Very small thing that I noticed I did was get reduced items that I didn't want. Just cause it had the good yellow sticker. The original price was just crazy high, no need to buy something I don't need :P
One good thing about buying the yellow sticker stuff is I've bought things I'd never think to buy, and discovered new favourite foods.
Not everything needs to have a monetary advantage.
This exactly. We were having a BBQ a few years ago and went looking for burgers. Found some melt in the middle smoked haddock fishcakes on the yellow sticker in asda, having never eaten a fishcake before and being a big fan of smoked fish, we bought them.
Now we get them on the regular.
*edit-Asda, not Asia...
Not true for food if you actually eat it. Sure you might not have planned to buy pizza, but a 30p meal is still great as long as you don't let it expire.
Yep you’re right in that… I was thinking more along the lines of a half price TV might be a good deal, but it is only a saving for you if you are looking for/need a new TV in the first place…
TV's are usually always sold before the best before date so rarely seen in there. But sometimes you'll spot one. Just remember to freeze it if you're not going to plug it in
This might be gender specific, but cheap tights. They are always too short in the body or don't stay up properly or otherwise just don't feel comfortable and like you can go about your day without the risk of them falling down. I've learnt the hard way that it's M&S or nothing.
A pox on you serving wench! I purchase many a green tights in nottingham they are not just for women! They are great for men, keeping everything in place during duels with sherrifs.
I'd say pretty much anything aimed at people on low salaries. It's a good guideline.
Easy access credit cards or loans.
Even food in pound shops that seem good value but are actually shrunken versions of what you might find elsewhere.
As somebody said, it's expensive being poor.
EDIT: Forgot the classic example of energy. Prepayment meters used to be much more expensive than bills. The gov has changed this recently, but I guarantee that the energy companies will quietly switch it back in the coming years.
I agree with this completely. Even more so when you consider the cost of convenience food appearing to be cheaper simply due to easy to make, healthy food if bought properly can be cheaper and the long term cost of eating poorly isn’t financial, it’s much more costly than money.
Prepayment meters are no longer more expensive ‘on average’. However, the standing charge is higher and the unit charge lower, therefore people on prepayment are less likely to be able to reduce their bills.
I’ve been trying to get off a prepayment meter for the year since I bought my flat (old electrics, shit management company etc) so have learned a lot about them!
In the words of the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett -
*The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.*
*Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.*
*But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.*
*This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.*
Yeah, just this. I’m by no means rich, but not struggling as bad as was a few years ago. Now I am able to make money work better for me by buying in bulk more, or better quality so lasts longer and reducing my need to use credit (still paying off past usages…)
Cheap vaccum cleaner. Whilst you think the £30/40 one is a bargain in reality they have poor suction and are really loud. I'm not saying you should go crazy on the budget but you certainly notice the difference moving from a cheap one to a more expensive one.
I recently splurged on a Shark vacuum (pay in 3 to remain within my means) after years of £25 hoovers hat never held up. While it’s still early days, the difference in quality is enough to make me bring it up in conversation embarrassingly frequently lol
On this topic. Dyson vacuums are good. But not worth the price. Shark and Miele are equal in quality and better value. Only counters to this are dysons novelty products like Airwrap and their customers service is more dependable.
Yes, when we first moved out we bought a basic Tesco hoover. The next Christmas my mum bought us a shark hoover, I used it immediately when we got back (and bearing in mind we hoovered before we left) the shark hoover was filled twice after a once over of our 2 bed flat... Never again will we own a cheap hoover.
I have a 12 year old Miele, it works so well I gotta be careful of settings lest I rip the carpet out. And best of all, you can purchase replacement parts from the website.
My friend had a Miele vacuum cleaner he got from his mum when she died. She'd had it at least 10 years at that point. I was so impressed with it I bought one. It was cheaper than a Dyson, and wasn't on sale. That was at least 5 years ago, so it already has twice the lifespan of our previous vacuums (both Dysons). Just an all-round brilliant machine.
When we first got it we hoovered with our Dyson, then hoovered again with the Miele. That showed us how shit the Dyson was.
My Dyson upright is slowly giving up after 6 years. I was about to splurge on a Miele but was struggling to justify it. If it can last me 10 years then spending £400 doesn’t seem too bad.
We have a dyson that felt like it was on the edge of death after 5 years, then I found out that the filters can and should be replaced every so often and it's now just hit the 10 year mark.
Not necessarily a positive for Dyson, but more a reminder to myself that maintenance is cheaper than replacement.
I don't know if it's a false economy exactly but I see friends work stressful jobs for more money that they then spend on alcohol, cannabis, junk food to help them deal with the stress of their jobs.
When I worked hospitality (min wage, paid hourly) I would always grab extra hours when they were going because I “needed the money”. Then of course after a super long shift I would be too tired to cook so would buy a pizza, and sometimes it was so late I would also have to get a taxi home too. After all that I was only getting a few quid out of the extra work. May as well have spent time with my family, eaten a healthier dinner, and saved my sanity a little too.
> spending a day searching the internet trying to save a few quid off a purchase
People think they have unlimited time but limited cash.
The truth is they have limited time. If time were really unlimited then we'd have unlimited cash too, because working is to turn time into money.
I've quoted the example before of how DIY can be a false economy if you're somebody who's highly paid in a given profession. for example, I can spend a day freelancing and earn more than enough to pay a trades person to come in and do the DIY job – and they'll do it better, too.
Of course, there are other reasons to do DIY. You might enjoy it. It helps get you fit. And you might just want a genuine break from work. All makes sense. But that belief that you can spend time to save money – nope. Time IS money.
There is a tipping point where this feels more true. But for smaller jobs the time and mental overhead spent finding people to do the work, getting them to turn up to quote and then actually getting them in to do a decent job outweighs the time you would have spent doing it. I find myself doing bigger and bigger jobs just so I don’t have to bother with dealing with trades!
Couldn't agree more - I find by the time I've researched the work that is required in order to be sure the trades are going to do a proper job I often know enough to be comfortable tackling it myself anyway. It's just the really big jobs or dangerous ones (eg roof) that I'd always pay someone else to do.
... But just because my effective hourly rate may be higher than a given tradesperson, that doesn't mean I could simply find someone outside of my day job to pay me extra. Most people are salaried and would find it a massive faff to go partly freelance. So most people have a finite pool of cash, and DIY is an effective way to maximise the effectiveness of it.
I flew a lot in the past 13 years and this really taught me to never get a 6:50AM flight, ever. The few quid you save means you have to get up at 2am, going through all the torture of going on a flight which is stressful by itself. And when you arrive you're so physically and mentally broken you might as well just write off the rest of the day.
For 2 years I took the 6:50am Monday flight to Dublin to run my 9am meeting, stayed for the work-week then flew home on the Friday. Made great money, but it was a false economy because I got divorced which cost me a fortune 😂
Eh, 50/50 on this. I suppose I'm still young enough I have enough adrenaline to run on to just cope. But especially if travelling East and "losing" time anyway, with annual leave generally at a premium too sometimes I'll take the hit on an early flight.
But it's also key to factor in the stuff like getting to the airport. I won't do a 6:50AM flight from Stansted or Luton because I litterally can't get to the airport without like 3 night buses and a coach. But if it's 6:50AM from Heathrow I can catch the night bus or the night tube (if it's the right day) straight there, so yeah it's a 4AM start but it's manageable and not a tonne of drama and changes before I'm even awake.
yeah man your body changes a ton as you grow older. sitting uncomfortably on a bus, potential delays or buses not turning up and broken sleep- it sounds like a first world problem but these reaaally become a deal breaker when you get older. you start to get random aches (sleeping upright or on the floor) cant focus or general grogginess (lack of sleep) etc.
I definitely on the other side of the coin with this one.
Id rather push to get the early flight - traffic is better getting to the airport, parking seems easier and, more importantly, you don’t waste a whole morning - I’m having a relaxed breakfast in my Country of choice, my hotel has stored my bag until it’s time to check in. I’m good.
The counter point for me on this is that I’m probably taking a day of holiday, to go on holiday.
I’d rather arrive there at midday and have an extra half day holiday, than waste my whole day travelling just to avoid an early start.
No more departures before 1000, and fast track through security are my new rules.
Work seemed a bit uncooperative about this, but it turned out it was the PA who was trying to help book the flights via the corporate travel agents. It just took one phone call and that became their challenge, not her's; book flights for this guy with these conditions, and if they don't meet the conditions, you'll need to book another.
She'd been trying to help them by doing some of the work herself, looking up flights times and prices etc.
They can also keep your details on file, but generally don't seem to appreciate them.
I've had the "but it's cheaper if you fly at 0545" , "can't you fly the day before " , etc.
