Archive for April, 2009
Saving Money on doing up your home
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
…discounts, coupons & grants you can get to help you.
Decorating is an expensive business, and it can be even more expensive if you’re trying to make improvements to the house that are environmentally friendly. Don’t panic though, there are way’s you can cut the costs of all that DIY.
Government Grants
Did you know that the government wants people to put in things like cavity wall insulation, efficient water heating, and loft insulation? They do. So much so that they actually offer grants that are available to everyone to help them with the costs of installing some of these things. There are two schemes available, one is for people who are in receipt of certain benefits, and it gives a full grant to do certain things – this means that if you qualify, you could have your cavity walls filled, your loft insulated, and even a new sleeve fitted on your boiler completely free of charge! The other grant which is available is for the same sorts of items, but is available to anyone regardless of if they are on benefits or not, and could give you a discount of between 50% and 70%. You can find out about both here.
Coupons
BView has a section called ‘home and garden’ which is always worth keeping an eye on, there are coupons here for places like B&Q, Warrington Fire Surrounds, and ABC Carpets and Beds, as well as loads more places that do everything from lighting to flooring and kitchens. There’s another section on B-View which lists discounts offered by trades people too, so if you need a specialist it’s worth giving it a look, they’re not always national chains either, as BView encourages local trades people and stores to offer discounts through their site too.
Discounts
Lots of DIY shops want you to use their stores at the moment, so they’re all competing for your custom. What this means is that you will find most of them are running special weekend events where they offer discounts on one or more areas within the store, so plan your DIY with plenty of time, and you’ll be able to take advantage of these. Make sure you ask in the stores (the customer service desk is best) as well to see if there are any other discounts you can take advantage of. Some stores offer a percentage off to pensioners on a certain day of the week, and others offer a discount to people who’ve just moved home in the last few months.
Tags: BView, coupons, discounts, grants, home improvment, Savings, vouchers
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Finalists for the "what would you do with 99%" contest
Monday, April 27th, 2009
Thanks again for everyone who entered! I had a lot of trouble getting it down to 10 entries, so find here the top 12 entries (in no particular order!) We’ll finish voting next Monday, May 4th at midnight and the winner will be announced on Tuesday, May 5th! Good luck contestants!
Rebecca Page wants to pay for the insurance to set up her own childminding business and with the remaining go to Cornwall to visit her husband’s mother, who has ailing health.
Nicola Poor wants to invest the money so she has a solid base to achieve her dream of becoming self sustaining by starting up her own business.
Chris Dunn as a new arrival in the UK, wants to deck out his deck, so he can stop being ashamed of having his friends over for barbecues.
Sue Smith has a “Mini dream” to buy a classic Mini Cooper and spend her spare time doing any required work to bring it up to its former glory. I’m guessing the £500 would buy the roof, or the seats or something?
Julie Kapral is a lovely young lady with an obsession with pink, whowants to become a full fledged designer, and needs to buy desks and cabinets. She promised to send lots of photos of her new office!
Basheera Khan would use the cash to buy a plane ticket to visit her family in South Africa and hang out with her mother. She even offers her mother as a surrogate.
Joy McCarthy would have a small man (or a big one, she says she’s not too picky) come dig a hole to install a “Green Cone” so she can reduce her household waste to practically nothing (and also produce fantastic soil for her garden).
Stacey O’Neill would, during her last year next to the ocean, would practice her knot tying, and finally learn how to sail!
Meg Smitley would get twelve square meters of rubber-love… also known as gym-matting for her basement. An avid wrestler, she wants to finally get a chance to show her husband how a take-down should happen!
Helen Cruse decided she would use it to have a proper roughing it vacation on the Tiny Isle of Shuna off Oban. No Electricity. No TV. Mental!
Melinda Seckington would get the ultimate geeky boardgame collection, getting as many of the top 25 games out there as she could!
Jim Lamb wants us to send him a fresh English pie to him in Australia.
