Most libraries – even small ones, offer to loan people books, dvds and cds as standard these days, and although in most places dvds and cds cost a few pence to borrow, it is a pretty small fee when compared to using other lending services.  My own local library lets you borrow a total of up to 10 items at any one time and keep them for up to 1 month for books, and 2 weeks for dvds or cds.  Mine is also a great place to find out about local events too, as they have stands of leaflets available so when I go there I often learn about other things I can do as well.

For anyone who has a larger library nearby there’s even more available, as many of these have computers available for people to use to access the internet.  Some charge a small fee again, but many allow people to use these for up to a certain amount of time per week for free these days.  Then there are reference sections to most libraries where you can access a huge amount of information about a wide variety of subjects.  These books have to remain in the library but it’s a great place to find information and the staff in these places are great at helping people to find their way around and seek out what they’re looking for.  It’s a great place for kids to go when they need to research a school project, and sadly somewhere that gets forgotten about a lot in this age of computers.

A few of the biggest libraries around the country also have other resources available such as microfiche records of all the births, deaths and marriages in the country.  This sort of information is great if you’re researching your family history.  Many also have local history and local business sections too where you can find out more about the area you live in, or what businesses are registered in the area.

It’s a wealth of resources at our fingertips, most of it available for free to us all, and yet libraries are highly underused places.  So if you’re looking for something to do that won’t cost you much, why not have a trip to your local library and see what they can offer you.

If you’re a regular traveller it’s worth buying a season ticket in advance – this will reduce the cost per journey.  However even if you’re not a regular traveller it’s worth trying to buy your ticket early as some companies will offer you a cheaper ticket if it’s bought in advance – 12 weeks early is best as this is how far in advance tickets are released and this way you’ll get the best prices!  www.thetrainline.com is a good place to start for buying cheap train tickets in advance, and for season tickets try www.nationalrail.co.uk

Rail cards are available in various formats, and if you travel fairly frequently they can save you quite a bit of money.  Here are the different types of card and their costs:

16-25 Rail Card – £26 – Available for anyone age 16-25 and gives you 1/3 off all rail travel for 1 year.

Family and Friends Rail Card – £26 – Available to anyone travelling with kids and gives 1/3 off adult and 60% off kids ticket prices.  Up to 4 adults and 4 kids can travel on one card.

Senior Rail Card – £26 – Available to anyone age 60 and over, gives you 1/3 discount on all rail travel for 1 year.

Disabled Person’s Rail Card – £18 for 1 year or £48 for 3 years. – Gives you 1/3 discount on all rail travel for you and a companion traveling with you.

Network Rail Card – £25 – Gives you the same as a family and friends rail card, but is only for use on the South East network.

Something else that many people don’t know is that if you’re train is late, you are actually entitled to claim some money back for the journey that you took.  If your train is either canceled, or is more than 15 minutes late, you can get a claim form at the station to fill in to get your money back either in full or in part for the cost of your ticket.

On top of this check out different times for travel if you can.  If you travel off peak it is always cheaper than peak times, so play with your timings a little if you can – you may be surprised how much difference it can make.

Contributed by Vialdana

I’d already had a look on Confused.com and been offered a slight reduction with Endsleigh who I have favoured in the past, I was tempted as I know their customer service to have been exemplary in the past but then I’m a bargain hunter at heart so the search went on.

I’ve been insured with Lloyds TSB for two years which has served my purposes but honestly I would have probably changed insurers had I not been so lazy with the renewal last year. Prompted by CI and their required 6 predetermined calls I ended up with a great quote from the Co-operative and all was looking good. I’ve had insurance with the Co-op in the past and found them to be a decent company to deal with.

My renewal was coming up just over £300 which wasn’t especially appealing, I’m a firm believer that my insurance should go down each year, holding a steady figure is of no interest to me. The Co-op were offering a saving of around £55 and I had the potential to further beat that figure down with an extra saving by signing up online.