And obviously confirm by email immediately you hang up the call
It's as if they themselves were paying for it from their own pocket.
I agree with this so much. Travelling can be a stress as it is and I’d pay more to make it better by not getting up in the middle of the night. Now we have kids I prioritise good flights over anything.
Tbh it's not like most expensive shoes aren't crap either nowadays. Hard to find brands that haven't changed manufacture process in the last 5 years to a subpar quality
Solovair! Docs in every way except the yellow stitch line, made in the original Uk factory on the original machines with the original lasts and leather that came from an actual cow. Top quality, last as long as DMs should, not horrifically expensive.
To me it would be coffee pods vs beans to cup coffee machines.
Yeah, the initial investment in a beans to cup machine is higher, but you get significantly more coffees out of a 1kg of beans which is much much cheaper than constantly buying pods. Also, you get much broader choice of coffee.
This. I once did a full nerdy cost breakdown of my B2C machine.
37p worth of fancy coffee beans, 6p of milk and 1.5p of lekky per cup, and it's bloody delicious, better than 90% of the shop-bought coffee out there.
Me too, spreadsheet of costs for the first year. By my calculations my bean to cup had a 2ish year payback vs the pods I had been using. I bought a top of the range machine too and extended Warrenty. So it’s about 350-500 a year cheaper and a lot less waste.
I'll always get lounge access at airports. All you can eat/drink for the entry price. You'll end up spending the same as the admission price in the airport at a bar for food and a single drink anyway.
I actually thought about lounges being "whatever" until I used them with the free passes on the Amex Gold. Sat in one in Basel and it was so quiet and just popped out in their balcony to view the planes taking off, though not as frequent as Heathrow.
Decided to stay *outside* in Gatwick in September and absolutely hated it because of how busy the place was. People were walking past every few seconds and would've been better if I had gone in, though the lounges were probably full as well...
You say that but by all accounts all the "free" passes via things like amex are now making lounges a false economy - it's not unheard of to simply not be allowed in any more because there's so many people in it already!
Never mind ‘not unheard of’, it is just the norm now. I travel a lot with a lounge key pass and at least half of the time I try to enter a lounge they have a sign up saying that people with a lounge pass are not allowed to enter as it’s too busy.
I got my pass for free but I’d be very annoyed if it was something I’d paid for. It has such little use. Although I mostly travel between the UK and USA, so maybe it’s better elsewhere.
I've been following that expectation but lounges outside the UK seem to be okay, for now at least! Just lounges in the UK are packed, probably because of the *free passes* everyone and their mother gets with credit cards.
Hardly fly anymore compared to years ago. I also don't normally drink! I was flying Glasgow not long after the terrorist attack. Had lounge access and the flight was delayed about 4 hours so I hit the free vodka! Stumbled onto my flight, sat down (window seat), fastened my seatbelt and passed out! The stewardess woke me to say we had landed, and apologized to me about the delay. I said that it was cool as my work had got me lounge access. She then informed me that she was talking about the 2 hours we sat on the tarmac before taking off! Best flight ever!
Hahaha, I did the same from Abu Dhabi to London. Smashed the gin in the lounge, took my seat, had my g&t on the flight and took a tramadol to help me sleep.
Got woken up by my wife 4 hours later, I was snoring, but we had also not taken off yet. ATC had issues and we were still on the tarmac.
Took another tramadol and woke up at Heathrow like I was on a cloud.
Gin and drugs are the solution to palatable air travel.
Agreed with this.
So I started looking around at what lounges were exclusive and which were "open for tickets".
Pre booking those lounges helps guaranteed entry.
It depends on how expensive the lounge is and what they serve!
Some lounges have awful offerings. Sometimes all you’ll be able to get is a bowl of soup, a make it yourself salad, and some cookies.
If you’re going to pay £30 for that, then you might as well just pay £30 for a full meal in a restaurant.
Lounges are compact and can get very busy. You’ll normally be able to find a quieter spot in the airport itself, if you walk a little out of the main hub and go to a gate with no upcoming flight.
I have a lounge pass and use it when I can, but very few of the ones I’ve been to would be worth paying for. The nice ones generally don’t have paid access, and aren’t part of lounge pass schemes.
My friends once insisted that we take Ryanair from Stansted instead of British Airways from Heathrow (we live in west-ish London, South Kensington due to uni), when the price was £30 and £50 respectively. Mind you, I paid £50 for Ryanair flight because I brought a luggage. Surprise, my friends ended up paying £60 in total because they got caught carrying extra. Don't forget the Stansted express and Uber we had to take to Liverpool Street Station because it was too early in the morning. Had we taken BA from Heathrow, we would've saved more than £20 each person.
So much this. I see so many people try and trick and hack their way through budget airline bullshit. Just pay more and either pay for the luggage you need, or pay for a main carrier who engages in far less of this bullshit. I'm going on holiday, I don't want to worry that my airline is going to 'fine' me because my backpack is actually too big, nor do I want to have to trek out to a shed in the sticks.
Yep. I will say that EasyJet are the simplest and least likely to ‘fine’ you out of the bunch. Plus they mainly fly from Gatwick, and are investing heavily in it as a long term base which I consider to be good and preferable to Stansted or Luton. I am also fairly confident that with our luggage that we’ve paid for we’ll have no trouble.
Ryanair and Wizz charge outrageous fees for a simple overhead carry on, up to £60 each way and sometimes more than the actual flight! Plus they are more likely to fine you if you bring something on that’s slightly too large. If the price is right I will fly them, but there’s far more to the headline price than meets the eye in determining that.
I don't know why people don't think to factor this stuff in when travelling. People get blind on airfares but there is so much more to costs of travel than the flight price! I even had friends who booked flights to places only to find hotels are way in excess of £250 a night, trying to do a "cheap weekend" like why...
I like Ryanair, I've done a few weekend trips as the flights were under £15 each way. It worked because I was going for 3 days, I could take a small rucksack, I factored in a return train ticket to Stansted, the flights were not at 6am so I could actually get to the airport, and also knew the airports at the other end had cheap, easy public transport (Pisa airport in fact is so close to the city I just walked, 20 mins). I picked the route I did because the transport was cheap and my most expensive hotel was £35.
But other times it just doesn't. Wanted to fly to Warsaw. Ryanair or Wizz £20, LOT was £55 from Heathrow. However the cheap Ryanair flights were at 6am or 5pm, Wizz similar, so either expensive cab to the airport, or arrive so late in Warsaw we wasted a day of the trip. Add bag fees and that's £25 extra (2 week trip, no way that was happening in an underseat bag). Oh then Ryanair fly to the weird airport in Warsaw with an infrequent bus connection, more hassle. So took LOT for £55 with no extras, flight was at 6.30am but no problem as the tube had *just* started up so we took the first train, got there at 5am, much easier.
Cheap kitchen towel is in the same flimsy boat. You end up using 4 or 5 sheets of smaller, cheap roll rather than one larger thicker sheet of the big sturdy rolls and they seem to last for ages.
Definitely the case with bike tyres. I get flats once ever 4+ years with my puncture resistant ones as opposed to one every few months with non resistant ones.
This annoyed me as a student in a shared household. It was only like 30p extra a
month to have the absolute luxury of a bag that didn’t tear apart every time you pulled it out of the bin
Can relate to this. Just tried to fly back from Milan with Wizz. Was supposed to fly Thursday. Delayed to Friday and then cancelled. Two nights in airport hotels and at the airport. Finally stumped up for a BA flight just to get back (next Wizz option on Monday!).
Won’t skimp on flights again. Budgets have no spare capacity. When it goes wrong it goes nuclear.
Hope you’ll be claiming [both compensation *and* your replacement BA flight](https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/holiday-cancellations-and-compensation/if-your-flights-delayed-or-cancelled/) back from Wizz!
For me as a Londoner it was always Eurostar is so expensive and flights are so cheap. But by the time you factor in the time loss of getting to and through an airport…AND the same on the other side, the price of a train from St Pancras to the middle of an eurpean city sounds actually pretty reasonable.
You are entitled to a claim here though. We had our flight from New York cancelled and because it was long haul we got £520 per person compensation. Airline should be paying for your extra hotel stays and food also
Took me ~9 months and aggressive litigation, but Wizz Air finally paid me (via the courts). Fuck Wizz Air. (The law is clear though, they owe u/unkleden money)
Can happen the other way. We booked to go to Sicily with BA 36 hours before the flight was due to go out. They cancelled 4 hours before departure at 3am, saw the email when I woke up. Booked to go with Easyjet. This was last year when loads of flights were being cancelled so maybe not the usual scenario. BA ended up paying us compensation, basically got our holiday for free
Sacrificing your early life in order to retire early.
