Tips for Living on a Budget

[victoriatagg]

Hi all,

At giffgaff we’re always keen on helping our members get great value by sharing information around the benefits of buying SIM Free, and saving by ordering a free giffgaff SIM card instead of getting trapped in an expensive two-year contract. Truly savvy mobile users will know this by now, but if you want to check out why buying your phone outright is cheaper than getting a contract, take a look at our Mobile Adventurer infographic.

Our inspiration for this campaign came from the “Live Below the Line” charity challenge which is designed to raise awareness of poverty by challenging people to do 5 days worth of food shopping on only £5. We thought we’d take the challenge to the next level by asking a group of bloggers for opinions and tips on how to live different aspects of your life on a shoestring budget.

The bloggers we asked have a wealth of knowledge on how to eat well, dress to kill and do all sorts of other things for less than you would normally pay. They’ll be writing up their blog posts in the coming weeks and we will make sure to share their advice with the giffgaff community!

As ever, we’re also keen to hear from you so feel free to comment below with any extra tricks you know for saving the pounds and pence. For more inspiration you can also check out some great tips from giffgaff members for eating on a budget in this blog post on Live Below the Line,

[carolshanahan]

One word ALDI!!!! About 5 months ago i started shopping there...now i never leave the shop!!!!!! I used to think they products wouldn't be as good as the other supermarkets but they are absolutely fine...i saved £15 a week from changing to aldi from asda. Im not great at maths but that's alot of money per year to save!!

[jeff_elephant]

My tip for food is to become vegetarian or start eating more vegetarian food. If you buy dried beans / lentils from the supermarket, you can cook up a 500g small bag that costs £40p-150p to last you for 3-4 days. Cooking in batches twice a week saves you time and money. And you can pack these beans / lentils for work, which is super cheap, super healthy and super easy!

My other food tip is to eat porridge for breakfast. It's super cheap, super healthy, low in gluten, low GI. I add seeds, gofi berries, cinnamon and set honey to mine for flavour. 

Try these 2 tips out! You'll be far healthier and it will unintentionally save you money!

[computekbrain]

Definitely take lunches to work.... don't buy lunch whilst out as you'll waste loads of money doing that

[larsus]

My tip for living on a budget is, when you go shopping try and stick to the two pound rule. Ie don't buy an item that's more expensive than two pounds you'll be surprised how much you can get. Obviously you can stay away from the frozen meal isle, which brings me to my second point. Which is cook yourself, if you think you're not a good chef get a good recipe some websites that I use on a,regular basis are sorted food (they even have a YouTube channel) and bbc good food. Even if you're not a good cook everyone can follow a recipe and with time comes skill. Lastly when shopping buy in bulk or buy reduced meats, if you go to Tesco look for their reduced meat, even if it goes off tomorrow, pop it in the freezer it will still be good in a month time

[jaro2]

My tip for living on a buget is to get rid of that high maintenance partner!!Heheh!!

[jaro2]

*budget*. heheh get rid of the high maintenance partner and ebay anything they have left behind!!! Works wonders!!

[bob_williams]

Just buy what you need rather than bulk buying items that are going to be wasted. No point at all in thinking you are saving because you are getting 12 for the price of 8 on something if in the end a third of it goes off before you have time to eat it.

[popeye89]

Review your driving. People assume its cheaper to run a petrol than a diesel, but it isnt always the case. If you do 8000 miles a year or less youre probably better off with a petrol. Diesel cars often sell for more and it can be many years before you see a return, if any, especially when you factor in repair costs

[ma2013]

Great idea. I agree with a previous post, take lunch to work and take those nescafe cappuccino packs to work (instead of Starbucks). Bulk buying is a great idea too (sorry all the good ideas have already been stated above). :-)

[stephenmiller]

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