a money saving thread for the cash poor amongst us.

Save money on expensive binoculars by moving closer to what you’re looking at.

Regarding those oil change pump thingies, do they remove any swarf or stuff you should be looking for in an oil change?

Never really seen them used to be honest.

If you’ve worked in public sector and retired, you can still apply for the blue light card. Wife has done it recently.

Use cashback sites. Even for small purchases.

If you’re on EE you can get 6 months free either Apple TV or Apple music through the EE app under rewards.

Use Tesco clubcard vouchers for discounts on eating out at certain pub chains / restaurants.

Tesco Clubcard plus – £96 a year to buy in and save £500-£600 per year.

Nectar card plus use of their app for me. Once it knows what you buy regularly, it often gives up bonus points for those items plus there’s a few decent partner offers, extra points (and discounts) at Esso, Argos etc and a few competitions, occasional bonus points (most pretty token gestures like 5 or 10 Nectar points bonus but I did once win 7000 points!)

I can often end up with £100 in Nextar points by the end of the year.

My phone contract was up recently and I have moved to a Lebara Sim only deal via the ubiquitous MSE.

It’s ridiculously cheap for the first six months (like under £2/month) then rises to £5 or £6/month.

And uses the same network I was already on.

Farmfoods discount vouchers – I ve seen cafe and shop owners in farmfoods.  Subscribe you get vouchers 2 quid off 25 spend.  Cheapest place for chocolate, marmite, peanut butter even before extra discount.

That’s a time v’s money thing though… a basic service/ oil and filter change on my car, with an MOT at my local indie is £189.00

By the time I’ve pratted about, got mucky, disposed of the old oil etc, I’ll just pay someone else to do it.

But unless you can do something of some value in the Kwikfit reception, it takes you just as long.

Eurocarparts will deliver me an oil and filter (free next-day delivery) for ~£50

Drive the car onto the ramps, remove plug, remove filter, let it drain, fit filter, refit plug, fill with oil.

30min and it’s done. The oil sits in the old bottle until the next tip trip.

I’ll be finished, washed up, and drinking a cup of decent coffee before you’re even sat down in the waiting room drinking the complimentary mellow birds from the machine.

There’s jobs I don’t do because they’re a faff, I just paid the local garage £30 to swap an exhaust because it involved 2 hard to reach bolts that I just CBA doing on a cold driveway, but even that is still saving £100 buying the generic pipe for £90, and paying the garage £30 Vs the £250-£300 Kwickfit charge for the job. Cambelts and clutches, depends on the car, a that stage I usually decide I don’t have the patience to work on the job for 6 hours efficiently (which really means it’s a 2 day job with tea breaks),  But the routine stuff just makes economic sense because you’ll do it every year saving a few hundred quid each time.

Regarding those oil change pump thingies, do they remove any swarf or stuff you should be looking for in an oil change?

Never really seen them used to be honest.

They remove all the same stuff the sump drain would have.

Depends on the engine, some are designed to be emptied via a pump not the sump plug. If you think about it lot’s of higher performance engines are built like this, e.g. motorbikes.  They have a dry sump which a scavenger pump transfers the oil to a separate tank from where you drain it.  I own a pump, but don’t use it on the fiesta because there’s no undertray or anything so it’s as quick to drive it onto the ramps.  And I have to go underneath it to access the oil filter anyway.  If the filter was on top and the engine designed to allow emptying that way then I’d have no qualms about it unless there was some other reason like the sump itself had to be removed to inspect the pickup pipe.

If there’s swarf in your oil then the engines f***ed.  Worrying about whether there’s 10ml or 20ml of oil left to be diluted into the next 4.5l is the least of your problems.

Buy high ticket Christmas presents after Christmas

I’ve been beating the current account switching bonus drum on here for years –  options are now scarcer for me, given the number of times I’ve switched, but the odd one still comes up. Literally free money.

Stoozing is a good alternative to cashback cards. Do all your spending on a 0% interest card and put the corresponding sum into a high interest savings account. At the end of your 0% period, pay it off and pocket the interest. I’ve made nearly £600 in the last calendar year. You need to be on top of it, but it’s as close to totally passive income as I’ve ever got.

