Here are some more utterly random ideas about making money and spending less of it.
Completely random money-saving and money-making ideas
- More alternative transport… Following on from yesterday’s post, another alternative means of transport. Have you seen those spring-like running things you strap to your feet, that let you bounce along at remarkable speed? I wish I knew what the blasted things were called… we saw a woman wearing them on Eastbourne seafront, a huge pink metal spring on each shoe, which made her at least six feet tall. She was bouncing along dressed in pink, like an elegant flamingo. Fantastic. If you know what they’re called, I’d love to find out!
- Lost your hard copy Tesco Clubcard vouchers? Now they’re online, so you’ll never lose them again. Apparently some people have re-discovered as much as £400 worth of vouchers they thought they’d lost forever.
- Energy company blues – Our last energy supplier, who I switched from last year, have only just sent a cheque refunding us for the cash they owed. The year before they held onto more than £600 of our money, and would probably still have it if I hadn’t spotted it and asked them to put it back in our account. If your gas and electricity accounts are in way too much credit, ask for your money back and earn the interest on it yourself instead of giving it away.
- Why pay for expensive software when there are free equivalents? There’s LibreOffice free office software including word processing, presentations and spreadsheets. You can use free software like paint.net and gimp for manipulating images. And VLC Player is one of the most widely compatible media players you can get.
- Student insurance isn’t always the cheapest – You’d assume student insurers would offer the cheapest student insurance. But it isn’t always so. If you’re a student and need to insure your belongings, car or whatever, it might be possible – and cheaper – to add an extension to your folks’ home insurance. Check and see.
- Use things up before going food shopping. Once a month, clear your cupboards, fridge and freezer and eat absolutely everything that’s anywhere near edible. It means you waste less food because stuff is less likely to quietly go out of date while you’re busy stockpiling more.
- Eat less meat – If you’re already doing meat-free Mondays or whatever, how about extending your meat-free evening meals to every other day? If you’ve had lunch there’s no real need for a massive slap-up meal in the evening, and it’s easy to make simple, tasty, meatless dishes. Next time I’m going to cover a bunch of places where you’ll find gorgeous meat-free recipes…