How to save...

Menu planning - I've saved £50 per week on my shopping bill doing this recently

Cook in bulk - big pan of spag bol for instance, same amount of energy used as you're just using one pan/slow cooker, then freeze in individual portions (perfect for when you can't be bothered "proper" cooking and saves getting a take away). I tend to use foil containers from the £1 shop for this as most stuff can be cooked from frozen

Thank you! I am in desperate need of tips, especially as we should be saving more this year.

I need to look into 1 and 2 but tip 3 is a great one! Spending on various cards definitely constitutes for a lot of our over spending!

We have a seperate account for our bills and overpay a small amount each month, then at the end of the year we have usually saved a bit without realising.

We also save about £100 every 5 months or so just on a change jar. Usually speand it on beer for the summer festivals.

Out of curiosity, those of you that are couples (or can remember before you had a child to consider as well) how much do you spend weekly on food shopping? We have an account which has £100 deposited in each week, the last two weeks I've spent around £90! So this doesn't leave much over - which is what we wanted to use for meals out, drinks, days out etc and instead we end up spending from a different account to cover the things we enjoy. Off food shopping later so will try to save and have a voucher for £10 if I spend £30 ? We are not bad off by any means but really don't budget well and this needs to change.

Menu planning and doing the shop online has saved us money.

Interesting...I only spend card where possible. If I lift £20 for a sandwich the whole £20 somehow disappears, but when swiping I only spend the exact amount of the sandwich. I o keep very good track of my card purchases though and hang on to all receipts until they have been debited from my account.

I also vote for meal planning - saves a fortune and means that we hardly ever chuck anything away.

Having gym memberships and Cineworld cards is a must for us - means we can have cheap nights out at the cinema, or go for a laze in the sauna on a SUnday afternoon.

Don't go food shopping hungry - you will buy **** you dont need Go shopping with a list and stick to it

Amazon grocery if there is something you buy on a regular basis - subscribe and get 10% off. We get our dog food like that (as it's fairly expensive to buy).

Now we have £50 a week which covers 7 dinners, 5 packed lunches for him, 5 lunches for me, 5 breakfasts for us both (cereal/fruit/yoghurt) and 2 weekend brunches. We also manage a coffee or two each at the weekend when we go for a week and at least one game of squash (£4).

A friend recommended we switch to payment metres for our gas and electric, so we did. We worked out we are saving £45 a month by doing it this way. It has made us much more resourceful too.

We spend on average £60 a week - more if there are things like washing tabs, dishwasher tabs etc. as these are expensive but only needed every few months.

Watch out for naughty "special offers" - often I find the deals are not always as good as they seem - especially with Muller light yoghurts!!

I take £100 out at the beginning of every month and put it in various envelopes which then add up throughout the year. At the moment, I have one for the car, presents for my OH, other presents, house, emergeny, hen do. Means that when I have an expensive month coming up, ie birthdays or MOT then have a little pocket of money already saved and don't need to stress so much about it. It also means that I can usually save some money each month in a proper account as even my expensive months already have money in envelopes saved for them if that makes sense. My friends laugh at my little envelopes, but they really help me out!

For food shopping, I save on a card with Asda and Iceland, couple of quid here and there, soon adds up and I don't miss it.

Comes in handy to refill the freezer if we're short one month, but I generally save it up for Christmas.

What happens if, God forbid, your house catches fire?!

So we are spending far too much! I used to be really good with money until I started adopting H's attitude of 'well, if we don't use it, it'll come in use for something' and sometimes buy things for the sake of having it in the cupboard! I need to stop buying baking goods, as its not something I need to do and it's too tempting as we're meant to be eating better. Cricks and Mrs C, that sounds like a much more reasonable budget so will try to work to this today when I go. I used to always order online, but found its easy to over spend, and they quite often messed the order up so it put me off.

Spending cash (take it out at the start of the week and that's your spends, focuses you on what you're spending onh and added bonus less use of cash machines etc in te week= less chance of something dodgy happening with your cards).

pay your credit card off each month in full (not loosing any money in interest also unless you are desperate onl used the card if you know you have the cash to pay for it, for example I use my C Card for online shopping bt only buy things I know I have the money for).

Online shopping, make you more aware of good deals on things like cleaning products (plus we get more choice than in our local supermarket) you also don't tend to buy things just because.

Buying in season fruit and veg when possible, H and Ilike to get at least some of our fruit and veg from the local greengrocer, which if you buy i season is cheaper than the supermarket and often lasts better.

Thinking about the amount of meat you are eating (if you are a meat eater)) my h was terible for eating large amounts of meat (more than a serving) at a sitting, getting him to realise this means our eat now goes further, and he now has far more veg etc with meals to make sure he isn't hungry.

Look at your energy consumption, heating, leavin glights on leaving the stero, TV etc on standby hey sound petty but if you get in the habit of turning things off or putting a jumper on rather than tuening up the heating you can save more than you think.

If you are eating out in the week look for discount vouchers or offers in local resturants, you get the same meal for less (so more to sped on drinks!).

Public transport if you use it to go to work etc are you using the cheapest option look into if weekly, monthly or longer tickets will save you money. For example even if i only go to town 4 times in the week at the moment it is still cheaper to buy a weekly ticket than to buy 4 returns.