Convert Tesco club card vouchers into money off the channel tunnel crossing

[edit because i missed it]

Re the oil changes thing – how many people send their car to a garage just for an oil change?

It would usually be done as part of a yearly major or minor service so the saving of doing it yourself would be negligible.

But for most people the security that there car has been inspected by a knowledgable mechanic is worth far more than a £60 saving.

What I can’t spot myself, the MOT does, and I can’t recall the last MOT fail that I hadn’t identified in advance.  And no one starts off knowledgeable, but if you do your own oil change you’re far more likely to spot other problems before they escalate. And 90% of fixes are either low skill but take time / faff so anyone could do them with instructions,  Or take a bit of skill / tools but most of the time the cost of the tool is still less than the garage bill would be.

Unknown unbranded oil in your car unless you specify

If it meets the spec it’s fine.

If the garage was prepared to use the wrong oil entirely then why would you trust them with any work at all?

I’ve not always used the cheapest, my usual rule of thumb is to pay less than £5 more for a gallon than the cheapest that meets the spec.  Most years that means ECP or Halfords own brand synthetic rather than semi, or Magnatec if it’s on offer.

Separate quotes for buildings and content insurance. I saved £150 this year.

Convert Tesco club card vouchers into money off the channel tunnel crossing

Or, get the ferry instead for a cheaper, longer but more chilled crossing.

do they remove any swarf or stuff you should be looking for in an oil change?

Most of it. You run the engine until warm so most the crap is then floating in the oil you pump out. It is all the garage does anyway, and they don’t always run the engine first

The biggest change I’ve made recently is to start using a budgeting app called MoneyHub. It uses the open banking standard to aggregate our family accounts, credit cards, pensions, mortgage in one place and every time a transaction is made on any of them the app categorises the expenditure into things like groceries, fuel, savings, transfers etc etc. I’ve had to do some work to check and update the automatic categorisation but now I’m up and running, as soon as I buy something I habitually check the app to see what it’s showing as and update/approve as appropriate. The app then gives me a dashboard of monthly expenditure  so I can see just how much I’ve spent against each category.

I also export the data periodically into an excel doc which I’ve designed to analyse and collate the expenditure across Jan – Dec. Using 2024 data, this gave me a really good idea of our typical expenditure per month against each category, and I’ve created a monthly budget that I’ve incorporated back into the app.

I share the app with my wife and it’s really helping us to see where our money is going and to understand what (if any) discretionary expenditure we can afford. It’s also helped us to identify some fraudulent transactions that we missed.

If we stick to the budget, we should be able to save a couple of hundred £ per month instead of having to dive into savings every month to pay the credit card bill.

Buy luxury Christmas puddings now, the Tesco ones are aged 12 months, by next Christmas they’ll be 24 months and even more delicious but a fraction of the price. Ignore the use by date, we had two from last year, feeds 8 or two people over three meals!

If it meets the spec it’s fine

I’m thinking of some previous threads about tyres on here yet no one on here would dare admit to Nanking/**** Chinese rubber on their Skoda Octavia/Yeti

These ditch finders meet the spec, personally I’d whip them off and change to a Michelin

Sometimes can get up to 50k miles if no punctures and good at dodging the many pot holes so can easily save you in the long run cost wise

Buy your birthday cards from us.

The exact same card can be over a pound more in Smiths.

I’m thinking of some previous threads about tyres on here yet no one on here would dare admit to Nanking/**** Chinese rubber on their Skoda Octavia/Yeti

These ditch finders meet the spec, personally I’d whip them off and change to a Michelin

Sometimes can get up to 50k miles if no punctures and good at dodging the many pot holes so can easily save you in the long run cost wise

I’ve never fitted* for anything other than name brand tyres, that’s different because you can actually judge what the benefit is. The EcoConact/energy saver/Blue Response etc all last longer, are quieter, get good ratings for grip / efficiency and rate well in magazine tests.  And subjectively feel nicer.

