Money saving hints & tips for those saving for travelling.

[*Touring Ted*]

I'm always trying to find ways of saving money. Cutting back on unnecessary spending and being savy with cash so I can travel..

Lets hear all your day to day tips !!!!!!!


My newest one has been making homebrew wine.

I used to buy 4-5 bottles of wine a week. At about £5-£7 a bottle, thats £100 a month. Sometimes more heh heh..

You can buy very easy to do, pre-mixed wine kits for £25 which will make 25 bottles of very good quality wine.. It's SOOOO easy you wouldnt believe.

My wine bill is now £12.50 a month instead of £100 !!!!!!!

Obviously you can do this for all wines, s, cider etc etc ! all the equipment costs about £50 which pays for itself in the first month.

[maximondo]

Ha ha - ever since getting back from my last trip, I have manage to borrow all my furniture, borrow some clothes and worked out that if you eat oats and sultans for breakfast, that only cost $5AUD a month!

All my friends are amazed at how heap I am!

[devildiver]

quit smoking, quit drinking, sleep in a tent, quit motorcycles and use a bicycle, and if this doesnt cause major depression the fact that you shaking, mildy hyperthermic and no where near your destination will!

On a serious note I think shopping around both before your trip and whilst on it helps. When you have a budget theres a big difference between a ten grand bike and a five grand bike, even if it "wasnt the one charley mcgreggor used".

[usl]

i drink around 4-5 cups of coffee a day ... 2€ * 5 = 10 €*50 days = 500€!!!

to make a saving a started to ask for hot water and make my own coffee ... it saves a lot...

[Threewheelbonnie]

On the drinking front try boxes of wine instead of bottles. Cheaper, plus you can have a glass and there is no pressure to finish off the bottle.

Supermarket own brands will save you loads. Some are below par (can't stand Morrisons basic stuffin, but ASDA's is OK), some (like ASDA curry sauce at 6p a jar) are great. Try everything then switch back when you really can't stand the cheap ketchup or whatever.

Get yourself some aluminium boxes for the freezer too. You'll cut your portions as one portion always goes in the tin box for the freezer. Healthier AND one meal in three/four is basically free. If you really need to save, chicken's are dirt cheap right now. A £3 chicken plus veg, curry sauce, mushrooms to make a pie etc. will feed two people for about five days. Gets a bit repetative, but that's where cheap wine comes in!

Your local library is a lot cheaper than Amazon.

A bit late in the year, but if you've got a garden plant some veg. Supermarket Garlic, Spuds, chiles and peppers are all "live". Chuck the clove/spud/seed in a pot and you can grow freebies. Even garden centre plants are cheaper if they live.

The killer for a lot of people is snacks. If you like burgers, I find the McDonalds breakfast a lot better treat than stuff in the afternoon where you blow a fiver but still want your next meal.

I'm a Yorkshireman, I'm supposed to be mean

Andy

[jcbp]

Originally Posted by Threewheelbonnie

Your local library is a lot cheaper than Amazon.

+1. Also, many libraries allow you to request any book on the county catalogue and get them sent to your local branch for free. For a fee they can access books not in the county and get pretty much anything. This means that your local library is very much larger than it looks.

Also, if you live nearish to a county border you can often join the library in the town over the border. That gives you two county catalogues to search.

Worth checking before you set out to buy a book just to read it rather than own it.

[magdalena]

Good tips! A lot of them hadn't occured to me. I tend to try to avoid eating in restaurants so much, and try to shop at supermarkets (and buy their own brand of food as another user mentioned- it's always cheaper). Depending on where you're travelling, you can find water fountains around the city with drinking water, and it's a good idea to carry around a water bottle and fill it up each time you see a fountain. You save a lot by not buying bottled water

[*Touring Ted*]

I made £1000 on Ebay over the last 2 months...

I walked around my house, garage and sheds routing out stuff that I didnt use anymore !

I was very surprised what some people will pay for what I thought was useless junk..

Sold and old guitar and amp, grow lights, bike spares, tyres, old Playstation games, etc etc..

Have a rummage !

