www.iva.co.uk

I'm still awaiting money from Quidco. Just need them to pay up as I could do with it x

Remembered another one: I collect Tesco clubcard points which then convert into BA airmiles, it reduces the price of tickets if collected enough miles to cover your destination, so you only pay taxes. I found this very helpful

shop around the petrol staitions for fuel,i do around £400- £500 a month in fuel,i got my 5 pence per litre of from tescos this week,so i wait untill i really need fuel and put about 70 litres in saving me about £350 then i can have a nice bag off chips and a sausage to cheer me up

I shop around for fuel too. I also drink gin and tonic at home as its cheaper than buying bottles of wine!!!

BoL thats got to be the best ever way to save money,drink gin and tonic at home as its cheaper than wine!!! I just spat tea at the laptop laughing!!!

Paul

We shop around for fuel but never get the 5p off a litre as we don't do the weekly shop at Tesco!! At the moment Asda is cheaper.

We do the three for a tenner wine from Asda but would never drink G&T anyway - filthy stuff!!

Bit of a price war on diesel at the minute so might be looking at who's best this weekend. I never spend enough in one shop to qualify for the money off fuel coupon. x

The savings I enforced upon myself at the start of my IVA are still in place now I am out of it,and those savings are 1) Cancel my Sky subscription saving £33 a month. 2) Cancel my mobile phone contract and go for PAYG - as far as I'm concerned PAYG is much cheaper. 3) Sell as much unwanted junk as possible on Ebay to raise money, (although I don't sell on Ebay anymore,I did then!) 4) Give up alcohol(almost!), teetotal now though I used to have a glass of red wine every Sunday up until last Christmas, which is a lot less than I was spending on booze before. 5) Use the pound shops more often, so many items so much cheaper than purchasing them from the big retailers!

If I can help it I'll never cancel Sky as it's our only entertainment, we prefer a contract phone (well Jan does anyway - she likes her up to date phones). We do Ebay when we have stuff to sell and also buy from there as well.

Afraid we both drink so we'll not give that up but we do like the cheap shops for things such as my deodorants and Jan likes Baxters soups and they are cheaper from B&M and have more variety than Asda do.

I just go to all the bargain shops now and am well known at work for knowing where there is a bargain to be had, they find it funny I find it necessary to savea few £.

Daughter (18) has adopted my frugality and shops around now too which will stand her in good stead for uni.

I do all the shopping and use Asda who are great when it comes to deals but do tend to use a hike and drop approach, if you look at the little labels that show the item price, in the bottom left corner it shows you when the offer will end but be warned ..you will need glasses and usually there is somthing on offer in each range take washing detergent i usually get persil but that is on a price hike but surf is on offer at half the price.Try not to be to brand dedicated.Definatly shop around ie nik nacks in asda pack of 18 £3.98 in 99p shop you get a pack of 10 for 99p.Inbetween shopping be careful where you go, we have a coop just round the corner again quite good when it comes to offers but not so good on everyday items there is a papershop next door and i can save nearly a £1 each time i get bread milk and eggs.

There are some cracking tips here. I particularly like Lesley_’s tip about transferring oddments into a savings account – it was posted nearly two years ago (I only joined this week) but I’m glad it’s there! I’m going to start doing that.

For my own money-saving tactics...

I cycle to work. This is by far my biggest money saver. I live in Roehampton, SW London and work in Holborn in the centre. It’s a round trip of 20 miles a day and keeps me quite fit, but more importantly it saves me around £120 a month on travel. Maintenance costs are minimal – I take very good care of my bike and have it serviced every year, which usually costs around £200 what with moving parts being replaced etc. And I’m not one of your fair-weather cyclists, oh no... All year round for me, in all weathers!

I bring my own lunch to work, which saves me around £5 a day. Buying your lunch in Central London isn’t cheap.

I do my weekly shopping at Asda. Not due to any economic reason or preference over any others, just because it’s nearest! I generally stick to the in-store brand (although avoid the Smart Price budget range as it’s awful) as it’s good quality stuff and no different to the branded stuff, but it is significantly cheaper. I keep my eye on the offers, although the point made in the above post about a ‘hike and drop’ approach is a very good one – you need to keep your eyes open with those. I generally try and keep my shopping within a set amount, and follow the “Do I need it?” mantra.

I also make use of their Price Guarantee scheme. I keep my receipt and enter the details on their website the day after my visit, and it compares what I spent with what it would have cost at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose. If what I spent comes to less than 10% cheaper (which it frequently does) I get a voucher, which I print off and take with me on my next visit, and it gets knocked off my bill. I’ve had anything from 16p (negligible) to £2.50 (decent), but every little helps. That’s Tesco’s motto, of course, but it applies here. I’ve yet to reach the giddy heights of £7.20, which a colleague showed me a few weeks ago, but that came from a monthly big shop.

My Voucher Codes is a handy app if you have a smartphone. It tells you which places around your location are offering deals of pretty much any sort, from two-for-one meal deals, hairdressing, cinema, mechanics... Anything at all. Their website is worth a visit.

I use Top Cashback for online purchases. It’s pretty much the same as Quidco. It’s always nice to get a return on doing what I’d do anyway, however minimal it may be. It all adds up.

My best investment was 99p on a little cash book from Rymans. In this I keep strict records of all my transactions. I hang on to my receipts and write it in – there’s a column for the date, money out, money in, balance, etc, so I have a running total of exactly how much I have in my account at any given time. I check it regularly against my account online to make sure the two tie in, and as transactions generally take a couple of days to show up online it’s actually a more immediate method of keeping everything in check to the penny. It’s very satisfying to do – even if the figures aren’t great, at least I know what they are and am in control of them, which is important.

Alongside this, on a separate notepad, each month I write out a checklist of what needs to go out – rent, bills, council tax etc – subtract the total from what’s coming in, and the figure that leaves me with is the figure I have to stay well within on that month’s expenditure. All my expenditure is written out as I go along, with a running total so I know exactly where I am. Obvious stuff, I know, and probably no different to what everyone else here does with their own accounts. The main thing for me, and I guess for everyone else, is the feeling of being in control of my money and being able to account for every single penny at any given time. For too long, I certainly didn’t feel in control at all, and it’s a horrible feeling. And there’s something comforting and satisfying about maintaining handwritten records.

Rick, this is very impressive. All I do is check my online bank account everyday but I shop different places every week. I do look for bargains but find very few. Wish I was more like you x

Oh, I learned the hard way! There was a time when I paid little attention to my bank account, if any at all, and got into the classic trap of overdraft fees and bank charges, which is a nigh on impossible situation to get out of once you’re stuck in it. That was a few years ago, and I had a bit of a battle with NatWest over it, which I eventually won, but pulling yourself back into a reasonably healthy situation afterwards is a never-ending struggle. So I went from one extreme to the other – from not paying any attention to it to being very stringent about keeping my own records. I never want to be in that awful vicious circle of charges creating more charges again. It made me ill at one point.

I can’t begin to tell you how satisfying it is to write in those little columns. I have a special pen for it and everything! It’s pathetic really, but the anally-retentive list-maker in me really gets off on it. It’s become something of a routine. I guess it’s comforting, and as I said earlier, the feeling of being in control of my finances is very important.

I get a kick out of the daily checking of my balance because, for the first time in living memory, it's in credit all the time !!!! I have even modest savings (the last time I had those was my Trustee Savings Account in 1970-odd).