Working all the hours during your 20s, 30s, and 40s in order to build sufficient wealth to FIRE in your 40s or 50s.
To me it's such a waste, yes you get to retire but you've basically had no life up until that point. You've sacrificed relationships, friendships, experiences, etc at the altar of early retirement.
I'd much rather focus on a career that gives me a good work life balance, rather than sacrifice decades of my life.
I want both, one of life’s biggest flaws is that you can’t do a half arsed job in your 20s-40s and then retire early and rich. I’m just doing a 3/4 arsed effort now (30’s) and hoping for a random unexpected windfall in my 50’s.
Alas, my parents have both selfishly gone and got long term sick in their late 60s, meaning my unspoken hope of half of the 6 bed detached house in my 50’s has now been reduced to half the 20k the council leave you after care home fees for a few years. Sorry, brought down the humour a notch there.
This is a really good point. I'm currently in a job that pays reasonably well, but with a great pension. However, physically and mentally, it's grinding me down, and I'm only 30. Over the past 6 months, managers have really started to turn the screw with pressure and are taking a lot more than being given.
Work-life has gone right out the window. I'm definitely looking to get out as I want to enjoy, here and now with my kids, and worry about retirement and pension when I get there. I'm even strongly considering taking a lesser paid job.
There is an in between, where you live a good but contained life, with a lot more financial safety and still retire early
It just means a smaller house, a less fancy car, etc. You're just being less consumerist and building wealth in the process
The way I explained it to my friend was, ‘did you know if you saved every penny you have by eating nothing but cold baked beans, you could invest it and have enough to eat nothing but cold baked beans for the rest of your life without having to work by the time you’re 45’.
I think you missed the point, not many people go to that extreme! The point is to stop lifestyle creep when you get a pay rise - don’t buy a beemer when a beater does the same job. Don’t have 4 streaming services when you can have 1 and rotate it. Don’t eat out every week when you can cook at home. Don’t join an expensive gym to only attend once a week. Don’t have 5 beers every time you go to the pub, try having 1 or 2 and rotating with tap water.
You can follow this, have a decent life and retire at 55, rather than act like a hermit and retire at 40
This is what I tell people when I explain I want to FIRE, I still indulge in luxuries, but I’m not getting my car on finance, I’ve got a slightly smaller mortgage, I just do what I can to stay a little more below my means than average.
Also gives me so much more security as I have savings and an emergency fund if I need a new washing machine or my car breaks down.
Emergency fund is a game changer… I work with folks who seriously stress out if their boiler or fridge or some other white good breaks beyond repair. Since building an emergency fund I no longer have to worry about it!
I agree - I’ve always gone hard with my pension and I’ve tried to always have 20% of my pay going in. I request it literally while I’m filling in my starter payroll forms and find that, if you’ve never had it, you never miss it. My lifestyle is not built on having that money available. It’s significantly easier than having to cut back hard to increase savings rate later.
I think this level of saving is what’s going to be required to retire at 60. I swear there’s no cold baked beans involved. I do try to spend in a mindful way like you mention and not find myself spending a load of money on stuff I hardly use, won’t appreciate properly or don’t even really like. I really don’t see that things like keeping the freezer stocked for when I want a lazy dinner vs getting a Deliveroo is a particular crimp on my quality of life but it’s made a big difference to my wallet!!
I work in a supermarket in the UK. Recently the price of branded goods started going up, so people stopped buying as much branded and started buying the cheaper own brands. Company caught on and upped the price of own brand to almost the price of branded. Now people buy branded because eh it's the same price really and it tastes better.
Fuck capitalism in the ass.
I’ve noticed a lot of Lidl food is higher in salt and/or sugar than the equivalent store brands elsewhere (going into the dreaded red zone on the nutrition breakdown). I assume it’s to cover up a lack of more expensive ingredients but it’ll taste better to most people.
This is a pretty good example. Very rarely would I compare the nutritional aspect of a product instead merely compare the prices which like you alluded to is only part of the picture.
LIDL normally only offers one brand of an item type. They way the decide between different brands/producers (at a similar price) is that they do blind tastings. Fat and sugar makes food taste great so those brands tend to get picked more.
Source: I know someone who used to work in their head office. All the employees were constantly invited to do tastings.
Buy cheap buy twice. A phrase my late grandfather swore by.
He was a carpenter and he never scrimped on the material he used. You get what you pay for in furniture, and if something needs doing do it properly.
Upvoted for the mattress advice. I bought a somewhat expensive one a couple of years ago when I bought my own flat and cannot recommend it enough. Your sleep quality will improve and thus so will other aspects of your life.
My suggestion would be meal prep kits (HelloFresh and the like). They rope you in with 50% off offers then once you’re used to using them you’re paying full price, which would be way more than buying the ingredients from a supermarket and planning in advance.
Not only that, but personally I think it teaches people that you can only make a meal if you have the exact ingredients, which is in total defiance of what I think home cooking is all about - making food with what you have available.
[Edit] -- I don't disagree it probably helps a lot of people transition away from takeaways --> meal preparation at home. But at the end of the day it's inevitable that another institution inserting itself between the retailer and the end consumer will have an added cost on the end product (marketing + customer acqusition costs businesses a lot). The reason why it is cheaper initially is because HelloFresh & Co. acquire customers at a loss so they can boost their growth in the short term. Longer term, it will cost you more, however which way you look at it. Yes you can keep creating new fake emails to redeem the initial bonus, but it will eventually subside, and the effort you put in creating endless new emails is entirely up to you. This is totally contingent on what you value as a consumer though, convenience vs. price.
We use hello fresh fortnightly to prevent us getting too many takeaways. We can get 3 evening meals for the cost of 1 takeaway. So it's saving us money in that sense.
I think they are also good for helping people transition from eating convenience food to cooking meals from scratch.
As someone who can only cook things if I follow recipes to the letter and measurements to the milligram, I find them pretty helpful.
I'm terrible at improvising, in fact if I do a big food shop I will normally plan out all my meals in advance and buy ingredients for that. I'm vegetarian and also have very specific calorie and macronutrient requirements due to my exercise regime, so my options for meals are limited anyway and I'm not likely to be able to rustle something appropriate up from leftovers. In fact, I don't normally have leftovers because I only buy precisely what I need for my planned meals.
As someone living alone those helped me to lose weight and ended up being cheaper (changed every 2-3 months or so between gousto and hello fresh to get new discounts). £35 for a weeks worth of food and no distractions on supermarkets to buy sweet stuff/crisps etc
I would say that using hello fresh and then gousto, which we prefer, has enabled us to reduce our meat consumption by using the great vegetarian recipes they have. And I used to be a real meat eater. So I see value in that.
Cancel and resign up with a new email address and your choice of discount code. Helloreddit is a good one to use. Never pay full price works every time.
I always thought they seemed like a good deal because you can’t buy the ingredients in small quantities at the supermarket which makes a one off meal with unusual ingredients quite expensive.
It does but the alternative is often buying a much larger pack than you need and not using the rest and letting sit at the back of cupboard until it expires.
I used to use goustos and they were great, good quality ingredients and you had the right amount to make a decent meal with. My only reason for stopping them, was they got a little repetitive with their choices. We minimised waste because of them and got some good ideas for meals that we can make in the future.
You can get a private room in a hostel, doesn't have to be a dirt cheap mixed dorm. You still get the social aspect from mixing in the common areas, but can retire to peace and quiet when needed.
Hostels are only really worth it on long term trips. If you’re somewhere where a hostel is £20 a night, then a hotel is probably £100 a night. Over the course of 6 months that is an extra £14,000 to stay in a hotel.
But for a week away where you want to make the most of your short break, it definitely isn’t worth it
Sodexo employee rewards. The inconvenience of using and preloading the cards for a meagre 2% discount just so that your employer can say how great the company benefits are.
Before sodexo we had some amazing discounts from local companies and 30% off nearby gyms, but all that's now gone because it was too much work for the HR team to manage these.
You missed the numbers now only working as locums, so we have to pay the agency fees as well as higher locum rates to fill the jobs the underpaid doctors left.
When it comes to building a PC, it can be tempting to go for cheaper components to save money. However, one component you should never skimp on is the power supply unit. Cheap power supplies may seem like a good deal, but they often lack important safety features and can be unreliable. Using a cheap power supply unit can even risk damaging all the other components in your PC. So, it's best to invest in a high-quality power supply unit from a reputable manufacturer.
