Council Tax makes up a large part of your monthly expenditure so wouldn't it be great if you could reduce the amount you pay, and even better if you could get a nice fat cheque at the same time?Well, maybe you can. Apparently up to 400,000 houses in the UK have been assigned to the wrong council tax band and it's really easy to check if your house is one of them. If it is, you could have your future Council Tax payments reduced and get a rebate for any past overpayments.It's basically due to the fact that when Council Tax was first introduced, the government needed every house in the … [Read more...]
See how much you can save….
I know I'm always telling you about ways to save on your gas and electricity but today I wanted to share with you this:It's my latest energy bill, showing that I'm £858.07 in credit! How fantastic is that?We've tried really hard to reduce our energy usage around the house using all of the tips that I regularly share with you on here but as well as the energy we've saved by reducing our consumption, we've also saved by switching to a different provider.I think a lot of people don't realise how easy it is to switch providers. Everything stays exactly the same other than the company … [Read more...]
A Frugal New Year – Saving energy around the home…
I'm working with Britmums and British Gas at the moment on a campaign to help educate people about energy conservation which is perfect timing as my next post about how to have a Frugal New Year was going to be all about reminding you how to save energy as a family. I know I'm always going on about saving energy but it really is important and to make sure you really get the message, I'm going to share with you something that my daughter was taught at school: Using Less Energy = Lower Energy Bills + Less Impact on the Environment To a 9 year old it's a no brainer really, why would you not … [Read more...]
A Frugal New Year – Let’s start with meal planning….
Meal planning is probably the single biggest change I made when I started out on my frugal journey and it's something that I continue to do (almost) every week. I'm not perfect though and if I'm honest, there are plenty of times when we don't stick to the plan for one reason or another but on the whole, we do quite well and have managed to reduce our food shopping bill by a fair bit.I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you what meal planning is or how to do it but I will tell you how I do it and hopefully, if you meal plan too, you might share how you plan your meals in … [Read more...]
Family Friendly Frugal Meals – Sausage and Bean Casserole….
I didn't do too well at sticking to last weeks meal plan I'm afraid.... I *may* have even substituted one night for a takeaway and another for egg, chips and beans ;-)I've had a stern word with myself and am ready to go again so here's what we'll be eating this week:Monday - Fray Bentos pies with chips and peas. I love Fray Bentos pies so I stocked up when I found them on offer last week.Tuesday - Chicken and egg fried rice for the adults and fish fingers, mash and beans for the kids.Wednesday - Macaroni CheeseThursday - Mussels with crusty bread and french fries. Pasta … [Read more...]
Change the way you shop – savings at the supermarket….
Tonight I got some very odd looks while I was doing my shopping - It may have been because my trolley was filled with this little lot:It's for a community project at work where we're donating toiletries to some local homeless charities. We've all been asked to take in a few things and encouraged to buy value products so we get more for our money, which ultimately means that we're donating more to the charities. I bought 5 cans of shaving foam, 10 tubes of toothpaste, 5 packs of 4 toothbrushes, 8 bottles of deodorant and 8 packs of 10 razors - all things we've been told are … [Read more...]