Keeping my knowledge of Quidco in mind I went searching the site for offers which could tempt me or at least cashback on the quote I had with the Co-op and sure enough two popped up. One for an immediate £1.50 payout on a quote with Gocompare.com and £70.00 cash back on my Co-op quote and I was about to hit the send key when I noticed the quote on Gocompare.com, three companies were able to undercut my current quote and each had cashback with Quidco.
The lowest was £235 with Kwik Fit with £42.50 cashback and a free MOT. Fabulous!
There is a glitch though and the same will apply on many insurance websites, watch out for all the many added extras, they’ll add things like windscreen cover and breakdown cover and legal cover at figures like £25 here and £18 there but they all add up. If you want the bare bones be sure to read the details and keep your final figure where you want it.

So, ultimately, I’ll have a £50 payout from CI, a £42.50 payout from Quidco for the Kwik Fit insurance and a further £1.50 for the quote on Gocompare.com, a free MOT at a saving of around £40 and my insurance was hammed down by almost a third. Once I claim all payouts and savings my fully comprenhensive insurance will have cost me £101 and a couple of hours of my time. Furthermore, any work on my car by Kwik Fit will be at a 10% discount over the coming year which is useful to me since one of their branches is near my place of work.

The Co-op quote would have been £288 minus £71.50 cashback on Quidco and the £50 from CI, not quite such a good deal in the end result but still a good saving on my renewal.

It’s worth going through this same process for all insurance policies you take out each year, it’s a little time consuming but generally the savings are apparent.

In my experience, any time I seek out a new business to work with I’ll seek out those few negative comments, not so I can find out what could go wrong, but more importantly, so that I can get an idea of how the company responded when things turned bad.

Earlier in the year when a reviewer complained that our offer of a Google Adwords voucher for new business members was “rubbish” for existing advertisers we took the time to address their concerns, and hopefully made the promotion a little clearer for everyone.  Another great example of how important negative feedback is to can be seen in Louisa E’s comments. We worked hard to address each of the issues she raised about the site and are confident BView is better because of it!

BView knows how important it is to give business owners an opportunity to put their side of the story across and explain what went wrong and how they’ve set about resolving problems or complaints raised by reviewers. Through BView, businesses can add a response to any review left for their business, and this is a valuable way of showing how important customer satisfaction is to your company. If you’re looking for some more examples when a bad review ended up making the business look good, read this.

Potential customers will understand that no business gets it right every time for every customer and will be encouraged to see a businesses working hard to recognise where they’ve made mistakes and what they’ve done to correct them – and to make sure it doesn’t happen again!

Don’t forget that all feedback will have a positive impact on your businesses SEO (it’s visibility to search engines) so if you haven’t already, invite a few of your customers to review you on BView.

En route we travelled through Hull, hardly a fine example of tourism but with it’s own appeal in the form of The Deep a large sea life centre just off the main roads. We got in for the family ticket price of £28.50 and there’s the option to upgrade that ticket at no extra cost to a year long pass, all they ask is for a donation next time but it isn’t compulsory. So, that’s a years entry into The Deep for around £7 each. You can even make use of the local tourist information board who often provide online printable vouchers or key phrases to quote and make even greater savings at attractions around the country.
We even managed to find some places of interest with free entry, like Wold’s Way Lavender Farm and we picked our own fruit at a farm down the road before driving home via Wentworth Garden Centre.

Park even assist with savings, for example you can buy entry for The Sea Life Centre in Scarborough at great reductions instead of the ticket sales at the venue. Alternately look at the internet site and find vouchers on site or sign up for Bview’s local listings to get an up to date link to the latest offers in the area.

No matter what type of holiday you want or even if you just want a day out or two, it’s worth searching around the internet for reduced price entry to visitor attractions and events all over the UK and really making the most of the sunshine.

Tempted and willing to research I had a look at the offers from Ford and found some interesting figures, they’re offering a £2K government scrappage amount and they’re going to match it, which sounds amazing, but that’s for a Style at £12,295 after reductions, then another £1,892 as a fee for the credit which stands at a whopping 7.9 APR. Suddenly the offer isn’t quite so tempting.