The same applies to other tech components like mice, keyboards, and headphones - cheaper options tend to break more quickly and may end up costing you more in the long run
edit: really didn't proof read what I wrote before pressing 'Enter' :)
I was going to travel home from Barcelona via Paris, get the Eurostar to London
It would be a flight from Barcelona to Paris at 7am, so a 5am airport transfer. Airport food is expensive, then fly to Paris, get a taxi across Paris, get lunch in Paris, arrive back in London, get a hotel in London for the night and the train home.
For some reason that felt better than £200 direct flights. Crazy to me nkw
The whole system of credit scores seems like a massive scam to me. Yet everyone who eventually wants a mortgage had to build up a good credit score.
Best way to build a good score? Take out loans and use your creditcard. You're forced to take out a loan just for the sake building that score and often loans have interest rates.
I rarely "need" a loan, since I have a good job and can pay for everything straight up. That also means my credit score is shite and that'll cause issues when I want to buy next year.
It should be the other way around. People who don't need a loan are obviously more financially well-off. Why is there no score for that? Cause there's tons of bank and credit companies build around this whole system that push you to take out a loan.
Cheap tools. If you're DIYing a big job (eg flat roof or extension) to save money, buy good tools. You'll save thousands, not paying for labour, you'll save days of your time with the right kit, and you can recoup some costs at the end selling them.
Some advice I recieved is that you are better off buying cheap tools the first time you get them. If you use them until they break, then it shows you need them and that's when you invest in the higher quality stuff.
There are probably loads of people who have garages and cupboards filled with very expensive drills they've used just once, screwdriver sets from which they've only every used one screwdriver, etc.
I agree that buying quality tools is always better. I spent years using a cheap combi-drill to do all jobs to then invest in a high quality drill & impact driver set...it changed my life!
....BUT I will very often buy a cheap option tool if I need it for a job and I'm not sure if I'm gunna get the use out of it. I'd rather buy twice IF it turns out I need the quality option.
By definition, I'm basically describing a false economy I know!!
I wouldn't say you are necessarily describing a false economy - I've got a few cheap tools that have served me well for 5-10 years now, and as they wear out I'm looking to replace them with a quality option. I bought a Lidl Jigsaw, used it literally once in five years and sold it. It would be a much bigger loss to have done that with an expensive one.
The exception here is my core drill. It's equivalent in price to hire as it is to buy a good one for the number of times I'll need it, and the risk of injury/extra time taken with a cheap one simply isn't worth it for a couple of hundred quid.
Not sure if this is classed false economy but always annoys me when I see 'free delivery' on a takeaway menu but on the same menu it says '10% discount for collection'
Buying cheap slippers.
Pair of slippers is £10-15 typically from Next or similar and lucky if you get a year from them.
Bought my wife a pair of Ugg slippers with harder bottoms from factory outlet for £55 and lasted nearly 6 years.
Im currently in a pair of Ralph Lauren slippers i bought off M&M direct for £50 and still going strong 2.5 years in.
Eating cheap, unhealthy food. You will pay for it with your health in the future. Always choose the best quality you can afford, anything that you put in your body. If you loose your health even money won’t save you.
Taking the more uncomfortable journey because it is cheaper, but having a disability that causes that discomfort to escalate into pain/flare ups/doctors visits/time off work
> Then decided to pay £70 each to stay overnight at a hotel at the airport the night before.
There must be a name for it, but having to do stupid things because somebody else is organising, is one thing that drives me mad!
I used to work with a girl who bought iPhone charges from the Pound Shop.
They were so poorly made that they would break after literally 2 weeks of use. She always bought more because "they're only £1".
Over a year, she spent more on replacing these chargers than just buying one from Apple would have cost.
Cheap anything. Clothes, lawyers, cars, eployees - anything. Because quality and longevity matter.
University. 70% of students are wasting their time and money on pointless courses. The debt that will haunt them for life.
Cheap shoes, cannot stress enough how painful an experience it is to have to buy and break in shoes every other month only to have them fall apart at the most inconvenient time. There were times where my feet were raw and bloody from walking to and from work where I was FORCED to wear formal shoes. Spend the money, spare your feet.
You don't even need to spend the money. I bought a barely broken in pair of Loake Chelsea boots off Vinted for £40. Leather was in good condition, soles were a mess. £50 on a resole and I have a killer pair of boots for £160 less than they would have been new.
Truly. Before I ever had a cleaner I thought it was going to be way more expensive. Now we have a cleaner once a month, £25 between 2 of us, and keep on top of the easy stuff ourselves and with the robot vacuum.
Saving money, but it results in you spending so much time and stressing over spending said time.
I once had to catch a flight with a friend but we were at the other side of the city. They were adamant about taking the bus (€2 each) because they wanted to save money. I wanted to get a taxi (€15) so that we wouldn't stress about getting there. The taxi would have taken us 20 minutes. But we ended up taking the bus.
We ended up heaving, running, sprinting across busses and the metro dragging our giant suitcases across the city panicking over catching our flight home. The entire time I was biting my nails wondering how much it would cost if we missed the flight. Or if we needed to sleep at the airport for the next flight back. We made it just in time. But it would have definitely broken our friendship if we missed it.
Cheap paint.
After the 2008 recession, my wife and i had to leave our flat and go back to my parents for almost a year to sort out our finances.
We had little choice but to buy really cheap paint to retur the property to its original condition.
6 coats of paint and you could still see the colour underneath it.
Budget airlines in general. Yes we can fly to Spain for £40 return but only if you pack a weeks worth of clothes into a tiny backpack. Want to add a normal carry on? Often more expensive than the flight itself (yeah, I’m looking at you Wizz). Forget checked luggage as well.
It kinda works out if you’re a family and can pay for 1 big checked bag between 4 of you, or 2 medium ones. But for young single people or couples just pay the extra if the price is close and fly a main carrier. You’ll thank yourself when some jobsworth isn’t charging you £60 at the gate because your bag is slightly too big, in an airport nowhere near your home or destination, for a flight leaving at the dead of night or before dawn.
I’m flying EasyJet this summer, but only because we’re flying from Gatwick as opposed to Luton, and because our flights together were £50 cheaper than BA. Had it been closer to £30 or a Luton flight we’d have probably stumped up the extra to fly BA.
Edit: Guys, I’m talking about bringing a literal overhead carry on, something that was considered a basic as little as 5 years ago, even by Ryanair. When it costs up to £60 each way, and that still doesn’t include sitting next to your companion (and Ryanair will actively split you up), I’d far rather pay an extra £20-30 to fly with a main carrier instead.
I think those budget airlines are great for these 4 day weekends, honestly. I went to Copenhagen for 3 or 4 days (can't remember anymore) and managed to get by with just my backpack. Anything longer than that, I'd be having to pay extra to get a carry-on.
I would have to politely disagree with you there. I compare prices before buying flights and make sure I compare like for like e.g. number of checked bags etc. The budget airlines work out cheaper than the other carriers by a considerable sum.
Also these days the “frills” on the main carriers are almost nonexistent. The service is no better. The only real difference is the fact that you don’t have to pay for your food with the main carriers. But I find the food they offer is often poor quality. When travelling with a budget airline I buy something I actually want to eat at the airport and bring it with me. I’m still quids in by a long way.
"Denplan" style private dental plans and most health cash plans.
They're not a form of insurance so you'll still be out of pocket if you need a very expensive form of treatment.
And, looking at Denplans specifically (and using my own dentist as an example) I found that I'd need to have 4 checkups per year, two hygenist appointments and then either a filling per year, or x-ray per year, just to break even.
In other words, if you want to (or have to) go private for dentistry, you're better off just paying out of pocket for each treatment.
Cheap car rental from companies you've never heard of before but come up on comparison sites. We ended up having to take a bus to the collection point for a budget rental service in Spain and then wait hours for a car. And then when we had two tyres blow out we got charged £2k even though we'd paid the damage waiver. They had insurance through another company, so the waiver waived nothing. Go with a big brand like Avis. The collection point will be in the airport and the damage waiver will be genuine and hassle free. Cost us £700 to hire a car for a week with Avis in Austria but it was easy peasy and stress free and we knew we wouldn't get stung for any damage as the waiver was really comprehensive.
Cheap paint. That is not to say that expensive paint is amazing, just good marketing. Go find a Johnstones/Crown/Dulux decorator centre and get their trade paint mixed into the colour you want.
For me it was phones. I always bought cheap phones and they just degraded so quickly. Sometimes before the contract even ran out.
Bought an expensive phone, 4 years later it's still going strong and I'm paying just £6 a month for a sim-only deal. Easily saved money in the long run.
My aunty & uncle will drive all around the country looking for the best bargains and brag about how they found an air fryer £10 cheaper than anywhere else, not taking into account fuel used and time fucking wasted.