Vote for your favourite now!
[polldaddy poll="1572862"]
Posted in Competitions | 63 Comments »
Discount Supermarkets
Monday, April 27th, 2009
When people talk about supermarkets, generally they’re talking about places like Tesco, Asda or Sainsburys (the big three). But there are lots of others, some of which are known as discount supermarkets. These discount supermarkets are stores such as Aldi, Netto and Lidl. The thing is, are they any cheaper, and if they are, does the quality of the products hold up?
It’s a good question really – after all why would they be considered discount if they weren’t cheap? Well in fact the reason that places like this can get away with charging less for some of their products isn’t just to do with the quality of the products. In fact, it’s got a lot to do with the layout and look of the store. Large well known places like Tesco make everything nice and neat and tidy, they take items from the storage rooms and transfer them from crates onto the shelves in nice neat stacks. Discount supermarkets often don’t make things quite so pretty, they take the crate and stack that on the shelf rather than taking the products from the crate first, or even just put a stack of crates in a gap on the floor and don’t even bother with shelves. This helps them to keep some of their overheads down and means that they can then pass the saving on to the customer.
Another factor that can contribute to keeping the prices lower, is that although generally they will always have certain key items, they won’t always have the same brands of everything, opting to buy whichever is cheapest at the time, and meaning you may have to opt for a brand you don’t normally buy if you want that product.
So, in conclusion if you don’t mind the store layout being a little shabbier, and you’re not too picky about brand names, then it’s probably worth giving places like this a try and seeing how you like their products. Many of them are of just as high quality, and the financial saving can make it well worth while. One thing it is worth noting though is that most of these discount supermarkets also make another big saving by charging for their carrier bags, so if you don’t want to waste money having to buy a few bits of plastic to carry everything in, make sure you pop a few of your own bags in the boot of the car to use instead.
One thing worth keeping your eye open for in this sort of store is oddball items that one wouldn’t normally expect to find here – from tents to computers, power tools to pushchairs. If a deal is good, the discount supermarket may buy a one off job lot of a product and once it’s gone, it’s gone, but while it is there, it’s often a lot cheaper than it could be bought elsewhere.
Tags: aldi, asda, BView, discount, lidl, money saving, netto, sainsburys, save, shopping, supermarket, tesco, voucher
Posted in General, Savings | 2 Comments »
The "get £495 for free" contest update!
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Hi guys! Just an update on the contest, and to let you know about an important change to it.
It’s the last week, with the deadline this Saturday night at midnight. Have you entered in?
You still have time to tell me what you’d do with 99% off of £500!
We’ve already got some fantastic entries, including:
- Joy who wants a small man to dig a hole in her garden,
- Julie who wants to deck out her office, and
- Jim who wants us to send a proper English pie to him in Australia.
Vero, the organizer of Social Media Camp, asked if I could write a post about the contest for the SMC blog. I think in her frazzled state, she didn’t understand that it was about what she’d personally do with the money. So, I tried to get into her mind, and knowing that she’s a French Canadian, came up with getting her to swim in the world’s largest poutine. You can read about that here! Ha ha ha!
Slight change of plans.
We were meant to allow the members of Social Media Camp to vote on the sunday with stickers to decide the winner. But Social Media Camp is now a one day event only (the Saturday), so there’s no way people can vote on the Sunday, even though I already got the stickers!
the 99% off stickers from Moo, with my evil eye in the background
But this is good in a way, because that means we can open up the voting to the web, the ultimate democracy! Those shortlisted will now be put into a poll, where anyone can vote. We’ll be putting up the top 10 entries on Monday, 27th of April for one week. Then we’ll announce the winner.
Still want to enter?
Here’s the rules:
- You write a blog post telling the world what you’d do with 99% off anything you like (up to a value of £500). Make sure you have a link back to www.bview.co.uk.
- Send an email to competition@bview.com and give us a link to said posting.
- All entries have to be received by midnight GMT on Saturday, April 25, 2009.
