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My gift to MSE: 21 ways to money save/improve your life. [updated 4 Feb]
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greyster
Posts: 2,392 Forumite
Hi all
If you are new sign up to Martin's weekly email, which gives a lot of tips. Then read this
Update: 04/02/08 - Minor changes including updating egg card promotion.
I'm not going to beat about the bush with this; here's [strike]17[/strike] 21 ways to improve your life or save money. My aim is that at least one point will teach you something new
This is a mixture of things I've learnt from MSE and my own knowledge.
1. I use this site as a one stop point for information. Before I purchase anything whether it’s a new service or a product, I search the articles but mainly the forum for information.
TIP: I do not use the internal search, I use google.co.uk advanced search. I set the domain to moneysavingexpert.com so it only searches this site. I then open up each link in a new window and skim through. I find this a lot easier and get more relevant information than MSE search.
2. Moneysaving is a good way of networking socially and in business. How many times does someone at work or in the pub say I’ve been trying to find a good deal on this or I want to find to know the cheapest provider for that. You can transfer your knowledge on the subject and join in on these conversations. Sounds silly but I’ve broken the ice a few times by biting the bullet and saying 'well actually, you can do this.' Works good with managers if they are really looking for something
3. Quidco. Sweet wonderful quidco. Blessed is our quidco. You can now buy almost anything online through them. I have found although it does not create savings the size of a pay packet, it does add up and helps.
4. Bargain hunting. This should be an artform. By using this site and hotukdeals.com anyone should be able to learn what is a good price for something. Gone are the days of buying something without truly understanding what is an acceptable price for a product, especially technology items. Remember where possible to stack quidco cashback with discount codes for retailers to get prices not directly available to the public.
5. Employee discount codes. Team up with your friends to create additional discounts that are not normally available. Do not post these on websites as the code will ultimately be cancelled within hours. Large employers will have websites dedicated to employee benefits (you may have one and not be aware of it). Remember to stack these with quidco.
6. I took out an egg credit card that gives discounts on Shell fuel, Waterstone books and trips with lastminute.com. The book discount also stacks with quidco and promotional codes, giving me my first triple discount. I pay my bill in full every month.
EDIT: It does seem the waterstone promotion has recently disappeared from the egg site. It's still in the small print so perhaps the cashback is still working. Anyway I forgot to say you also get £20 on quidco for this card. Remember this is Egg Card and not Egg Money which is another credit card they do. If you have an exceptional credit rating you should investigate the capital one cashback card which gives cashback on everything. I believe egg is the next best deal.
EDIT2: Shell promotion is over and been replaced with 10% at lastminute.com. This I feel is equally as good with 10% off already competitively priced holidays. If you are in London, check the threatre and meal deals, the deals already in most cases free by buying them together and you get 10% off.
7. I buy foods that I consume regularly and that last long in bulk when special offers are on. For example I always eat weetabix as I’m not very adventurous in the morning. When they are buy one get one free I buy as many boxes as I can carry to the car on that particular shopping trip. It however does not look cool when you are waiting to pay with all those yellow boxes stacked. :rotfl:This should also be applied to your favourite wines, beers or spirits.
8. Car Insurance – use Martin’s article to find the top 10 providers. Then see which ones are on quidco for between £50-120 additional cashback. It is not uncommon for your 8th cheapest insurer on a quote for example to become the cheapest when factoring in quidco.
TIP: Remember, if quidco does not track within the 14 days cooling off period insurers offer, cancel the insurance and try again.
TIP: When you renew with the same provider, make sure you cancel your policy and sign up again if you use the same provider so you can take advantage of quidco a second time.
TIP: Do phone your existing provider and tell them you are about to jump ship and apart from saying goodbye you would be interested to know the cheapest price they can do as it's never too late
My provider dropped £75 but I still ended up taking out a new policy with them and going through quidco hehe
9. Renewal time with service providers. When it comes to renewal do not keep paying the same price for the service. This is especially important for sky and Virgin media but can also be applied for mobile network services and other utilities. Have a read in the MSE forums to see what other people are getting. I work in the mobile industry (please don't PM me for deals I'm not a seller) and I would suggest anyone with a good history with the their provider to stay put unless they get an insanely good deal elsewhere. All networks are looking at improving retention and good history will play a bigger part in retention deals in 2008-2009. This includes PAYG customers.