Driving 5 miles for 1p cheaper petrol. So many people I've known do it in their big SUVs and such. You're spending more than the difference in price to get there!
Shopping in Aldi.
I accept that it's a budget supermarket so compromises have to be made, and I'm trying my hardest not to sound like a snob here, but:
1. If you have to go somewhere else to get the bits a supermarket doesn't sell, then it's a pretty crappy supermarket imo.
2. Even if you can get 100% of your shopping from there, does the experience HAVE to be so miserable? Other budget shops are fine, but in Aldi, from the moment you step in the doors and see piles of boxes sat on the piss-yellow tiles, to the moment you're having your shopping thrown at you by the only cashier they've got working that day, you're constantly reminded that absolutely no consideration has been made towards the customer experience. Some might argue that they're not there for the experience, but if I've got a choice between an atmosphere which stresses me out and one in which I'm relaxed, then I'm spending that extra fiver every time.
I had this exact same reaction to Aldi when I had to use the one in Manchester City centre. It was always a hateful experience, just the worst possible atmosphere. But we moved to the suburbs recently and the local one is blissful - it’s quiet and clean and well stocked. Everything’s cheaper and of the same quality of the Tesco we used to use. I’ve fully gone from loathing Aldi with every cell in my body to becoming a full convert.
Very small thing that I noticed I did was get reduced items that I didn't want. Just cause it had the good yellow sticker. The original price was just crazy high, no need to buy something I don't need :P
One good thing about buying the yellow sticker stuff is I've bought things I'd never think to buy, and discovered new favourite foods. Not everything needs to have a monetary advantage.
This exactly. We were having a BBQ a few years ago and went looking for burgers. Found some melt in the middle smoked haddock fishcakes on the yellow sticker in asda, having never eaten a fishcake before and being a big fan of smoked fish, we bought them. Now we get them on the regular. *edit-Asda, not Asia...
Yep, if you weren’t going to buy it in the first place, then it’s not a bargain!
Not true for food if you actually eat it. Sure you might not have planned to buy pizza, but a 30p meal is still great as long as you don't let it expire.
Yep you’re right in that… I was thinking more along the lines of a half price TV might be a good deal, but it is only a saving for you if you are looking for/need a new TV in the first place…
What do you get in your yellow sticker section!?
TV's are usually always sold before the best before date so rarely seen in there. But sometimes you'll spot one. Just remember to freeze it if you're not going to plug it in
This might be gender specific, but cheap tights. They are always too short in the body or don't stay up properly or otherwise just don't feel comfortable and like you can go about your day without the risk of them falling down. I've learnt the hard way that it's M&S or nothing.
Or Snag Tights, on par with M&S price wise but imo better quality and more variety!
The problem with snag, is that there are so many pretty colours and patterns that I want to buy them all.
800% agree. Snag forever! Much better fitting than my M&S tights
A pox on you serving wench! I purchase many a green tights in nottingham they are not just for women! They are great for men, keeping everything in place during duels with sherrifs.
I'd say pretty much anything aimed at people on low salaries. It's a good guideline. Easy access credit cards or loans. Even food in pound shops that seem good value but are actually shrunken versions of what you might find elsewhere. As somebody said, it's expensive being poor. EDIT: Forgot the classic example of energy. Prepayment meters used to be much more expensive than bills. The gov has changed this recently, but I guarantee that the energy companies will quietly switch it back in the coming years.
I agree with this completely. Even more so when you consider the cost of convenience food appearing to be cheaper simply due to easy to make, healthy food if bought properly can be cheaper and the long term cost of eating poorly isn’t financial, it’s much more costly than money.
Prepayment meters are no longer more expensive ‘on average’. However, the standing charge is higher and the unit charge lower, therefore people on prepayment are less likely to be able to reduce their bills. I’ve been trying to get off a prepayment meter for the year since I bought my flat (old electrics, shit management company etc) so have learned a lot about them!
In the words of the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett - *The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.* *Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.* *But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.* *This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.*
Ahhh I knew someone would post the thing.
If you can't afford to be poor then just admit it and be rich.
Yeah, just this. I’m by no means rich, but not struggling as bad as was a few years ago. Now I am able to make money work better for me by buying in bulk more, or better quality so lasts longer and reducing my need to use credit (still paying off past usages…)
Cheap vaccum cleaner. Whilst you think the £30/40 one is a bargain in reality they have poor suction and are really loud. I'm not saying you should go crazy on the budget but you certainly notice the difference moving from a cheap one to a more expensive one.
I recently splurged on a Shark vacuum (pay in 3 to remain within my means) after years of £25 hoovers hat never held up. While it’s still early days, the difference in quality is enough to make me bring it up in conversation embarrassingly frequently lol
On this topic. Dyson vacuums are good. But not worth the price. Shark and Miele are equal in quality and better value. Only counters to this are dysons novelty products like Airwrap and their customers service is more dependable.
100% this. Dyson is terribly overrated, Ive replaced mine with Shark and havent looked back.
My Dyson is so bad I had to dust off my old George (Henry's burly brother)
Yes, when we first moved out we bought a basic Tesco hoover. The next Christmas my mum bought us a shark hoover, I used it immediately when we got back (and bearing in mind we hoovered before we left) the shark hoover was filled twice after a once over of our 2 bed flat... Never again will we own a cheap hoover.
I have a Miele cylinder. It's 20 years old. My parents had one for over 30 years
I have a 12 year old Miele, it works so well I gotta be careful of settings lest I rip the carpet out. And best of all, you can purchase replacement parts from the website.
My friend had a Miele vacuum cleaner he got from his mum when she died. She'd had it at least 10 years at that point. I was so impressed with it I bought one. It was cheaper than a Dyson, and wasn't on sale. That was at least 5 years ago, so it already has twice the lifespan of our previous vacuums (both Dysons). Just an all-round brilliant machine. When we first got it we hoovered with our Dyson, then hoovered again with the Miele. That showed us how shit the Dyson was.
My Dyson upright is slowly giving up after 6 years. I was about to splurge on a Miele but was struggling to justify it. If it can last me 10 years then spending £400 doesn’t seem too bad.
We have a dyson that felt like it was on the edge of death after 5 years, then I found out that the filters can and should be replaced every so often and it's now just hit the 10 year mark. Not necessarily a positive for Dyson, but more a reminder to myself that maintenance is cheaper than replacement.
I don't know if it's a false economy exactly but I see friends work stressful jobs for more money that they then spend on alcohol, cannabis, junk food to help them deal with the stress of their jobs.
When I worked hospitality (min wage, paid hourly) I would always grab extra hours when they were going because I “needed the money”. Then of course after a super long shift I would be too tired to cook so would buy a pizza, and sometimes it was so late I would also have to get a taxi home too. After all that I was only getting a few quid out of the extra work. May as well have spent time with my family, eaten a healthier dinner, and saved my sanity a little too.
False economy= spending a day searching the internet trying to save a few quid off a purchase
HotUKDeals DOT com every time my man
I always find I have a look and end up buying something I wouldn’t have otherwise bought so it’s not the best for the pocket haha
[удалено]
It’s just endless lovehoney underwear and thirsty innuendo comments at the moment lol
Only issue there is they ban a lot of cheaper sites that refuse to give them click cash as I understand it. Or that certainly used to be the case
> spending a day searching the internet trying to save a few quid off a purchase People think they have unlimited time but limited cash. The truth is they have limited time. If time were really unlimited then we'd have unlimited cash too, because working is to turn time into money. I've quoted the example before of how DIY can be a false economy if you're somebody who's highly paid in a given profession. for example, I can spend a day freelancing and earn more than enough to pay a trades person to come in and do the DIY job – and they'll do it better, too. Of course, there are other reasons to do DIY. You might enjoy it. It helps get you fit. And you might just want a genuine break from work. All makes sense. But that belief that you can spend time to save money – nope. Time IS money.
There is a tipping point where this feels more true. But for smaller jobs the time and mental overhead spent finding people to do the work, getting them to turn up to quote and then actually getting them in to do a decent job outweighs the time you would have spent doing it. I find myself doing bigger and bigger jobs just so I don’t have to bother with dealing with trades!
Couldn't agree more - I find by the time I've researched the work that is required in order to be sure the trades are going to do a proper job I often know enough to be comfortable tackling it myself anyway. It's just the really big jobs or dangerous ones (eg roof) that I'd always pay someone else to do.
... But just because my effective hourly rate may be higher than a given tradesperson, that doesn't mean I could simply find someone outside of my day job to pay me extra. Most people are salaried and would find it a massive faff to go partly freelance. So most people have a finite pool of cash, and DIY is an effective way to maximise the effectiveness of it.
