Need to save/make £3,000 for wedding in 7 months!

[Deleted User]

Hi MoneySavingExperts!

Me and my fianc! are getting married next May, that's 33 weeks to save/make £3,000 so we are looking to roughly make £100 a week.

The first thing I think we need to do is reduce the money we are spending, things I think we could save on is switching gas/electricity providers, moving to lower priced foods, making cheaper meals, wasting less food, eliminating unnecessary purchases or putting them on a wish list for after the wedding.

The second thing I was thinking was how to make money, we have so many things that we need to sell it is unreal! We have a tele, about 15 bags of clothes, about 10 boxes of toys, an oak coffee table, a box full of books and a big pile of DVDs & blurays.

When I look at it all though it is just a big collection of stuff and don't know where to start. I sold the best clothes on eBay but don't know what to do with the rest, I was thinking doing a big car boot sale but don't know anyone with a car. I would rent a car but don't know if i would earn enough to justify renting a car to do it.

If anyone has any other ideas on how to make or save money or can elaborate on any of the ideas I have mentioned above i would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.
Aiden

dotdash79

ASOS market place for some clothes, DVD, bluerays can be sold on some sites like music magpie(some will pay more for some stuff than other sites)

Coffee table you could sell in Loot or on gumtree.

As for saving money look at tracking everything you spend for a month you will be shocked at how much you waste. Are you due any bonuses, any old PPI you can claim?

dotdash79

Wedding gifts can be stuff to help make the day e.g. flowers, cars, wedding DJ.

Or ask if people can help have a look on the wedding board for tips.

gb12345

Can you get overtime at work or part-time second jobs (lots of shops will be looking for temporary workers in the run up to christmas).

Do either of you have any skills that you can use to generate extra income (freelance work or perhaps something craft related so you can sell on the likes of etsy).

dotdash79

Have a cheap-mas!

shmeeko69

Hi Aiden,

In order to achieve what will be a difficult target, there are only two ways in which you can do this. Either you increase your incomings or you reduce your outgoings. If you can do both over the next 33 weeks then, it could be possible.

Selling things like clothing can be quite difficult unless it's designer. My brother buys and sells designer gear on ebay part time and makes a few quid. Selling things like DVDs and CDs is ok, but you will only get between 50p to £1 on average and especially if you go through sites like Music Magpie. Consider setting up a Facebook community selling page in your area or look for one which already exists and start listing your items - coffee table, clothes, DVDs......

Reducing your outgoings is probably easier especially when it comes to heating. Once the colder weather hits and the gas central heating comes on then, the pounds signs start ringing out for the utility companies. Depending on your circumstances and whether you have any young children in the house, turning down the thermostat to say 15 or 16 degrees over the winter will enable you to make a saving.

The only other option is to reduce the costs of the wedding. Although that may go down like a lead ballon wth your other half?

[Deleted User]

dotdash79 wrote: »

ASOS market place for some clothes, DVD, bluerays can be sold on some sites like music magpie(some will pay more for some stuff than other sites)

Coffee table you could sell in Loot or on gumtree.

As for saving money look at tracking everything you spend for a month you will be shocked at how much you waste. Are you due any bonuses, any old PPI you can claim?

Hi dotdash79,

I will price up all of my dvds on music magpie, put the coffee table on gumtree and i will get a decent app on my iphone so i can track our outgoings, i suppose even if we do it for one month it will tell us where the most money is going although we could probably do with squeezing every penny everywhere.

I am currently in the process of claiming back PPI so i have my fingers crossed!

dotdash79 wrote: »

Wedding gifts can be stuff to help make the day e.g. flowers, cars, wedding DJ.

Or ask if people can help have a look on the wedding board for tips.

We have to pay half of the photographer after the wedding so i suppose we could kindly ask for money instead of presents, i have seen a lot of nice poems you can place in invitations that can ask for money as a gift.