Branded oil on the other hand?

Our Fiestas done 174k on cheap-ish oil (but does use/leak oil, has done form new) and has spent 21 years being alternately driven round town cold by my OH who treats the pedals as binary switches, or thrashed up the motorway at Mach 0.11 to Yorkshire and back. The C-max did 160k before and never lost a drop.  The Berlingo had 3 changes in the time I had it between 130k and 160k and never had an issue on cheap oil.  I know a few people have had expensive oil analysis done to see what impact it has, but even that comes with the massive caveats that it’s not a direct comparison between oils, just an analysis of how that oil is performing.  And you can’t define what the impact of any difference is. Even if A was better than B, it doesn’t follow that B will have any meaningfully impact on the engine if it meets the spec and you change it on time.

*i’ve had less well known brands on cars I’ve bought

I’ve never fitted* for anything other than name brand tyres, that’s different because you can actually judge what the benefit is.

I’ve always fitted middle-range, if that the right description (i.e. Landsail/Hankook) tyres as I’m extremely sceptical as to the benefit of name brand tyres on a 1.4 hatchback.

I have Clubcard+ it’s pretty good, costs £7 a month, I usually get about £20 ‘back’. I can understand why the poster thinks they’re getting hundreds a year. The Clubcard app pushes a “saved this year” figure which includes normal club card discounts. You can also get 10% off Tesco brand non-food items too, so if you like F&F stuff… I don’t, it’s all shapeless and drab.

I suppose due to my advanced years I’ve learned rich v poor, happy v unhappy isn’t about saving a penny on beans, bulk buying in Costco, driving £500 bangers or whatever.

Some people are genuinely poor. If you’re in that horrible place when every penny counts and it’s ‘eat or heat’ or new clothes for the kids v council tax then you have my complete sympathy, and I hope you’re able to make life easier for yourself.

When I was younger, I got caught in the capitalist trap. I always thought that I couldn’t be happy until I had the ‘thing’ I’d been fooled into thinking was important. New House, New Car, Holidays, Bikes, TVs, Phones, but I never was, I just felt increased strain to keep it up. The only money saving tip that’s ever worked for me has been to be content as much as I can be. I try to let go of material things that don’t bring real joy. Simple things bring real joy to me, sitting in the pub having a pint and sharing a bag of crisps is cheap, but if you can’t spare the money for that, sitting in a friend’s kitchen with a cup of tea is just as good really. You don’t need £500’s worth of hiking kit to go for a walk. A copy of a good book for 50p from a charity shop reads just as well as a £15 hardback or via a £100 kindle.

I’m not miserly, but I try to pause when I’m buying something – do I need this? Do I want this? Will this bring real joy? I have no problem buying things I want, but I avoid ‘consumer nonsense’ when I can.

“I’m thinking of some previous threads about tyres on here yet no one on here would dare admit to Nanking/**** Chinese rubber on their Skoda Octavia/Yeti

These ditch finders meet the spec, personally I’d whip them off and change to a Michelin

Sometimes can get up to 50k miles if no punctures and good at dodging the many pot holes so can easily save you in the long run cost wise”

I do consider tyre choice a bit. If you’re asking your fitter for ‘economy tyres’ you’re often doing the opposite. The don’t last long, they puncture easily and they do have a meaningful effect on safety and handling.

Michelin make incredible tyres, if you’ve got something sporty then their Pilot Sport range offer an incredible balance of performance and longevity and their more eco focused tyres do save a dribble fuel and last a long time.

I think the best VFM though is in the middle ground, the brands that make good quality tyres, but perhaps not the same marketing budget, such a wide range or bother with high performance stuff for sports cars. Kumho, Avon, Uniroyal etc. They’re cheaper than Michelin, Continental and Pirelli and may lose a bit of absolute performance (useless on that 1.4 hatch back) but a massively better made and long lasting than typical Linglong Ditchfinders.

I occasionally shop at Tesco, but do 95% of my groceries at Lidl – and I’m certain I’m saving a lot more than I could with a Clubcard+.

