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Money-saving tips! What helps you cut costs?

This week (21-27 September 2020) is officially National Recycle Week and this Moneysavingexpert.com guide explains how you can get paid to recycle your old clothes and shoes. I had no idea you could do this 
With this in mind and the financial squeeze many of us are facing, I wondered what helps you save money?

Could we use this thread to compile a list of handy hints for saving the pennies? Let's have a go - share your tips below.
Here's another goodie: Scope's webpage about free and discounted events with your friend or personal assistant.

With this in mind and the financial squeeze many of us are facing, I wondered what helps you save money?

Could we use this thread to compile a list of handy hints for saving the pennies? Let's have a go - share your tips below.
Here's another goodie: Scope's webpage about free and discounted events with your friend or personal assistant.
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Here are a few things that me or my family do...
- Let go of brand loyalty and buy whatever brand of a certain product is on offer. I always buy whatever brand happens to be on offer that week. I hardly ever buy a product that is full price as I regard that as a failure of sorts
- Negotiate over the final bill with people like tradesmen and mechanics. Often their price is not firm and there is room for movement.
I will post more if I think of them!
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Socially I am not very good but I have no issue asking for a discount (well no more than speaking to them for any other reason haha) if I think it is possible, I’m not sure why more people don’t do it!
Use blankets and warm clothes to avoid having the heating on and make use of the warmth from the oven when it is on
Turn off radiators in rooms you dont need them on eg I never have heating on in the bedrooms
Make meals from scratch using basic ingredients, like pasta, tomatoes, beans, rice , veg, Cook in bulk an d freeze
Use your smart meter to review power usage
Get rif of any un necessary expenses like sky, subscriptions, prime etc
I'd add stop buying take-away coffees too, I'm a glutton for a fancy latte when I'm out but they are expensive!
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You can save quite a bit when driving by not over using the brakes and accelerator and by ensuring correct tyre pressure and oil level.
Knowing roughly what time of day food is marked marked down at the local supermarket is helpful. Most of our food comes with a yellow or red reduction sticker on it!
baking your own cakes is far far cheaper than buying made ones, depending on what kind it is. Ie a sponge cake for a pound in a supermarket is hard to beat I’d guess when you add everything up.
I also only ever buy coffee when it’s on offer, you can save quite a bit that way if you’re a big coffee drinker.
Diy skills are well worth gaining and you can save a lot of labour costs that way. There are lots of diy skills on show on YouTube these days and plenty of solutions to common problems.
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Charity shops and other second hand stores are a good way of getting items more cheaply, and it's a more sustainable way of shopping too. Scope charity shops are the best choice, of course.
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I was just thinking that it would maybe be a good move both for the environment and peoples pockets if there were tax incentives to buying used items, such as no VAT or something?
According to the Charity Tax Group website:
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I struggle to chop things so tend to buy pre-chopped onions and veg if I can, but this can be more expensive which is fustrating.
If I'm at home I can get someone to chop things in advance so I have a freezer full of different things that have been chopped.
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On the topic of greenhouses one thing that we did do which worked well both as protection and as a makeshift greenhouse was cutting those large 5L water bottles in half and growing the plants under them! Not particularly attractive but very effective. A family member was able to get an endless supply of empty bottles from their office which was good.
Whenever we do the shopping, we always find ourselves saving a few pennies by checking the section where they put things that are nearly past their best before date. You get so many bargains and some of the things can be just shoved in the freezer and preserved.
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In Waitrose (I don’t go in there much) they sometimes give the stuff that’s close to its sell by date away for free! I guess they are too posh to reduce the prices
And yeah I've never been to Waitrose either, so I can't comment on how things are there. Although free stuff sounds great!
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