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Anything new?

Making your money go further
neversay
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Anything new?

#112998

Postby neversay » January 24th, 2018, 11:23 am

I'm sure most of us here are LBYM old-timers but, given the board has been quiet, I wondered if anyone has any new LBYM strategies for this year?

My current list:

  • Utilities - Changing my gas/electric deal after comparison on MSE, uswitch, etc plus £30 cashback via uswitch/topcashback (more than MSE). Moving back to E.on and their smart metering after a year with a small cheaper provider but decided that I like the greater visibility of my usage that smart metering provided. I'm also pleased with my (£90) Nest which has helped us to optimise usage - particularly modulating the boiler and reaching temperatures steadily. Regular comparison searches and cashback for all other insurance/utility renewals. The figures from last year to beat are: car insurance £163, home insurance £146 and electric/gas £64.50 pcm, annual travel insurance free (HSBC Premier), car breakdown £27 inc homestart.
  • Cashback - Just turned a £43 Quidco payout into an Amazon voucher (with 1.5% bonus) so I have broken the £2.5k payout from Quidco. However, I am doing more with Topcashback now as Quidco tracking is so unreliable.
  • Price watches - Camelcamelcamel alerts me when any of my Amazon wishlist items hit my target buy price, including presents for kids, kids party gifts. Hotukdeals alerts me with other keywords, like Xiaomi Aqara sensors for my cool smarthings set-up.
  • Mortgage - Remortgaging in June and considering an offset this time and wondering whether to lock-in a deal early (?).
  • Credit - I'm fortunate to have a perfect credit score but still check credit record monthly via noddle and Experian to ensure there's no fraud or searches that could affect our rating (particularly ahead of remortgaging). Still us Amex for 1% cashback.
  • Tracking - Watching all my accounts using Moneyhub web/app which gives me daily alerts on all transactions which are good for fraud monitoring but lets me categorise spending and do budgeting and analysis (well worth £10 a year to me, but others exist). Also reviewing all our subscriptions and direct debits to check no money is leaking away.
  • Holidays - Summer holiday all book and paid for with cheap long-haul flight deal during the summer vacation, staying with friends and family. I need to schedule mini-breaks during the half-terms. I will use up some free nights from reward nights from hotels.com and possibly add some further family outings on to business trips (Scotland, Cotswolds, etc)
  • Groceries - As for shopping, we can afford Waitrose but proudly shop at the nearby Lidl which is quick, easy and far cheaper for most things. Occasional trips to other supermarkets for other items and bulk buying non-perishables on deals elsewhere.
  • Meals - Meal planning is definitely an area for improvement.
  • Savings - Shuffled some savings and cash ISAs to Virgin Money and cycling money through regular savings accounts. I've finally got a Zopa account and may consider parking some money there for a while.
  • Investments - Consolidated old F&C CTFs into II JISAs. Sold some of my miscellaneous shareholdings from my iWeb Shares ISA. Generally simplifying and holding on to too much cash so hoping for a healthy correction at some point
  • Pension - Requested my annual transfer valuation from an old USS pension. All my II SIPP holdings are in low-cost Vanguard Lifestrategy 80:20 as I haven't had time to actively invest recently. I'm not sure I'd get better results from tinkering but should ask other Lemon Fools...
  • Car - Car serviced using a friendly local one-man garage who doesn't mind me bringing along oil, filters etc that I pick up on deals online. MOT booked for March at a testing station that doesn't do repairs. My 12-year-old estate is now on 94k miles and still going strong, considering whether breaking the 100k barrier causes a large price drop (?). Every month or so I consider a change to a hybrid/electric but the car is so reliable and costs so little to run (and depreciation) that it's not worth getting a new one for the kids to destroy. Only downside is it's diesel VED but we don't travel far and switching will probably do more net environmental damage.
  • Fuel - Spend £80 a month on fuel on average, less than 8k miles a year. Monitoring my fuel using the Fuelio App on Android (highly recommended, but others exist). Doing an experiment with BP ultimate fuel for a few fill-ups which seems to push the price per mile up from 16p to 18p but the car does seem more spritely. The car costs in total well under £2,500 a year for everything (fuel, insurance, VED, servicing) part of which is also offset by business mileage.
  • Health - Cancelling my private income protection cover and doing it instead via my business, in a trust. Need to revisit dentist subscriptions for the family which have crept up (particularly given that none of us have any dental issues and we spend all of 30 seconds in the chair every 6 months)
  • Garden - Doing a planting plan and will be visiting my local allotments shop plus watching out for online deals from Thompson & Morgan etc. Will do fewer but high-value crops in my small veg patch this year.
  • Home help - Taking great pleasure saving a lot of money doing all our own cleaning, gardening and DIY (while our next door neighbour is never without a tradesperson's van outside their house).
  • Entertainment - After spending well over a hundred quid for a decidedly average meal last week, we resolved to avoid fine-dining restaurants for a few months and instead blow the money filling-up the fridge with nice food and wine from the supermarkets instead.
  • Reward Schemes - Having said that about restaurants, it's time to use up some those Tesco 4x vouchers on free Pizza Express trips with the kids and some days out this summer. After years of collecting, I still haven't seen anything good to spend Nectar points on.
  • Tech - Tech is my weakness and I'm at 'peak gadget' right now. I really need to remove old and redundant tech as we have old laptops, tablets, cables, you name it. Does anyone know any good sources for getting rid?
  • Stuff - Seriously, we don't need more stuff. It's time to empty all the cupboards, attic, wardrobes, garage and donate, sell or recycle/dump all the garbage we have accumulated over the years. Made a start on the kids rooms which are now wonderful. Less is more!

