Money Saving Tips

A few tips to help in the recession, as well as helping the environment too.

1.Buy second hand, join a freecycle if you have one in your area, they are on yahoo groups and basically it's people giving away things they don't want anymore for free. Buy from charity shops.

2. Make do and mend rather than getting brand new stuff, or get it secondhand.

3. Look in skips sometimes you find real treasures in them, I got a beautiful pair of metal dining chairs all that was wrong with them was they needed new seat covers.

4. Buy from markets, buy all the cheap discount food in shops, or buy the no frills. Grow your own vegetables. Learn about nature and it's abundant and neglected food source. I make dandelion coffee by roasting dandelion roots. But be sure you definitely know it's edible before eating it and some plants have to be cooked or prepared in a certain way to make them edible. And don't pick from the roadside.

5. Don't buy top brand items, or designer clothes, you can even learn to dress make if you have the time and make your own clothes. Or even knit your own clothes. Or buy plain clothes and customise them. Also it's easy to learn how to alter clothes if they don't fit properly, or even take them to an alteration shop.

6. Buy a massive stock of food that way you'll be paying last years prices, and if you get it wholesale it will be even cheaper, obviously you do it with things like tins and dried food.

7. Cook from scratch, don't buy take aways.

8. Buy electrical goods such as computers, consoles, DVD players that are older, there is no need to buy the latest gadgets when you can wait for them to go down in price a year later or get them second hand. My computer is a dinosaur that was given to me it was an ex-company computer that would have been thrown away.

9. Generally be thrifty, buy on eBay, make your own stuff, it's easy and there are lots of internet resources on how to make anything you want to. Even homemade beauty products and jewellery