Every Friday I publish “Frugal Friday!“, an open-ended series with some of the simple and best ways to really save you money both now and in the future.

This Friday I am concentrating on reducing electricity bills. Here in the UK winter-time is traditionally the time of higher energy usage: the elderly use electric blankets, whole families have home lighting left on for longer as British Summer Time draws to a close, and we are generally stuck inside for the evenings more often requiring entertainment.

There are some simple steps you can take (and some cool gadgets you can buy without guilt!), to help lessen the impact of this seasonal increase in our home carbon emissions courtesy of our electric usage.

Check Your Tariff

Before last year, there was massive competition in the domestic supply market with various “lock in” and “fixed” deals. You may well have switched, I know I did. The fix on those tariffs has come to a close now though and prices are floating upwards so it’s time to get switching again.

There are hundreds of sites that will likely find you something cheaper; some good starting points are GoCompare, CompareTheMarket, and uSwitch. Don’t forget to finally go via QuidCo to get any cashback available, too!

Energy Saving Lightbulbs

Fairly obvious this one, and easy to achieve. Morrison’s just last week had an offer on of 4 for £1, and not low-quality either. As the nights get longer, more retailers will be trying to tempt us, so keep your eyes peeled. Even if you pay full price for them though you will still make a saving. The average bulb lasts for 5 years of normal use and consumes between 11 and 17 watts.

By switching all the bulbs in your house to low-energy equivalents, you could save around £112 a year and up to a whopping £307 over the life of a typical 8,000 hour bulb.

Turn Them Off

When you leave a room, turn the light off. Sounds so simple but take a moment and think – in the depths of winter – how often do you walk/drive/cycle around and think half of the houses you come across look like they are attempting to imitate the Blackpool Illuminations? Why pay even a reduced amount to keep an unoccupied room lit?

This can be a challenge with children, but with a little perseverance even the family dog can probably manage to turn the light out when it has finished in the kitchen. Your moody teenager may require slightly more effort.

Kill The Standby

Televisions, DVD players, computers, Satellite, Cable, modems, microwaves, food mixers, video recorders, printers, even modern intelligent washing machines and dishwashers. It’s amazing what has a ’standby’ mode these days. When standing by, ready for action, these devices are still sucking electricity and adding to your bills yet giving little to no benefit. Switch them off at the wall when you are done using them and again save upwards of £50 over the course of a typical year.

The Bye Bye Standby Energy Saving Kit takes the hassle out of such energy efficiencies by automatically killing the power for you when the device enters standby. It even comes with a handy remote to remotely control whatever you plug into it.

Monitor Your Usage

Last year, I got an Owl Cm119 Wireless Electricity Monitor, and they are absolutely fabulous. You can literally see, in real time, just how much money is being wasted in your home – and perhaps more impressive – see the difference after your efforts. The device pays for itself inside the first month or two, and you can find yourself doing seasonal challenges if you are not careful!

Banish the Tumble

As convenient as the tumble-dryer may be, it costs pounds to use every time. Pop the clothes out on the line if the weather is nice and get nicer clothes that last longer, dried for free courtesy of mother nature. Even if it is windy but lacking in sun you’ll be surprised how quickly clothes can dry in the open air.

Fridge & Freezer

If your freezer requires it, keep it defrosted regularly. Any build-up of ice means it has to work harder, consuming more electricity. If your fridge is regularly half-empty or more, fill it with water-filled bottles. These will help keep the inside temperature stable and reduce the effects opening and closing the door have. If your appliance(s) are older, when replacing ensure you get A-rated.

Never put warm or hot items in your fridge or freezer, either. Not only will this play havok with the internal temperature, it can take hours for your appliance to restore the previous temperature and damage food already within as well.

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Christmas is fast approaching! There are, as of today, 70 days until The Big Day.

If your family celebrates Christmas, it can be a testing time for your finances. Even with a relatively small family, it is amazing how quickly the cost of gifts can mount up. Throw in buying for friends, distant relatives, distant cousins 18 times removed, and you quickly end up potentially spending hundreds upon hundreds of pounds.