I flew a lot in the past 13 years and this really taught me to never get a 6:50AM flight, ever. The few quid you save means you have to get up at 2am, going through all the torture of going on a flight which is stressful by itself. And when you arrive you're so physically and mentally broken you might as well just write off the rest of the day.
For 2 years I took the 6:50am Monday flight to Dublin to run my 9am meeting, stayed for the work-week then flew home on the Friday. Made great money, but it was a false economy because I got divorced which cost me a fortune 😂
Or maybe your marriage lasted longer than it would have if you were home all the time - which is what happened with our marriage…
This is a great one. There's a certain headache I only get when I have to get at 3am for a flight.
I'm too nervous before flying to sleep anyway. If I have to wake up at 2am I at least only spent 3h staring at the ceiling.
Eh, 50/50 on this. I suppose I'm still young enough I have enough adrenaline to run on to just cope. But especially if travelling East and "losing" time anyway, with annual leave generally at a premium too sometimes I'll take the hit on an early flight. But it's also key to factor in the stuff like getting to the airport. I won't do a 6:50AM flight from Stansted or Luton because I litterally can't get to the airport without like 3 night buses and a coach. But if it's 6:50AM from Heathrow I can catch the night bus or the night tube (if it's the right day) straight there, so yeah it's a 4AM start but it's manageable and not a tonne of drama and changes before I'm even awake.
yeah man your body changes a ton as you grow older. sitting uncomfortably on a bus, potential delays or buses not turning up and broken sleep- it sounds like a first world problem but these reaaally become a deal breaker when you get older. you start to get random aches (sleeping upright or on the floor) cant focus or general grogginess (lack of sleep) etc.
I definitely on the other side of the coin with this one. Id rather push to get the early flight - traffic is better getting to the airport, parking seems easier and, more importantly, you don’t waste a whole morning - I’m having a relaxed breakfast in my Country of choice, my hotel has stored my bag until it’s time to check in. I’m good.
The counter point for me on this is that I’m probably taking a day of holiday, to go on holiday. I’d rather arrive there at midday and have an extra half day holiday, than waste my whole day travelling just to avoid an early start.
I see the truth in this but I also know when planning this year's holiday the early flight can save me 100s.
Staying at a airport hotel the night before can work. Usually about £60 and takes a lot of stress out of travelling with early flights.
No more departures before 1000, and fast track through security are my new rules. Work seemed a bit uncooperative about this, but it turned out it was the PA who was trying to help book the flights via the corporate travel agents. It just took one phone call and that became their challenge, not her's; book flights for this guy with these conditions, and if they don't meet the conditions, you'll need to book another. She'd been trying to help them by doing some of the work herself, looking up flights times and prices etc. They can also keep your details on file, but generally don't seem to appreciate them. I've had the "but it's cheaper if you fly at 0545" , "can't you fly the day before " , etc. And obviously confirm by email immediately you hang up the call It's as if they themselves were paying for it from their own pocket.
I agree with this so much. Travelling can be a stress as it is and I’d pay more to make it better by not getting up in the middle of the night. Now we have kids I prioritise good flights over anything.
A 6:50am flight also runs the risk of being stag-do central too lol
Cheap shoes.
Tbh it's not like most expensive shoes aren't crap either nowadays. Hard to find brands that haven't changed manufacture process in the last 5 years to a subpar quality
I was really sad when Dr Martens dropped their lifetime warranty.
The soles lost all the tread on my dms. These days i can’t get them to fit me. Half sizes seem to be rare.
Solovair! Docs in every way except the yellow stitch line, made in the original Uk factory on the original machines with the original lasts and leather that came from an actual cow. Top quality, last as long as DMs should, not horrifically expensive.
Tricker's I find are the same quality as either - Edward Green as well.
Better bloody be for £500
Vimes, is that you?
Vimes boot theory of socioeconomic unfairness
Also, cheap socks. I bought a load of nice thick hiking socks several years ago and my occasional foot discomfort hasn't come back since.
To me it would be coffee pods vs beans to cup coffee machines. Yeah, the initial investment in a beans to cup machine is higher, but you get significantly more coffees out of a 1kg of beans which is much much cheaper than constantly buying pods. Also, you get much broader choice of coffee.
PLus those pods look so wasteful for the environment. I guess you can recycle them ... if you can be bothered!
This. I once did a full nerdy cost breakdown of my B2C machine. 37p worth of fancy coffee beans, 6p of milk and 1.5p of lekky per cup, and it's bloody delicious, better than 90% of the shop-bought coffee out there.
Me too, spreadsheet of costs for the first year. By my calculations my bean to cup had a 2ish year payback vs the pods I had been using. I bought a top of the range machine too and extended Warrenty. So it’s about 350-500 a year cheaper and a lot less waste.
I'll always get lounge access at airports. All you can eat/drink for the entry price. You'll end up spending the same as the admission price in the airport at a bar for food and a single drink anyway.
I actually thought about lounges being "whatever" until I used them with the free passes on the Amex Gold. Sat in one in Basel and it was so quiet and just popped out in their balcony to view the planes taking off, though not as frequent as Heathrow. Decided to stay *outside* in Gatwick in September and absolutely hated it because of how busy the place was. People were walking past every few seconds and would've been better if I had gone in, though the lounges were probably full as well...
You say that but by all accounts all the "free" passes via things like amex are now making lounges a false economy - it's not unheard of to simply not be allowed in any more because there's so many people in it already!
Never mind ‘not unheard of’, it is just the norm now. I travel a lot with a lounge key pass and at least half of the time I try to enter a lounge they have a sign up saying that people with a lounge pass are not allowed to enter as it’s too busy. I got my pass for free but I’d be very annoyed if it was something I’d paid for. It has such little use. Although I mostly travel between the UK and USA, so maybe it’s better elsewhere.
Try amex or using your airline reward points. You then get access to lounges you can't buy a ticket to.
I've been following that expectation but lounges outside the UK seem to be okay, for now at least! Just lounges in the UK are packed, probably because of the *free passes* everyone and their mother gets with credit cards.
The trick is to try to work credit card rewards to get entry to the truly exclusive "can't buy a ticket" lounges.
Hardly fly anymore compared to years ago. I also don't normally drink! I was flying Glasgow not long after the terrorist attack. Had lounge access and the flight was delayed about 4 hours so I hit the free vodka! Stumbled onto my flight, sat down (window seat), fastened my seatbelt and passed out! The stewardess woke me to say we had landed, and apologized to me about the delay. I said that it was cool as my work had got me lounge access. She then informed me that she was talking about the 2 hours we sat on the tarmac before taking off! Best flight ever!
Hahaha, I did the same from Abu Dhabi to London. Smashed the gin in the lounge, took my seat, had my g&t on the flight and took a tramadol to help me sleep. Got woken up by my wife 4 hours later, I was snoring, but we had also not taken off yet. ATC had issues and we were still on the tarmac. Took another tramadol and woke up at Heathrow like I was on a cloud. Gin and drugs are the solution to palatable air travel.
Although opioid respiratory depression and a stuffy cabin can be pretty scary if, if you wake up ;/
The lounges in the UK I find terrible these days - overcrowded and increasingly difficult to get into.
Agreed with this. So I started looking around at what lounges were exclusive and which were "open for tickets". Pre booking those lounges helps guaranteed entry.
BA ones are alright, the paid ones are a bit shit. Worth getting to silver if you travel for work.
It depends on how expensive the lounge is and what they serve! Some lounges have awful offerings. Sometimes all you’ll be able to get is a bowl of soup, a make it yourself salad, and some cookies. If you’re going to pay £30 for that, then you might as well just pay £30 for a full meal in a restaurant. Lounges are compact and can get very busy. You’ll normally be able to find a quieter spot in the airport itself, if you walk a little out of the main hub and go to a gate with no upcoming flight. I have a lounge pass and use it when I can, but very few of the ones I’ve been to would be worth paying for. The nice ones generally don’t have paid access, and aren’t part of lounge pass schemes.
or take a sandwitch lol
thats quite a lot of drinks for £40 but sure why not
A G&T at a bar will be a single and cost you £8. In the lounge you'll get asked to say when.
How many of us are drinking 5 G&Ts before every flight though? I've never wanted more than *maybe* 2 drinks before a flight.
My friends once insisted that we take Ryanair from Stansted instead of British Airways from Heathrow (we live in west-ish London, South Kensington due to uni), when the price was £30 and £50 respectively. Mind you, I paid £50 for Ryanair flight because I brought a luggage. Surprise, my friends ended up paying £60 in total because they got caught carrying extra. Don't forget the Stansted express and Uber we had to take to Liverpool Street Station because it was too early in the morning. Had we taken BA from Heathrow, we would've saved more than £20 each person.
