Posts Tagged ‘money saving’
Money Saving Gardening (Part 2)
Monday, August 24th, 2009
Back on the subject of Gardening on a budget, the other option apart from local garden centres etc is to buy online and this is where a review site like BView really come into their own I think, as checking reviews for online nurseries or Garden centres that sell by mail order can be a real boon. I have ordered from several online companies but I appreciate others might be nervous in doing so the first time, so to read a review first can make all the difference, and of course if the company are then offering vouchers or discounts via BView then you have even more of a bargain. I shopped at Crocus for the first time this year and the BView discount made it incredibly cheap.
My other tips for money-saving gardening are to use things you can pick up cheaply. This year I have cabbages and broccoli growing in old plastic storage crates that I just made some holes in, at the bottom, for drainage. They are easy to move around and hold a lot of compost which is perfect for veg. You can make your own plant food (if you don’t mind the smell!) from soaking nettles in water for a couple of weeks, and of course to propagate and get free plants, just take cuttings. I use old polystyrene pieces from parcels as ‘crocks’ at the bottom of pots which has the advantage of using something that doesn’t break down in landfill, and saves adding extra weight to the pots.
You can grow potatoes and leeks etc in thick bin bags rather than expensive planters; make your own garden accessories by threading shells onto string and driftwood or using old broken jewellery to hang in trees and twinkle in the sunshine. I am even using an old wardrobe mirror in the corner of the garden for added interest amongst the plants. At the end of the summer before it breaks or rots I will just take it to the tip where it was destined to go anyway!
Browsing gardening sites can often give you fabulous ideas that you can adapt to suit yourself. To make a small pond I just buried an old sink, surrounded it with flat stones to cover the edges and put in some rocks to give a different depth for any wildlife that might come. I found someone giving away a water lily cutting on freecycle and so there it was – a mini water feature for no outlay but my time!
So with a little imagination and by being a savvy shopper, you can have a garden to be proud of without spending very much money at all! And of course, any of the places you DO shop at, you can come back and review on BView to help others make an informed choice.
Check BView for the latest offers at:
GardenCentre.co.uk
Gardens and Homes Direct
Cotswold
Tags: bargain, cheap, garden, garden centre, gardenin, gardens, money saving, out doors
Posted in Savings | 5 Comments »
Money saving Gardening (Part 1)
Monday, August 10th, 2009
With all this glorious weather in Devon this year, I have had a great summer so far in the garden and it struck me that gardening on a budget IS actually possible with a little effort. While I would love to just throw money at my garden – and it would be easy to do so as garden centres are so addictive, the knack is in buying the offers and shopping judiciously.
For instance – the garden section in DIY stores and supermarkets are not looked after by gardeners and often get either neglected or over watered by the staff, so do not be afraid of buying the plants they are selling off cheaply when they are looking a little worse for wear. What you will often find is that with regular watering and some TLC these plants revive and grow as normal.
Many garden centres (In my area – Otter Nurseries, Trago Mills etc) send out leaflets with their special offers on and ideas for the garden. I think personally it’s a great idea, as I have often made a detour on a day out to visit a garden centre if I know they have a good price on compost or pots or something. Checking online if they have a website can also be a good idea if you have something specific in mind and of course checking bView for discount vouchers is a good place to start. I have managed to get a collection of very expensive ceramic pots due to BOGOF deals and I haven’t paid full price for compost or plant food in years as one garden centre or another usually has a discount price at one time or another.
I have also given spare plants away on Freecycle and picked up other excess plants on there from others too. From seeds up to actual garden sheds, all kinds of things can be picked up free if you are lucky.
Thinking ahead can also save you a lot of money. Taking cuttings and collecting seeds from plants you already have, for the following year, can save a fortune and buying seeds early in the year rather than waiting and paying more for plug plants is incredibly money saving. When a packet of 50 seeds is around £2 and 6 plug plants a matter of 2 or 3 months later is the same, getting into growing your own seems like the only way to go. However, even for people who don’t have space to grow things from seed, clever shopping and discount vouchers can still make a lovely garden without breaking the bank.
Find great deals at garden centres with BView:
GardenCentre.co.uk
Gardens & Homes Direct
Homebase
B & Q
Contributed by Elizabeth C
Tags: bargain, discount, garden, garden centre, gardening, money saving, smart garden, voucher
Posted in Savings | 1 Comment »
Buying reduced food at the supermarket
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Shopping for food is an expensive task, and a fairly thankless one because you have to do it over again every week. It’s especially tedious when money is tight.
