Learning how and where to save money at any time in your life is useful, but it becomes particularly essential when you have children. You have someone in your life that is 100% dependent on you, relying on you to make the right financial decisions, and when our little one was born, we started to consider how we spent our money. Here are just three easy ways that you can make your wage stretch that little bit further.
Be creative with days out
A lot of parents opt for theme parks, cinemas and day trips to different towns when they think of treating their kids. Those are all great ideas, but they won’t work on a regular basis if you’re trying to save money. It isn’t just the initial payment, but the need to add food, drink and even souvenirs on top of it.
Days out don’t have to cost the earth – think of more creative ways that you can spend time together. Go for long walks and explore a new area of where you live each time, go down to the local park or gardens with some games and pack a homemade picnic, or if you live on the coast, take a freezer with ice pops you’ve made yourself to the beach.
Save money on clothing
There are a lot of ways that the whole family can save money when it comes to clothing. If you’re looking for kids clothes, my top tip is to get sales-savvy and buy out of season; if you know that your children will need new summer clothes next year, wait until sales periods at the end of this summer and go online for the best deals, so that in a years’ time your kids have all the clothes they need but for much cheaper.
If you need new suits for the office, sites like Jacamo have many styles, patterns and colours of suits that you can purchase as part of a multi-buy deal, where you can get the full three-piece for less. Or, look at their polo shirts and sportswear where you can get the same item in multiple colours for less money, meaning you cut costs but don’t compromise on the quality.
Buy in bulk
It’s often the case when you shop around online and in bulk-buying stores like Costco, that you can save a lot of money off the retail price of an item by buying it in multiples. For example, everyday items like toilet paper and shampoo, or canned/dry foods like tuna and pasta can often be bought in higher quantities for much lower prices.
You might have to extend your cupboard space a little, but it will be worth it for all the money you will shave off your weekly food bills. Another trick is to take advantage of new member offers too, such as free delivery for online shopping or a discount for your first order.
You can click here for more money-saving tips, but if you have any, post them in the comments section below…
I received compensation in exchange for the above
I’ve done some comparisons between Tesco and Aldi. For the average shop, Aldi is much cheaper – but Aldi don’t do home delivery (as far as I am aware), which has been needed in the last few months.
For bulk buys or certain other regular purchases, check out Amazon Subscribe and Save:
1 – 4 subscriptions arriving in a month Save 5%
5 or more subscriptions arriving in a month Save 15%
We use it for toilet paper, kitchen towels, wet wipes, toothpaste etc. With the 15% discount it would be hard to find some of the items cheaper elsewhere.
You can also get Cashback credit cards that give you a small % back for all your purchases – so if you were going to buy something, at least you get some money back (though usually something like 0.5% so it isn’t worth thinking about on the individual purchase level! As Martin Lewis always says though: make sure you pay off your credit card bill in full each month, or any Cashback savings would probably be eaten by the interest!
Money Saving Expert has a lot of good money saving suggestions – one could say they are experts at it!
Also check out sites like Top Cashback: if you are going to buy something, see if you can buy it through a link from there (once you have signed up and logged in) and in a few weeks / months depending on the website you’ll end up with some cash (either payable in to your bank account, or through other means such as Amazon vouchers (with some extra cash thrown in). Makes sense if you were going to be buying something anyway, but I wouldn’t go and buy something from there just because I could get cash back. They also have browser extensions to help alert you when you are on a site that offers cash back. (When people sign up from the referral link and earn £10 cashback, I’d receive a bonus of £5.00.)
There are also apps like HotUKDeals that you can set up to alert you when there are special offers on items of interest, or just browse for a bargain if you would prefer.