Before I retired (early) I'd be identifying tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds of savings on construction projects , but now spend my time saving a few quid off each shop, working together with Mrs Scrungee who's job involved helping people with money problems so they wouldn't get their homes re-possessed, so we've both done this sort of thing professionally on a much larger scale.
Another way to save money is free food (and other products). I don't mean from a food bank but 'Try me Free' (TMF) promotions. We also use another address to launder a second claim for anything going for free (my favourite price) where claims are restricted to one per household. TMFs are useful for getting your spend up to the minimum to use money off vouchers such as £3 off £20 and in the recent promotion at Morrisons we got TMF waste pipe unblocker and TMF shampoo. N.B. only one TMF per shop as you need to send the receipt off with your claim (so no electricals, etc. in the shop). Tonight's dinner is free fish caught at Tescos
@Scrungee Quite ingenious that, buy a TMF product using vouchers, then send in for a refund and get the full amount back. Are the TMF refunds always in cash/cheque or do they send vouchers instead? If it's vouchers, then one could get into an endless loop and never run out of them all the while "sampling" the goods for gratis.
Normally cheques, but some TMFs can be claimed back online (there will be a code inside the packaging) and paid into your bank or Paypal account.
Interesting, so one could collect vouchers/coupons from newspapers/magazines/in-store, then buy TMF products with them, send in for the refund and receive cash. So much for the "not redeemable for cash" stated on the coupons. Pity we don't have a TMF set up here.
There's usually a cost to TMF items as you have to send off for your claim and it costs the postage (but not the envelope because we recycle those ). It's more difficult nowadays using any unfranked stamps because the modern ones are difficult to get off!
@shiney Fair enough one has to pay the postage. Any TMF envelope packs available? What about this? http://www.latestfreestuff.co.uk/free-random-stuff/free-envelope-samples/
@DIY-Dave Thanks, I don't need the envelopes as I have a stack of them that have been my incoming mail. The cheapest stamp here is 50p - unless you're able to buy at a discount.
Is that for next day delivery anywhere in the UK? Costs much the same as here but our so called next day delivery often includes three sunsets and sunrises.
No, that's second class stamps and they're going up at the end of the month. First class stamps are 60p and also going up at the end of the month.
I think the days of the written/printed letter are well and truly numbered. Within rising postage costs following the privatisation, a lot of business will be hit. And expect them to be hit again soon, as the privatisation included the Post-office Address File. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26605375 The Post-office Address File (PAF) is a database of every address in the UK. Most consumers wont care, as its one of those things that sit in the background out of site, but to businesses, it is a very important database. Imagine a mail order business, wanting to capture accurate address details of its customers so that it can post things with a degree of confidence that they'll get there. As daft as it sounds, many people actually get their own address wrong, sometimes it is quoted over the phone and entered wrong, or copied from hand written forms, and again entered incorrectly. This is where the PAF comes into it. For a given license fee (depending on volume) business can run cross matches between their mis-spelled, mis-typed or just plain erroneous addresses and get them matched up to the correct version as held by the post office, which is important if you want the letter to get there. If they don't clean them up against the PAF, most will still get there, but it takes manual intervention at the sorting office. Because of this, Royal Mail also offer to businesses, a discount if they can supply the mail with fully validated addresses. The license fees for PAF are currently quite modest, to the extent that business can actually save money overall by using PAF to ensure that all the addresses they mail to are valid. I'd be willing to bet 50p that now the PAF database is in private hands, we will see the license fees for its use rise significantly in the not too distant future. Those price rises will hit businesses that routinely mail many thousands of people, and I'm not talking about junk mail, I'm on about things like our seed catalogues, energy bills, and anything else that currently comes through the door. Those business will face a choice. They will either have to absorb the increased cost, pass it on to their customers, or try to eliminate the cost by not mailing stuff. I think most businesses will choose the latter if they can, and if they can't, then its very tough choice time, either pass the cost on to the customer, and risk losing those customers, or absorb the cost, and risk becoming not viable.