10. Demand compensation when messed around by retailers. Look at the MSE forums to see which retailers are too easily giving out “sorry” vouchers or money off your next order and make sure you ask for it whenever you are inconvenienced. M&S, Amazon, Virgin Trains, Asda (care) spring to mind. Write letters to HQs where possible (not the above retailers, just phone), grabbing their address from their websites. The secret is to not spend a lot of time on this, no more than 10 minutes using a generic letter template. You don’t get compensated for your 10 page letter with amazing English that took an extra 2 hours to write and post. Avoid using email where possible.
11. If using a landline telephone. Do investigate services such as 1899.com (see Martin’s articles on this) to save additional money per call.
12. This is a naughty one… so letters in the post please. I buy my cinema tickets online and select student as they are never checked for a discount. If you buy tickets at the cinema then you need to talk to a person who would then ask for student ID. Sorry I think cinema tickets are overpriced, I did say it was naughty.
TIP: Take your girlfriend/wife to the cinema. Make sure they take their largest handbag to carry your supermarket food in the big screen without having to pay £5 for cinema popcorn. The handbag is required so you are not detected by staff as they often don’t like this.
TIP: Don't forget many cinemas do Orange Wednesday. 2 for 1 tickets.... this offer is all over MSE, don't forget!
13. When you go abroad, try and get a national wide current account for free cash withdrawals at foreign ATMs. If you do not have one, find out which banks give you lowest commission charges with your bank card. E.g. with Barclays, you get lower commission charges with Deutsche Bank which are all over Europe.
TIP: Always pay hotels in the native currency. Many have their own exchange rate which is “higher” than usual. It’s a lot better to let your bank calculate it in pounds.
14. Do you have a small website, even a free one? Stick betterthanbanners (search on MSE) tiny banners on your site for £5 amazon code per month and £10 per friend you sign up. It is nice and easy compared to the other 100 companies claiming to do the same thing. I save mine up for Christmas. EDIT: Signups are currently on hold, they do this from time to time. Keep the site bookmarked.
15. The John Lewis Price Match guarantee. John Lewis price match other stores, not websites. However Empire Direct is often laballed as a website but it actually has stores. You will often find that Empire Direct have very competitive prices, a lot cheaper than most places. Get John Lewis to price match them and run away with John Lewis’ 5 year warranty as standard warranty on top. A 5 year warranty costs 3 figures with most stores. Get the best price and warranty with John Lewis.
EDIT: I should be more specific and say that this 5 year warranty as standard tends to apply to larger items such as all TVs and fridges. Don't expect a 5 year warranty on a christmas decoration
16. The hidden Amazon price guarantee. Read my forum signature. This is my largest contribution to MSE. I believe I posted this first on MSE. Do ensure you claim money back if your item gets lower on Amazon. Amazon is a funny retailer, it has millions of products a lot more than its main rivals. It’s apparent they do not manually control the price of each product but use a supply and demand model to let products fluctuate in price. Therefore when a price drops it’s not necessarily because an operative has just changed the price. Therefore prices on amazon change a lot more than any other retailer and you should where possible keep on an eye on your product prices after sale. Use price notification tools to email you if the price goes down but my advice would be to book mark expensive items and check yourself as these tools can be quite slow at times.
17. Do you want broadband but not a telephone line? This is not common knowledge to those who are not overly technical but Cable (Virgin Media) does not require a telephone line for broadband. This often leads to a big cost saving when getting broadband from them. Remember Virgin is also on quidco.
18. Give yourself 5% off amazon for life. Sign up to Amazon Affiliates and buy products using your own link. NOTE: You can't use your own account to buy as it doesn't work. Use your partner's/family's account to purchase and it doesnt matter if you use your own address or bank card.
19. Loyalty card schemes - Do the opposite to what Nectar and Tesco or any scheme want you to do. HORDE YOUR POINTS. Nectar usually do one sale a year where you can cash them in at double value. Then and only then should you use them. One of the last sales ended two days early so be quick, they can't accomodate all the point horders! With tesco, remember only to spend on Tesco clubcard deals, they cash in at 4x the value.
20. Drink a lot of fruit juice? I've just realised that juicing technology is in the future...... you can buy juicers now that crush your fruit so much that only dry pulp remains, meaning all the juice has been removed as opposed to most. Once more its easy to maintain, satisfying people who are lazy in the kitchen like me. I figured that owning a high tech device, even the top end best selling one on Amazon at £85 works out to be cheaper with fruit than buying non concentrated 'real juice with bits'. You can even queue fruit up making it the best thing to watch at 5.30PM, now Neighbours is leaving BBC1.
