Free Money Saving Tips

One of the larger expenses when you move into a new home is the household appliances. One of the things worth checking out is how you can get your chosen fridge, freezer or washing machine cheaper than in the store.

There are ways to find genuine bargains, but there are some evil looking solutions out there too.

For example, Comet has a website where they sell off returns. It’s a good idea to check what is available there although it is not the cheapest option, but the site has additional drawbacks.

The delivery charges are particularly painful, but the website is not really well known so you can get some bargains, although it is obvious that the auction format is not entirely “free” but rigged to favour comet.

Check www.clearance-comet.co.uk/ to see if you can find the bargains.

(Personally, I never bother because the site is low on traffic, but if you start bidding, the system magically seem to find competing bidders…)

Saving money on your bills can some times be very very easy to do. You might not think of insurance as the most inspiring thing in the world. That is at least not until you find out that the way you pay your car insurance for instance can save you up to 25% off your premium.

Instead of paying monthly, pay the insurance annually when you get the option to. Usually insurance companies add interest to your monthly premium for the convenience. So if you pay the annual car insurance premium up front, you can save yourself quite a chunk of money.

If you can afford to that is.

Anything that sits in its own nice little bag on the clean store shelf commands a premium for the convenience of having the food bagged for you.

Buy your groceries loose and for a bunch of bananas for instance you could save yourself 30% compared to the bagged version.

Small personal sized packaging is the most expensive form of product size and if you have the room for it, buy in bulk sizes instead.

Jon says:
“It took us a while to actually get to grips with this one, as the BOGOF deals have been a central part of our shopping strategy for a while, but also because we don’t have the room to buy in serious bulk.

Instead of following this tip to the letter and buy in bulk we now avoid small sized packaging and also look for budget alternatives and supermarkets own brand products.”

The most important reason for avoiding the small sized bags that haunt the vegetable isles in particular, is that they end up in the land fills.

Take Action Today:

Train your eye to look for loose groceries. The best place for quality loose food is the local farmers markets, but you do pay a premium. Hunt down wholesale stores like Makro and other similar stores that sell in bulk as well.

The regular supermarkets also sell larger sizes  - Check out Tesco’s or Mysupermarket.co.uk

Save money on groceries by shopping them online at Tesco’s (affiliate link)

If you read any site offering debt management advice they will without fail tell you two things you need for getting out of debt; you need a budget and a get out of debt plan.

Perfectly sound advice which is well worth listening to, but how easy do you think it is to plan for it if you have lots of  debts and lots of other things you want to save up for?

Well it is all about perspective and I’ll tell you all about it.

Planning your finances when you are in the red and have more debt than a 3rd world despot can be quite daunting. It’s bad enough having to deal with the debt that you have to pay off but if you for instance have to buy a car or want to go on a great family holiday, that can be a hard thing to cope with.

Sadly it is the truth that it was your own overspending that put you in that place, but how can you turn the desire to get a new and more economical car into something motivating when you have 4 or 5 lean years of hard saving simply to pay back the debt, ahead of you?

That is where the perspective comes into force. Your debt free day may be years away. But the way to bring it forward is to earn more.

There are 3 things that are relevant in this situation. How much you owe (or want to save), the time frame and how much you can set aside every month to reach your goal.

My wife is saving up for a big wedding for her daughters (my step kids) so lets use that as the first example.  Basically the timeline is fixed and so is the amount of money she needs to save.   In situations like this your perspective is simple - in order to save up enough in time for the big day you have to save a set amount. So if you have to save £900 in a year and a half you must set aside £50 per month.

The second example is my need for a new car. If I want to have say £3000 for a car deposit, then my perspective is a little different. The two things I have to work out is if there is a deadline.  If I want to buy within a year, then I have to find £250 a month to set aside just for the car.  If I can only afford £50, then I have to wait 5 years - this is my second perspective.
Are you familiar with snowballing your debt payments? Basically this means you pay off minimum payments on all your debts except your most expensive one. All your spare money goes to pay off this most expensive debt. When this is paid off you move on to the next debt and pay off as much as possible on that.

If you take it a bit further you can add your savings plan to your “snowball” and save up massively once you have paid off your debt.

Patience is required for this approach but the reward is that you will be going on that holiday, paying for that debt or driving in that new more economical car without any debt what so ever. And what could be better than that?