BOGOF, 241, 342 and more acronyms you should care about...

Supermarkets, at any given time, are generally filled to bursting with promotions, special offers and deals. All too good to pass up, and only around for a short time, so you'd better grab them before they're gone! Or should you?

According to a Telegraph article from 2008, more than 80% of all promotional activity in our supermarkets takes place in the form of multi-buy promotions. They're a firm favourite with the big chains which dominate our grocery shopping, largely because the heavy-hitting brands are commonly more willing to give extra product free to the stores, than permenantly reduce their price.

How that affects us the shopper is fairly simple, in that if we've planned for buying 1 xyz and 2 abc's, then the former being on BOGOF, and the latter 3-4-2, really throws our shopping list.

If you run the sort of shop where whatever you fancy floats into the trolly, it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem, but for meal planners working to a budget it can be awkward, especially when you factor in the common practice of slight price increases to factor in multi-buy deals.

With all this negativity you may think I am anti-multibuy. I'm really not. My only issue comes down to what makes a good buy and a sound spend. A few good things to consider when faced with multi-buy meccas...

1. Is it perishable?

It sounds so, so obvious. But we can all be guilty from time to time of having greedy eyes and thinking we can get through more produce than we ever could. Obvious offenders for this category are fresh produce like meat and veg; but do remember to consider freezer space. The three for a tenner deals that tend to stay pretty much constantly at the likes of Asda and Tesco make meat much more affordable for us, but I only go for them when the freezer space is there!

I have heard people say that they "wouldn't use that much", however, for some strange items. Dried and canned foods aren't a concern and neither are things like washing up liquid, washing powders, toilet roll or cleaning products. The only real issue there is storage space; and I'd say if you've got it, go for it. Through clever multi buys and Approved Food orders, we've stocked up on non perishable items in the past, and that stock has stretched much further than we ever expected.

2. Will you use it?

Again, it sounds so obvious and so simple. Sure, the other cereal may be on offer but if you or your family really don't like it, it's going to sit unloved, gathering dust... while you're back at the tills buying what you would have anyway.

3. Is it really a saving?

This one can be a little more difficult, as it requires memory! Awkward though it may be, try to pay attention to the common prices your favoured supermarket(s) tend to ask for the goods you buy. If the go on offer, do pay attention to the usual price versus the current price. If it's higher, maybe the sweet deal could be a touch more sour than expected?

4. Pay attention to the pack sizes!

This can work two ways. First off, I'd recommend checking out pack sizes you don't normally buy; say if the 500g pack of something is £1 and the kilo £1.50, normally the kilo pack is better value. But a keen eyed shopper could spot the buy one get one free offer on the 500g pack and get a kilo of said product for £1! (Yes, I have no idea what on earth could be that cheap either... sadly!)

The second way this can work isn't quite so helpful to the shopper. Other shoppers I know have observed a trend for diminishing pack sizes; often allowing a multi buy offer that isn't as generous as first thought.

5. Keep an eye on the competition.

This one doesn't apply to me quite as much living where I do now (a city centre location with a single tesco metro - very, very annoying!), but back home our shopping centre plays host to both an Asda and a Sainsburys. It can make for some extra savings to detour into the alternate store if they've got some offers that are useful. Many shops now publicise their offers online, so a 5 minute googling session could save very real £££s!

And above all, happy bargain hunting!

Alexandra x

Hello from one very stressed blogger...

We have under a month left here. Now, readers who've stuck with me through this blog will know our time here has been... challenging, at times. Hell, we've wished we could get out of here sooner. But now the time is almost upon us, it's becoming very hard work.

We don't yet have a flat or house to move to. What's more, the "cheap" houses still need deposit and admin fees, and between those it's all really adding up... We'd found a flat, but then the landlord picked a DSS client over us - guaranteed cash I guess. Even more of a pain as that flat didn't need a deposit and the admin fee was half that of most LAs we've come across. /sigh.

I am still a student, though I'm having a big old conundrum about that - we're skint as hell and I'm not used to, nor am I comfortable with, my finances feeling this out of control. There's undeniably a huge part of me saying "just go work" - I'm looking for employment as things stand anyway as I have the summer off so I'm just waiting and hoping someone will get back to me about the shedload of job applications I have in already.