21. No contest - Autoaid is the BEST VALUE car recovery firm. An old lady wrote off my car (and hers) instantly in a collision on a main road. I paid £180 for my recovery and got it back in 5 days. If you can afford to "pay" and claim, BUY NOW at an insanely cheap £32 per year. You are covered NOT the car, meaning you can recover a friends car if you were a passenger. Recovery to anywhere in UK. website: autoaidbreakdown.co.uk. Search for autoaid on this site for more information.
Please share your knowledge. This site will be better with your contributions. If you are a long time lurker, register and post your findings now. The more knowledge MSE has the better savings we can all make. Feel rewarded for helping people get the best from their service providers and retailers. Thanks for reading and remember to sign up to Martin's free weekly email....... it gives loads of tips.
In the interest of goodwill and not causing offence I've removed "additional information" which was given to me after this post and put it below. So you can still read it but at the same time the regular's wont get annoyed and claim I stole their information.
TIP: Use Martin's cashback checker to see which gives the most.
TIP: Use Heinz' guide to saving money on BT http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=1598074&postcount=3
If you are new sign up to Martin's weekly email, which gives a lot of tips. Then read this
Update: 04/02/08 - Minor changes including updating egg card promotion.
I'm not going to beat about the bush with this; here's [strike]17[/strike] 21 ways to improve your life or save money. My aim is that at least one point will teach you something new
This is a mixture of things I've learnt from MSE and my own knowledge.1. I use this site as a one stop point for information. Before I purchase anything whether it’s a new service or a product, I search the articles but mainly the forum for information.
TIP: I do not use the internal search, I use google.co.uk advanced search. I set the domain to moneysavingexpert.com so it only searches this site. I then open up each link in a new window and skim through. I find this a lot easier and get more relevant information than MSE search.
2. Moneysaving is a good way of networking socially and in business. How many times does someone at work or in the pub say I’ve been trying to find a good deal on this or I want to find to know the cheapest provider for that. You can transfer your knowledge on the subject and join in on these conversations. Sounds silly but I’ve broken the ice a few times by biting the bullet and saying 'well actually, you can do this.' Works good with managers if they are really looking for something
3. Quidco. Sweet wonderful quidco. Blessed is our quidco. You can now buy almost anything online through them. I have found although it does not create savings the size of a pay packet, it does add up and helps.
4. Bargain hunting. This should be an artform. By using this site and hotukdeals.com anyone should be able to learn what is a good price for something. Gone are the days of buying something without truly understanding what is an acceptable price for a product, especially technology items. Remember where possible to stack quidco cashback with discount codes for retailers to get prices not directly available to the public.
5. Employee discount codes. Team up with your friends to create additional discounts that are not normally available. Do not post these on websites as the code will ultimately be cancelled within hours. Large employers will have websites dedicated to employee benefits (you may have one and not be aware of it). Remember to stack these with quidco.
6. I took out an egg credit card that gives discounts on Shell fuel, Waterstone books and trips with lastminute.com. The book discount also stacks with quidco and promotional codes, giving me my first triple discount. I pay my bill in full every month.
EDIT: It does seem the waterstone promotion has recently disappeared from the egg site. It's still in the small print so perhaps the cashback is still working. Anyway I forgot to say you also get £20 on quidco for this card. Remember this is Egg Card and not Egg Money which is another credit card they do. If you have an exceptional credit rating you should investigate the capital one cashback card which gives cashback on everything. I believe egg is the next best deal.
EDIT2: Shell promotion is over and been replaced with 10% at lastminute.com. This I feel is equally as good with 10% off already competitively priced holidays. If you are in London, check the threatre and meal deals, the deals already in most cases free by buying them together and you get 10% off.
7. I buy foods that I consume regularly and that last long in bulk when special offers are on. For example I always eat weetabix as I’m not very adventurous in the morning. When they are buy one get one free I buy as many boxes as I can carry to the car on that particular shopping trip. It however does not look cool when you are waiting to pay with all those yellow boxes stacked. :rotfl:This should also be applied to your favourite wines, beers or spirits.
