I am cursed with the same thing a lot of us girls suffer from- expensive taste and a low paid job.
On this page, I am going to share with you a few ways I save myself some money.Its actually quite simple to save a decent amount over the course of a year and I put that money towards what to me, are ‘luxury items’- things that are really too expensive for me to buy all the time……..things like Emma Bridgewater Pottery and Vintage Quilts.
I am rubbish at taking advantage of vouchers/special offers on things - I forget or loose the receipts/tokens. So my suggestions involve very little effort-just a few adjustments to the way you buy things. Some you may have already thought of and use yourself.
- Buy own brand biscuits in the plain wrappers at the supermarket. Chocolate Digestives for 39p as opposed to £1 (on a good day)….Ginger nuts for 34p….Cream crackers for 29p....Asda Jaffa Cakes for 40p. Put them in a pretty biscuit tin or jar and no-one will notice. Biscuit junkies like us go through 3 packets in a week- buying them this way saves us £120 a year!!! That’s a set of 6 x EB Dinner Plates!!
- If you craft a lot like I do; making quilts and pretty things from fabric- don’t go to a Haberdashery or HobbyCraft to buy the fabric. Go to Charity shops. I buy most of my fabrics for craft projects in Charity shops- you can get a lot of patches from an item of clothing!!! I mostly use men’s shirts at around £2 each but I find that children’s clothes often have really pretty patterns and are even cheaper although you get less fabric-but perfect for patchwork.
- We go through a lot of socks- my dogs like to chew the toe/ankle section. Don’t throw old socks away, they make really great window cloths- you can put your hand inside them, wear them like a mitten and it makes cleaning a window a breeze.
- If you buy a lot of magazines- buy subscriptions. I buy 3 x Home Interiors Magazines a month. With subscriptions to these- I save £49 a year and I get a nice surprise when I find the next issue of my favourite magazine falls amongst the bills through the letterbox!!
- Make a monthly trip to Poundland/ Pound Stretcher to stock up on cleaning and bathroom products. Okay, so sometimes the ingredients on the back are written in Swahili but it’s the same brands you would buy normally and it’s much cheaper even than the supermarket deals. I reckon I save at least £70 a year doing this.
- When buying books, especially expensive hardback books like Interiors books or Recipe books-it might seem obvious but buy second hand ones. Amazon is great for this- I make an Amazon Wishlist of the books I want (I have usually flipped through it in a bookshop to make sure they are worth buying) and then I check my Wishlist every so often (because the prices of second hand ones change when someone new lists one) and I purchase the ones that are at a great price including postage. Almost all of my big hardback cookbooks are second hand; I have had some fantastic deals and saved myself a lot of money.
- Buy next years Christmas wrapping paper and Cards in the sales right after Christmas. Its usually 70% off so you are mad not too. Just make sure you don’t buy anything with- ‘All the best for 2011’ etc written in it !! Same with Mothers Day and Fathers Day cards.
8. Have good clear-out and list things on Ebay/Gumtree etc. I do this periodically.
I usually do it when I have seen something I want that I dont have money for. I go through my
fabric stashes and bits and bobs and put them on Ebay until I raise the money!!
9. Buy LED lightbulbs. And LED Twinkle lights. We got one of those electricty monitors so we can see how much power we are using.....when the LED lights and fairy lights go on- they use so little power that it doesnt even register. We have a string of twinkle lights on in the downstairs hallway
and porch all the time now, so its lit all winter and it seems to be costing nothing!!
Some great ideas Hayley - keep it up!
ReplyDeleteRose H
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