Shopping - Great Money Saving Tips

I LOVE to shop. Give me a chance to spend money and 98% of the time I will do it. But I also love saving money and seeking out a bargain! My main difficulty when it comes to shopping is that our nearest shopping towns are 20-25 miles away either way, so I end up spending my much-needed retail therapy budget on fuel and parking (yawn).

Anyhow - here are a few of my great money saving tips that I use when shopping (mainly online) - enjoy!!

Cashback Websites
Head to Quidco or Topcashback to earn cashback and find discount codes when shopping online. Even if it is travel insurance policy or a hotel break you're booking, see if you can get some money back. No better way to treat your other half than finding you can get 12% cashback on a £150 per night hotel room - that means more money for a nice meal!

Nectar Loyalty Card
Nectar is the biggest loyalty card scheme within the UK which launched in 2002 . It includes over 400 online retailers and points can be collected online and often in store. If you're not with Nectar already - please do get on there and sign up! This is my favourite money saving method because of the simplicity. It's as easy as this:

Log on to Nectar, find your retailer, click 'shop now & collect points' 

And BOOM! Points added a few weeks later.

A lot of retailers often do a double points period too, so the money saving can really add up. Now the fun part: redeeming the points :-) I usually let my points add up for about 9 months, by which time I might have around £50 to spend. You can then spend these points online at Sainsburys for your weekly shop, Pizza Express or even Easyjet, as well as many others. If you love to travel, consider spending them with Easyjet - we're heading to Venice in a couple of months' time and it's only costing us £30 each return - bargain!!

Your Bank
You will also find a lot of banks are starting their own reward schemes too. I'm with Halifax and they have a cashback scheme running , so I can log on to my account, see what offers there are from several retailers, and just by using my bank card I can earn cashback which goes straight to my account! If your bank isn't yet offering a money saving scheme then it wouldn't hurt to shop around, some banks offer you an instant cash reward for just joining them.

Email Sign Up
Browse your favourite shops and join their mailing lists - you sometimes get offered a discount just for signing up and it means you get regular emails from your faves so you never miss out on something new and fabulous, plus make some great money saving bargains. I never buy anything online at Dorothy Perkins unless I have a voucher code and always manage to get a free delivery discount code by searching Google (plus free returns if you change your mind!).

In Store
You find your perfect top in a store, and they only have one in your size. BUT there's a terrible make-up stain on it! What do you do? - No you don't put it back and wander off miserable. You ask for a discount. The worst they will say is there isn't one, but chances are nobody else will want it at full price either. Best case scenario - you get a love 20% discount off it (more if you're lucky)!


Supermarket Schemes and Mysupermarket
Head to MySupermarket and do your normal shop with your normal supermarket, and it will tell you if you're missing out on bigger savings elsewhere. This website compares the following shops so you know you're getting a good comparison:

And let's not forget the supermarket schemes on offer - Waitrose has the MyWaitrose card, Boots has a Boots Advantage card and Tesco has the Tesco clubcard plus all the others available. With the Tesco scheme we save up our vouchers and use them towards the cost of airport parking (which double up the value) or cinema trips, so they no longer have to cost a fotune.

I hope these money saving tips can help you save a good sum, or collect some point to spend on a luxury treat. Shopping around is the key to the best ways to save money and it's totally worth it - why pay more, if you don't need to?!

Holiday Hunting: Tips and Advice for a Great Vacation

Let's vacation it up!

So you want to get away: long haul or short haul, city break or beach trip, summer or winter - but you don't want it to cost the price a tourist pays (who doesn't love a low cost holiday?!) and you don't want to be clueless about the destination. Well I have gathered some details into this one blog post, which I hope will help! Many of my friends will know I manage to create a spreadsheet for anything I possibly can, so set about making one with your findings - it'll be great research for considering future trips!