8. Car Insurance – use Martin’s article to find the top 10 providers. Then see which ones are on quidco for between £50-120 additional cashback. It is not uncommon for your 8th cheapest insurer on a quote for example to become the cheapest when factoring in quidco.
TIP: Remember, if quidco does not track within the 14 days cooling off period insurers offer, cancel the insurance and try again.
TIP: When you renew with the same provider, make sure you cancel your policy and sign up again if you use the same provider so you can take advantage of quidco a second time.
TIP: Do phone your existing provider and tell them you are about to jump ship and apart from saying goodbye you would be interested to know the cheapest price they can do as it's never too late
My provider dropped £75 but I still ended up taking out a new policy with them and going through quidco hehe 9. Renewal time with service providers. When it comes to renewal do not keep paying the same price for the service. This is especially important for sky and Virgin media but can also be applied for mobile network services and other utilities. Have a read in the MSE forums to see what other people are getting. I work in the mobile industry (please don't PM me for deals I'm not a seller) and I would suggest anyone with a good history with the their provider to stay put unless they get an insanely good deal elsewhere. All networks are looking at improving retention and good history will play a bigger part in retention deals in 2008-2009. This includes PAYG customers.
10. Demand compensation when messed around by retailers. Look at the MSE forums to see which retailers are too easily giving out “sorry” vouchers or money off your next order and make sure you ask for it whenever you are inconvenienced. M&S, Amazon, Virgin Trains, Asda (care) spring to mind. Write letters to HQs where possible (not the above retailers, just phone), grabbing their address from their websites. The secret is to not spend a lot of time on this, no more than 10 minutes using a generic letter template. You don’t get compensated for your 10 page letter with amazing English that took an extra 2 hours to write and post. Avoid using email where possible.
11. If using a landline telephone. Do investigate services such as 1899.com (see Martin’s articles on this) to save additional money per call.
12. This is a naughty one… so letters in the post please. I buy my cinema tickets online and select student as they are never checked for a discount. If you buy tickets at the cinema then you need to talk to a person who would then ask for student ID. Sorry I think cinema tickets are overpriced, I did say it was naughty.
TIP: Take your girlfriend/wife to the cinema. Make sure they take their largest handbag to carry your supermarket food in the big screen without having to pay £5 for cinema popcorn. The handbag is required so you are not detected by staff as they often don’t like this.
TIP: Don't forget many cinemas do Orange Wednesday. 2 for 1 tickets.... this offer is all over MSE, don't forget!
13. When you go abroad, try and get a national wide current account for free cash withdrawals at foreign ATMs. If you do not have one, find out which banks give you lowest commission charges with your bank card. E.g. with Barclays, you get lower commission charges with Deutsche Bank which are all over Europe.
TIP: Always pay hotels in the native currency. Many have their own exchange rate which is “higher” than usual. It’s a lot better to let your bank calculate it in pounds.
14. Do you have a small website, even a free one? Stick betterthanbanners (search on MSE) tiny banners on your site for £5 amazon code per month and £10 per friend you sign up. It is nice and easy compared to the other 100 companies claiming to do the same thing. I save mine up for Christmas. EDIT: Signups are currently on hold, they do this from time to time. Keep the site bookmarked.
15. The John Lewis Price Match guarantee. John Lewis price match other stores, not websites. However Empire Direct is often laballed as a website but it actually has stores. You will often find that Empire Direct have very competitive prices, a lot cheaper than most places. Get John Lewis to price match them and run away with John Lewis’ 5 year warranty as standard warranty on top. A 5 year warranty costs 3 figures with most stores. Get the best price and warranty with John Lewis.
EDIT: I should be more specific and say that this 5 year warranty as standard tends to apply to larger items such as all TVs and fridges. Don't expect a 5 year warranty on a christmas decoration
16. The hidden Amazon price guarantee. Read my forum signature. This is my largest contribution to MSE. I believe I posted this first on MSE. Do ensure you claim money back if your item gets lower on Amazon. Amazon is a funny retailer, it has millions of products a lot more than its main rivals. It’s apparent they do not manually control the price of each product but use a supply and demand model to let products fluctuate in price. Therefore when a price drops it’s not necessarily because an operative has just changed the price. Therefore prices on amazon change a lot more than any other retailer and you should where possible keep on an eye on your product prices after sale. Use price notification tools to email you if the price goes down but my advice would be to book mark expensive items and check yourself as these tools can be quite slow at times.