What's everyone else up to?

didds
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Re: Anything new?

#113003

Postby didds » January 24th, 2018, 11:32 am

"Meals - Meal planning is definitely an area for improvement."

what are the strategies people use?

I would have thought the most financially prudent approach would be something like

1) buy cheapest/bargains when shopping
2) design a menu around that

1) may of course include buying BOGOFS/reduced items when availbale (freezing etc) and usijng at a later date.

I would imagine planning a week's menu (say) and shopping for that means one may end up spendfing normal amounts for a meal that could have been made cheaper with a different option when confronted with it in the shop/market etc?

didds

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Re: Anything new?

#113025

Postby Alaric » January 24th, 2018, 12:21 pm

didds wrote:what are the strategies people use?


Buy what's on special offer including last date bargains and don't buy more than you can eat, freeze or store.

neversay
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Re: Anything new?

#113034

Postby neversay » January 24th, 2018, 1:00 pm

didds wrote:"Meals - Meal planning is definitely an area for improvement."

what are the strategies people use?


Quite. I ended up writing so much that I didn't finish that point properly. Other than buying bulk and discount, we should be doing a lot more batch cooking, slow cooking (meal prepared in the morning, ready in the evening) and meals where we have bought the ingredients specifically (e.g. 'Friday evening is homemade pizza night'). At present it's all too ad-hoc.

N.

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Re: Anything new?

#113037

Postby didds » January 24th, 2018, 1:36 pm

I identify with that neversay.

We do pretty well with the p[urchasing - on the whole.

But our lack of planning leads to quite a few jacket spuds/pasta/emergency beans on toast type meals rather than a considered approach.

The worst case scenario is Mrs Didds "picking somehting up from the supermarket" on the way home from work that seems to somehow end up as £25 on a sort of meal and a half, which if the "kids" don't then share we may as well have gone to a local pub and saved the washing up!

didds

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Re: Anything new?

#113039

Postby Loup321 » January 24th, 2018, 1:41 pm

Meal planning strategy:

We are 2 adults and 1 child. We try to include the child in our evening meal, but if we want something spicy she has something separate (microwave pizza, or chicken nuggets and corn on the cob are staple meals). Usually, we cook a recipe for 4 adults, eat half on day 1, and reheat the other half on day 2, only cooking the rice / pasta / side vegetables that we need.

Sit down and plan the week - which nights are one or more of us out, which afternoons are busy and we won't want to cook etc. Decide which nights are cooking nights and which are reheating nights. If one adult is out, plan meals that include the ingredients that person doesn't eat. It doesn't have to be Cook meal A, Reheat meal A, Cook meal B, Reheat meal B - we might cook 2 nights in a row and then reheat 2 nights in a row. We might cook meals for one if someone is out.

Find nice recipes in the books I have on the shelf, or a book I have borrowed from the library. Write out all the ingredients I need, including quantities. Check the cupboard to make sure I have enough pasta, spices, tinned tomatoes etc. Add on anything like coffee, toilet rolls, washing up liquid, that we are getting low on. Go shopping.