And there are caveats: The vehicle must only be first registered on or prior to 31 August 1999 and the owner must have owned the vehicle continuously for at least one year prior to the order date of the new vehicle.
The scrapped vehicle should have a UK address on the registration certificate (V5C) and has either a current tax disc and current MOT certificate, or has a current tax disc and a current Hackney Carriage Licence, or has an MOT certificate which expired no earlier than 14 days before the date of the contract for a new vehicle.
Neither vehicle (scrappage or new) should exceed 3.5 tonnes.
The purchased vehicle must be first registered in the UK on or after 18 May 2009 and have no former keepers.
The registered keeper of the new vehicle must be identical to the registered keeper of the vehicle to be scrapped. The Scrappage Allowance will be payable in relation to the first 300,000 new vehicles purchased nationwide or until 28 February 2010, whichever is sooner.

My reservations were repealed by the more promising offers with Kia, a subsidiary of Hyundai , where you can get a Picanto for a mere £4,495 on the road with a £2,000 combined saving with the new incentive. As a cash purchaser with no ridiculous APR to pay on a credit agreement, you’d actually be making a reasonable purchase for a new car, though it should be borne in mind that a car decreases in value rapidly for those first days of ownership and then drops to it’s usual steadier decline, but with a sensible road tax bracket, great fuel economy, low insurance grouping of 2, 3 or 4 and all around nippy features, perhaps many of the savings are to be made later. You could also look at the Fiat Eco at £5,995 and Peugeot 107 Urban Lite from £6,945.

It’s only a true saving if you don’t pay the hiked credit/ finance fees and interest rates.

Having established what was important, we decided that we would have new cots and mattresses but anything else could be second hand. Cots are known to harbour MRSA and may well explain many 2nd and consecutive sibling cot deaths when cots are reused but not cleaned properly in the interim.
My parents stepped in and bought two cot beds, half price at Toys R Us, just under £80 each. My twins are still using them at age 3 in their bed form and with at least another year or two of use to come.
The other grandparents bought the mattresses, also from Toys R Us, using vouchers we received when the cots were bought and we bought the type suitable for cots then beds with wipe over covering on one side and breathable cloth on the other. In other words, lifetime mattresses instead of the flimsy foam cot mattresses which would need replacing again as the cots became beds.
Our choice of cot beds was a slightly unusual size so we bought some of the sheets at Toys R Us too, again using vouchers from the back of the in store magazine and making use of a 3 for 2 offer, so I bought 6 which still see us through in rotation.
The rest of the bedding came from Dunelm Mill, which has a great selection of pretty, themed baby and child bedding in sets, which also have a great resale value later down the line. Dunelm Mill have a website if you don’t have one close by.

Now we had somewhere to put the babies we thought about transport. In a fit of organisation I posted a wanted advert on our local Freecycle website. Freecycle is all about reducing landfill by giving away items you intend to get rid of. You can post ‘wanted’ or ‘offered’ adverts. Some people are very rude and ask for things to sell, we’ve fallen foul of that, but some are pleasant and genuine and give things away which save other people no end of trouble.
Freecycle can be found by googling along with the name or your area or nearest town. It’s all free!
Our advert asked for any baby items for twins. From that one ad we got a McLaren double pushchair, two single Graco pushchairs with car seats and bases, two bouncers, two moses baskets and stands, a bottle warmer and a highchair. That’s around £800+ of baby kit and the givers were pleased to see it go.
We used a wallpaper stripper to steam clean everything, MRSA loiters in fabrics and the weave of moses baskets too. Research told us that bleach and high temperatures kill MRSA and most other nasties. Bleach isn’t kind to newborn skin so steaming was the way for us. Everything was in great condition anyway but looked brand new and gleaming once steam cleaned.

We gave the bottle warmer away pretty fast. It was a pain in the neck on the side in the kitchen. We found two Tesco 33p measuring jugs did the job just fine when filled with boiling water and the bottles placed inside.

We used all the pushchairs, the double at times and the single if we were both out, the car seats and bases were used everyday and eventually we gave them all away again to be used by others with their children.

We bought a single changing mat and kept it slid underneath an armchair when not in use, thereby not bothering with a changing unit, though my Nannan, excited about forthcoming babies bought one anyway so we had the luxury of having one in their bedroom too.

I joined the Boots and Tesco baby clubs, which has yielded a great deal of coupons, even during pregnancy, for stocking up on essential baby products and a few treats for the burgeoning mother to be.