- I’m going to shortlist my top 10 favourites, and then they will be up for voting on this blog from April 27th until May 4th at Midnight.
- You can enter as many times as you like (if you have multiple blogs, then go for it!).
- People from anywhere in the world can enter, but the prize will be awarded in pounds sterling.
I’ll probably give you some stickers too, since I now have 180 of em! So get your creative hats on and let me see your best work!
If you want to read the original post, and read what I’d do with the money, you can do that here.
Tags: bview contest, free money, what would you do?, win £500
Posted in Competitions | 1 Comment »
Where can I get coupons from?
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Coupons are great aren’t they! Little bits of paper that let us have money off the things we’re buying. I like to keep a stock of them in the house so that I can keep my shopping bills as low as possible, but sometimes it can be quite hard to find them, so I thought I’d share with you a few of my ideas on where you can find them.
Magazines
This is a great place to start looking, especially if you already buy the magazines. Lots of manufacturers advertise in magazines and sometimes they slip in a coupon for the product as well. If you find a magazine with a lot of coupons in it that you’ll use, it can even work out that you’ve saved more money than the magazine costs, in which case why not buy an extra mag and give it to a friend (after you’ve cut the coupons out of course!).
Newspapers
I don’t know about where you live, but where I am we get three free local newspapers each week, and quite often there are leaflets inside them. To be honest most of the leaflets don’t interest me and I throw them in the bin, but do make sure you check the leaflets carefully for coupons before you ditch the bits of paper, it’s ever so easy to miss them.
Online
Some manufacturers put coupons on their website sometimes, offering money off a particular product – especially new products, or savings when you eat at their restaurant at a certain time of day, it’s well worth keeping an eye on these sites, and if they have an e-mail newsletter try signing up to that too, as some of them send coupons to registered members. There are also sites like BView who have a whole range of money off coupons listed on the site – some are ones you can print off, others are codes which can be used online, these sites are always worth bookmarking so you can come back to them if you’re buying something to check and see if you can save money.
Supermarket leaflets & products
Keep your eyes on the shelves in stores, occasionally you’ll find a product with a coupon on it – Nestle did this with their cereals a while back and had several coupons on each box. Also look out for leaflets on counters in stores too, these sometimes have discount offers in them as well.
Sharing with friends
If you have friends who like to clip coupons too, try storing up everything whether you can use it or not, and then inviting all your friends over for a cuppa and have a little swapping session.
Tags: BView, coupons, money saving, shopping, supermarkets, vouchers
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Vi’s top coupons for April
Monday, April 20th, 2009
BView has a lot of coupons available doesn’t it! I’ve been having a bit of a root through the site and I’ve selected my favourite ones for this month to share with you here.
La Senza
My first Top Discount is definitely one for the ladies – although men, if you know your ladies size I’m sure she’d love a treat! La Senza are offering 50% off selected lines of Bras, Babydolls, and Nightwear, and they really have some stunning items at the moment. They also offer free delivery if you spend over £35 so you could really bag yourself a superb bargain here. This offer expires 1st of May.
Expedia
For those starting to plan their holidays this one might be worth a look, Expedia are offering a 30% discount at Hilton Worldwide Resorts when you book with the Early Saver. This one doesn’t expire till 15th December, so even if you’re not planning a trip away yet, keep this one in mind as 30% is a pretty good saving.
Superdrug
A nice everyday one this, but very useful never-the-less. 10% discount across the whole store online including sale items is being offered with this voucher code, and it doesn’t expire till 18th November, so this is a must to bookmark!
Hip Home Direct
Anyone thinking of moving house? If you are, you’ll need a HIP (Home Information Pack), it’s a requirement these days. This company is offering a 10% discount to anyone who mentions the word BView when they apply for a HIP. No expiry date is given for this.
Chargrilled
This last one I’ve picked because it happens to be a favourite store of mine. They do t-shirts with funny slogans on them, and I have to say I think they make brilliant gifts because there’s just so much choice. They’re offering 5% discount with this link.
