Old Style Money Saving - things that only you do!

Do you have any quirky things to save money that you have always done? Or ways to get the most out of products you have bought, like squeezing every inch of paste from the toothpaste tube, swilling out shampoo bottles/bubble bath to use every drop? Well your not alone. I found a lovely thread on MoneySavingExpert where people were posting all their little nuances and quirks and I read it from start to finish.

My gran and grandad were always using bits in the garden, plastic bottles / toilet tubes for planting seeds, old socks for dusting and some of that has rubbed off on me.

Here are a few things I do, not necessarily BIG money savers, but a bit of a helping hand.

 

This is my notebox, I used to spend money on buying post it notes / notebooks until I kept a stack of incoming mail one month to see how much rubbish we received. Each piece of A4 is cut up into 8 squares and popped into the box to use for notes/shopping lists. I now have two of these tiny boxes, one in the kitchen and one by the telephone in the hallway because we receive so many letters.

I also write coupons for the children on them, If they have been super - they get a ticket for one extra long bath, or an extra book at bedtime. Then they get to redeem them. It all ends up on the recycle bin one way or another, but this will save me a few pounds each year.

I also print out my coupons on the back of these letters (I use nothing personal like bills.) - but school newsletters or community news circulars are great for using. I have never had any questions asked when handing in the coupon either.

I keep old towels / clothes that are no good for donating to charity - and use them to clean the bathroom/kitchen and windows. Some of them I simply dispose of after use,  others I make into quirky flannels for the children to use in the bath, rather than buying sponges. This again saves us a few pounds a year, and I find the towels are great for dusting with, much more effective than microfibre cloths, which make my hands feel funky anyway!

I also keep a jug / bottles of tap water chilled in the fridge. Cold water is fabulous, sometimes I wonder why we buy fizzy drinks when a nice cordial with ice cold water is just the ticket. I make my own ice too - I could never justify paying £1 for a bag of ice, I always keep a zippy bag topped up in the freezer, and prepare more if I know guests are coming to stay.

I pop a peg on my toothpaste tube too, and the children's ones.

Not massive savings, but these little savings contribute to £10 a year if not more? When you look after the pennies, the pounds look after themselves. What are your quirks? Would love to see you mention them on the MSE THREAD.

Food Budget Task - Weeks 17-20

This months entry is not as in depth as previous ones, but I hope to follow it up with some interesting posts in the coming week. My head has been firmly buried into my OU course material for the past month, and I have submit my EMA to be marked Wahoo!!

The break in my books is only temporary however, as I have now started my driving lessons. So I have more material to keep crunching in the evenings. A friend of mine asked me how I managed time to fit everything in, and the answer is very simple - I gave up TV.

Okay here's my results

Week 17 - £75.37
Week 18 - £88.27
Week 19 - £97.82
Week 20 - £85.16

Total - £346.62 (much higher than last months £291.94!)

Within this on Week 19 I had my daughters 3rd birthday tea party, it increased the cost by around £10 that week - and I also purchased 4x Dr Oetker pizzas. For each Pizza you purchase (look out for promotional boxes) - you get £10 worth of coupons that are redeemable over the next 12 months which is SUPER as the last coupon is a FREE pizza. A very good future investment if you like Pizza - and they have been on offer in Sainsbury's and Morrisons.

Please note - I paid for the original 4 pizzas when they were half price in Sainsbury's @£1.40, then used the VALID coupon for this month to get the next four, which was £1.00 off making each pizza 40p each! Eight of these pizzas were given away to relatives, and I was proud to say how I had obtained them at a value price of 40p! I now have more coupons to buy more pizzas as each one becomes valid in the future.
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Week 18 contained a KFC meal for the family, We have done very well at cutting back on restaurant cooked fast food so I decided we deserved a treat, and..... I used a coupon to get 20% off! I was lucky enough to participate in their free chicken promotion, where you could print off a coupon to exchange in store, I gave this to my daughter who came home with the receipt for me. If you visit the website on the listed on the receipt - YOUR KFC and enter details about your visit - you get given a code to add to the receipt which gives you a discount on your next purchase. This reduced our meal from approx £17.00 to £13.00 which is great - and didn't make me feel so bad about using our shopping budget for a treat.

We dont eat that much junk food by the way, this blog post looks very unhealthy! EEK.
My children really have a well rounded diet, and we eat fatty foods in moderation. Pizza comes with Salad, not chips here.

Im happy that were still under the £400 budget, but the next four weeks will be a real test - as we have a large family birthday party to cater for - as well as a a few weeks of relatives staying, so we like to stock up to have plenty in. Lets see if it tips the balance!

GIVEAWAY - Cinema tickets & Postcards for Comping!! YAY

Spring cleaning has been quite a mission today, with the children finding things they have not seen since Christmas - and a rotation of all the old winter gloves with summer hats has seen an entire day of dressing up and chaotic game play.

