Low cost beauty tips
October 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
As recession and job insecurity start to hit many households, paying lots of money for beauty products becomes lower priority as many households struggle to pay core bills.
However, help is at hand. Compromising on price of products does not mean that we nolonger look after ourselves and our bodies….her are a few tips to save money on some beauty treatments clearing the funds for those indispensible beauty products.
Water….the cheap way of achieving glowing skin
Dehydration leads to dry and flaky skin. We’ve all heard how we should aim to drink 8 glasses of water per day….not only does it help our concentration but it will also give you a glowing complexion.
Milk….good enough for Cleopatra…great for our skin too
If you have too much milk left in the fridge and you want a treat before it goes sour, add a cup full of milk to you bath for a natural moisturising treat.
Give natural moisture back to your hair
Hot water strips your hair of moisture. Not for the feint hearted in the winter months, but great for shiny locks…..use luke warm water to wash your hair then finish with a cold rinse to seal the hair’s cuticles and keep in the hair’s natural moisture.
Lemon aid for stained nails and fingers
If you have used a lemon for cooking, take the skin and rub it over your finger nails and finger tips. It will remove any unsightly stains and leave your nails and fingers cleaner and brighter.
Blasting hot and cold?
Taking the time to do blasts of alternating hot and cold water in the shower doeas wonders to boost blood and lymph circulation and is even claimed to ward off cellulite. It doesn’t matter whether you start or finish on a hot or cold blast…its the alternating that dilates blood and lymph vessels and get everything moving.
Plan Ahead to Save Money on Food Bills - Part One
October 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Frugal food shopping is a rapidly returning art as we all start to feel the pinch of recession. However, whilst our parents may have been well versed in this art, there are many who are not because they have never needed to be whilst cheap and plentiful food was available alongside cheap credit if the cash was not available for that week’s needs.
Top Tips for Saving Money on Shopping
- Plan your shopping list for the week ahead. Only buy the items that you need to deliver this menu. This will save money on those impulse buys that bump up your food bill and are not really necessities.
- Get to know your local butcher and fishmonger. Seeking advice on preparation methods and recipies will build a relationship that may mean a few extras get thrown into your parcel as well.
- If you have room to freeze meat or fish this can be a great way of saving money due to discount for larger quantities.
- A slow cooker can be a great investment if you are planning to buy the cheaper cuts of meat to save money. These cuts typically need long, slow cooking to make them tender and bring out the flavours.
- If it is possible to get to your supermarket in the early evening, you will find a lot of bargains on display. The store will need space for the next day’s delivery so they will mark down the price on a lot of food so as to clear the old stock. Trial and error will be needed with your local store to see what time the best bargains are put out….but the payoff is significant savings on all sorts of produce - much of which you will be able to freeze or use up within the next couple of days.
More money saving tips on shopping will follow soon….
Saving Money on Shopping
October 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Rising prices of food and the financial squeeze of higher fuel prices and increased interest rates the credit crunch are making the challenge of feeding the family on a budget increasingly challenging. None of us want to increase debt or reduce savings any more than we have to when dealing with the day to day costs of running a home …..so where do we start with meeting this challenge?
Top Tips to Save Money on Shopping
- Don’t take the kids with you when doing the daily shop. Chances are they will slip all sorts that you don’t need into the shopping basket or pester you to add unnecessary items costing you more.
- Once you have decided what you can afford for that week’s food etc, remove your debit and credit cards from your wallet and take the cash with you instead. It will keep you focussed as you walk around and you can’t spend money you don’t have with you. It is also a good way to raise awareness of how much you are spending each week.
- If the store you use has a loyalty card system, make use of it. many of these schemes give you cash back for groceries…giving you a chance to save up vouchers for Christmas or other special occasions.
- Evaluate buy one get one free deals. Will you consume all of the items before they expire or go off? The life of some fresh products can be extended by using correct storage in your fridge or Stayfresh Longer Bags. If you can get through all of the items in the deal without wastage, they can be good value for money.
- Supermarkets place the most profitable items at eye level to encourage quick sale due to convenience. Train yourself to find the item you need then look down to lower shelves and find the cheaper alternatives. Often these are just as good at a fraction of the price.
- Supermarket own brands are often just as good as the famous brand names. Items like baked beans, sweetcorn, tins of tomatoes etc are not discernably better if you buy a well known brand….sometimes the own brand item is even nicer! Try one or two own brand items per week on your family and see if they can tell the difference.
Please post your own observations on ways to save money on shopping and share them with our readers.
Saving Money on Subscriptions
October 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Ramit Sethi in his post explaining the “A la Carte method of saving money” claims that we often overspend on services that we subscribe to as, after an initial blaze of enthusiasm, usage often tapers off. At this stage it is possible to save money by paying for these services a la carte (or as we use them).
Why are subscriptions so popular?