If you have not begun preparing for the cost of this, it inevitably ends up being charged on your flexible friend.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Even if you cannot get away with token presents, you do not have to spend the earth on giving to others. Some of the best presents can be the cheapest, and this Frugal Friday explores some of the options available to those of us who want to give thoughtful, meaningful gifts at Christmas without having to take out a second mortgage to achieve it.

8 Christmas Gift Ideas

… That won’t break the piggy bank.

Gift Certificates

Buying for some people can be a nightmare – take my step-father as an example. The man has everything he wants or needs in life, so what do you buy someone in that position? Find their weakness.

His weakness is model trains; the loft space of their home is entirely devoted to his railroad tracks. To save buying him something he doesn’t want or need, the best gift for him is a gift certificate from our local model railway shop. That way he can buy what he needs for his next expansion plan – and not have to exchange any money to do so.

Be careful though: Some gift certificates/cards expire if not used in a certain period. If the business you buy them from goes bust, you also have little to no comeback.

Amazon Wish Lists

A lot of people in my family have Amazon wish lists. If you want to be certain of buying them a gift they will appreciate and they live some distance away, have a browse through their wish list. You can likely find a reasonably cheap “Want” that can be fulfilled, and it’ll still be extremely meaningful to them to know it came from you. Amazon will even wrap it and ship it for you!

To get started, head on over to your local Amazon and click “Gifts & Wish Lists” or similar. You can then search for Wish Lists by name or email address. This may get you to their list without them even realising you have something off of their list in mind. Perfect!

If anyone wants to buy me something for Christmas, you can find mine here

Scented Candles

I love candles, and if you shop around, you can find some brilliant scents for very little. A few years ago I bought my wife a “Europe Candle Collection” that had scents of different European cities. They smelled divine when burned, but also looked amazing as well.

The price? £15 for 10.

Books

Almost everyone enjoys a good book, and if you cannot find anything on their Wish List, ask someone close to them for ideas. The danger is buying them a book they already have, so some collaboration is required. If you know the person really well then this becomes less of an issue – buying something they will really enjoy but that might be outside their usual own-purchase window.

Failing that, you can always fall back to a gift certificate from Amazon or their local book store.

A LoveFilm Membership

If their thing is more along the lines of good movies, then a LoveFilm (or other online DVD subscription service) is a brilliant gift. They can load it up with the movies they want, and watch them without paying a penny. This is much better value (for you and them!) than buying ‘a DVD’ or ‘a boxset’.

Home Made Cookies

If you are a whiz in the kitchen, some home-made goodies will go down a treat. For the sake of the cost of the ingredients involved, you can make someone smile from ear to ear for literally pennies.

Receiving such gifts, knowing the loving care that went into making them, makes the cost irrelevant to the receiver.

Gourmet Coffee

For the amount of coffee you usually get in these, they are hellishly expensive – but we are really talking about a whole gift for under £10 here. If the person you are buying for is rarely without a mug of coffee in their hand, this gift will be  perfect.

Expensive Undergarments

Male or female, adult, child or somewhere in between – there is always the need for socks and underpants. Ordinarily I am a ‘utility’ kind of purchaser in this department. When someone buys me some expensive stuff for Christmas, I really am thankful. They feel good, look good, and last so much longer.

You will still spend out less than £10.

Further Reading

There are loads of resources on the internet for further ideas – try searching Google for “Frugal Christmas Gifts” to end up in a sea of suggestions. You cannot escape the fact your son may want a Playstation 3 this year, but by saving money on other gifts, you might just be able to make that happen without resorting to charging your credit card or suffering in other areas of the budget.

Next year, start budgeting for Christmas gifts in January. If you already do this then fabulous! If not, budget it in. If you allow £25 in your budget for gifts, come December you will have £300 to spend on gifts for your loved ones, rather than ending up in a blind panic on December 10th wondering what to buy and how to pay for it.