So, even further economy drives commence. Between the lack of funds and the impending move, we're working hard on storecupboard shopping - that is eating from what we have in our cupboards, fridge and freezer with a focus on avoiding any more spending till we really have to. It makes for some interesting meals, I can tell you that!

I hope to give you better news soon, and in a more decisive tone.

Alexandra x

The Final Countdown...?

At least in terms of living here!

We're well into the season of house viewings here, and used to having groups of people traipse around our house! We had a huge tidy up and cleaning session which impressed the Letting Agent - who'd been whining previously. They've been a shockingly poor agent for most of the time so all things considered we don't really want to give them anything on us!

While our fellow students are able to arrange the next year's accomodation now, myself and the Mr are in a different situation - we plan to live in a place just the two of us so we are looking to the domestic market rather than that of the student market..

We have been looking to move in June, which means that reasonably we can begin to look seriously from May... However we have requested information on an especially cheap property that has no deposit/bond, which would mean we could bring our move forward to May, which means we could likely take said house... Saying that, this is all getting awfully ahead of ourselves.

But it's nice to be optimistic!

With no deposit, and being £100 cheaper p/m than this house, it'd really help... Plus, with any luck the Mr should get the job he's in for, which will bring in an extra £600 p/m plus if I get the job (weekend mornings in a shop) I'm after, we'll see another £200 roughly!

All in all, these things added together make for what may become a real debt-busting summer!

Fingers crossed, I'll keep you all updated!

Alexandra xx

I did a header!

I did! Took me a while but I got round to it. Feel a bit better about this place now.

Anyway, on to... 'things'.

I'm not too much further forward than the other day to be honest. I'm still plodding on with daily clicks, scratchies, etc. I've also started comping, so I'll let you know about end of month totals when we get there, and any wins as they happen.

I requested a £15 Love to Shop [Iceland food shopping for me, yay!] voucher from Toluna this week. I've heard their voucher dispatch time isn't at it's speediest right now though, so I'm not counting my voucher-based chickens till they're hatched/here.

This week's noms, aside from the abundance of rubber chicken, has been quite mincey, with both spaghetti bolognaise and chili making appearances.

I have found myself eyeing anything that might be eBayable around the house, but seem to be drawing several blanks there.

Fingers crossed, eh?
Alexandra xx

On the Subject of Rubber Chicken, and More...

Well hello there again.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year, I spent much of it back in Northumberland with my parents and the other half's family. There was even a boxing day parents-meet-parents type event! It all went well though, and I had a lovely time.

Money is still tight though, perhaps more so. I find my mind turning more and more frequently to the subject of money and any possible way to spend less and perhaps earn more. There are a couple of links in the blog right now, which are affiliation links, generally to survey sites or similar, which normally give me some small cash reward - a pound or so, occasionally more. So if you're not already with them, and you do use my links, I thank you for that. I;d say join them anyway as survey sites really help me.

Still, with limited means of upping my income, it largely falls to the side of saving what cash I do have in order to ensure I have enough for the summer. Food bills are probably the one bill we have the most control on here; it's a shared student house so we don't always get to say if the heating's kept off, and sometimes lights are on when they ought not to be. It's the nature of the beast though and hopefully a lot of that shall be eliminated when we're living just the two of us.

For the time being though, I've turned my attention to our food. I wasn't doing much cooking since we moved here last summer - my boyfriend has done a great deal of it, and while he cooks very tasty meals, they are rarely economical. They tend to be somewhat oversized, meat heavy, and rich. Not great for health, or the pocket.

In the last month or so I have taken over much of the cooking after conquering my fear of the cooker here [it is very hard to light, sometimes resulting in large flames - but a lighter has helped that!] and as such I've begun to notice a difference.

Tonight I roasted my first chicken. I bought the 3-for-£10 on meat deal in Tesco, 2 chickens and a pack of steak chunks, the latter chicken and the steak currently residing in our freezer. I had never roasted a chicken before - shocking I know - so I was strangely proud of tonight's attempt, as it was falling off the bone! :)

Now, on to what makes my chicken "rubber" - I'll give you a hint, it's not the one in the picture!

