The Great "Extreme MoneySaving" Hunt: How far do you go?

louiseypees

Well nothing very extreme really, but moneysaving stuff I've done:
- Once helped to save up for a holiday by living off cup-a-soup, bread and caffeine for a few weeks - not recommended!
- More recently have insisted on a food shopping overhaul - staples of the diet now include oven chips, baked beans, eggs (eggs are a whole money saving scheme on their own, in my opinion!), fish fingers and discounted cold meats for sandwiches to take to work.
- I've never met a bottle I couldn't refill.
- Making our own limoncello with the cheapest vodka around that I wouldn't ordinarily clean my toilet with!
- Doggy bags from restaurants - no matter how small the leftovers.
- We just can't justify paying £35+ a month for the gym, so we've invested in home exercise equipment - a £50 bike on sale in tesco about a year ago, a £15 stepper, and a free exercise game from the company I work for.
- Still on exercise, we found that the local leisure centre do a lot of exercise classes which you don't need to be a member to attend - going to one or two of those, learning the basics and then carrying on doing them at home has worked very well!
- Hand-made presents - I'm a massive fan of photos, and photo albums and collages have made some family members very happy recently - much more personal than spending a fortune on something faceless.
- Making stuff and selling it on ebay - only just started that one, we'll see how that goes!
- Signing up to supermarkets online and not buying anything has got me a lot of free delivery offers - and shopping online always saves me money as I'm less tempted to buy everything!
- I never buy anything without checking its price on about a million websites first, and seeing how much cashback it can make me.
- We've saved a fortune on our summer holiday by booking every last scrap of it ourselves (and keeping nerdy spreadsheets!). An interrail pass in most European countries is only £99 for 3 days' travel in a month and it means that we don't need to hire a car until the last stop of our fantastic 4*, 2 week, 4 centre holiday - a single train ticket on one of the routes we're taking would've been £115, so we're pretty chuffed with the saving!
- When you're booking a DIY Holiday, get the flights booked up months in advance to get the best prices, and leave the hotels until relatively late to catch them when they're trying to shift the rooms.

Errrrr.... think that's it. Nothing revolutionary, but it's working for us

rozeepozee

DEBTMONKEY1A wrote: »

??!!!!:rolleyes: From a previous post 'Look through magazines in shops & don't buy them'...that is just WRONG!

Endless times when I've been on my other 1/2's 'magazine run' there's maybe just one dog-eared copy of heat magazine because all those tight b*****s have just stood there reading it. It's not a library-it's a shop!!!

I've winced at a few of the "money saving" tips on here that to me seem like stealing, but I have to disagree with this one. I read the magazines on the stand at Tescos and do so very carefully and don't think it's harming anyone but Tesco's profits and I think it can stand that. Interesting to see where others' moral compass falls.

Pandrea

- Hand-made presents - I'm a massive fan of photos, and photo albums and collages have made some family members very happy recently - much more personal than spending a fortune on something faceless.

Yeah, this is a good one. My best friend and I have recently been giving each other 'unbought' presents - apart from saving money, since we've known each other 19 years, we worked out we'd been buying Christmas & birthday presents all that time = 76 shop bought presents. Frankly there are only so many things you see in shops that are suitable, can't keep giving each other toiletries or books EVERY time. And unbought presents are more creative and give you something to talk about.
So for Christmas I made her a travelling case for her hair straighteners, out of an old oven glove (with a cover made from an old tea towel with a nice pattern - means she can pack them in without having to wait till they cool down as the oven glove, turned inside out, is heatproof). She gave me a train ticket for a journey I was making - paid for by a refund voucher from a journey of hers which had been delayed - and some new CDs she got free through work, which I was very happy with. For her birthday I made her a photo album, printing out and sticking in old pictures and writing on funny comments etc, she loved it. I hope we'll keep this trend up and spread it to other friends!

Pandrea

don't think it's harming anyone but Tesco's profits and I think it can stand that.

Er, what about the magazine's profits? Newspapers and magazines are in crisis right now as it is. I must admit I've looked at the odd story while browsing but not of magazines I would otherwise buy, the ones I like I do make sure to purchase because I want them to keep going. However I have subscription deals for my favourite 2 magazines which saves money and I keep it to those only, no impulse buys.

kings981

I set the alarm and put the washing machine on at 4am when the electric is cheaper. It is then ready to hang out before I go to work in the morning.

It may only save a few pennies but over a whole year it all adds up.

rozeepozee

Another tip is I've potty trained my son about six months earlier than my friends and gone straight to undies instead of pull up pants. At 30p a nappy/pull up, I reckon I'm saving about £1 a day for six months. Okay, I've had to do a bit more washing but I bet I've saved loads nonetheless.

Pandrea wrote: »

Er, what about the magazine's profits? Newspapers and magazines are in crisis right now as it is. I must admit I've looked at the odd story while browsing but not of magazines I would otherwise buy, the ones I like I do make sure to purchase because I want them to keep going. However I have subscription deals for my favourite 2 magazines which saves money and I keep it to those only, no impulse buys.

Think we'll have to agree to differ on this one. How is only reading the odd article any different?

Alwaysachoice

inspectorgoole wrote: »

Someone mentioned taking food from allotments as a way to save money...

Yes it would, but the people that have allotments are often doing it to try and save money themselves. I'm an allotment holder myself and would be devastated if someone came in and nicked my produce that I had spent ages tending.

Taking what isn't yours shows little respect for other MSEs, especially when they have put the hard work into growing things. If you want produce, grow it yourself.