No matter, Its all fantastic fun - and I have also found 2 unused tickets for the Cinema!!
Unfortunately, I can't use them as we don't have a Cineworld close to us - but one of you can win them... as well as a little bundle of postcards that I picked up at the Cinema last time I went.

Its not a HUGE freebie, but it is a freebie!

So to win - you have to complete the steps below, and I want to also plug a fabulous facebook page whilst I am doing it.

For any savvy coupon cutting shopper, use the rafflecopter widget to find a fantastic dedicated Facebook Fanpage that has helped save me money -  Extreme Couponing UK!
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a Rafflecopter giveaway

T&C -
Please use the widget and answer the Blog required question properly, It doesn't take 2 mins.
No automated or bulk entry - and UK only.  

Food Budget Task Weeks 13-16

Argh!!! ...

That's all I can say about how out of hand my OCD on collating shopping data has become, so today I am taking steps to calm down just how complicated I have made tracking all our spending...

:Takes deep breaths!:

Okay, welcome to the next update of my food shopping task for 2013. As you may know from my previous posts, I have been doing my best each week to reduce the overall costs of my food shopping for my family of 5.

Weeks 13-16 are as follows

26 Mar - £66.67
2 Apr- £43.59
9 Apr - 102.20
16 Apr - 79.48

Total - £291.94 - which is SUPER!! This is even lower than my previous months totals.

Week 1-4 = £405.05
Week 5-8 = £363.93
Week 9-12 = £358.37
week 13-16 = £291.94

I feel this eventually going to balance out soon though, so I anticipate the next 4 weeks totals.

A little more about why this is starting to stress me out, is because of the mountains of receipts I am now holding on to, and the systems I employed to calculate each weeks finances - which get confusing if I use coupons, or have brand matches.

Each day, or every time I do a shop, I note the total from that shop into the notebook above holding onto the receipt. Then I calculate on a separate spreadsheet items I have obtained for FREE.

Free items are obtained via the Sainsbury's coupons I find/get given - If I have used a £2 off a £20 shop for example.. I will spend £18 of my own shopping budget on consumables - and get a non consumable item for £2 FREE! (This is a FREE item that I am obtaining due to having that coupon - the same as gathering bonus nectar points, EG: 400 points when you spend £20, which stack with the money off type.)
I did not want to calculate it as 'money off my bill' - I wanted to see a profit in terms of using coupons. As if I had not have had that coupon, I would have had to have paid for the item.

Since purchasing the £30 of washing powder in January (with cash) I have not had to spend a single penny on any NON - CONSUMABLE ITEM. (All my toilet rolls, cleaning bits, toothpaste, shampoo have all been FREE.) The spreadsheet calculates a total of £120 I have saved from coupon shopping alone, paying for the ENTIRE value of the product, not just money off.

This means as well as the notebook & receipts folder, I have to keep track of the FREE items coupon  spreadsheet, nectar bonus points spreadsheet, monthly household outgoings spreadsheet - and a separate coupon book....Phew

It may not seem like alot, but with my OU End of Module Assessment looming I feel like I am spending ages each morning fluffing around with bits of paper unnecessarily.

So I think I am going to abandon writing each individual shop down each day in the notebook - and just keep all the receipts together and once a week calculate the outgoing amount.
The spreadsheets are fine to manage and take little time, so with my next update I can see if things have got a little less stressful.

However, doing all this is rewarding, as I have almost saved £200 this year - and have booked my first 4 driving lessons YAY!! I am paying £30 for the first four lessons, on an introductory scheme, and then if I buy them in bulk blocks of 20 - I can get them for £20 a lesson, which is super.

My eldest daughter thinks that my coupon hunting is crazy, but when I explain to her that I am turning bits of paper into bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste she can't argue that its not rewarding.

Some people manage to work from home, and this is the best I can do currently, whilst running a family home, volunteering at two organisations, studying for a degree as well as finding time for my personal life with my partner, and my comping hobby...

I aim to look back on this one day proudly at what steps I have taken to provide for my family.

The sun is finally here!

YAY!! The sun has been shining all day today, the air is much warmer and finally all the snow has gone! How chaotic has the weather been this year? Phew...

With the weather being so unpredictable we have not had that much time to really get stuck into outdoor activities, so when Wellies and Worms reopened after relocating Hannah and I were raring to go.

You may remember my post last year about the groups small plots - I Made This
Well this year we have a large allotment for the children to explore, plant,  nurture and harvest crops in.

The first session this week focused on getting us used to our new location, and next week we hope we get to see the allotment which is very exciting.

The little ones started off with something light, Sunflower planting to get us all started. The small tools and units were the perfect size for the children, so they got to do everything themselves -  choosing a pot, adding soil - seeds and watering! I wonder how tall they will grow this year?

