2012: Thou Shall Save Thy Money

As I won't be posting until we've hit the new year I wanted to share with you, one of my resolutions. I'm very much a 'go with the flow' type person and I usually refuse to make them, but this year feels different. For the first time i'm going into a New Year without any of the previous year(s) hang ups. I've decided to change career, something that feels like the biggest shakeup of my life but one i'm actually looking forward to!! My motto for starting 2012 is 'Out with the old, in with the new'.

Brace yourself, this is a bit of a ramble!

Now is the perfect time for a clean slate and one of the things I want to focus on is saving money. If you follow me on twitter, you'll have noticed that my latest guilty pleasure is watching back to back episodes of extreme couponing. There are always episodes on Discovery Real time but if you don't have this channel, you can find all the episodes online. It's basically about American men & women collecting coupons for money off grocery shopping totaling amounts like $1000 and paying $5 for it.

Although this is a complete extreme way to shop, takes them hours and hours of planning and here in the UK we don't have the amount of offers and coupons that is available in the US, it doesn't mean we can't take part on some level. 

I think it's a very British thing to not use money off coupons even if you have them. Our attitude is very much that we can't be bothered with the fuss over saving 20p off a loaf of bread. But all these savings add up and there is ways to find and print out coupons for money off items that you use regularly. for instance, go onto Facebook and 'Like' the Philadelphia cream cheese page and you get a £1 coupon for a 200g or above tub. A 200g tub costs exactly £1 so therefore its FREE! Try www.beforeishop.co.uk to get you started!

{Click the coupon to be taken to the printable voucher}

Another great website I have found is www.mysupermarket.co.uk where you can do your grocery shopping online and it will tell you how much it will cost at each supermarket. As you shop it will also tell you if you can save money on an item or if a cheaper item is available that you can swap with. I checked out our weekly shop and you can see the money saving for yourself! Also if it's the first time you check out with them, you get £10 off when you spend £50 or above which would have taken my total to £53.58. Why spend £72 at ASDA when I can only spend £53 at Tesco? I think we all need to adopt the attitude of 'why should I give away £20 extra of my money?' because you worked for it and if someone wanted to dock 2 hours of your pay you wouldn't be happy about it! That £20 you worked for so keep it in your pocket!

Lets face it, the weather is going to be pretty dismal for the next couple of months so, why not spend one Sunday afternoon looking for some coupons? Do you shopping online and see how much you can save. Sort through all your old clothes or bits and bobs you no longer want or use and sell them! Have a blog sale, put them on ebay, do a car boot or donate them to charity. It'll soon all add up and think of all the great things you can do with the extra money thats tied up in things you no longer want or that you are giving away for the sake of not getting that coupon out of your purse!

I hope you all have a fantastic New Years Eve whatever you're doing and here's to an amazing 2012!

Lisa X

"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right" - Oprah (For Sean!)