Posts Tagged ‘coupons’
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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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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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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