There is however one way you can sometimes cut your costs substantially, but it does mean being prepared to spend some extra time and effort on things.
Every fresh food item in the UK has to have a sell by date on it. This is the date after which the supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell it. (This only applies to fresh foods, items in tins and which have best before dates work rather differently). Every day the supermarkets will have a staff member who will go round and find all the fresh food items which are going to go out of date that day, and reduce the price on them. This is to help stop wastage. If they have to throw the item away they get nothing for it. If they can sell it – even at a reduced price – then they will get something.
You can take advantage of this knowledge by watching in the various supermarkets near you to find out when they make their reductions. Most supermarkets will have two times. The first time is normally when they reduce the items down by a percentage – this varies from place to place, some will be halved, some will only reduce by 10%. This first reduction is normally done fairly early in the day. The second reduction is normally done late in the afternoon or early in the evening, and at this time they will reduce the already reduced items down some more, generally to a really low price, and if you’re around when this happens, you can take advantage and buy a lot of food very cheaply. So take the time to get to know when your local supermarkets make their reductions.
Things like bread, milk, cold meat, and much more can be frozen – if you freeze it on the day of purchase, and it’s use by date is tomorrow, then when you defrost it you will have 24 hours to use it up exactly the same as you would if you just used it when you bought it from the supermarket. The same thing applies to most products that can be frozen, check to see how long they have between the sell by and the use by date… if it’s the same date, then if you freeze it, when you defrost it you will need to eat it the same day. If it’s three days difference then you will have three days when you defrost it and so on.
You do need to be careful when doing this is to make sure you can use the item before it goes out of date, OR that it’s suitable for freezing and you have the space to store it. If you buy ten loaves of bread because they’re 10p each but only have space to freeze four of them, you’ll find yourself wasting the rest.
Tags: discounts, money saving, shelf life, smart shopping, supermarket
Posted in General, Savings | Comments Off
Online Discounts – Getting the best deal possible
Monday, May 4th, 2009
I don’t know about you, but when I find a discount code for something I’m planning on buying it gives me a nice warm feeling as I know I’m going to be saving some money. Sometimes though there are more than one code available because of the way some companies design things, and in order to get the best deal possible you have to calculate how much you’ll get off with each code to work out which is going to be best for you.
The other day I had one where I was buying an item online and there were two codes available. One offered me 10% off anything in the store, and free delivery, the other offered me £20 off if I was spending £100 or more. The item I was buying was £120 so I knew I could use either code. At first glance, I thought that the 10% off and free delivery was going to give me the best deal, but just to be certain I did have to do a bit of working out to see which worked out best. Here’s how I did my workings out:
Basic Price £120.
Delivery £5.95.
First Code – 10% off + Free Delivery = (£120-10%=£108) – Total Cost after Code: £108.
Second Code – £20 off = (£120-£20+£5.95) – Total cost £105.95
Not a lot in it as you can see, but if I’d used the first code – the one I’d thought would save me the most - I wouldn’t have saved quite so much money, and I do always like to save as much as possible. It’s nice having multiple discounts available, specially at the moment when we’re all trying to save as much as we can, but do make sure you do your maths carefully or you could miss out on the best deal.#
Tags: BView, discount, internet shopping, money off, money saving, online, voucher
Posted in Announcements, General, Savings, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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 »
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
Posted in offers, Savings | Comments Off
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 »
The consumer trap
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Everyone likes the idea of something for nothing, however, where loyalty cards are concerned, the phrase ‘It’s too good to be true’ may hit the nail on the head.
Loyalty cards came into common use in the mid 1990’s, a stroke of marketing genius which saw supermarket giants market shares entirely unbalanced and a terrifying customer retention. This galvanised the opposing chains into action and in just two years loyalty cards were rife.
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.
Tags: discount, find a deal, loyalty card, money saving, shopping, special offers
Posted in Business, Findings, General | Comments Off
An introduction to online discount vouchers
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
The recession is really starting to bite: high street stores with never ending sales, reports of shoppers “downshifting” in their weekly shopping and consumers becoming more conscious of how they spend their hard earned cash. It’s getting harder for businesses not just to attract new customers but to keep the ones they already have. When multi-millionaire Wayne Rooney is looking for 50% off his night out it’s clear that thrifty, shrewd spending is becoming the norm and it’s going to take more than a few extra reward points to persuade people to part with their money.
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.
Tags: credit crunch, money saving, recession, shopping, voucher
Posted in Announcements, Business, Findings | 1 Comment »