There are loads more discounts on the site too, and it’s always worth remembering that not all of them are national, so have a hunt for places in your local area who might be offering a discount through BView too.
Tags: best vouchers, BView, chargrilled, coupon, discount, expedia, hip, la senza, money saving, superdrug
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Efficient personal expenditure
Friday, April 10th, 2009
Efficiency in essential expenditure is on everyones mind right now and I’ve been experimenting with keeping a tight rein of my outgoings. It came as a surprise to find out how much it costs me to run my car each day.
Transport
For some transport is a costly affair indeed, even a second hand car could be less efficient than you would expect. If you drive work out how much your car costs you daily and work out how cost effective that it to you. Check out your miles per gallon calculation here Look at your local bus, train or tram services to compare costs but balance this with the freedom of your own vehicle. Consider car shares and similar cost sharing schemes with friends, neighbours or colleagues. There are often incentives with your local councils to increase the appeal of car shares.
Income and outgoings
Check if your income and outgoings are accurate or if you are entitled to help here www.entitledto.co.uk at HM Revenue & Customs . Enter your details, it’s all anonymous, in order to calculate what you might be able to get help with. It might be single persons council tax discount, free school meals and prescriptions and a variety of other amounts.
Check uSwitch for savings on utilities and then check Quidco before you commit to a contract as you could get a substantial amount of money back. The same goes for insurance renewal, telephone, internet and television subscriptions and utility expenditure.
Local facilities
The local library is a forgotten resource. Why spend your money on books when you can order books in your town or city to be delivered to your local library. You can, for a small charge, usually hire CDs and DVDs much cheaper than the likes of Lovefilm or Blockbusters .
Cashback
When you must buy something, check cashback sites like Quidco for savings. I bought a new mobile phone at Carphone Warehouse and got cashback for almost half the price and then signed up for a prepay Vodafone SIM card and got half the money back. My £10 a month SIM is actually costing me £5 a month as a result of the cashback.
Coupons, codes and vouchers
Check any newspapers and magazines for money off vouchers or coupons you can use when shopping. Look at the free supermarket magazines before you shop. Check the likes of BView and moneysavingexpert.com for codes and coupons to reduce your shopping bill, get free delivery or additional freebies and savings on other purchases.
Buy in bulk
There are some items we get through in vast quantities. Whilst my twins were tiny nappies and wipes were financial killers. I joined Makro and began buying Pampers wipes at the equivalent of 70p per pack when buying 12 at a time in a big box. Then nappies bought on offers of buy one box of 156, get one free.
Buy second hand
If you need something, think about if it has to be new. Using eBay , car boot sales, advertisement magazines, NCT sales, flea markets, the local press and other second hand sales venues.
Buy in sales
I often buy items in sales, either to save money on gifts or to buy clothing for my twins. I have a second wardrobe which is purely to keep clothes in bought in sales. I buy 6-12 months ahead and pay around 25% – 50% of the original price whilst still keeping my girls in Boots Mini Mode, Monsoon, BHS, Next clothing and shoes. You can do the same for your own clothes. Save all your money for the January sales or end of season sales and buy whatever tickles you at the time then put it aside for the right weather. I usually hit the Boots January sale at 70% off for a huge stock of gifts through the year. Even now in April, my sale bargains have saved me around £80 on the full priced items. I even plan my sale shopping in advance by checking out availability on the website.
Buy a lower range
You’ll have noticed that each supermarket does a range of products with varying prices. It could be baked beans varying from 17p value to £1.15 best quality with posh packaging and often the content differs little. If you buy mid range now, consider dropping a level to save up to 10%. The difference is much bigger when you drop from mid level to value goods and you’ll really notice a difference in your bill. Using a stores own brand is often cheaper than a branded label. Check who the product is made by. I have it on good authority that certain brands of washing powder are exactly the same product between the highest and lowest ranges, merely marketed to attract the broadest scope of shoppers.