Were really happy to be back at the Children's Centre, It gives Hannah freedom to express herself, and mix with others pre-school. They have messy types of play that we wouldn't necessarily do at home as well as large art projects we all work on week by week. This is just additional extra's on top of the hours of fun we have outdoors in all weathers in our Wellies with the Worm farm and the plants!! We have started looking forward to Thursday afternoons again!! Wahoo!!
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To see if there is a SureStart Centre in your area - click here to search.  

 

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#BzzAgent - E45 review

As a Bzzagent I really like to test the products I am given before writing a review. I was pleased to have been accepted onto the E45 campaign, and as much as my beauty regime is minimal (at best..) body lotions and moisturisers are one thing I use as religiously each time I bath or shower. As a mum of three, in the past, like many other mums - I found myself using left over products I had bought for the children. I had a shelf full of different brand baby lotions and oils which were all rated excellent upon product launch, which were not good for baby.. but were kept just in case they are good for my skin. These often left my skin wet, sticky and smelling quite odd, (I had a strawberry scented one once, that was sickly sweet!! eww.)

So, previous to trying E45 I was using a children's branded body lotion, which I felt was okay.. until I tried E45.

At first I decided that of the two bottles I was sent to try, I would keep hold of the E45 Nourish and Restore for my own use, whilst using the E45 Moisturising lotion on my children's skin.

 

The first thing I noticed about the E45 Nourish and Restore was that it did not have a powerful scent, it is only mildly fragranced. I was not sure if I liked this at first, as like I have said - the previous moisturisers I have used have been heavily scented. This element of the product I grew to actually prefer especially when applying to my hands after washing up.

I didn't want to overuse the E45 - so I used it in small quantities, not too much so my skin would be soaked - but just enough to rub in, which was great. It was not sticky or damp afterwards and was very easy to use, not runny or gooey. I always wait an hour or so to really feel results as my skin needs time to readjust after a shower, and I was more than impressed with how smooth and silky the E45 made my skin feel. I could confidently say an 80% improvement over the previous children's type product I has been using before. What was more astonishing was for the first time ever, I could still feel the results of the moisturiser the next morning, and so could my husband as he felt my skin! We both commented on how great it felt, and it really did feel super.
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With having children, my body has changed a lot and I do have stretch marks. This is why I tend to apply a body lotion after reading that moisturising helps reduce the visibility of them. After my third child I suffered a real lack of body confidence and it took me a long time to readjust to the changes the babies had made. For the first time in many years I am starting to accept and enjoy my body again, and a simple change like swapping to E45 was a massive boost to how my skin felt. I have now disposed of the old nasty moisturisers that were lining my shelf gathering dust for one simple yet effective bottle of E45.

I am still in the process of testing E45 on the children, my youngest daughter has a few dry patches which appear every so often - just dry skin patches (she is aged 2). My eldest daughter (age 13)  suffers from dry skin too on her hands, and in the past was advised by the doctor not to use perfumed products. They are both using E45, but as and when it is required - and have had no problems at all with it. For children, E45 has always been a brand of choice for us anyway but I am so pleased that I have tried and tested it, it is something I am very happy to say I will be using for a long time.

You can order your FREE SAMPLE to try here - E45 Lotion Sample Request
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Let me know how you get on, some of the people who I passed my samples out to said E45 was great and that they were also going to use the money off coupons to buy some next time they go shopping.

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Please note as a #Bzzagent I have been given this product to try for free. This has not affected my review, and if it had been a dissapointing product I would have stated why in this review.

Win up to 60,000 Nectar Points with Confused.com

Confused.com have teamed up with Nectar to give away super prizes this spring.
They are asking customers to create a Pinterest board showing how they would spend a million nectar points - in any way you like.

Our entry was based around the family and home, with Spring finally rearing its head amongst all the frost and snow, we are planning a major spring clean - and clear out! Time to replace old habits with new ones, and gearing up to get back into the garden with a fresh mind this year.

I chose a new food mixer, as I really want to encourage the children to bake more this year. I have lovely memories as a child of making cakes with my mum, and now they are old enough - we can carry on that tradition.

 

I also close lots of lovely household cleaners, Lenor fabric softener, Flash wipes, Cillit Bang, helping hands for my spring clean - all at great comparable prices from Sainsburys.

 

I also added toys for the children, Rotations for toys happen alot to keep minds active, and a new kitchen would mean they can spring clean their little play area too, as well as out door activities to keep bodies healthy as well as minds!

 

Finally I added a breakfast tray - Just need to leave some HINT cards for the hubby, or else he will be the only one getting use out of it! haha!

Here is the link to my entry - Our Million Nectar Points Spring Clean 2013 - Which contains alot of items from Sainsbury's - my favourite store currently - as you know. (Which also has the Nectar Loyalty system.)

To enter yourself by the 18th April,  and for more information, click here -

 

Don't forget your hashtag too! #pinforpoints Good luck x