Every Friday I publish “Frugal Friday!“, an open-ended series with some of the simple and best ways to really save you money both now and in the future.

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Every Friday I publish “Frugal Friday!“, an open-ended series with some of the simple and best ways to really save you money both now and in the future.

I was suffering from a small degree of writer’s block today. When I first came up with the idea of ‘Frugal Friday’, I had millions of post ideas zinging around in my brain, and it took much restraint not to write one huge article there and then with my ideas.

Now I have come to actually write another one, and my mind has gone blank. Every writer’s worst nightmare.

So I sat back and analysed myself for a moment. “What do I do that is frugal?”. I have written recently about saving money on your cooking and food shopping which are two of my passions, and something that everyone else has to do as well. I wrote about making good savings on the running cost of your car. Again, most people have a car and so that was a worthwhile article.

Then it suddenly dawned on me: haggling.

I have saved countless hundreds if not thousands of pounds over the years by haggling: with car dealers; shop assistants; telesales folks; a real varied range of different scenarios and people that more often than not, resulted in a saving.

Some examples from just this year include getting half-priced multiroom (for 2 rooms) for 12 months and a free Sky+ box for my satellite viewing pleasure. I got a 15% discount on my mobile phone bill without entering into a new contract. I even saved £150 off of a new set of tyres for my car.

So how do I did I do it, and how can you do the same?

Ask For a Discount

One of the simplest and most obvious ways is simply to ask for a discount. I once got 10% off in Curry’s just for asking if they could do me a discount! Front-line sales folks often have small discretionary powers when it comes to knocking value off of a product, but they won’t unless you ask.

Go Armed

I needed a new tyre earlier on this year on my car due to a slow-puncture in a non-repairable place. Two others were coming up for probably being illegal, so I decided I’d get them all replaced at the same time.

Unfortunately the ’slow’ had suddenly gone from slow to not so slow, and I found myself in the nearest Kwik-Fit. While they are not exactly my first port of call for maintenance, it was a case of “needs must” as I would not have made it home.  After choosing my brand, I sat down in reception.

I didn’t read the free magazines or drink instant plastic coffee, however. I dug my mobile phone out of my pocket and began price hunting for the brand and model of tyre I had just been cajoled by circumstance into purchasing. Unsurprisingly, the price I was paying was well over the odds of what I could have paid if I had ordered online.

When the chap called me over to pay, I asked for a discount. When he replied that the “price was good” already, I showed him my findings. Even my Ford dealer was coming out cheaper than what they were charging, and that was saying something. I walked out after a few more minutes of discussion with over £150 discount applied.

A Warning Shot

This works really well for services provided on a monthly basis such as satellite TV or cable, mobile phones, insurances, credit cards and so on. Mention that you are “considering leaving for another provider” and many customer service agents will launch into retention mode. How far you get depends on who you get, and what the company is, but sometimes this is all you need do.

I did this to Sky earlier in the year, and got offered Sky+ for free instead of the usual £60 installation. A good result. You can do the same with your credit card if you don’t like the interest rate, or your cell phone package, or your gym membership or any number of regularly paid for services.

Make The Explicit Threat

Sometimes though merely thinking aloud to a customer service agent is not sufficient. Sometimes you must explicitly state “I wish to cancel my account” before they will pass you through to the Retention Team. These folks have enormous power, and can make the world move if they like you enough and you are otherwise profitable.

I escalated my Warning Shot to Sky to an Explicit Threat and the tone of the conversation changed. It was no longer a cheerful discussion, it was pure business: They wanted mine, and they would clearly work to get it. In the end I settled for a free Sky+ box, free installation, and half-priced multiroom x2 for 12 months.

Don’t Be Afraid to Back Down

Sometimes, despite escalating through the stages of Asking, Arming, Warning and Threatening, you get met with the grim response of “very well. Your account will be cancelled.”

Ack! They have called your bluff.