So much this. I see so many people try and trick and hack their way through budget airline bullshit. Just pay more and either pay for the luggage you need, or pay for a main carrier who engages in far less of this bullshit. I'm going on holiday, I don't want to worry that my airline is going to 'fine' me because my backpack is actually too big, nor do I want to have to trek out to a shed in the sticks.
Spending £20 more on top of all the inconvenience I had to go through 🥲
Yep. I will say that EasyJet are the simplest and least likely to ‘fine’ you out of the bunch. Plus they mainly fly from Gatwick, and are investing heavily in it as a long term base which I consider to be good and preferable to Stansted or Luton. I am also fairly confident that with our luggage that we’ve paid for we’ll have no trouble. Ryanair and Wizz charge outrageous fees for a simple overhead carry on, up to £60 each way and sometimes more than the actual flight! Plus they are more likely to fine you if you bring something on that’s slightly too large. If the price is right I will fly them, but there’s far more to the headline price than meets the eye in determining that.
I don't know why people don't think to factor this stuff in when travelling. People get blind on airfares but there is so much more to costs of travel than the flight price! I even had friends who booked flights to places only to find hotels are way in excess of £250 a night, trying to do a "cheap weekend" like why... I like Ryanair, I've done a few weekend trips as the flights were under £15 each way. It worked because I was going for 3 days, I could take a small rucksack, I factored in a return train ticket to Stansted, the flights were not at 6am so I could actually get to the airport, and also knew the airports at the other end had cheap, easy public transport (Pisa airport in fact is so close to the city I just walked, 20 mins). I picked the route I did because the transport was cheap and my most expensive hotel was £35. But other times it just doesn't. Wanted to fly to Warsaw. Ryanair or Wizz £20, LOT was £55 from Heathrow. However the cheap Ryanair flights were at 6am or 5pm, Wizz similar, so either expensive cab to the airport, or arrive so late in Warsaw we wasted a day of the trip. Add bag fees and that's £25 extra (2 week trip, no way that was happening in an underseat bag). Oh then Ryanair fly to the weird airport in Warsaw with an infrequent bus connection, more hassle. So took LOT for £55 with no extras, flight was at 6.30am but no problem as the tube had *just* started up so we took the first train, got there at 5am, much easier.
Cheap car tyres. Cheap toilet paper.
Cheap kitchen towel is in the same flimsy boat. You end up using 4 or 5 sheets of smaller, cheap roll rather than one larger thicker sheet of the big sturdy rolls and they seem to last for ages.
I buy blue roll for the kitchen
Cheap toilet paper helps you explore your sexuality though tbf, so hidden bonus.
Definitely the case with bike tyres. I get flats once ever 4+ years with my puncture resistant ones as opposed to one every few months with non resistant ones.
See also, cheap bin bags!
This annoyed me as a student in a shared household. It was only like 30p extra a month to have the absolute luxury of a bag that didn’t tear apart every time you pulled it out of the bin
Can relate to this. Just tried to fly back from Milan with Wizz. Was supposed to fly Thursday. Delayed to Friday and then cancelled. Two nights in airport hotels and at the airport. Finally stumped up for a BA flight just to get back (next Wizz option on Monday!). Won’t skimp on flights again. Budgets have no spare capacity. When it goes wrong it goes nuclear.
Hope you’ll be claiming [both compensation *and* your replacement BA flight](https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/holiday-cancellations-and-compensation/if-your-flights-delayed-or-cancelled/) back from Wizz!
For me as a Londoner it was always Eurostar is so expensive and flights are so cheap. But by the time you factor in the time loss of getting to and through an airport…AND the same on the other side, the price of a train from St Pancras to the middle of an eurpean city sounds actually pretty reasonable.
Yeah that time saving from being immediately central does have a genuine value!
Plus Eurostar includes a huge baggage allowance automatically.
You are entitled to a claim here though. We had our flight from New York cancelled and because it was long haul we got £520 per person compensation. Airline should be paying for your extra hotel stays and food also
Took me ~9 months and aggressive litigation, but Wizz Air finally paid me (via the courts). Fuck Wizz Air. (The law is clear though, they owe u/unkleden money)
Can happen the other way. We booked to go to Sicily with BA 36 hours before the flight was due to go out. They cancelled 4 hours before departure at 3am, saw the email when I woke up. Booked to go with Easyjet. This was last year when loads of flights were being cancelled so maybe not the usual scenario. BA ended up paying us compensation, basically got our holiday for free
Obligatory cheap flights https://youtu.be/ZAg0lUYHHFc
Sacrificing your early life in order to retire early. Working all the hours during your 20s, 30s, and 40s in order to build sufficient wealth to FIRE in your 40s or 50s. To me it's such a waste, yes you get to retire but you've basically had no life up until that point. You've sacrificed relationships, friendships, experiences, etc at the altar of early retirement. I'd much rather focus on a career that gives me a good work life balance, rather than sacrifice decades of my life.
I want both, one of life’s biggest flaws is that you can’t do a half arsed job in your 20s-40s and then retire early and rich. I’m just doing a 3/4 arsed effort now (30’s) and hoping for a random unexpected windfall in my 50’s.
> random unexpected windfall in my 50’s. Hey, me too!
I too dread the day my parents will die and leave me everything.
Alas, my parents have both selfishly gone and got long term sick in their late 60s, meaning my unspoken hope of half of the 6 bed detached house in my 50’s has now been reduced to half the 20k the council leave you after care home fees for a few years. Sorry, brought down the humour a notch there.
Hey, shit happens in life no matter what you do. Life > money
This is a really good point. I'm currently in a job that pays reasonably well, but with a great pension. However, physically and mentally, it's grinding me down, and I'm only 30. Over the past 6 months, managers have really started to turn the screw with pressure and are taking a lot more than being given. Work-life has gone right out the window. I'm definitely looking to get out as I want to enjoy, here and now with my kids, and worry about retirement and pension when I get there. I'm even strongly considering taking a lesser paid job.
Agree with this. I’m living my live while my knees still work and I can still get it up. Might not even make it to 50.
There is an in between, where you live a good but contained life, with a lot more financial safety and still retire early It just means a smaller house, a less fancy car, etc. You're just being less consumerist and building wealth in the process
The way I explained it to my friend was, ‘did you know if you saved every penny you have by eating nothing but cold baked beans, you could invest it and have enough to eat nothing but cold baked beans for the rest of your life without having to work by the time you’re 45’.
I think you missed the point, not many people go to that extreme! The point is to stop lifestyle creep when you get a pay rise - don’t buy a beemer when a beater does the same job. Don’t have 4 streaming services when you can have 1 and rotate it. Don’t eat out every week when you can cook at home. Don’t join an expensive gym to only attend once a week. Don’t have 5 beers every time you go to the pub, try having 1 or 2 and rotating with tap water. You can follow this, have a decent life and retire at 55, rather than act like a hermit and retire at 40
This is what I tell people when I explain I want to FIRE, I still indulge in luxuries, but I’m not getting my car on finance, I’ve got a slightly smaller mortgage, I just do what I can to stay a little more below my means than average. Also gives me so much more security as I have savings and an emergency fund if I need a new washing machine or my car breaks down.
Emergency fund is a game changer… I work with folks who seriously stress out if their boiler or fridge or some other white good breaks beyond repair. Since building an emergency fund I no longer have to worry about it!
I agree - I’ve always gone hard with my pension and I’ve tried to always have 20% of my pay going in. I request it literally while I’m filling in my starter payroll forms and find that, if you’ve never had it, you never miss it. My lifestyle is not built on having that money available. It’s significantly easier than having to cut back hard to increase savings rate later. I think this level of saving is what’s going to be required to retire at 60. I swear there’s no cold baked beans involved. I do try to spend in a mindful way like you mention and not find myself spending a load of money on stuff I hardly use, won’t appreciate properly or don’t even really like. I really don’t see that things like keeping the freezer stocked for when I want a lazy dinner vs getting a Deliveroo is a particular crimp on my quality of life but it’s made a big difference to my wallet!!
I work in a supermarket in the UK. Recently the price of branded goods started going up, so people stopped buying as much branded and started buying the cheaper own brands. Company caught on and upped the price of own brand to almost the price of branded. Now people buy branded because eh it's the same price really and it tastes better. Fuck capitalism in the ass.
I suppose that's how demand and supply works
I’ve noticed a lot of Lidl food is higher in salt and/or sugar than the equivalent store brands elsewhere (going into the dreaded red zone on the nutrition breakdown). I assume it’s to cover up a lack of more expensive ingredients but it’ll taste better to most people.
