Not-so-moneysaving anti-tips?

Camomile

Last month I bought secondhand LeCreuset on ebay for my bread baking in vgc.It cost me around £16 with the postage.

silverwhistle

My first tip is not to have a telly and hence get annoyed by the programmes. Through a combination of inertia, lack of desire, laziness, a childish delight in winding up TVLA and local pubs that shows football I've never had a colour TV.


As for Le Creuset, my casserole was a purchase in a Cherbourg hypermarket on one of those cheap day trips over 30 years ago. There was no label on the item and they couldn't find it on the stock list so they asked me to make an offer. It helped I had sufficient French so I made a low, but not too low, offer. Put it this way, I was very pleased and they just smiled.


I've also got a Le Creuset saut! pan: this will be my weapon of choice if I ever get night time intruders. They'll think I'll be going for the knives, but it'll be the pan I go for. It's got a wonderful swing weight and once in motion there's no stopping it!


I'm not sure where wine comes into the overstocking problem. I've probably got 7/8 dozen bottles which is OK in that I don't just drink because I have it in the house. But some wines need to be left for a bit, and you need the right wine for the right dish/occasion plus a good proportion of the stock is bought back from holidays at decent prices. Gutturnio from an Italian Lidl is really not going to break anybody's bank!

balabooberlies

This thread is great !

I confess to loving a certain brand of tomatoes but full price they are a pound a tin !
Every now and then they are on offer for 50 pence. That's when I stock pile.
As I do not know how to cook for 2 ..... I use 2 of the favoured brand along with a cheap brand. Works for me. I love tomatoes so at the moment am a really boring cook.....but I am working on that.

As for car boots and charity shops have had to give them up (due to finances) but also kept buying so many unnecessary things. Believe it or not....I only go if I need something like a pressie for someone.

I don't understand the recreational side of shopping and hate seeing it being flustered on children by parents that do that...and only that on weekends. I don't know if I am making sense.....but I know what I mean

Novice_investor101

I bulk buy when I do my big shop, stocking up on tinned stuff, pasta etc & I'll buy 2 or 3 bottles of shampoo & shower gel, I always have a spare bottle of fairy washing liquid, deodorant, my fave face wash etc.
I live alone so buy the things that keep when they're on offer - why pay full price? It also means I only go to the big supermarket once a month & only really have to do an expensive shop (toiletries/household) about every 2 months.
I'll run my stores down of food & then do another monthly food shop to restock.

VfM4meplse

I never thought of bulk-buying as being wasteful until I saw the earlier post. She's right, if you run a retail business you can't afford to have more than 2 weeks of stock on the shelf for cashflow reasons but somehow when you do it at home, you see the savings rather than the costs of the investment.

Which made me think.....I do have a lot of stuff for one person, but its all stuff I'll get through...eventually. Mostly non-sugary breakfast cereals (I'm not a big eater but I am very lazy in the kitchen, hence they can be very helpful!) - luxury crisps, whole nuts, cake, biscuits, chocolates etc, which are items I personally don't eat alone, but I find handy to serve when guests come over. To not be able to offer a guest - planned or unexpected - something good to eat is just not the way I have been brought up!

These are all bulky items and although the cupboard is full, after a spell of entertaining (usually summer or Christmas) / austerity in the case of cereal (January - March) there is suddenly a lot of space liberated. Its now a habit that is going to be very difficult to break.

Recent Lidl MOCs were used to stock up on toiletries, because again I'll always use them. Running out of TP, toothpaste, handsoap, shower gel, deodorant etc is an unforgivable oversight. Ditto soft drinks and mixers (again not my thing but handy for guests that aren't tea / coffee drinkers) as I was taking the car out anyway and they are long-dated so it made sense to buy a load then. Otherwise my supermarket trips are small and of the two-legged variety, so I get the benefit of the exercise. I suppose its down to whatever works for you.

Where I admit I have gone very wrong in the past is buying too much in the way of hair care, usually from Poundland. I'm always a sucker for a product that bravely boasts that will tame my wild mane, and hence have so much stuff that was used once and never again. Last spring I found a much better solution: have it cropped short and then trimmed regularly! Even though it means many more trips to the salon every year - eight instead of the usual three when it was long - its saved both time (every day) and money spent in the salon, because I no longer indulge in the Kate blow-dry!

Honey_Bear

Using fresh lemons to get a tablespoon or two of lemon juice for household cleaning is madness. Buy a bottle of lemon juice - far cheaper and keeps for longer. Use it for cooking.

Mixing foodgrade vinegar and foodgrade bicarbonate of soda to clean drains. It doesn't. It looks impessive when it froths up but it doesn't achieve anything else. What you actually need is household soda and boiling water. Far cheaper.

Trying to clean the oven with (again - foodgrade) lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda just doesn't work either.

Such a waste of food and money and this nonsense is peddled continuously by people who've clearly never cleaned anything using these methods.

As for pouring foodgrade bicarbonate of soda on a stinking old mattress was about one of the most revolting ideas I've ever come across and it was regularly peddled on How Clean is your House? If that mattress surface is that filthy, stopping its surface reeking isn't going to get to grips with the mountains of filth that's sunk into the guts of the things over the years. There are some things that just should be replaced occasionally.

happydays89

Sea_Shell wrote: »

And this week's classic of...you could save £11,000...if you let out your annex as a holiday let.

Where is it, what beautiful part of the country, where tourists abound?....Milton Keynes!!!!:rotfl:

You would be surprised what money you can make letting part of your home,we do Airbnb in a built up area and earn around £14,000 a year with very little work involved.The first £7,000 is tax free as it comes under the lodger scheme.We have guests from all over the world.
Not all guests are tourists some are people working in the area or people visiting family the reasons are endless.

Primrose

happydays89 wrote: »

You would be surprised what money you can make letting part of your home,we do Airbnb in a built up area and earn around £14,000 a year with very little work involved.The first £7,000 is tax free as it comes under the lodger scheme.We have guests from all over the world.
Not all guests are tourists some are people working in the area or people visiting family the reasons are endless.

I do wonder what your immediate neighbours think about a constant flow of strangers coming to your property, or perhaps you don't worry about that?

In my experience, with an increasing number of burglaries etc taking place many people might feel uncomfortable about a regular flow of strangers coming to your property/road and might feel uneasy that the area in which they live may feel a little less secure.

I,m not suggesting any of your guests are undesirable or in any way dishonest, just that a constant flow of strangers into a residential area may make some of your neighbours feel u comfortable or somewhat more vulnerable, especially if they are elderly

VfM4meplse

happydays89 wrote: »

You would be surprised what money you can make letting part of your home,we do Airbnb in a built up area and earn around £14,000 a year with very little work involved.The first £7,000 is tax free as it comes under the lodger scheme.We have guests from all over the world.
Not all guests are tourists some are people working in the area or people visiting family the reasons are endless.

Its not for us all, though. My home is my sanctuary. I would not wish to share my space for any amount of money.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I personally cannot be arrised to melt down manky old slivers of soap to make a new bar, and then have to clean the pan afterwards. Dove bars are invariably 2 for a quid in £ shops so it seems a lot of faff to save 50p.


I'm a vegetarian so slow cookers aren't relevant as they seem designed for getting the best out of cheap cuts of meat.


Cooking from scratch is generally a great principle, but I draw the line at making my own puff pastry or pasta. With enough time I've made my own guacamole and salsa, which definitely tastes better, but not sure home-made hummus is worth the effort?