17. Do you want broadband but not a telephone line? This is not common knowledge to those who are not overly technical but Cable (Virgin Media) does not require a telephone line for broadband. This often leads to a big cost saving when getting broadband from them. Remember Virgin is also on quidco.
18. Give yourself 5% off amazon for life. Sign up to Amazon Affiliates and buy products using your own link. NOTE: You can't use your own account to buy as it doesn't work. Use your partner's/family's account to purchase and it doesnt matter if you use your own address or bank card.
19. Loyalty card schemes - Do the opposite to what Nectar and Tesco or any scheme want you to do. HORDE YOUR POINTS. Nectar usually do one sale a year where you can cash them in at double value. Then and only then should you use them. One of the last sales ended two days early so be quick, they can't accomodate all the point horders! With tesco, remember only to spend on Tesco clubcard deals, they cash in at 4x the value.
20. Drink a lot of fruit juice? I've just realised that juicing technology is in the future...... you can buy juicers now that crush your fruit so much that only dry pulp remains, meaning all the juice has been removed as opposed to most. Once more its easy to maintain, satisfying people who are lazy in the kitchen like me. I figured that owning a high tech device, even the top end best selling one on Amazon at £85 works out to be cheaper with fruit than buying non concentrated 'real juice with bits'. You can even queue fruit up making it the best thing to watch at 5.30PM, now Neighbours is leaving BBC1.
21. No contest - Autoaid is the BEST VALUE car recovery firm. An old lady wrote off my car (and hers) instantly in a collision on a main road. I paid £180 for my recovery and got it back in 5 days. If you can afford to "pay" and claim, BUY NOW at an insanely cheap £32 per year. You are covered NOT the car, meaning you can recover a friends car if you were a passenger. Recovery to anywhere in UK. website: autoaidbreakdown.co.uk. Search for autoaid on this site for more information.
Please share your knowledge. This site will be better with your contributions. If you are a long time lurker, register and post your findings now. The more knowledge MSE has the better savings we can all make. Feel rewarded for helping people get the best from their service providers and retailers. Thanks for reading and remember to sign up to Martin's free weekly email....... it gives loads of tips.
In the interest of goodwill and not causing offence I've removed "additional information" which was given to me after this post and put it below. So you can still read it but at the same time the regular's wont get annoyed and claim I stole their information.
TIP: Use Martin's cashback checker to see which gives the most.
TIP: Use Heinz' guide to saving money on BT http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=1598074&postcount=3
0
Comments
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Thanks for the time spent on this and for the knowledge shared. What's the Egg / Waterstone's discount, please? 0
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Happy_shopper wrote: »Thanks for the time spent on this and for the knowledge shared. What's the Egg / Waterstone's discount, please?
Hi Happy Shopper. It's a shame my first reply is a correction but it does seem after several months they've removed waterstones from the promotion. It's still in their T&Cs so maybe people are still getting cashback. On a plus note I forgot to say you get £20 for this creditcard through quidco. I'm going to modify my OP. Thanks!0 -
Better than banner are not taking any more singups just now...
Good tips though 0 -
You forgot the main tip, get Martin's weekly email where you'll find the latest tips
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tips/09-01-2008/
and read all of Martin's articles linked on the Main Site
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/0 -
Thankyou, youv'e been busy!!Kat :money:0
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Re the student discount at the cinema, dont you have to show your student card when you recieve the tickets?
thanks for the info too0 -
Re the student discount at the cinema, dont you have to show your student card when you recieve the tickets?
thanks for the info too
With my experience, no. The cinemas I use have small machines on the wall that let you pick up prebooked tickets and nothing else. You put in your debit card that you used to make the purchase online, it looks for tickets bought with that card and churns them out. I have noticed recently that some cinemas put a notice up saying student tickets have to be collected at the till but I believe this is just a scaremongering. My tickets printed as normal.
Just for the record, I go to Vue and Odeon cinemas.
Why not give it a go. The worst thing that can happen is that they ask and you can say you made a mistake. At which point you would have to pay the difference.
I visit the cinema a lot and I never had a problem.0 -
The google search tip is great, many thanks. The limited search on this site has always been an annoyance to me, but I've tested it and lo and behold can now find the information I want. (to search the forums rather than the main site, the domain needs to be http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com)0
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thanks wendy. doing moneysavingexpert.com will include the main articles as well but usually the results will be forum posts, due to the sheer number of them.0
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