Isla Contoy, Quintana Roo, Mexico - April 2014

1. Look at a map - where do you want to explore?
So I live in England. I know that short haul will mean Greece, Spain, Turkey, North Africa (Tunisia and Morocco), whilst long haul includes Thailand, the Caribbean, India and the UAE. If it's only a week I'm thinking of I will probably stay closer to home (May-September) otherwise long haul it will be! Once you've narrowed it down to about 3 destinations, check out Worldtravelguide here and type in the country you're considering. This is a great website to tell you basic holiday info such as if you need jabs before you go, what the public holidays are, the best time of year to visit, a brief history and much more. This should give you the 'need to know' information and possibly help narrow it down a bit more :-)

2. Destination weather and when to visit
To give you a sneak peek into the weather and when you might like to visit, type the country/city into good old Google followed by the word 'climate', and look at the image search - this should give you various graphs, so have a look at a few and you should get an idea on rainfall, minimum and maximum temperatures, how many hours of sun to expect, etc, like this:

3. Tips for cheap flights
If you're not going too far or for too long, you might find that you can book a flight and hotel/villa separately to avoid going with a tour operator and potentially paying more; great money saving tip. If so, get on to low cost airline websites such as Easyjet and Ryanair and do it yourself - it's a bit of extra organising but it's worth it to save those pennies. In our household we are big fans of Easyjet, because their hand luggage has a size limit but not a weight limit, so you can grab a cabin mini-suitcase and pack that for your journey. This means no hold luggage so it's a cheaper option and also means that at the other end you're not waiting an hour for your suitcase to appear at the baggage collection (yay)! Try and find accommodation with a washing machine and you can pack some washing tablets so you only need a few outfits for a week, the only problem will be trying to work out which of your amazing outfits to pack! Needless to say these low cost flights are great, but try to plan ahead, 5-9 months if at all possible, because prices only seem to go up in my experience.

4. Vacation websites to check out for great money saving trips
A good selection of build-it-yourself package holidays: Lowcostholidays, Sunmaster, Onthebeach
Some great places to look for accommodation: Holidaylettings, AirBnB, Trivago

5. Trip-advise pretty much EVERYTHING!
So you think you've found your dream hotel - the photos look professional and the amenities suit the whole family. First thing to do: get to Tripadvisor and see if it's a real winner. Tripadvisor is fantastic because it gives you the chance to hear from real life, everyday people that have actually been and can provides comments on their stay. Just don't forget to look at the good as well as the bad, and take into consideration when the review was posted. A hotel that might have been bad 4 years ago could well have improved.

6. Activities and attractions
You arrive ready to get some tourist adventures under your belt - it might be kayaking, visiting local ruins or exploring a tropical island that has lots of rare birds and fish. Shop around and take advantage of some great money saving deals! It's easy to settle for the first salesman that comes along with a number of excursions to sell, especially if you're travelling with a tour operator, and sure, the prices may seem reasonable, but head into town and have a look around, there are a lot of countries that expect you to haggle so the first price might not be the final price.

7. Currency
When looking for travel money I used to head to the local post office, but then I thought about searching online for the best price before our Mexico trip and the results were incredible. I headed to MoneySupermarket.com and opened up all the sites they suggested. I then looked for what £500 could get me in Mexican pesos on each, and the results were incredible. Here's an example of how much £500 could get me in UAE dirhams (based on 4 providers on 01/03/15):
Fairfx - £500.64 = 2760 dirhams
Travelex - £500 = 2723.25 dirhams
Post Office - £499.57 = 2700 dirhams
Sainsburys Bank - £500 = 2688.95 dirhams
ASDA Money - £500 = 2705.95 dirhams
Obviously the exchange rates are constantly changing so it's best to check a week before you're ready to make a purchase and then check again before you actually buy, but this example shows that for almost the exact same amount of money you can get an extra 70 dirhams (approx £12.70) of holiday money, and every little helps when it comes to money saving.

8. Learn the language
Buy a cheap phrasebook off the internet, a physical one or an audio one, and learn the basics of the language. This tip won't really save you any money but the locals will appreciate someone who is at least trying to absorb the culture whilst in another country, and they will respect you for it. Learn to say hello, good afternoon, thank you and good night - I think you'll find you enjoy it too!


9. Deals to be done in advance
If you know you're definitely going away to a country warmer than your own within the next 9 months, head to the shops during the low peak season for some great money saving opportunities. If you are going on safari in April, buy your suncream in November as they tend to have good deals on despite it being winter. And head to eBay during October to pick up maxi dresses and summer sandals at bargain prices, because not many other people will be after a summer wardrobe in the autumn.

I hope you've found this post useful! When it comes down to it, I believe it's all about planning in advance, taking the time to search and you can save a fortune (who doesn't love money saving ideas?!) - check out my previous travel post here to see what other deals I have done in 2015!