Then I began shopping on eBay. Buying in bulk was great. I bought expensive washable nappies (Kooshies) in large quantities for far less than you can find on the high street. I’ll admit to failing entirely with washables, it was such a headache and I gave in and bought disposables to my own disgust.
However, I resold all my nappies and recuperated almost the entire cost back on eBay!
I then used the money again on eBay to buy bulk Tommee Tippee bottles, dummy clips, MAM teats and dummies and the other small paraphenalia which comes later. These are small items which not every baby or mother wants but if you do use them they begin to aggravate with their inflated prices.
Our girls would only have orthodontic teats and dummies, which was fine but they cost a little more than most.

Breastfeeding is the cheapest way to feed a baby of course, but not everyone can. I was able to make use of the local Surestart services who loaned out breastpump which had all brand new pieces, ensuring hygiene. This meant I could express to make the most of my milk even when one of my babies couldn’t feed. Eventually we used formula and even then, chose Farleys, one of the cheapest on the market but with the better balance of casein for babys instead of the much heavier products like Cow & Gate.

As the girls grew I would give away what they had outgrown or no longer needed and readvertise in need of each new stage of development on Freecycle and on the local forum. This gave us clothing and toys, a couple of lightweight strollers for a holiday, two bed guards when the cot sides came off, a baby walker and no end of other useful bits and pieces. Even now I can advertise second or third generation pre-loved items, continually passing on.

Car boot sales are a veritable gold mine for baby items, but only if you go early. The good stuff is sold quickly but the prices are usually excellent. We usually buy toys or clothes and we’ve had some John Rocha clothes and hugely expensive Fisher Price toys for as little as £3 for the £65 toy and 50p for clothing. A huge contrast to items when bought brand new in Mothercare or Adams.

eBay was handy for shoes too. Clarks cost an arm and a leg if you keep twins in them but since most toddlers barely make a mark on shoes until about 18 months old, you can get first walkers in mint condition for a snip on eBay. So, we had the girls feet measured but bought online, usually saving up to 80% or 90% of the cost and still having the right sizes and in the current trends in the Clarks stores.

After the initial few months of shed loads of baby clothes as gifts for the new arrivals, I began buying their clothes in bulk on eBay and in sales. It’s a habit I’ve stuck with. I keep a separate wardrobe of clothing for the year ahead as I buy all their clothes for the next age group. So, at the end of 08/09 winter stock sales I was buying the clothes  for winter 09/10 in the appropriate sizes.
This means I’m prepared for any growth spurts and I can spread the rather diminished cost over the years sales.
We made full use of the Woolworths closing sales and stocked up on clothing, shoes and school uniform for when they need it in 18 months or so. At 45p – 99p each item instead of £7 – £15 each I’m happy to keep a little space aside for them.

There are no end of freebie websites which can help new parent with allsorts of items like feeding spoons and samples. They need to market their products and we need to save the cash, no problem. We tried no end of products by signing up to many websites. Just be careful to tick the privacy boxes or you’ll be plagued by junk mail forever more.

Anything we buy new generally has a resale value on eBay or on the local forum for sale section. We picked up two Bumbo seats on there for £15 and £13 and resold them on there 6 months later for the same prices. Both in the same condition and used well for several months.

Though we’ve saved money every step of the way where possible, occasionally sacrificing beauty for practicality, it’s been worth it. The days of empty nurseries full of antique furniture are long gone, we live in practical houses for the most part and most of the products we are instructed we ‘need’ are just luxuries which we must eventually part with. So why buy new and waste money? It might be a worthwhile investment if you plan to use any item for more than one child but there are so many baby sales items because they get very little use. The best part of the day a baby sleeps, nothing wears out, except patience now and then when they lie awake at night!

I was vaguely considering that I could begin to plan a holiday and musing over destinations when I began to think of the practicalities. My passport is out of date and my children don’t have one at all yet. There, in under 10 seconds is a cost of £164. £72 for my own passport and £46 for each of my children. I just don’t need that headache right now. I don’t need to leave the country.