Subscribing to a service such as cell phone, the gym, cable television, book clubs etc is often a lazy way of ensuring that, as the subscription fee whizzes out of the bank account each month, these services we enjoy using are available throughout the month so there are no worries about using them when money becomes in short supply at the end of the month. Why else would the favourite day for standing orders and direct debits be the first day of the month?
Have you thought about how subscriptions will be saving businesses money too? Think about it. They set the price of your monthly fee knowing what average use is made of the service they provide.They have reliable regular income coming in and save money on posting an invoice to you, paying clerical staff to open mail, process the payment received and chase up money owed. There is usually a 28 day cancelletion period as a minimum. It is so easy to miss that deadline …. so the business ends up entitled to extra payments from you and you are out of pocket for a service that you no longer want. Trust me…subscription systems are set up entirely to benefit the service provider whilst, on the surface, being offered as a special deal and favour to you, the customer.
How can I check the value for money that I am getting from subscriptions?
Ramit Sethi recommends cancelling all subscriptions then keeping a careful log of exactly what you have spent on each service on a pay as you go/a la carte basis.
This may be a bit extreme for some of us. You will already intuitively know which subscriptions you are not using as much as you thought you would. These are the ones to start saving money on.
A good way to start is, if your memory is good, to look back on the last month and list:
1) How many films you watched on your dvd rental scheme (by the time you posted them back and forth).
2) How many visits to the gym you made after you felt under the weather on a couple of days and the boss had you working all the hours available on some major project.
3) How many minutes of call time did you use out of that cell phone contract? If you get free calls to family would you do better on a lower contract?
If you cannot remember, make a list over the coming month. Once you have this information, find out the unit cost of each service you use if you were paying per item. Compare this with your subscription rate and, if your usage for the month being looked at was typical, you have your answer as to whether you should go a la carte or subscribe to that service.
Other ways to save money on subscriptions
1) Do you need your subscription to be at its current level or could you save money on a cheaper level? Do you, infact only watch 2 dvds per week instead of the expected 3 - 5? Could you get away with pay as you go and free family numbers instead of a contract on your cell phone?
2) A few months ago I was looking to save money on all household bills and rang around suppliers to get cheaper deals. When I contacted my suppliers and said I was considering changing, I got 20% off cable television and 33% off my cell phone contract if I stayed with my current suppliers. All businesses are eager to avoid losing custom as a result of the credit crunch and recession. Now is the time when, as a customer, you have more negotiating power. If you do your homework you can often negotiate significant savings on subscriptions and household bills….which can only help household finances.
Budgeting to Save Money on Household Bills
October 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
What is budgeting?
Budgeting is simply the art of keeping track of all of your household expenses and making sure that enough money is set aside to cover each of the costs incurred during the time period that you are budgeting for (usually a month or a year or a specific project). If, after looking at necessary expenditure, your income is insufficient, you have three choices:
- draw the shortfall from savings;
- raise extra funds to cover the additional costs; or
- save money on existing costs so as to raise the money needed for other items of expenditure.
So which method is best?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question.
- Drawing money from savings to meet growing household bills is the short-term solution that many are making during the financial pressures of the credit crunch. However, it is only short term as eventually savings will run out and then what options are left to you?
- Selling unneeded household items will also only provide a short-term solution as above. What happens when all that remains in the house is needed and there is still a shortfall in the budget for household bills?
- Gaining extra income from additional employment may be an option for some….if opportunities are available during a time of recession when jobs may be harder to come by. However, additional costs incurred to do that job need to be taken into account: commuting costs, childcare costs, time costs for resting and re-charging if over working….
- Undoubtably all of us should be looking at ways of saving money on household bills. This approach is simply good old fashioned thriftiness…looked down on by many during the times of easy and cheap credit as the short term solution to household budget shortfalls. Now, as we experience the financial pinch of a lack of easy credit, high interest rates and negative equity on real estate, thriftiness is going to be coming back into fashion with a vengeance. Most of us can make significant savings on a wide range of household bills.
- Clearly during these times of financial crisis and lack of cheap credit, mortgages, taxes and community charges are not going to be easily negotiated downwards.
- Choosing to have less of the luxuries of life can release a lot of money to re-direct to essential bills.
- In the coming weeks Credit Crunch Helpdesk will be looking in depth at how money can be saved on the full range of household bills. Undoubtably as many companies start to feel the pinch of the looming recession there will be a lot of good deals out there to be had as they try to keep your custom. This gives you stronger bargaining power instead of having to tolerate rising prices.
“So what household bills could I save money on?”
Please feel free to comment on the areas of household spending that you need most help with and we will aim to bring you the best advice to reduce these costs.
Saving money on water bills in the kitchen
September 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
If you are paying for your water by usage there are many ways that you can save on your water rates. Even if you pay a flat monthly rate for water usage, then there are environmental benefits to more cautious use of water resources as well.