Sorry if I sound rude, but I'd be ashamed of myself if I stole from someone else to 'save money.'

I missed the original post but am gobsmacked that some people think it's acceptable to nick food from allotments! OH and I have an allotment and work very hard to produce food for us and family, not to mention cost of seeds, tools, etc. That aside, if it's stealing to take food from the supermarket shelves, it's stealing to take food from allotments, farmers' fields, in fact anywhere where the food doesn't belong to you. Shame on you.

archdales

kings981 wrote: »

I steam off the unfranked stamps. I work in an office so deal with quite a lot of mail, and never buy stamps for myself. To get the stamp off the envelope place on a saucer and cover with boiling water, this melts the glue then dry the stamp and stick on the clean envelope using PVA glue.

This is very naughty and Royal Mail can do you for theft!. Granted their fault for not canncelling down.

HappySad

Senjo wrote: »

Absolutely HappySad. We have a Sony CRT widescreen TV and Sony freeview box with stand and cupboard under that a friend's dad was going to take to the dump because he was getting a new flatscreen TV. It works perfectly. With everyone buying flatscreen there must be loads of free CRT TVs and computer monitors going.
* Check out your local Freecycle group on the web and also Recycle.co.uk.
* I also wash my hands in cold water even in winter since having a new combi boiler last year, rather than have it fire up just for that.
* Switch off the microwave at the plug instead of leaving it to use electricity just to display the time.
* If you have a cooker hood, think if you need the light on in it every time you use it. It soon becomes second nature to switch the light off if it's not necessary.
*Supermarkets are not the cheapest for lots of food (never mind the fact that they seem to pack meat such as chops in 3s when you only want 2). I buy fruit & veg cheaper in the greengrocers and luckily have an excellent local butcher so if I just want, say 1 slice of ham, I can get it.
*Make Do and Mend is an old fashioned but good motto. People these days will throw clothes away rather than repair them. My OH drives me mad though by insisting on keeping so many old bits of wood, cable, wire, plugs etc.

You are so right. If you are happy to stay a version behind or "degrade" our requirements then you can get loads of stuff really cheap or free. We got a playstatio 2 from my inlaws. Nothing wrong with it and my son loves playing games on it. We also have all CRT TVs and monitors. We got a 32 inch TV wide screen for just £50 from a repair shop and it has been working fine for 2 years now.

Our microwave just needs to heat up so we always just get the under £30 one.

From my lodgers clothes bag I got a work shirt & a woolen scarf. The rest I have already taken to charity shop. This week @ the charity shop I have got a lovely Wallis dress £3 and a designer silk dress for................ wait for it £2!!!!! I have put the scarf, silk dress + woolen scarf under a delicate wash with delicate silk liquid in the machine under very very low temperature.

HappySad

louiseypees wrote: »

Well nothing very extreme really, but moneysaving stuff I've done:
- Once helped to save up for a holiday by living off cup-a-soup, bread and caffeine for a few weeks - not recommended!
- More recently have insisted on a food shopping overhaul - staples of the diet now include oven chips, baked beans, eggs (eggs are a whole money saving scheme on their own, in my opinion!), fish fingers and discounted cold meats for sandwiches to take to work.
- I've never met a bottle I couldn't refill.
- Making our own limoncello with the cheapest vodka around that I wouldn't ordinarily clean my toilet with!
- Doggy bags from restaurants - no matter how small the leftovers.
- We just can't justify paying £35+ a month for the gym, so we've invested in home exercise equipment - a £50 bike on sale in tesco about a year ago, a £15 stepper, and a free exercise game from the company I work for.
- Still on exercise, we found that the local leisure centre do a lot of exercise classes which you don't need to be a member to attend - going to one or two of those, learning the basics and then carrying on doing them at home has worked very well!
- Hand-made presents - I'm a massive fan of photos, and photo albums and collages have made some family members very happy recently - much more personal than spending a fortune on something faceless.
- Making stuff and selling it on ebay - only just started that one, we'll see how that goes!
- Signing up to supermarkets online and not buying anything has got me a lot of free delivery offers - and shopping online always saves me money as I'm less tempted to buy everything!
- I never buy anything without checking its price on about a million websites first, and seeing how much cashback it can make me.
- We've saved a fortune on our summer holiday by booking every last scrap of it ourselves (and keeping nerdy spreadsheets!). An interrail pass in most European countries is only £99 for 3 days' travel in a month and it means that we don't need to hire a car until the last stop of our fantastic 4*, 2 week, 4 centre holiday - a single train ticket on one of the routes we're taking would've been £115, so we're pretty chuffed with the saving!
- When you're booking a DIY Holiday, get the flights booked up months in advance to get the best prices, and leave the hotels until relatively late to catch them when they're trying to shift the rooms.

Errrrr.... think that's it. Nothing revolutionary, but it's working for us

You are GREAT!!! At the beginning you sounded like me as I too have bought a cross trainer in Argos sale and a stepper 2nd hand to have my own gym @ home. I used to be a member of David Lloyd but cannot afford the money or time for it.

doggy bags @ restaurant.. me too.
Carry own water all the time.. me too.

I have also learnt from you about booking holidays & flights.

I used to get offers from Ocado but not anymore. What supermarkets would you say that it is good to sign up with to get these offers when you don't use them for a long time?


What are you making yourself to sell on ebay or if you would rather keep this to yourself.. what ideas can you give me that I can make on ebay to sell?