As mentioned by another poster, you get loads of freebies like bakery items, cheese, fruit etc. – plus a monthly 10% discount if you spend £250 over the month.

And the quality of produce is often better anyway.

If you ride clipless then never buy brand new.

Lots of people buy brand new pedals and shoes to give clipless a go, try them out and hate them and then flog them cheap on FB Marketplace, sometimes I’ve paid just postage.

I have actually bought a couple of pairs of “Knackered” used M520 (already a cheap pair of pedals), disassemble (with £2 special tool) grease up and adjust bearings and you’ll get another decade out of them no bother. Saves even more

And the quality of produce is often better anyway.

I’ve not found this to be the case. We shop in both and there are certainly some items that are better but not that many things. Much of the time the quality is similar but it’s cheaper which is great. Worth going to both if you have the time

I think the best VFM though is in the middle ground, the brands that make good quality tyres, but perhaps not the same marketing budget, such a wide range or bother with high performance stuff for sports cars. Kumho, Avon, Uniroyal etc. They’re cheaper than Michelin, Continental and Pirelli and may lose a bit of absolute performance (useless on that 1.4 hatch back) but a massively better made and long lasting than typical Linglong Ditchfinders.

I dunno, Michelin Energy Savers, Dunlop BluResponse,  Conti EcoContanct, IME they last ~2x as long as the basic tyres, 25-30k on the front rather than ~15k..

I’d agree there’s not much real world difference between the mid-range Kumho, Avon, Firestone and Michelin, Conti, Dunlop tires though. I’ve got Firestones on the Midget as they’re the only tyres apart form uniroyal (which I found far too soft) that fit and aren’t trailer-spec ditch finders.

I’m not suggesting Pilot-Sports, R888R or NS2R’s on a 1.4 hatchback either.

But like shoes there’s money to be saved by getting the slightly more expensive ones that last a lot longer.

I’ve not found this to be the case. We shop in both and there are certainly some items that are better but not that many things. Much of the time the quality is similar but it’s cheaper which is great. Worth going to both if you have the time

That’s fair, a lot is similar but cheaper.

I was mainly thinking of some of my key items like cheese, bakery and cold meats where you get what Tesco would label as a premium product.

Veg can be better or worse TBF.

Hope this isn;t derailing the thread.

Back when I did my own spannering out of necessity, I always took my car to my Friendly Local Garage for an oil change. It might well be easy but it’s a nasty job and the cost difference between paying RRP for oil+filter vs paying someone else to do it was negligible.

I actually came on here to posy “Be nice to people, even if they are not being particularly nice at the time”.

I learned this back in my days in Tech Support. The people who were nice, you’d go out of your way for. Mr Angry got the bare minimum of service we could get away with providing.

Google opinion rewards pays me just enough to cover the cost of

I’m surprised this hasn’t cropped up before and I keep meaning to start a thread about it. It’s simple surveys, “have you visited Tesco recently?” – “no” – “thanks, here’s 8p.” But it adds up, I’ve got about £20 in my account at any given moment, perfect for those moments where you’ll spend several hundred quid on a phone but begrudge paying 69p for an app.

I learned this back in my days in Tech Support. The people who were nice, you’d go out of your way for. Mr Angry got the bare minimum of service we could get away with providing.

Same here, except swap Tech Support for ‘behind the counter at a post office’, ‘behind a bar’, ‘as a clerk in bank branch’ – nice people got lots of help, ranty angry people not so much (all though I did enjoy being extra, extra, obsequiously nice to ranty angry people, as it made them even angrier 😉 )

What’s this Google opinion rewards thing then?

*Edit – it’s alright, I, er Googled it.

Same here, except swap Tech Support for ‘behind the counter at a post office’, ‘behind a bar’, ‘as a clerk in bank branch’ – nice people got lots of help, ranty angry people not so much (all though I did enjoy being extra, extra, obsequiously nice to ranty angry people, as it made them even angrier ? )

My local garage and local bike shop (both independent family run places) work along these lines. The garage has helped me out many times for cheap, allowed me to pay half now, half next month on an expensive repair and so on.

