The Credit Crunch – Cutting costs where you can

October 22, 2008 – 3:55 pm

A lot of us have been feeling the pinch recently with the higher costs of gas, electric, food prices and petrol. A little of that has been alleviated recently with the government pushing the petrol stations to drop their prices in line with oil prices having come down slightly and some of us are even finding we can once again buy petrol at under £1 at the pump, something I don’t think many of us expected.

Finding ways to cut costs or lower need for things is still pretty much there in all our minds, and there are various things you can do to help yourself with this, and we’ve listed three big things we think might help you.

Cavity wall insulation
Find out if the house you are living in has cavity wall insulation. If it doesn’t then look into getting it done – the HEES scheme runs across the country and is government funded, it offers some of it’s services free to people on certain benefits, and for everyone else there are discount schemes available to help with the costs. Heating a house that has cavity wall insulation takes a lot less than heating one without, so even if you can’t get it done for free, it’s really worthwhile getting it done if you can as the benefits will be long term. Don’t worry if you don’t own your own home, many rented places can still have cavity wall insulation done under the scheme if the person living there has the permission of the owner to do it.

Car-share or don’t drive
Find someone who needs to go where you’re going and share the cost with them – whether it’s travelling to and from work, or doing the shopping together once a week. The saving will benefit you both especially if you can alternate who’s car you use as this will save not only petrol but wear and tear on your car, and also it will mean you will be driving less miles so you may be able to adjust your car insurance to say you are driving less miles and save that way too. Walking or getting the old push bike out of the shed are alternatives that you could look at as well – particularly for those shorter journeys, it might not be the best weather at the moment, but we are still getting some sunshine and as long as it’s not actually raining, you’ll soon get warm peddling hard

Shop Smart
Shopping with a friend has another advantage, you can between you take advantage of bulk buy offers, and buy one get one free (bogof) offers. Try sitting at your pc and looking on the Tesco, Asda or other supermarket website to see what offers they are doing before you head, it’s much easier to do it this way than to try and find them in the shop when you get there. Plan your weekly meals around these offers and make your shopping list accordingly. Plan on cooking simple meals as well – even if you’re not used to cooking from scratch, there are lots of websites where you can get recipe ideas for simple meals that don’t take a lot of effort and cooking from scratch is a lot cheaper than buying pre-prepared foods. If you have the space to store things then look out for those bulk buy offers where you can get the reeeeally large bag of pasta for only a little more than the regular size bag, or the giant box of teabags. Check carefully to make sure you are getting a good deal and then either split them with a friend or two, or get yourself a couple of big storage containers.