid by voucher
Food vouchers which can only be used for food should be issued
and clothing vouchers.
Money is not required for anything else if your on benefits
INSULATE, INSULATE, INSULATE…. Fill you loft and walls with foam and save hundreds of pounds of your heating bills. If you call 0800 512012 you can get a grant for free or cheap insulation from the governments Carbon Emissions Reduction Target funded schemes.
I agree with Phil, Linzi I work full time don’t earn that much but I have to pay for everything. my son’sDESPERATE for a job,will accept anything he’s never been out of work and DHSS have stopped his money because they say he left the last job of his own accord. If he was from the European Community they would’nt ask them if they had left their Country of their own accord and if they had it wouldn’t matter would it. Makes you sick!!
The Government will never change the benefits hand out system for long term unemployed
If they did they would fear those same people not voting for them in the next election.
makes a mockery of working in this country when you realise that
Even though I work full time, I’m finding it harder and harder to make ends meet on my wages, to the extent where I’ve started looking around my house for bits and pieces I can sell so that I can afford to run my car, mortgage, bills etc. I’m definitely going to start growing my own veg and I have started making my own clothes. Then, when I’ve got enough money saved, I’ll move to Canada.
There’s a website called Team Up Here dot com, which does away with the need for currency-based economics by swapping skills for skills.
Basically you can get everything you need done, i.e. plumbing, decorating, accounting, gardening etc for free.
The way this works is that you find someone on the site who can offer the skill you need, then swap it for a skill you have - i.e. you can pay someone for doing your gardening by teaching them spanish, or get your plumbing sorted by doing their ironing etc.
It’s the future.
Simple - eat less - you are all to too fat generally - so eat less, you should be able to live happily on 1000 calories a day, this will save you money, improve your health, wealth and appearance, and by reducing global demand for food, it will reduce prices of food commodities
Make your own lunch to take to work - don’t buy sarnies from Boots/M&S/Greggs etc. they’ll be a fifth of the price and probably alot nicer & healthier.
Or get a bit of cardboard and hitch your way to work
saves money on petrol, running a car and public transport.
Sneak into leisure centres and use their showers every other day, like I do! Saves on electricity bills.
Sell your house for 150K and buy a caravan and set up lodgings on a green field in the countryside
No longer have to pay Council tax, electric, water, save a fortune.
if you take recycling cans to tesco in sundorne shrewsbury they pay 2 club card points for every can you put in the bring bank so a 24 pack of stella beer recycled gives you 48 points or 4.8 pence off your next shopping trip…. Every little helps…
Sell your house for 150K and buy a caravan and set up lodgings on a green field in the countryside
No longer have to pay Council tax, electric, water, save a fortune.
Agreed, lead is freely available from the tops of buildings, copper from sub stations, caravans & income from drives.
dont pay your council taxes - its a rip off for just having the bins emptied half as many times, may be just pay half??
I have found though if you take Aluminioum direct to the smelter in Oldbury, near Birmingham you get about £1000 per tonne!!!!! makes you think hey??? Tesco must be making profit out of our environmental efforts