In return, I’m on their list of reliable people who’ll look after/walk their dog occasionally and if I walk past on my way to town I’ll ask if they want anything from the supermarket, if they need to send anything from the post office, that sort of thing.

And my LBS will almost always accommodate any sort of “can you just…?” repair or tweak.

I once got put onto the next easyJet flight after they oversold mine.  The guy ahead of me had a long wait after getting shouty with customer services.

So on the one had the moral is don’t fly easyjet and arrive towards the end of check-in and still expect to fly.

On the other hand I got 250euro and my transfers paid!

“extra, extra, obsequiously nice to ranty angry people, as it made them even angrier”

A colleague of mine once had a ned try to make a formal complaint about him.  My colleague had done nothing wrong and the ned was annoyed at being called sir whilst being booked.

Nectar card plus use of their app for me.

I doubt anyone truly needing to save money is shopping at sainos but regardless I’ll say it’s worth cycling through different nectar cards. My partner did all the shopping for a few months and when I came back to it using my own card i got “£13.50 off £90” 4 weeks in a row to try and drag me back into shopping there.

Be fussy about drafts, and be active in adding insulation to your home.

When shopping for food and other “commodity” items I shop by price – they don’t really care about you, they just want your business and price is the calling card.  For more specialist purchases – bike kit etc, I am happy to cultivate a relationship with the retailer because they usually value you as a longer term client and at some point it’ll be repaid in terms of getting a bike repaired at short notice or unexpectedly coughing up an unrequested discount.

Also, I don’t know if it is because there has been a cultural change or I am just more confident but i find “if you don’t ask you don’t get” is an increasingly well rewarded motto.

Learn to love Indian vegetarian food. Ideally cook it in big batches and freeze portions.

We’ve had a few holiday bargains. This one was even going away money was tight

This was an off season half term holiday. After lowers loads of googling i found a surely to good to be true £250 starts caravan, on the Gower, for a week. Trying to check if it was genuine i phone the number and had a jolly chat with the owner. Who was clearly Welsh, which was reassuring. So i checked with mrs Ampthill and then phoned her back. More jolly chat and she said she’d throw in breakfast every day in her hotel for free. So that was 28 cooked breakfasts and the holiday for £250

…now signed up to google opinion rewards…

Use both sides of your loo roll.

Partly inspired by this thread, that’s my thriftyness done for now.

Moved a few of the expired ISA’s to another fixed term/high rate deal,  SWMBO phone transferred from EE after they doubled her fee to 1pMobile back at her original price for more ‘stuff’ (still on the EE network bizarrely) and moved the leccy from Scottish Power to Fuse saving a couple of £100’s pa. Let’s hope Fuse deal with Customers well if there’s ever an occasion to contact them…

There now, I can now buy that totally gratuitous Faberge egg or gold Rolex on the savings and retire undefeated… 🙂

A few tips from my tight thrifty lifestyle:

1. Never pay cash for anything. Always pay on a cashback or rewards card – Chase debit card gives 1% back on most purchases with some exceptions. Amex is good if you can use the points but otherwise can be a false economy with the fee etc. Of course there are lots of threads online about how to get the most out of cashback/rewards cards and lots of dubious but legal ways to maximise them (eg undetectable manufactured spending).
2.  Always make sure your oven is full. If there is space cook up something else that you can freeze for another meal and microwave later.
3. In a similar vein, never let food go off. If its on its way out then cook something with it then freeze it.
4. Learn to repair things rather than pay for new/someone to fix them.
5. Empty your car of random junk to save on fuel bills. Top up fuel in the morning as the air is colder and the fuel is less dense so you get more. However don’t drive out of your way for cheap fuel as its a false economy.

There’s a woman called Sophie Morris around on the web who reads the small print on packaging to save us from doing it. She suggests swaps for ingredients and products that are healthier and cheaper, it’s surprising the number of “quality” products that are full of rubbish and the cheaper ones that are better!