Feeling the pinch - ways to lessen the impact

I, like a lot of the rest of you, have too much month left at the end of the money. I am always trying to find ways to save money. No point in asking OH for advise as this is solely my department, and he could not tell you how to log on to the back account, let alone how many bills we have coming out, whom too or how much for or on what dates, he leaves all this sort of worrying to me.

I try my best to balance the books, a firm believer of “ if I have not got I will not spend it”. I look for bargains in the supermarket and in general I tend to make all our food from scratch. When buying say mince for the tea I will buy enough for four nights, cook it all up at once and freeze three lots for other nights. This saves money for a few different reasons, bulk buying is cheaper, and cooking it together uses much less fuel, and then of course I have less gaps in my freezer therefore creating cheaper running costs. Never seem to get what I would call proper bargains in our supermarkets, they have reductions but I object to that reduction only being ten or fifteen percent and then losing any savings that can be made from buy two for £x. Often find your paying more for two out of date products than two full priced ones.

There are very few things left I find I can scrimp on, our belts feel so tight some days it’s a wonder we have not fell in half. 

With the price of fuel I have started to ask myself things like, do we need the heating on and if so do we need it so high? Is the journey in the car really necessary? Can it wait until we are out doing something else anyway? Would it not make more sense to get the exercise and walk or cycle to where I need to go?

One of the ways I have managed to cut costs without compromising what we have was using a price comparison site to reduce my monthly gas and electric by over twenty percent. I stayed with the same company but compared tariffs for our annual consumption and came up with a much better deal. Really wish I had done it a year or so back, but glad I have done it now.

My next money saving exercise is going to be on my insurances, My car insurance is due renewed shortly and I will be going all out to compare car insurance. I have my breakdown cover in with mine at the moment, but would I save more with that separate? Watch this space and come renewal time I will see what I can save.

Do you have any money saving hints and tips you can pass on?  Please feel free to leave them in the form of comments. Thanks.

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