I first read about the concept of "rubber chicken" a couple of years ago or more, on the MoneySavingExpert forums. The idea is to make the chicken stretch over as many meals as possible. A lot of people use the chicken for a roast dinner or similar for the first meal, but I made my first chickeny meal a pasta one as the mr is quite critical of how much meat he gets and I figured I could get away with less meat with less complaining this way! I used a single leg in the pasta for the 2 of us [and the pasta was packet stuff from approved foods!] and got no complaints...

The remainder of the chicken is in the fridge and will be dealt with tomorrow. There's definately going to be chicken and sweetcorn spun egg soup, chicken lasagne and a chicken curry though, off the top of my head. Then we'll see where we are, there may be some chicken and sweetcorn mayo sarnies this week for uni too, perhaps.

All in all, it's going pretty well. I'll post more on approved food later this week too. :)

Alexandra
xx

NSDs

I'm a member of the forums at MoneySavingExpert (shock, eh?!) and a monthly thread on the debt free wannabe board is the "NSD" thread. The idea is that you pledge a certain number (chosen by you) of "no spend days" in the month. For some people, this might be as low as 5, whereas some members go for figures as high as 25+!

Different posters have differing views on what constitues a spend, but I think I am in the majority in classing bills and DDs as not a 'spend'. I class grocery purchases as spends though, and I know some NSDers don't.

So, you may be thinking, "Why the strictness? Why not just be generally careful about your spending but spend as and when you want/need to?"
Well, the concept of NSD is that once you've opened your purse/wallet once in a day, it's not much of a jump to carry on spending. In fact, it can be really easy to lose track. Plus, I find just being "careful" leads me to feeling deprived when I don't buy myself things, whereas making it a form of competition with myself means I'm rewarded for my carefulness!

I pledged 15 NSDs this month - fairly high for my first month I guess - but we really don't have much cash left at all, so sensible I thought... Well, I'm on 8 so far! So I'm pretty happy!

Where have I been?!

Wow, it's a long time since I last wrote here. I guess a lot of stuff had piled up and with one thing and another, I just hadn't blogged anything. I'm back though, and this seems more significant than ever. A bit of a summary on why, and finances:

We're approaching the end of my first semester at Uni and I'm about to go into my overdraft. Now, this is undeniably doing better than many of my housemates and indeed my other half, but this is still not ideal in my opinion; it means I've spent more than i meant, definately. The light at the end of the tunnel here is that there is of course, more loan to come, at the (relative) start of January.

However, when that comes, I'll need to be paying out almost half of it immediately as rent, then there's however much we owe for gas and electricity since JULY. That's going to be a sod of a bill, I know it. Luckily in February there is a bursary due from the Uni (subject to good progress), so that adds a nice buffer. I'd earmarked it partially for a new graphics card for my pc, but that may not be so likely. My birthday's in May though, so I could always ask for one then.

Now, the reason why I've gone into uber-thrift mode is that we hate this house. I mean, really hate it. I can't wait to move to somewhere better - and by better I mean that it can retain some heat, you can't see your breath and we're the only 2 people living in it. I'm a little jealous of Richard's sister; she just moved down here and while her house is in a slightly rougher location, it's considerably nicer than ours! It's cosy, and homey and everything I wanted. *sigh*

The lease for this place ends at the end of June and therefore we need to have some cash saved; for deposits, potential referencing fees etc and rent. We should be getting £200 each back off the LA for this place, but she couldn't lie straight in bed, so I'm betting on that not happening (if that is the case though, we're already planning to threaten small claims court, don't worry) - but that does mean we need to save more. We can't afford to let up when loans come in either, if we're to save.

The good side of this is that I actually kind of enjoy being thrifty (I suspect the OH doesn't!), though it certainly is sinking in with him - he's even converted friends of his to bargain value versions of things they used to buy, looks for voucher codes etc. Good lad! And we have quite a few vouchers available for us to use too. Which is handy.

That was all a bit 'stream of conscious' really, so I'll shush for today.

Alexandra xx