So, my thoughts returned to good old Blighty.
Now, I’ve travelled the U.K fairly extensively, in caravans, tents, guest houses, hotels and friends homes. I’ve even stayed at a substantial number of English Heritage sites. I have children who think Dora The Explorer has the most exciting life and I love the idea of something new, so, wandering around the internet I found wigwams at Humble Bee Farm.
A lovely homey looking wooden building with real beds starting from £15.00 per person per night and just £8.00 for children. So, £31 per night and no great risk from weather conditions. There’s even a secure lock on the door, which might give me some peace of mind about midnight excursions by the gruesome twosome.

Or what about a Cocoon at Nostell Priory Park at £24.50 per night? A small building which looks like a rigid tent and again guaranteeing you won’t be blown away in the middle of the night. No escapees and the dubious pleasure of cooking outside every night, just like real camping.  It also means I don’t have to get up close and personal with nature, I can scurry back to the more-tangible-than-canvas-relative-safety of a plastic house. I’m warming to the idea.

I think my kids will love camping and it’s an adventure I want them to enjoy, though I worry about them getting out of the tent in the middle of the night in the same manner as they wander around the house eating chocolate in the wee small hours.
Still, I checked out the prices and venues. I remember staying in a lovely place in St Austell, Cornwall a few years ago and their prices for a tent are a very reasonable £4 – £9 per night depending on the season. However, prices vary around the country and during peak season. One site I found mentioned a £20 minimum fee per night during the peak season. You’ll often find money off vouchers in the back of The Camping and Caravanning Guide, available from CCC, Blacks and other similar shops.

Most of my childhood holidays were spent in touring caravans in Great Yarmouth and Skegness, or in static caravans in Cornwall, again, I’d quite like my daughters to enjoy that experience so I checked back to the sites we used when I was small. Vauxhall in Great Yarmouth would be around £418 for a week at the end of June in a dinky little 3 berth static caravan. The same week in Widemouth Caravan Park would be £322.00 as an online booking price.

I had romantic dreams of a cottage in the Lake District one year, all open fires and long country walks ending at cosy country pubs. The prices quoted were in the region of £350.00 minimum per week, for two people, in November! Unimpressed I quickly found a late winter sun deal in Majorca with Thomson for less and we skipped off to laze by the quiet beaches instead of the open hearth.
However a B&B begins at £60.00 per night and a weekend break might be just the thing.

I’ve never been entranced with hotels. They’ve always been associated with work related stays for me, though I confess, as a mental mum of two rampant children, I rather like the idea of no cooking and no cleaning up. Still, a brief search shows I could get a short dated booking for £42.50 in a 4 star hotel in Devon and share. I certainly couldn’t leave my little darlings in a room of their own…despite being far too young, remember the chocolate escapades I mentioned? Imagine a whole hotel full of adventure in the middle of the night. It would be Macauley Culkin Home Alone Part 4, The End!

So many people say that by the time you’ve finished, it’s just as cheap to fly elsewhere for a holiday. Perhaps the answer lies with Lastminute.com . The cheapest holiday I can find there is for £450.00 flying from Luton to Costa Brava and I’d still have to get the passports, bringing the total back up to over £600.00 without travel at either end, or insurance, or spending money. But the lure of no cooking and cleaning is strong.  I could even write a blog to enter the 99% off competition and win the chance to have my holiday for just £4.50!  No, I’d aim for the luxury of the Steigenberger Nile Palace in Luxor, Egypt. A snip at £489.00 per person. Still, that would be one paid for, a mere £4.89 from my pocket.

Maybe there is more to be said for Costa Del Back Garden. I think I’ll leave it a little while longer and bag a last minute deal, crossing my fingers for extra savings with vouchers on BView.

Tesco and Sainsbury battled head to head, Safeway briefly stepped in but retreated to no mans land, later being aquired by Wm Morrisons and Boots stomped all over the concept. Each promising their own advantages, each touting their perks as discounts and bonuses for loyalty and for each promise we sold our souls, arming them with ways to make us spend more money, allowing them lead us into temptation with extra points and lower prices.

Now the face of shopping may have changed forever. Each of us has given the much needed market research data about our habits, if we live alone or are on a diet if we eat meat or live on convenience foods. In fact, they’ll know what you’ve been up to if you buy a pregnancy test and what the result was if you start buying nappies. Then they’ll target you, with coupons and extra points vouchers, tempting you to buy more expensive brands than you usually might, or to wean your baby on a more expensive food, which if your child likes, you’ll buy more often and they’ll reap the reward on the profit. Genius!