Meal planning has made a massieve difference here, we waste less food, buy happy meat and don't go without treats but spend less. In conjunction with this a coule of meat free days a week ca help save money to.

Direct debit a set sum out of the current account into a savings account you won't miss it if it wasn't there.

McS H and I sepend £30-£60 per week, never more that covers at least 7 main meals 10 weekday lunches (5 each) usuall lunch on Sat to. nd breakfasts for us bot for the whole week, it also includes cleaning products etc hence the spend bracket.

McSquirtle - I find that I need to know what we're eating to be able to stick to it. That amount covers meals like organic roast chicken with all the trimmings, veggie frittata with (leftover) chicken, homemade pizzas with ham, mushroom and buffalo mozzarella (BTW, SWers, the low fat stuff is a bargainous 65p a ball in the Co-Op), some sort of mince based dish (spag bol, cottage pie etc), jacket potatoes, curry etc.

The boy tends to take a ham salad sarnie, carrot sticks, a hard boiled egg and fruit for lunch.

I'm not very good at saving but better than I was.

I save Nectar points more now since I discovered if you go through the Nectar site to Ebay or Amazon etc you can save points that way too. Then I use them for the Christmas food shop

For the packed lunchers out there, instead of buying ready cooked and cut meat for salad/ sandwhiches, we now buy a joint, or chicken cook it ourselves slice and feeze it, H now gets far better quality meat in his lunch and it costs less in the long run.

I put almost everything on a cashback credit card and then have a DD to pay it off in full every month. This means the bank pays me for the convenience of a credit card and I have the added "insurance" that CCs offer on purchases.

Returns -I get 2% on petrol and supermarket purchases and 0.5% on everything else.

We plan meals too, however, I tend to buy the things we need every couple of days - which isnt the most cost effective. We just never seem to have time for a weekly/monthly shop. I will try doing the shopping online.

I do make batches of meals and freeze them, and we used to buy chicken breasts and mince in bulk when on offer and chuck them in the freezer.

Save any £2 coins you get in a jar that you can only access by breaking. You don't notice the odd £2 going but after about a year we found we had around the £300 in it.

Set up an additional £5 pw DD to a savings account. Again, you don't notice the small amounts leaving the account but they soon add up. I use this to buy birthday presents with!

We have chickens so H will just have to have egg sandwiches more often I think. I am going to try to spend £60 and see how it goes, we have three cats so at least £10-15 gets spent on their food and litter before we even start buying for ourselves! Has anyone noticed much difference in the supermarkets? Usually I go to Asda, but I have a Morrisons and Tesco just as close. Popping tesco tonight as my mum wants to print some photos off.

Think I will have a word with H tonight and see what we can do, turning things off at the plug is something we need to get into a habit of doing as we also have reptiles that run 24/7 so every little will help. Now the weather is getting nicer I'm sure less use of the tumble drier will also help. Good weather also means more free activities I suppose, walks, cycling, picnics and drives out.

Also, we never pay any admin type fees that can be avoided - so we have 0% credit cards, any always pay for things by debit card if there is a credit card fee applied.

We are sensible with our energy consumption...I wont sit in a freezing house, but we would always put a jumper on first before cranking up the heating.

Always shop around to get the best deal on insurance, utility costs, etc. We pay our home insurance once a year to avoid the premium added for paying it monthly.

Discount codes and cashback for all online shopping - don't click buy without checking...even ebay do cashback on your purchases now!

*I just checked my Topcashback account and have earned £137.83 in the 10 months that I have been a member, and everything that I have bought has been items that I would have been buying anyway!*

See, we would be just under £5 for the same from the Aldi at the end of our road. I appreciate the point about picking up extras though; I don't tend do, but if you do I can see how it would all add up.

I guess I'm just praying it doesn't! Possibly a stupid thing to do really as at one point last year I had about £1000 in them altogether. They are hidden so a burglar (hopefully) wouldn't find them, but maybe I need to rethink the safety aspect of it. I guess I could just put the £100 a month into a separate savings account to my main account. I wouldn't be able to have all the separate sections like I can with the envelopes, but it would be safer!

We do this but with anything 10p and under - have saved £150 for the wedding over the last year...we should have enough to cover the cost of our DJ come May - although we will be sure to convert it in to notes before paying them ? you definitely don't miss the smaller coins at all!

Either separate savings accounts or a fireproof safe?

Think it will be the separate savings account! Would feel a bit silly with a safe in our little house!

Another good saving tip is shop at Aldi! Most of the produscts have won awards now (especially wine and cheese) also all their cleaning products have now been good housekeeping approved.

The veg also last longer than tesco. I spent £34 on Monday and with a £20 butchers shop and a £10 top up shop (milk, bread etc) this will last us about 2 weeks.

I don't know where you bank, but in theory there's no reason why you can't have a different savings account for each 'occasion'.

We are with Lloyds, and I don't know if this is common but... I can open a new savings account in seconds just by clicking a button and re-entering my password when I log in to our account. You can then rename each account to whatever you like. You could set up a direct debit to deposit a set amount in each one every payday or whatever. You see all the accounts (joint account, savings accounts, ISAs and credit cards) with one login number and password, so it's nice and easy.

This doesn't work for us...our milkman in the village doesn't come until after 9am which is no good for us at breakfast time