Sometimes, you have to buy different quantities, in which case you can freeze the rest. I have 3 chicken legs in the freezer, because there were 5 in the pack and I only needed 2 (I have a big stash of individually frozen chicken drumsticks for the small person, because she can't manage a whole chicken leg). Or you might get a BOGOF deal on mince or see some nice stuff in the reduced fridge. Then you can get a "freezer week" when you use up all these bits in the freezer, and only buy the fresh ingredients. These take place every 2-3 months in our house. They used to be more frequent when I shopped in Sainsburys because there were more deals. Now I shop in Lidl, everything is cheaper but there are far fewer deals so I rarely buy anything not on the list.

Basically, it takes half an hour in bed on a Saturday morning with a few recipe books and a cup of tea to plan the week.

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Re: Anything new?

#113093

Postby Itsallaguess » January 24th, 2018, 5:16 pm

neversay wrote:
Price watches - Camelcamelcamel alerts me when any of my Amazon wishlist items hit my target buy price, including presents for kids, kids party gifts.


You've just reminded me about something I knew I wanted to post about here -

Morrisons have a deal on at the moment, where 5000 MORE points are earned, on top of the default 1250 points you would get anyway, when you buy a £50 denomination gift card from a number of retailers, one of which is AMAZON, but here's a picture showing the others....

https://images.hotukdeals.com/comments/ ... 020175.jpg

Now this won't suit everyone, but given that this is a 12.5% reduction in effect, it may suit many people here if purchases are already planned from the outlets involved with the offer....I've been stocking up on Amazon cards and there's plenty still left in my local Morrisons...

The offer runs to the end of January, but please be aware that if you're buying more than one £50 gift card, they do need to be put through as completely separate transactions to gain the MORE points on each one...

There's a HOTUKDEALS thread here for anyone interested -

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/6250-m ... ms-2872455

I think there's also a limit to the number of MORE points you can gain in a single month, but it's £100 I think, from reading the above thread, so plenty of room there for people to take advantage of the offer if it suits them.

Please be aware that this offer only applies to the £50 gift cards listed on the above picture link.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

neversay
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Re: Anything new?

#113116

Postby neversay » January 24th, 2018, 7:21 pm

Thanks @itsallaguess.

As you have probably seen, there's also £10 off £50 on a spend with Amazon using the code BIGTHANKS as per this HUKD thread:

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/get-10 ... d-comments

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Re: Anything new?

#113147

Postby johnstevens77 » January 24th, 2018, 10:16 pm

I often buy what's on offer and cook around that. E. G. Lidl had lamb legs on offer for £6 or so a kilo so I bought one weighing about 1.8kgs but we are only two so I butchered it as follows: A rump to roast made 3 portions, (two hot and one cold meat), 4 steaks, a good shank for 4 portions, (two as is and 2 leftovers as a sauce with pasta), 4 portions for stew/curry/casserole. Today, I cooked 2 portions of the stewing batch with lots of onions, garlic and fresh okra in tomato sauce, added some wilting red peppers from the fridge, salt, pepper, oregano, allspice and pommegranate molasses and ended up with at least 4 portions of a good Middle Eastern "bamia marak", lamb and okra with tomatoes. Then we had a Waitrose voucher, £8 off a £40 spend which I used on Sunday, 31st December. I went early and raided the RFQS cabinet. Amongst other things, I bought 3 packets of their Xmas sausagemeat stuffing mixes. Some were used as meat balls for a luch buffet for the neighbours, some for meat balls in tomato sace for us and one pkt was roasted for lunch, rather like a meat loaf with gravy.

john

neversay
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Re: Anything new?

#113294

Postby neversay » January 25th, 2018, 1:01 pm

I should have added that part of my motivation on the meal planning is nudging myself to a healthier diet. Having just had stilton and broccoli soup (nom nom nom) I didn't need to consume as much white bread as I did (four buttered slices). Aside from self-restraint, I need to plan more filling lunch choices to be healthier and include 5+ a day which should be easy as I'm working from home.

It would be good to hear if anyone else has other LBYM actions underway this year?

My guess is that most of us here have been living and breathing LBYM for so long that we consistently do all we can.

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Re: Anything new?

