Saving up for BIG holiday. Your tips please on steady saving ideas

pandora205

Good luck with this. Best MS tips I've learned are:

change supermarket - Sainsburys is still quite an expensive one - and shop just once a week.
shop for fruit and veg at local market, shop seasonally
use fresh food first and plan meals around the fridge
bulk buy from Costco or other cash and carry (if you have a card)
try own brand/basics once and carry on if okay
cook in batches and freeze for lazy days
make own wine, bread and yoghurt
use Stardrops for cleaning just about everything (floors, washing up, windows, furniture, car)
always take lunch and a bottle of water (refilled mostly)
don't eat out or have take aways
wear what I have already and only buy occasional essential
grow veg and fruit (not that successful yet apart from lettuce and herbs)
make compost
use gym at least 4 times per week
fill in expenses forms, use Clubcard vouchers and any other vouchers, only go to Boots at double points times
use Clubcard vouchers for Blockbuster tokens for nights in
sealed pot challenge (less going in this year as I'm shopping less)
read books not magazines (though I do buy them - a library would be cheaper)
don't buy or eat snacks, soft drinks, biscuits etc apart from fruit (not for MSE reasons but it helps)
find a reasonable priced hairdresser
clean own car (no car washes)
use landline to phone local and distance when it's free and block calls to mobiles (teenagers in house here!)
use mobile for long distance rest of time and mobile calls

We eat really well and healthily for about half the amount I was spending before. I can't believe I wasted so much! We do less well on gas and electricity as we are quite extragent with hot water and cooking.

I'm sure there are other things too

ELLA

We are also saving for a big holiday too, its for april next year so we don't have long left now - We have been ebaying like crazy and also selling items on netmums as they come and collect so no ebay fee's to pay!!

We have also given everyone in the family the ref no to our holiday, if there are any birthdays and xmas then they will pay a bit off for us :-)

buxtonrabbitgreen

I used a share save scheme at work. £10 a month straight out of my wages for 3 years so I didn't really notice it. It didn't cover my big holiday. I took a loan as well. But it certainly helped a lot.

Dazi

I saw someone say they have a copper jar and put it into one of those machines, if its one of those machines in a supermarket those machines charge you. We got one of those money sorters and as soon as we get 5 bags of coins (usually the most banks will take at a time) I trot off and bank it.

We did this because a couple of years back we saved it in a big whiskey bottle and ended up with over £500 which went towards our spending money for a hol, after weeks of taking 10 bags down to the bank (had 2 accounts) ended up sticking the rest in a coinstar and losing a bit.

Ok we didn't lose that much, but when you have saved it, why give it away!:rotfl:of course if you want to be really MSE just empty the jar regularly and count it

Another thing I can think of is do online surveys, save the vouchers up and use them for birthday and xmas pressies, put the money you would have spent into holiday savings .
I echo everything that pandora said too

pretzelnut

Thats not a lot of money really.

Especially when you think about how much people spend on getting married. When i got married we paid out 9K in 1 year and 4 months later we seperated, lol
I would have rather put the money towards a once in a lifetime holdiay.

Im now with a new partner and we plan on getting hitched abroad - not making the mistake of spending that much money again on 1 day for everyone elses benefit.

Its gonna cost us about £10,000, we'll have us 2 and 3 kids with us.

We know we can do it - i quit smoking saved £5 a day, stopped buying a shop sandwhich and bottle of coke for my dinner £2 a day and that has paid for this years holiday. Stopped buying magazines and we rarely go out socialising as its to expensive. DF has done things to cut back to but thats going towards paying of our car. He does overtime and we save all loose change. Helped along by picking up loose change we find on the street. Every penny helps.
Christmas is getting cut back on this year as we always go over the top.

You could also do things like avon - will make you a bit of extra cash.

Use quidco and earn cashback for stuff, we changed all our house stuff like sky, gas, electric etc when we moved house and got over £300 cashback from quidco in 1 week just for doing things we needed to do anyway.

ginvzt

If you do any shopping online, booking hotels, etc, don't forget to use cashback sites!!!! I think I got well over £100 from Quidco in 2008 and I don't shop online that much.

gabyjane

Hi Dazi that was me! yes they do charge you but tbh it's not lots and the likeliness of one of us getting down the bank with it is nill! sounds sad but we actually enjoy seeing it all add up on the machine..much more fun!! quite embarrasing as last time we had so much the noise in the supermarket was awful and everyone stared..some even watched while it went through!! still was worth it in the end!..we have done this before with our shopping as you can put towards that!

easy

meeps wrote: »

enter competitions? eg the itv ones - winning 3k would be a big chunk!

Oh you are right Meeps. If only .... We have a few premium bonds, I'm kind of hoping the 5 or 10 K prize might come our way, solve the problem altogether.


I am entering a few comps here and there, but I'm amazed at how time-consuming it is !! I read a thread a few days ago where people said they enter 50 or 100 comps a day :eek:. What with work, parenting, cooking, houshold stuff, sleeping etc I only manage 5 or 8 ish a day