Clear Out and Clean Up £££

If you’ve not spring cleaned this year, then this is your kick up the butt to do so.  And while you’re at it – you can gather yourself a nice little lump of money for your savings pot.

Now, your either a car-booter or your not.  I’m not so I’m an ebayer.  I’ll pay the listing and final sale fees just to avoid having to ram the van full of rubbish.  Also, I’m a bit precious over things.  If someone is haggling for 5p off, I’ll refuse to sell it as I think they being cheeky!  So, it’s best all round if I sell things online!

Clear Out and Clean Up £££

Things that sell really well are baby clothes, designer clothes and electricals.  If you find any old mobile phones, sell them.  You might think they’re outdated and not worth anything, but someone might need it for parts, or it maybe their favourite model phone of all time.  Don’t be held back by what you think won’t sell.  You never know what people may buy.

Things that don’t sell well are bulky items that need collecting (prams, excercise equipment, barbeques) and DVD’s and books.  This is because the market is flooded and titles can be bought new from places like Play.com and The Book People.

Always price things realistically as you want rid of it.  If you’re not sure, look on ebay and see what the going rate is.

Another ebay tip is to list your items in the evening so the auction ends in the evening.  There will be more people actually online and bidding for your precious items.

For the car booters amongst you, please don’t be like me and refuse sales!!  |Take what you can and reduce prices at the end.  Make a “50% off” sign before you go and hoik it up when the crowds look like they have peaked.  You don’t want to be packing up a load of stuff you don’t want and taking back home.

After your car boot or ebaying spree, take out your expenses and put your profits in your savings pot.

If you do this every six months (or every three if you have loads of stuff!), you can pay a nice little chunk off that mortgage!

Lunch Money

This weeks tip for reducing your outgoings concerns the amount of money we spend on our lunch (and a bit of a rant about the price of a sandwich!)

Add up how much you spend on your own lunch during the week.  If you are a homeworker, like me, I usually eat 3 times a week out of the fridge and twice out during the working week.  If you can get the 2.99 meal deals every day, you are spending £15 on your lunch, but what about the extras you pick up when you are there.  If you’re anything like me in Boots, you’ll be spending a small fortune, but even a supermarket meal deal exposes you to magazines, more than you want to eat, special offers you don’t really need, cakes for everyone in the office – you get the idea.  You go in to spend £3 and come out spending £13.

The most cost effective option I have found for lunches is beans on toast, soups and leftovers.  If you don’t mind eating the same thing twice, leftovers are your saviour, plonking a whopping £60 a month in your savings pot.  If you do like variety (and I do), soups can save you with most home made vegetable soups costing around 40 pence per portion.  Add a bread roll and you’ve a filling, healthy meal.  Vegetable soup is also the best way of using up your dying vegetables and reducing that leftover food deficit we all need to reduce.  I’ll post a few vegetable soup recipes and update this post over the next week.

Now kids lunches may be breaking your food budget as they eat so much!  The majority of kids lunchbox items are vastly overpriced.  I bought my 9 year old a flask and he took a variety from beans and sausage to soup to pasta and even hot pot once (although that didn’t go down well).  The push behind that was that he was sick of sandwiches and it is a real timesaver in the morning.

So, daily sandwich runs can end up costing you enormously but on the up side – if you change your habits, you’ve a bit to put in your savings pot each week.  Forecast how much this will save you over the year and I’m sure you’ll be motivated enough to do it!

Let me know your thoughts below.  Have you any ideas for cheap lunches?

Project Mortgage Payoff: Petrol

Grrr. At the risk of giving away my age, I remember when the fuel strikes affected the country because it went past 79p a litre.  I'd be happy to pay that now.

To save a bit more money towards paying off my mortgage, this week I am really looking at how much petrol we use.

It's nearly the school hols so the school run will be sacrificed.

The short runs to the shop for bread and milk can be stopped.  We can walk the hound there and kill two birds with one stone.

Ice Hockey matches.  Car sharing is now an option.  To be fair, they do share as often as possible.

I need to get the smallest riding his bike more.  Again, two birds with one stone here as that can be a summer hol activity!

And all the money saved from my petrol budget at the end of the month will go in the savings account to add to my mortgage payoff fund.  How satisfying and really the incentive I need to walk!

Have you any ideas on how to use less fuel?


Share your ideas below!