#113312

Postby vrdiver » January 25th, 2018, 1:49 pm

I love supermarket bargains, but have learnt (the hard way!) that they're not bargains if you end up throwing stuff away, or doing an expensive fill-in shop to make use of them!

We make a meal plan, then a shopping list based on that. I'll look at the specials, yellow labels, BOGOFs etc, but only buy if they work with the meal plan or there's room in the freezer or shelf life is not an issue (e.g. last summer I had 20 kg of sugar in the garage at 38p/kg, waiting for jam making)

Asda seems to have price-matched basic fruit and veg with Aldi (they're almost opposite each other 'round here) but have kept the better BB dates, so I've migrated back to Asda for some items. Waitrose's "Pick Your Own" 20% off offers off are quite useful (especially if you like marmite :)) as is the free cup of coffee if actually shopping there!

Our Morrisons was cheapest for petrol for quite a while, but it's worth registering (basic is free) with http://www.petrolprices.com to check the competition. (I usually work out the cost of fuel for the increased journey, as there's no point in spending a £1 to save 50p!). If petrolprices is "hiding" a station you want to check, you can look it up via the map using http://www.whatprice.co.uk/petrol-price ... rices.html.

A +1 for camelcamelcamel. it achieves two objectives for me:

I look at the lowest price paid in the last year or so, and set my target price for an alert somewhere near that (sometimes above, so I get an alert when the price is dropping, even if it's not in my target range just yet.

#1. No alert, and I've saved money by not buying :) or alert and I've saved money compared to buying as soon as I saw it.
#2. Waiting for the alert makes me think twice about whether I really want it.

VRD

neversay
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Re: Anything new?

#113317

Postby neversay » January 25th, 2018, 1:55 pm

Thanks @vrdriver.

+1 for PetrolPrices

Incidentally, I mentioned having just started the switch to E.On from my current small energy supplier Future Energy. It turns out that they have now gone bust - https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/ ... -customers

neversay
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Re: Anything new?

#113319

Postby neversay » January 25th, 2018, 2:03 pm

Here's another LBYM opportunity:

You'll soon be able to fill up your water bottle for free in places such as Costa and Premier Inn as part of a new national scheme to cut the use of plastic. Water UK, which represents water and wastewater firms, has today launched its drinking water campaign, with the hope you'll be able to refill your bottle for free in tens of thousands of places in England by 2021. Water UK is working alongside the Refill campaign, which aims to make it as easy as possible to reuse water bottles and has already mapped 1,600 refilling stations on its app, to create a national network of places to get free tap water at high street shops, coffee shops, businesses and local authorities. (via https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/ ... -as-costa-)

App here: http://www.refill.org.uk/get-the-refill-app/

As a family we all use water bottles when we are out and about. Personally though, I'm not averse to asking to refill a bottle anywhere rather than pay £s for plastic bottles of water. Still, an initiative such as this great if it reduces all the staggering amounts of unnecessary plastic waste - let alone anti-LBYM expenditure - of plastic water bottles.

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Re: Anything new?

#113325

Postby UncleIan » January 25th, 2018, 2:26 pm

A yellow sticker anecdote...

One of my kids now has a weekend job at a major uk supermarket chain. They work on a Friday night, early evening, then for an hour after the shop shuts. One of their jobs is to go round the "fresh" areas looking for yellow stickered stuff that has a BBE/Use by date of that day, and removing them from the shelves. Sad to say from a general point of view, this stuff goes in the bin rather than a local hospice or homeless charity. From our point of view it's an added entertainment, as some of it tickles the kids fancy, and they bring it home with them...ten past ten on a Friday night is now "look what I got!" time. It either goes in the freezer, or the fridge, and the weeks meal plan gets adjusted to fit depending. We've had some lovely smoked salmon from the "high end" range, sausages, sushi, various veg, even a rather nice cake one week.

So if you want free food, work in a supermarket in the evenings!

Oh, and yes, they also do the reducing, and so has to run the gauntlet of yellow sticker groupies following them about. :)

neversay
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Re: Anything new?

#113361

Postby neversay » January 25th, 2018, 6:13 pm

Also, just a reminder to everyone that you don't have to wait until your contracts are up to get a better deal with your current provider.

Today I noticed the Vodafone Fibre 76Mb deal for £24 per month inc line rental for an 18-month contract (ends today). I contacted Sky who said I'm still on contract to the end of March but the still matched the Vodafone deal with Sky Fibre Max for the same price for a 12-month contract.