[mj]

It's good to see that I'm not the only one wrapping my head around this question, and I've been approaching this on several levels. Take the car for example - ever since I've had a driver's license I've had a car. Since I live in the city it was not a necessity but a mere luxury. One that cost us 600€ a year in taxes and insurance, plus another 480€ for the garage. That's almost 1,100€ a year without even driving it a single mile. I was very hesitant to sell it since I kept telling myself that it's a very convenient way to go grocery shopping, that I need it to go visit friends that live far outside of town or in another city, etc. This summer, my wife and I have decided to try and see if we actually could make it without a car for two months, and guess what: we could and we did. Consequently, we've sold it a month ago.

Other strategies involve avoiding to eat out as often as possible, which also includes taking sandwiches to work instead of buying them at Subways or the local sandwich place. We're also saving money by riding the bycicle instead of taking the bus, subway, etc., even now during winter time. That saves us another 100€ per month. Then there's selling useless crap - go through your stuff once a year and sell everything that you haven't seen, used, needed, or even remebered you had during the last year. And I also found the following to be very effective: never go grocery shopping without a shopping list. We tend to be way too impulsive and buy way too much crap without a shopping list. Mobile phone is another issue - I use a five year old Nokia and got a huge discount on my plan.

There tons of other possibilities, and just like everything else listed in this thread so far, it's all very specific. Not everybody will be able to do without a car, or do everything by motorcycle and bycicle, or to take food to work, save electricity, etc. We try not to be cheap, we go out regularly, but we also try to avoid pointless spending.

[mario agius]

ebay the money people pay for crap, amazing just try it

[oldbmw]

I grow a lot of our own fruit and veg which I store by freezing, making chutneys, jellies and bottling.
Some veggies I don't bother to grow because I can buy bulk packs very cheaply when they are in season ( at their best) Recently was buying 5 kilos of carrots for £1. These freeze well. But another way to store food is to make large casseroles/stews/curries and portion them out to freeze.
Buy a good slow cooker. You can then make the best tasting beef meals using shin beef which is cheap and also very lean, just takes a while to cook. You can also prepare a meal in the slow cooker at night, switch off in the morning and then reheat a portion in the microwave in the evening.
Simple quick cheap, tasty and very nourishing.
Always eat yoghourt when eating hard beans ( pulses) that way you digest the protein and don't make so much methane

To be healthy eat lost of different things, that way your body is more likely to have access to everything it needs.

[holodragon]

Hi all,always use a shopping list it will save you loads.If you have the time shop in more than one place,you will be surprised at how much you can save by comparing prices. Always check multiple websites for the cheapest deals,sometimes Ebay is not the cheapest place to be . Be strict with yourself & try to keep to a budget,a tip i learnt from my girlfriend was to keep all my grocery shopping receipts each month & then add them up,I was always overspending!
Treat yourself occasionally though, unless you enjoy living like a monk

[electric_monk]

Originally Posted by holodragon

Treat yourself occasionally though, unless you enjoy living like a monk

and what, pray tell, is wrong with that.......


PS....

[spooky]

Originally Posted by tedmagnum

I walked around my house, garage and sheds routing out stuff that I didnt use anymore !

I was very surprised what some people will pay for what I thought was useless junk..

That's exactly what I do for the last few years..., shifting the junk or unneeded gear over to eBay and get the gear I need most... that way I was able to transform my bike the way I wanted it to be with big fuel tank and the stuff that needed renewing any way....
the same with camping gear, sold lots of crap that was piled up all over the place for years, cleared up everything and was able to but my self a KATADYN water filter and all the other essentials by strictly working off my wish-list.

By doing it this way I totally reduced all my possessions to a absolute minimum, easy to store away.... and with a top travelling kit on the other end at the same time.

by the way... a tip for what you need to carry on a bike...
place "everything" (part of the bike) you want to take with you on a smallish size table side by side (not piled up)... everything that can't be placed on it... well that has to stay at home...
You would be surprised how less it would be i the end.. no more than 25Kg in total.

[mj]

Originally Posted by holodragon

Always check multiple websites for the cheapest deals,sometimes Ebay is not the cheapest place to be.

I agree, this is very important. I actually found eBay to be quite expensive for some stuff. Sure, eBay is #1 on the supply side but it's also #1 on the demand side - everybody knows it and if, as a seller, you want to make good money you sell it on eBay.

I found that the best source for shopping cheap are classifieds. Not necessarily Craigslist but local or smaller ones. I bought a tripod worth around 80€, mint condition, barely used for 5 bucks. Find a local or regional newspaper and start scanning the classifieds - you might be surprised how many things can be found quite cheap once you're off the beaten Craigslist and eBay path.