You now have two options. You can back-pedal if you wish. “I should really discuss this with my partner first. I will get back to you on this” is a good back-down method. Sometimes, despite fighting the good fight, you lose. If you are ultimately happy with the service you are being provided with then there is no shame in backing down from the haggling fight.

Or Follow Through

If however you don’t mind switching (remember, new customers generally get some cracking deals), keep going. You may well find you get a call back about 5 days before your contract expires pleading with you to reconsider. This worked very well for me with my mobile contract with Three. I had built up a 6 year relationship with the company, but I was not really happy. I am still not, but that is another post altogether. I went through the stages, and eventually asked for my PAC code to transfer my number and close down my account. I had not expected them to let it get to that stage, though.

To my utter surprise, they gave it to me. Without argument.

I rolled with it and followed through. I was not actually all that concerned about losing the service, in reality. Except, 4 days before my contract was due to be shut off, I received a call from their retentions team pleading with me to renew my contract. I spent a good 20 minutes on the phone with them explaining that I did not wish to renew, but would remain if they could reduce my monthly payments.

I received a 15% discount without having to renew my contract. They will apply a 15% discount to my monthly bill on a month-by-month basis until I decide to re-cancel, upgrade or renew. That suits me perfectly!

Haggling is at the end of the day, all about being brazen enough to ask. As someone far wiser than I once quipped: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get!”

Have you haggled, or does the thought of arguing over a price seem embarrassing to you? Share your views in the comments!

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Every Friday I publish “Frugal Friday!“, an open-ended series with some of the simple and best ways to really save you money both now and in the future.

This week I am concentrating on cutting down the costs associated with owning your car. Nearly everyone has one, nearly everyone needs one, and nearly everyone pays more than they need to for the privilege.

Cut Your Insurance Costs

Get Comprehensive Cover

Despite the lesser cover that third-party insurance provides, unbelievably the quotes are usually more expensive than if you had taken out comprehensive cover in the first place.

Shop Around

Always shop around for your insurance using price comparison websites to see how the quotes come up (GoCompare, MoneySupermarket, Confused, Compare The Market). Phone your present insurer and see if they can beat it if you’re otherwise happy with the service they provide. Remember, not all insurance providers are on price comparison websites (such as Direct Line), so be sure to get separate quotes from them as well.

Pay In Full

It may seem convenient to your budget to pay over 10 or 12 months, but invariably you will be stung by the company for doing so, as in effect they are loaning you the money to get the policy. APR’s range from 15-30% for this ‘privilege’, so if you can always always always pay for your policy in one go.

This has the advantage that if your vehicle is written off in an accident, you do not continue paying for car insurance on a car you no longer even own.

Up Your Excess

If you are not already penalised for being a young or inexperienced driver, then up your excess (deductable). The quotes vary wildly when you change your excess from £100 to £500. Be  sure you will be able to access such an amount in the event you need to make a claim though, as this will instantly be taken out of any payout you get. Any claims under your excess you will be expected to meet in full.

Drive Carefully

Hopefully this one is obvious, but if you drive like Jensen Button but on the M3 rather than Silverstone, you will end up having an accident, getting stopped by the police or if really unlucky, both at once. Not only do insurance claims knock up your costs, but so do points on your driving license.

Play With Your Job Title

I am not suggesting outright fraud here, but there is no escaping the fact the work you do has a very real impact on the cost of your premium. Martin Lewis over at Money Saving Expert has put together a job title picker to see if you could save money by tweaking your job title. Remember the general rule of thumb: If a family friend would agree on the spot that is a reasonable job title for the work you do, it is reasonable to give it to the insurance company. Don’t outright lie though, if the company finds out during a claim you could find your cover nullified.

Purchase via a Cashback Site

Once you have found a quote you are happy with, see if you can get the same quote again but via a Cashback site. You could find an insurer paying you £25-£150 for taking out their cover in doing so! Check out the CashBack Optimiser to see which site pays the most for the company you’re looking at.