Our shopping habits are hoarded on computers and sometimes sold to others for greater market power and we agree to that.

Generally the power lies very much with the shop. The card holder is targeted and tormented, given incentives and persuasions to buy what the store needs to shift or to move the customer up a brand level.

It’s rare that these cards will offer enough to the user to warrant the sale of information but there just a few which make it worthwhile if you don’t mind your preferred toilet paper type being bandied around.
Tesco have a catalogue of offers to choose from, other than simply cashing the coupons instore against your groceries. In the catalogue, your coupons are worth 4x as much, so £5 of coupons gives you £20 of treats in the catalogue.
I thought I had managed well to get breakdown cover for two people on two vehicles using my coupons, until I read on MoneySavingExpert.com about those who had new cars as a result of super clever offers shopping. Changing their eating habits to suit whatever maximised their points and taking the resulting coupons to the car chain involved, driving away with brand new vehicles and with less than two years grocery shopping. Every penny recouped in a car.

Tesco hold a significant 32% market share (compared to 16% each for Sainsburys and Asda), the exchange for the brand new cars which slipped off the forecourts via Clubcard vouchers, until the supplier Motorpoint, ceased their cooperative with Tesco in 2008.
Still, with record profits in the region of 2.8 billion this time last year and the strongest loyalty card legacy, I doubt it made much of a dent.

Boots have a whole legion of shoppers who sniff out the bargains and how best to spend on each item, maximising coupon returns and discounts. A recent example was the 97p sachet of Pantene conditioner, which yielded a 100 point return on the Boots Advantage card, a profit of 3p. By purchasing ten Pantene sachets, I could achieve a return of 1,000 Boots points to make my originally intended purchase, technically getting the sachets free of charge and a 30p profit. In a further manoeuvre of super savvy shopping, if those purchases were broken into groups of £5 or slightly more, a coupon was given out which entitled the bearer to £5.00 off Boots own No.7 products.
If you had originally intended to buy a pack of No.7 face wipes (5.50) and a bottle of No.7 cellulite body lotion(£5.00) you would ultimately transfer £9.70 into 1,000 points on your card, spend a further 50p and leave with £20.50 of products.

The loyalty card could prove to be more useful than it was intended with such detailed knowledge of offers and loopholes, turning the previously unrewarding cards back into the two way street we were originally led to believe they were.

Some retailers may look upon discount vouchers and special offers as a sign of “bargain” outlets, increasingly though it is becoming a more accepted way of attracting business. The web is playing an important role in this self promotion as it levels the playing field and allows smaller, independent businesses to compete equally with the nationwide chains. An added benefit with online vouchers is how easily they can be shared between one satisfied customer and their network of friends, family and colleagues. Whether it’s via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter or in conversation creating a voucher in a way that encourages it to be shared can only have a positive affect on your businesses online reputation.

What can your business do to attract new custom?

Increasingly savvy consumers are looking online to find the best deals and biggest savings. BView’s new discount voucher search engine brings this money saving mentality into the local area by helping businesses to publicise their latest money off deals, sales and special offers directly to potential consumers – be it locally or nationally.

As a business looking to test the waters of online promotions it’s important to know that not all offers are created equal. There are a number of different types of promotion you can offer depending on your business goals. Choosing the right type of promotion for your customers is vital for it to work for you.

Trying to attract new customers? “10% off your first order!”
Rewarding customer loyalty? “15% off of your renewal!”
Rewarding customers for spending more? “£5 off a £50 spend!”
Need an extra edge? “Free delivery!”
Seasonal lines coming to an end?  “Buy one get one free!”

Once you’ve decided on the offer that’s best for you and your customers it’s important to think about any restrictions or limitations you need to place on the offer. When will the voucher expire? Can a customer use it more than once? Does it exclude certain items? While it’s never a good thing to be too restrictive, it’s critical to make the terms of the offer clear up front as you don’t want your potential customers to feel like they’ve been cheated out of a deal.

The BView blog will be monitoring what offers work in different sectors, what key trends are occurring and speculating on what the future holds in the online voucher area and the local voucher area.