Check out the food reductions for last minute saves for your evening meal or to fill your freezer.
Whilst you fill your freezer, stick a load of balled up bags or those giant air filled pillows used in packaging to fill up freezer space. It’s more efficient to freeze smaller remaining spaces.
Buy energy saving bulbs for your home. Supermarkets all stock them very cheaply now and often on offers. Contact your utility supplier or look for free bulbs as part of your local councils economy efforts.
It’s very difficult to calculate how much all this could save you, we each spend different amounts in each element of our lives, but I think it’s safe to say that your expenditure will decrease and your awareness will increase.
Tags: discount, ebay, effciency, money saving, sales, shopping, smart spending, vouchers
Posted in General, offers, Savings | 2 Comments »
BOGOFs and Bargains
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Ever heard the term bogof and wondered what it meant? Well it’s a term meaning Buy One, Get One Free. It’s a concept that has spread across the shops in recent years to try and tempt us to buy one brand over another, and seduce us away from our normal brand.
Is it a good idea? Well… this is something that varies quite a lot. If it’s an item that you were going to buy anyway, and you can store the extra one then it’s most definitely worth going for. After all you’re getting something for nothing. If it’s not something you normally buy then you have to stop and ask yourself a few questions – Do I really need this? Am I buying it to replace something else and if so does it work out cheaper this way? Can I store the spare one for long enough to stop it going off? If you don’t need the item and are just being seduced by the label telling you that you’re getting something extra for free, then you’re not going to save money and it’s not a bargain. If you are buying it to replace something else – exchanging one type of beef burger for another for example – then does it work out cheaper this way?
Look at the weight on each box as well as the price and number of items in the box like this:
Brand A Burgers – 8 in a box and the total weight is 800g. The price is £1.00
Brand B Burgers – 8 in a box and the total weight is 600g. The price is £1.50
Brand B are on bogof, Brand A are not.
Which is really cheaper?
What you are actually paying for brand B is £1.50 for 1200g of burgers which is equal to 12.5p per 100g (the calculation is 1.50 ÷ 12). Brand A which isn’t on bogof works out to 12.5p per 100g as well (the calculation is 1.00 ÷ 8), so really you are not getting anything extra for your money by buying the bogof item!
As you can see from this, it’s important to do the calculations to check because sometimes it’s actually a false economy to buy the item that’s on bogof.
Something else you can do if you don’t think you will use all the extra before the item goes off, or you don’t really have the space to store it, is to shop with a friend. By doing this, you end up each just with one item, but you pay half price for it.
Tags: bargains, BOGOF, discounts, Savings, shopping
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How Coupons Can Save You Money
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
Vouchers & coupons may not seem like the sort of thing that can make a huge difference in your life, but actually if you use them right they can make more difference than you might imagine.
Most people reading this will do shopping every week, and will have to buy things like clothes, replace things for the house etc. and of course all these things cost. Imagine if you will that over the course of a month you’ve got to buy all your food shopping, a new washing machine because yours has broken & a new school dress & shoes for your child. Without shopping around and using coupons this will cost you a fair amount of money. However, if you look carefully at where you buy each item, and check out what coupons are available for use on the products you need, then you could find you could save yourself quite a sum.
Shoes bought in one shop might cost you £25 but in another they’re £30. At first glance the obvious place to buy them is the first shop because they’re £5 cheaper there. However, imagine that you’ve got a 20% off coupon for use in the second shop and things change slightly. Instead of paying £30, you’d pay £30-20% which is £24 making the second shop actually work out cheaper. Saving = £1 even though you bought the more expensive item!
The school dress for your daughter might be £15 in the shop you normally buy them from, but it’s worth looking in places you wouldn’t normally think of as clothes shops – supermarkets for example often have kids clothes at remarkably reasonable prices especially school clothes. Always join any clubs that supermarkets offer unless you really object to them as they often send out coupons that you can use in their store too. Imagine that by doing this you have brought the cost of that school dress down to a little under £10. Oh and of course you were going there anyway to do your shopping so you’ve just saved yourself a bit of petrol too! Saving = £6.
