How much have you saved?

bikes'n'beer

Martin, your recent advice about slashing mobile phone costs has worked a treat for me. I'm a heavy user (mainly business) with an Orange contract. After a few mouse clicks checking out deals with other providers I rang Orange - as you predicted I got put throught to the 'disconnections' dept with whom I managed to negotatiate a 50% reduction to my £70/mth plan + 7% extra minutes/mth. They also threw in a new all 'singing all dancing' Nokia 6680 for FREE (The local Orange shop wanted £79.99 for it!). Including a text bundle deal on top I'll save over £500.00 over next 12 mths!!!

It helped that I've been with Orange since 1995 and a big user - but I also laid it on thick about how good the service is!! (which in my experience it is!).

The big key though when negotiating for a better deal or reduction with anyone is BE NICE & POLITE!!!!

Thx again!!

dizpatch

What a brilliant site - I have really taken control . Moving onto new interest bearing current account (after being a captive and loyal and gullible customer of Bank for 28 years !!) and saved over £360 a year on contents insurance , paying for payment protection separately - saving another £??? a year, new mortagage at incredible rate , what can I say . the best bit is that managing your finances turns out to be fun when you get the hang of it !

Thanks Martin

Tomstone_2

By using the tips in the car insurance tips I managed to make a massive saving on my car insurance.

I used confused.com and they gave me a quote from Bell Insurance - I then phoned them and added my Mum to the insurance (has over 10 years no claims - I have 0% no claims) and this reduced the insurance by another £70.

Most companies such as Tesco etc were quoting me around £1000 (though Morethan quoted me £2700).

My Insurance bill this year - £480 a saving of over £500.

sinclasc

For the guy who got a Sky reduction after talking about cancelling....I did this, and refused the reduction too (I really did want to cancel). I then got Sky for 1p/month for 3 months.
True!

madfrenchgirl

When my renewal for insurance was due, Tesco was aslking 770 pounds, I tried to haggle with them but they did not care a bit... So I went to moneysupermarket angd got the AA to quote me 570 with less excess than stupid ageist Tesco. 200 pounds saved!!!

Used a voucher from prezzybox and saved 5 pounds on a prezzy which worked out to be 6 pounds instead of 11.

Got 2 wrangler jeans from La redoute for 2.20 thx to a voucher as well.

Got a 2 pound voucher for WHSmith by filling in surveys...

Got loads of freebies.

Saved an extraordinary amount of money by shoppin at LIDL

Bought a set of Halogen lights from LIDL for 8 pounds

Planning on spending just the right amount of money by using my homemade food planning Spreadsheet....

Lendusapund

Hi
So far havent saved that much as dont spend all that much. The biggest thing Im over the moon about is receiving my gift off stoozing of £150 after tax - for the first half year. Brilliant! I wouldnt have made the push to start had it not being all the advice here. Thanks everyone.

(could have all gone wrong though as my Stooze pot - A & L online, doesnt transfer to accounts other than link account.)

Hastings came out best for me car insurance wise even after checking all the sites. They couldnt reduce premium any so I got them to knock hundred off the accident excess - its something at least.

RichT

steve!_10

I saved about £300 in total, or about £20 p/m by cancelling the PPI on my Egg loan after reading an article here. I might pay it all off early too, using 0% credit cards.

Currently my car insurance is £1300 (i do likes me car though, I'm almost quite the pimp, don't you know) and after prepping myself after reading the insurance articles I'm looking forward to my renewal in December.

Come on, you jammy insurance companies, let's 'ave it!

ideasfarm

For my first post in here, I would just like to say a big thank you to Martin and all for opening up an entire new world.

Saved about £150 on house and contents insurance 6 weeks or so ago, and have just knocked £180 off my motor insurance.

Fantastic !!!!!!

It just makes you wonder who's ripping you off and shows you how easy it is to drift through life overpaying for everything.

Matty

seatzie

Martin,

Just over 3 years ago I read one of your sunday express articles about a mortgage deal with birmingham midshires, so 3 years on the deal has finished, I was almost your perfect example, you'd used 60k mortgage in the article, I was 62k, so I got 6% cashback, put it an isa and used it basically to take a 2% discount per year, so while the mortgage was 1.29 above base, with the 2% discount I was effectively always paying .71% below base for last 3 years, thanks martin! Actually I kept the 3.5k in an isa and used 100 per month I would have put in savings as the 2% discount!

since then I've used lots of stuff, alliance leicester current account, with 2 referrals on so an extra 100 quid on top, and lots more from the site including kids toys mis pricing (very good for our 11 week son!lol!)

anyway thanks again, keep up the good work
Darren

cornerclose

I'm quite new to this game having first heard about the website a couple of months ago when you were talking about water meters. I was facing a huge vet bill for a sick horse (potentially upto 6K) and was desperate to save money. So far I have saved:
somewhere between £60-100/year by fitting a water meter (not yet got my monthly charge).
£30 cashback to date on a Conran card (including cashback on £1000 of vet bills); the potential here is brilliant as I am self employed with a catalogue company and collect a lot of cash from orders which I usually pay into their bank, but they take credit cards so I can grab an extra 1% commission.
Estimated £350/year extra interest from shuffling my not-to-be-touched savings for my old age.
Estimated £45 so far by playing 3 cashback sites (since 4th November).
I also saved £10.50 on a £17.99 CD then got 2.5% cashback by using freefivers and Kelkoo and another 1% on the Conran card.
I'm now considering a Yorkshire Building Society credit card to make use of the 6 months 0% interest and yet more cashback.
Unfortunately the horse has died, so now I need yet more money to buy another one...
Thanks, Martin for some fabulous ideas. :T