Thanks for your reply.
Aiden

[Deleted User]

gb12345 wrote: »

Can you get overtime at work or part-time second jobs (lots of shops will be looking for temporary workers in the run up to christmas).

Do either of you have any skills that you can use to generate extra income (freelance work or perhaps something craft related so you can sell on the likes of etsy).

The job I have is very time consuming, 50 hr weeks sometimes but don't get extra pay on time in lieu which is very annoying as I would much prefer the cash.

Im not sure of any skills I could use, I am learning italian and am hoping to use that skill in the future but iI doubt it will be useful in the next 33 weeks.

Kind Regards
Aiden

[Deleted User]

dotdash79 wrote: »

Have a cheap-mas!

Oh yes! I will be selling about 90% of my sons toys so I will replace a few of them on the cheap, I doubt he will even noticed. Most of them are in are spare bedroom hiding away due to lack of space. Definitely need a clear out and make some cash out of it for the wedding.

Thanks
Aiden

[Deleted User]

shmeeko69 wrote: »

Hi Aiden,

In order to achieve what will be a difficult target, there are only two ways in which you can do this. Either you increase your incomings or you reduce your outgoings. If you can do both over the next 33 weeks then, it could be possible.

Selling things like clothing can be quite difficult unless it's designer. My brother buys and sells designer gear on ebay part time and makes a few quid. Selling things like DVDs and CDs is ok, but you will only get between 50p to £1 on average and especially if you go through sites like Music Magpie. Consider setting up a Facebook community selling page in your area or look for one which already exists and start listing your items - coffee table, clothes, DVDs......

Reducing your outgoings is probably easier especially when it comes to heating. Once the colder weather hits and the gas central heating comes on then, the pounds signs start ringing out for the utility companies. Depending on your circumstances and whether you have any young children in the house, turning down the thermostat to say 15 or 16 degrees over the winter will enable you to make a saving.

The only other option is to reduce the costs of the wedding. Although that may go down like a lead ballon wth your other half?

We have that many clothes i was considering taking out the designer kids clothes and selling them on eBay and putting all of the other bags into one of those pay per weight clothes shops that buy clothes by their weight just to get them out of our house and get some money straight into the savings. We litrally have about 15 bags full of clothes.

I noticed a section on this website about switching energy providers so i will have a look at that now and see if i can save. I am also going to scour the house for any drafts that can be excluded or filled in some way to keep the heat in.

Luckily my partner is understanding and we have been making sacrifices, cut backs and doing a bit of wedding diy to save money. every week we look at it and see if there is anything we can do without, do cheaper or even better for free.

Thanks for your response
Aiden

pixtotts

in reference to cash to clothes do you have a "Cash4Clothes" (as new user I cant post a link but google them there is a list of all of their stores at the bottom of the page) near you ? They also take shoes, soft toys, electrical items broken or working ( small! no white goods) but check with your local one to see what they accept ours had several things on their signs crossed out (like blankets) as they personally don't accept those items but other cash4clothes places?stores? may still accept them...

We learnt of them recently when discussing clearing out loft out with someone, she had taken all of her husbands clothes to one when he died. We nearly took all of our items to the tip! Would have been such a waste because all of the clothes were still perfectly wearable if a bit out dated ( a lot were my baby clothes and school uniform... I'm 24 now!!). All of them items are recycled and the clothing is resold across Europe (they have awesome little maps showing you where its all going to go to )

So in tidying out our loft we were able to get 2 black bin bags of clothes, 4 vhs players, and 1 broken hifi to take with us. They pay by weight, a bag of clothing/ 10KG clothing is £5, got £11.30 for all our items... that we nearly just threw out! Your not going to make your millions but for items you might other wise throw away definitely worth it!
x


Oops must have been writing this as you wrote your last post! sorry for telling you about something you already know...
also ... Next clothing apparently sells well on Ebay especially childrens if you have any of that might be worth a try, I'm planning on having a go once I get time