The washing machine you’ve found that you like can be bought in Dixons, and even if it’s not the best price you can find, they price match most of the big stores. So rather than buying it in store, go online and buy it from their website – the delivery will be free, and you can use the £10 off code that BView has available in the voucher section. Saving = £10 and a trip to the store!
Obviously you won’t always find a voucher to help, and when you do sometimes the savings will be big, and sometimes small, but even if you only averaged saving £16 a month that would still be an extra £192 you’d have towards other things over the course of a year.
Tags: coupons, discounts, save money, shopping
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Discount night out
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Luxuries, in all forms, have been the first casualties of the recession. People are tightening their belts, new car sales have dropped through the floor and property sales joined them. Non essentials seem to be all so yesterday dahling! We’ve almost begun a revival of ‘make do and mend’, the popular quote of wartime Britain. However, the beacons which remain strong, if not stronger, are restaurants and cinemas.
Zagat Survey tells us that here in the UK, eating out is still de riguer even though the cost of eating out has risen by 3.7% in the last year. The financial climate has not yet stolen our gastronomic freedom. This might be helped in part by the proliferation of discount vouchers available. BView has been part of the rise and rise of the discount voucher, with the Pizza Express voucher having over 1600 downloads alone. Many retailers, restaurants amongst others, have their own coupons, codes or downloadable vouchers available via links on the BView site. You can find 2 for 1 offers at ASK , Strada , Cafe rouge , Zizzi and many more .
Those vouchers can be the decider and assist in putting diners behinds on restaurant seats at quieter times, introducing new clientele and encouraging greater spend, after all, we are more likely to spend on desserts and drinks if our main course is free or half price.
I indulged in the same way at Old Orleans this week. The neighbouring cinema were in cahoots, printing ticket stubs with a 2 for 1 offer at the restaurant. I was meeting a friend for a midweek girly night out and we decided, based on the ticket stub to eat out first. We each ate a delicious main meal and a dessert with happy hour cocktails (all in the name of research of course ) and considered ourselves well fed at low cost, the total bill was £27.00.
Technically we each saved £5.50, splitting the reduced cost in half. Not an enormous saving but enough to encourage us to eat dessert and indulge with the fancy drinks, increasing what would otherwise have been a £17.00 bill by £10.00. Genius marketing indeed.
In comparison to Zagats figures of an average meal out in London running a bill of £40.55 per person, £13.50 each was quite the money saving deal.
Content in our meal we did not indulge further in snacks at Cineworld, though I doubt they missed our custom as they have also seen a rise in profit across the country.
I asked them about their business in relation to recession and found that; “From a local perspective, since the start of 2009 we have seen a 9.11% increase in admissions over last years figures, a real ‘bums on seats’ increase of 37,942 people and a total amount of admissions so far this year of 386,951, which is staggering!
Those figures are in part attributed to the releases of Bolt 3D and My Bloody Valentine 3D and the Unlimited card, allowing the cinema goer unlimited viewing for a fixed monthly price, again convincing the customer of value for money. This falls in line with the national figures for Cineworld showing revenue up 4.8% to £298.9m and box office up 6.4% at £197.5m. A very strong position for 2008’s figures in relation to 2007 which saw the continued rise of house prices and the national boom.
As an Unlimited card holder, paying £11.50 per month and using it at least twice per month, then using the discount voucher at Old Orleans, my girly night of a meal with dessert and drinks and a showing of Marley & Me totalled less than £20. I feel I’ve had a lovely night out and without great or unjustified cost.
A two act night of fun reprised across the country for everyone to enjoy, bring your own friends for maximum appreciation.
Tags: cheap night out, cinema, discount, eat out, night out, restauraunt, save money, voucher
Posted in Business, General | 1 Comment »