Cut Your Fuel Costs

Shop Around

Just as I advocate shopping around for your insurance, shop around for your fuel as well. Costs in a 10 mile radius can vary by as much as 15 pence a litre, so it pays to spend a moment to check PetrolPrices.com and see who is charging what today before you go fill up. The site requires registration but is completely free.

Do Not Fill Up

Unless you have a long journey ahead, do not fill your tank right up. If you want to be really frugal, don’t go much beyond half a tank at any one time. Fuel is heavy, and your engine will have to work harder to move the car and its contents around the more it weighs. This tip won’t make you rich overnight, but over the course of the lifetime of the car, it could save you hundreds of pounds.

Empty The Boot

If your vehicle is anything like mine, the boot becomes a storage cupboard over time. Anything not immediately required seems to end up in it somehow. In much the same way as the extra fuel weight means less miles per gallon, so does the extra weight of the rubbish in your boot. Keep it regularly spring-cleaned, and only carry around what you really need day-to-day. Every additional 50kg of weight you carry in your car increases fuel consumption by an average of 2%.

Take Your Foot off the Pedal

Simply driving a little more efficiently can add up to 25 more miles per gallon of fuel! If your tank holds 13 gallons, that is possibly upwards of an extra 250 miles per tank. Anticipate traffic flows, look further ahead than you normally would, and knock some speed off your clock. Posted speeds are maximum limits, not targets.

Consider a Cash Back Credit Card

Citi offer a Shell-branded MasterCard that pays 1.5% back on the price of your petrol if you fill up in a Shell garage. This used to be 3% and much more worthwhile, but you may now find simply shopping around saves you more over the long term.

AMEX offer a Platinum Cashback credit card with a whopping 5% introductory cashback rate, but this also drops to between 0.75% and 1.5% over the long term.

Finally Egg Money offers 1% cashback but unless you spend considerably on it throughout the year, the £12 annual fee will eat into any cashback you earn, making the card uneconomical for anyone but the higher spenders.

If you choose to go for a cashback card, remember to pay off the balance in full every month. The APR of these cards will stunningly dwarf any return you could have expected from the cashback.

Keep it Serviced

A well looked after engine, is a happy fuel efficient engine. Change the oil regularly, change the oil and fuel filters and clean or replace the air filter regularly and in any case within the servicing schedule of the manufacturers handbook.

Keep Them Inflated

A tyre just a few PSI short of its target starts to lose efficiency. A 5 PSI drop can see the drag increase by as much as 4%, and this increases the work your engine has to do to keep you rolling. It will also start to damage the tyre and cause uneven wear, making it unsafe over the long term and also speed up the replacement schedule biting your wallet.

Turn The Air Conditioning Off

AirCon increases your petrol consumption by as much as 10 per cent – so if it is only a little warm, put the fan on or wind down your window. That said, if you are travelling over 60mph then having the window down increases drag which increases your fuel consumption – so air conditioning would be better. Better yet, keep below 60mph and keep the window open!

Other Cost-Saving Ideas

Wash At Home

Taking your vehicle through the car wash may save time, but at £5 a go for a decent one, it is not cheap. It will also likely start damaging or scratching your paintwork, only do half a job on your alloys and cover your windscreen in wax. For the sake of an hour on a weekend, it is far cheaper to do it yourself. Even if you want to buy brand-name goods to do it with, it will work out considerably less than £5 per wash. If you are content with a bucket of soapy water then you may as well put the whole £5 back in your pocket.

Avoid Dealer Servicing

If your vehicle is outside of its warranty period, avoid the dealership like the plague. An independent garage will likely do the same or better work for half the price. Case in point: My Ford dealership charges £125 for an oil and filter change. KwikFit do the same for £25, and my local garage charges £19.50. All use the same parts and oil, and the cheapest one also had me back on the road in the shortest amount of time.

Downsize

If it has come the time to replace your old banger with something a bit more modern, consider going smaller. A smaller vehicle will be more efficient, generally cost less to insure, and cost less time to wash as well.