There's always a good offer on elsewhere so it's worth shopping around 2 months out from your contract end date.

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Re: Anything new?

#113475

Postby JessUK98 » January 26th, 2018, 1:55 pm

Meal planning is one of the things I'm terrible at. I did try once, lasted about a week and then I decided it was too much effort.
I need to make more of a concerted effort I think. I'm sure once I get a few meal plans saved, it will be much easier.
I already do a lot of batch cooking, as it makes things easier for me at lunch times. I nip home from work to take the dog for a quick walk and can just bung left overs in the microwave.
I need to also stick to my shopping lists as well. I have a habit of putting whatever takes my fancy in the trolley. I remember as a student and later new homeowner, religiously budgeting and making lists (and buying "no frills" stuff etc). I would also would wander round the house in a coat and fingerless gloves rather than pay for heating (to be fair I was also on the breadline and only had an open coal fire and portable heaters anyway), and would monitor my water usage (metered). Now that I'm comfortably off I've gone off the rails and don't even think of stuff like that. My younger self would be horrified :lol:

Thankfully a lot of lessons I've learnt over the years as a TMFer have stuck. No more debt, I always shop around for the cheapest deals, pay for everything annually, pay my credit card off every month, keep a track of all my expenses (very interesting to see whet I managed to live on) and reuse/recycle most things that I can.
I need to get a handle on frittering away all my surplus cash now. I've managed to save quite a bit every month for nearly a year without touching it, so am now looking at putting that into some kind of investment (was thinking fixed rate bonds and/or stocks & shares ISA). I do sometimes wonder where I'd be financially if I hadn't found TMF when I did.

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Re: Anything new?

#113498

Postby didds » January 26th, 2018, 3:19 pm

JessUK98 wrote:and would monitor my water usage (metered).


which as an aside is exactly why water metering is not - IMO - a good idea. I accept others mileage may vary.

didds

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Re: Anything new?

#113515

Postby swill453 » January 26th, 2018, 4:28 pm

didds wrote:
JessUK98 wrote:and would monitor my water usage (metered).


which as an aside is exactly why water metering is not - IMO - a good idea.

I don't think JessUK98's statement supports your conclusion at all. As a (presumably) single occupant with water metering, the water bill would be far less than an equivalent unmetered property.

Scott.

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Re: Anything new?

#113556

Postby JessUK98 » January 26th, 2018, 7:27 pm

swill453 wrote:
didds wrote:
JessUK98 wrote:and would monitor my water usage (metered).


which as an aside is exactly why water metering is not - IMO - a good idea.

I don't think JessUK98's statement supports your conclusion at all. As a (presumably) single occupant with water metering, the water bill would be far less than an equivalent unmetered property.

Scott.


Absolutely. I can’t remember exactly how much I was paying for unmetered water before I got a meter put in (I think it was about £25 p/m several years ago), but it literally cut my bill by over a half. Then obviously there is an opportunity to save a few quid again by being stingy with water. I’ve never been wasteful of water anyway, but I used to think twice about washing the car, or putting an extra load of washing in, or having a long shower. I even went so far as putting a brick in the cistern and not flushing the loo unless I did a number 2. Now I don’t think twice about how much washing I do, or how long I have a shower for etc. Nice in a way, but still pretty wasteful to some degree.

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Re: Anything new?

#113628

Postby vrdiver » January 27th, 2018, 10:24 am

swill453 wrote:
didds wrote:
JessUK98 wrote:and would monitor my water usage (metered).


which as an aside is exactly why water metering is not - IMO - a good idea.

I don't think JessUK98's statement supports your conclusion at all. As a (presumably) single occupant with water metering, the water bill would be far less than an equivalent unmetered property.

Scott.


Water meters were (and are) an excellent idea! They make people think and act to turn the tap off whilst brushing their teeth, use a washing up bowl etc. Just like the 5p charge on carrier bags, they focus attention on needless waste, as well as penalise people who leave their garden hose running (if you want water for the garden, get a water butt).

Imagine the waste if we moved away from electricity and gas meters to a fixed charge instead: houses left heated with the windows open, lights on all night and in unused rooms etc. etc.. Water conservation is just as important as energy conservation, but without the carrot&stick of metering, most people just wouldn't bother.


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