Top Money Saving Tips for Water in the Kitchen
Here are some tips to help you to reduce your water consumption in the kitchen and so reduce your bills during the constraints of the credit crunch as well as being more environmentally aware:
- When going to the tap for a glass of water, most people run the tap for a while to get it nice and cold first. Placing a jug or bottle of water in the fridge will prevent the water wastage that happens when each glass of water is fetched from the kitchen.
- Keeping water used in kettles and saucepans to a minimum reduced the amount thrown away as well as the energy used to bring it to the boil. An added benefit of steaming vegetables is, of course, less of the nutrients get destroyed in the cooking process making this small change a winner all round.
- Washing fruit and vegetables in a bowl of water rather than under a running tap then using the leftover water for watering houseplants will make significant savings.
- Instead of rinsing soap off dishes under a running hot water tap, place the washed dishes on the drainer then, at the end of washing up, gently pour a jug of hot water over them to rinse off soap suds. Not only will this save water but the energy to heat the water too.
- Newer energy efficient clothes washing machines and dishwashers both use less water in them. Not only does this make significant savings on water bills during the year but also reduces the energy used to heat that water too bringing savings on two major household bills.
Although these may seem like modest savings they really do mount up and we would love to hear any more tips that you might have to save water in the kitchen.
In the next post in this series we will examing ways to save water in the house and garden.
Enjoying the Good Things in Life on a Budget
September 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The word “budgeting” is one that makes many a heart sink. It smacks of being frugal, going without the things we enjoy, possibly even missing out completely….!
It doesn’t have to be that way though. Undoubtably the rogue bill that comes in for the car or the sudden hike up in interest rates, fuel bills, food prices etc can cause a blip in household finances. However, it is still possible to enjoy the good things in life without having to completely surrender them in order to pay the bills.
“Okay, so how do I do it?”
Today’s tip suggests that you write down everything that you spend money on over the month from household bills, loans and mortgages through to the takeaway coffee grabbed on the way to the office.
That $2 dollar coffee on the way to work each day could be costing you $520 per annum. Just cutting back on that treat for 2 days a week could save money ($208 per annum).
Taking your own sandwiches and a piece of fruit to work at an approximate average daily cost of $2.32 instead of an average cost of $4.47 per day will save a total of $559 per annum.
That DVD or CD habit can really mount up….a lot of them collecting dust on the shelf and rarely being watched or listened to again. At an average cost of $14.99, choosing to buy second hand at an average price of $5.99 (if you really must own it) or renting instead at an average price of $16.99 for an unlimited rental monthly contract scheme, can give you wider options saving between $155 and $216 per annum.
Just think what you could spend just these 3 savings on alone!
Don’t even get me started on how much cutting back on a chocolate habit can save in a year! You get the picture of how it’s done……
At the end of the day, everything that we choose to spend money on is a choice….especially after basic household bills have been covered.
Tell us what you think are the best money savers in your budget and how you go about doing it. There’s a whole wealth of experience out there during the credit crunch that we can all benefit from.
Stretch your Clothes Budget with Smart Styling
September 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
“Tempted to new clothing on a tight budget?”
Despite tightening budgets with the credit crunch it’s still so tempting isn’t it? As the new autumn and winter fashion trends start to appear in store we get tempted to have the latest look and last season’s clothes get pushed to the back of the wardrobe.
“So how can my clothes budget be stretched to include this season’s fashions?”
However, it is possible to enjoy the new fashions without wasting other perfectly usable items in the wardrobe…..the trick is to have certain classics that are neutrally coloured in black, brown, navy or beige and then add in just a couple of this season’s trends of clothing and/or accessories to bring your core wardrobe bang up to date and save money too. In this way it is quite possible to enjoy this season’s look without breaking the bank!
Loose Vegetables Save Money
September 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Buying vegetables loose instead of pre-packed can save money.
As the credit crunch bites into household food budgets it is important to consider how the money we spend on food can stretch further without compromising on quality and taste.
Apart from the adverse impact upon the environment, packaged vegetables tend to cost more that loose vegetables. In addition, if you live in an area where you pay by quantity for refuse collection, you need to keep the rubbish to a minimum….a thin plastic bag to collect your potatoes or tomatoes etc in (as opposed to a plastic tray and film cover or thick sellophane bag) takes up a lot less space in the bin.
“How else can I save money on fruit and vegetables?”
Buying from a fresh produce stall in your local market can also make significant savings. You may have to watch out for the odd damaged item being slipped into the bag (unless it is a self service stall) but, if making casseroles and soups, this can be a cheap way to get delicious, quality fresh produce into your freezer. How much more delicious would a fresh tomato sauce base made from extra ripe tomatoes be (often at 20% of store selling price at the end of the day) rather than jars of pre-prepared tomato sauce bought for so much more?