Avoid Financing A New Car

Aside from the fact brand new cars lose value the moment you drive them off the forecourt (as much as 20% in some cases), if you have bought it on finance you could be making it much more expensive in the long run. See my own story on doing this, as it effectively doubled the cost of my car over the 6 years.

And the Biggest Saving?

Use your car less. This does not mean don’t use it where doing so would be useful, but if you can, combine your journeys into one and spend a moment planning out the most efficient route to do everything you need to do without driving along the same bit of road three or four times.

If you are just “popping down the shop” and the weather is pleasant, grab your bike or take a walk instead. Short journeys are arguably the most fuel-expensive, and if you can cut them out you will be well on your way to cutting your annual vehicle costs.

Anything I missed? Come help out in the comments.

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Every Friday I publish “Frugal Friday!”, an open-ended series with some of the simple and best ways to really save you money both now and in the future.

This week I’m focusing on short, sharp tips that could save you hundreds of pounds over the course of a year while food shopping.

Never Shop on an Empty Stomach

You know the drill. It’s early evening, you are tired from work, starving hungry and find no food in the house. By some miracle you resist the temptation to ring the local Indian delivery folks, and instead shuffle back in your car to visit your local supermarket. You have nothing in mind particularly beyond getting home again, and as a result end up massively overspending. Your hunger did your shopping, rather than any conscious plan you may have had.

Eat before you go shopping. If you are not hungry when you go, then tantalising offers that are not already on your shopping list will likely be easily ignored. Which neatly brings me to my next point…

Write a List

Going shopping without a list is a disaster waiting to happen. You buy loads of things you don’t need, forget half the stuff you do, and get loads of “extras” on the side.

To combat this, work out a meal plan for the week ahead and everything you’ll need to buy to make it happen. If you are going to do some batch cooking in the week, see what you already have in the store cupboards before adding them to the list.

If it isn’t on the list – don’t buy it!

And leave the pen at home… adding it to the list afterwards is cheating.

Calculate a Budget

Much like having a list is important for not over-spending, so is having an idea of where ‘overspending’ would be in the first place. Everyone will have their own idea for a budget, but £50 per person per month is not unreasonable to aim for if you have the time to batch cook. That is my own personal food budget, and mostly, I manage to achieve that these days.

Slow Down & Scan

The items on the shelves at eye-level are the most profitable products. You see a jar of pasta sauce the moment you walk into the aisle and grab it, throw it in your basket and zoom off to the next item in the list.

You just fell for the oldest marketing trick in the book. Next time slow down and study the prices. Scan the entire shelf from top to bottom and look at the cost per unit calculations most supermarkets provide in the super-small-print on the shelf labels. If you take a moment to compare prices you can save upwards of 100% on the purchase price of some items.

Try Downshifting

Downshifting isn’t about suffering a cheaper product, it is about finding a cheaper product where you cannot honestly tell the difference between it and a more expensive brand. If you have a habit of always buying “Finest” or “Taste The Difference” or some other premium product, try a brand name instead. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, try stores-own. You’ll often save pounds per product doing this and likely won’t notice a shred of difference when cooked.

Some premium brands and stores-own are even made in the same factory. The only difference is the packaging and the price.

Shop at Reduction Hour

My father makes a killing doing this. He very rarely goes shopping before 8pm, which is precisely when our local Tesco begins doing the final knock-downs on things that are going out of date the next day or so. It is not uncommon for him to come home with bagfuls of items at 10p here, 20p there where the original cost would have been pounds here and pounds there instead.

Anything that will not be eaten or turned into a batched meal gets frozen until it is needed and remains just as good and just as flavoursome as the full priced equivalent.

Never Turn Down ‘Free’

Quite regularly my mother will include me in meals she makes for herself, or my father will invite me out to lunch to catch up. Never turn down these opportunities, as it’s a great way to spend extra time with friends and family, and shave costs from your food bill as well.

Happy Friday, and Happy (Cheaper) Shopping!

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