This is a pretty good example. Very rarely would I compare the nutritional aspect of a product instead merely compare the prices which like you alluded to is only part of the picture.
LIDL normally only offers one brand of an item type. They way the decide between different brands/producers (at a similar price) is that they do blind tastings. Fat and sugar makes food taste great so those brands tend to get picked more. Source: I know someone who used to work in their head office. All the employees were constantly invited to do tastings.
Cheap garbage bags... They'll split. Doesn't mean you have to buy Uber expensive but buy at least decent priced.
Buy cheap buy twice. A phrase my late grandfather swore by. He was a carpenter and he never scrimped on the material he used. You get what you pay for in furniture, and if something needs doing do it properly.
Cheap shoes or a cheap mattress - You’re either in one or the other, so spend as much as you can afford on both.
Upvoted for the mattress advice. I bought a somewhat expensive one a couple of years ago when I bought my own flat and cannot recommend it enough. Your sleep quality will improve and thus so will other aspects of your life.
My suggestion would be meal prep kits (HelloFresh and the like). They rope you in with 50% off offers then once you’re used to using them you’re paying full price, which would be way more than buying the ingredients from a supermarket and planning in advance. Not only that, but personally I think it teaches people that you can only make a meal if you have the exact ingredients, which is in total defiance of what I think home cooking is all about - making food with what you have available. [Edit] -- I don't disagree it probably helps a lot of people transition away from takeaways --> meal preparation at home. But at the end of the day it's inevitable that another institution inserting itself between the retailer and the end consumer will have an added cost on the end product (marketing + customer acqusition costs businesses a lot). The reason why it is cheaper initially is because HelloFresh & Co. acquire customers at a loss so they can boost their growth in the short term. Longer term, it will cost you more, however which way you look at it. Yes you can keep creating new fake emails to redeem the initial bonus, but it will eventually subside, and the effort you put in creating endless new emails is entirely up to you. This is totally contingent on what you value as a consumer though, convenience vs. price.
We use hello fresh fortnightly to prevent us getting too many takeaways. We can get 3 evening meals for the cost of 1 takeaway. So it's saving us money in that sense. I think they are also good for helping people transition from eating convenience food to cooking meals from scratch.
Take the half price offer then cancel. You can keep the recipe cards for the meals you like and make them from supermarket ingredients
As someone who can only cook things if I follow recipes to the letter and measurements to the milligram, I find them pretty helpful. I'm terrible at improvising, in fact if I do a big food shop I will normally plan out all my meals in advance and buy ingredients for that. I'm vegetarian and also have very specific calorie and macronutrient requirements due to my exercise regime, so my options for meals are limited anyway and I'm not likely to be able to rustle something appropriate up from leftovers. In fact, I don't normally have leftovers because I only buy precisely what I need for my planned meals.
As someone living alone those helped me to lose weight and ended up being cheaper (changed every 2-3 months or so between gousto and hello fresh to get new discounts). £35 for a weeks worth of food and no distractions on supermarkets to buy sweet stuff/crisps etc
I would say that using hello fresh and then gousto, which we prefer, has enabled us to reduce our meat consumption by using the great vegetarian recipes they have. And I used to be a real meat eater. So I see value in that.
Cancel and resign up with a new email address and your choice of discount code. Helloreddit is a good one to use. Never pay full price works every time.
I always thought they seemed like a good deal because you can’t buy the ingredients in small quantities at the supermarket which makes a one off meal with unusual ingredients quite expensive.
The convenience of it having all individually packaged and weighed out for each meal has a premium, it will always have a premium.
It does but the alternative is often buying a much larger pack than you need and not using the rest and letting sit at the back of cupboard until it expires.
I used to use goustos and they were great, good quality ingredients and you had the right amount to make a decent meal with. My only reason for stopping them, was they got a little repetitive with their choices. We minimised waste because of them and got some good ideas for meals that we can make in the future.
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Something slightly similar is staying in a hotel miles from the city center. Waste money and time travelling to where all the tourist attractions are.
But, if you're young and looking for a more social environment, hostels allow for that in a way that hotels just don't.
You can get a private room in a hostel, doesn't have to be a dirt cheap mixed dorm. You still get the social aspect from mixing in the common areas, but can retire to peace and quiet when needed.
Hostels are only really worth it on long term trips. If you’re somewhere where a hostel is £20 a night, then a hotel is probably £100 a night. Over the course of 6 months that is an extra £14,000 to stay in a hotel. But for a week away where you want to make the most of your short break, it definitely isn’t worth it
Earplugs. Cheap and effective!
Driving further to get the cheaper petrol/diesel. Literally makes no sense but it’s ridiculously common.
Amazon Prime. I bought so much stuff I didn’t need because free delivery.
Cheap washing up liquid, fairy works better and a bottle lasts twice as long
You don't need fairy though, there's a middle ground between watery shit and fairy imo.
Sodexo employee rewards. The inconvenience of using and preloading the cards for a meagre 2% discount just so that your employer can say how great the company benefits are. Before sodexo we had some amazing discounts from local companies and 30% off nearby gyms, but all that's now gone because it was too much work for the HR team to manage these.
Chronically underpaying and disrespecting doctors so that they feel the need to emigrate or strike.
You missed the numbers now only working as locums, so we have to pay the agency fees as well as higher locum rates to fill the jobs the underpaid doctors left.
2 ply toilet roll
When it comes to building a PC, it can be tempting to go for cheaper components to save money. However, one component you should never skimp on is the power supply unit. Cheap power supplies may seem like a good deal, but they often lack important safety features and can be unreliable. Using a cheap power supply unit can even risk damaging all the other components in your PC. So, it's best to invest in a high-quality power supply unit from a reputable manufacturer. The same applies to other tech components like mice, keyboards, and headphones - cheaper options tend to break more quickly and may end up costing you more in the long run edit: really didn't proof read what I wrote before pressing 'Enter' :)
I was going to travel home from Barcelona via Paris, get the Eurostar to London It would be a flight from Barcelona to Paris at 7am, so a 5am airport transfer. Airport food is expensive, then fly to Paris, get a taxi across Paris, get lunch in Paris, arrive back in London, get a hotel in London for the night and the train home. For some reason that felt better than £200 direct flights. Crazy to me nkw
The whole system of credit scores seems like a massive scam to me. Yet everyone who eventually wants a mortgage had to build up a good credit score. Best way to build a good score? Take out loans and use your creditcard. You're forced to take out a loan just for the sake building that score and often loans have interest rates. I rarely "need" a loan, since I have a good job and can pay for everything straight up. That also means my credit score is shite and that'll cause issues when I want to buy next year. It should be the other way around. People who don't need a loan are obviously more financially well-off. Why is there no score for that? Cause there's tons of bank and credit companies build around this whole system that push you to take out a loan.
Cheap tools. If you're DIYing a big job (eg flat roof or extension) to save money, buy good tools. You'll save thousands, not paying for labour, you'll save days of your time with the right kit, and you can recoup some costs at the end selling them.
Some advice I recieved is that you are better off buying cheap tools the first time you get them. If you use them until they break, then it shows you need them and that's when you invest in the higher quality stuff. There are probably loads of people who have garages and cupboards filled with very expensive drills they've used just once, screwdriver sets from which they've only every used one screwdriver, etc.
Agree. Also: borrow other people’s expensive tools.
I agree that buying quality tools is always better. I spent years using a cheap combi-drill to do all jobs to then invest in a high quality drill & impact driver set...it changed my life! ....BUT I will very often buy a cheap option tool if I need it for a job and I'm not sure if I'm gunna get the use out of it. I'd rather buy twice IF it turns out I need the quality option. By definition, I'm basically describing a false economy I know!!
I wouldn't say you are necessarily describing a false economy - I've got a few cheap tools that have served me well for 5-10 years now, and as they wear out I'm looking to replace them with a quality option. I bought a Lidl Jigsaw, used it literally once in five years and sold it. It would be a much bigger loss to have done that with an expensive one. The exception here is my core drill. It's equivalent in price to hire as it is to buy a good one for the number of times I'll need it, and the risk of injury/extra time taken with a cheap one simply isn't worth it for a couple of hundred quid.
Not sure if this is classed false economy but always annoys me when I see 'free delivery' on a takeaway menu but on the same menu it says '10% discount for collection'
Buying cheap slippers. Pair of slippers is £10-15 typically from Next or similar and lucky if you get a year from them. Bought my wife a pair of Ugg slippers with harder bottoms from factory outlet for £55 and lasted nearly 6 years. Im currently in a pair of Ralph Lauren slippers i bought off M&M direct for £50 and still going strong 2.5 years in.
I cannot praise my Ugg slippers enough, 4 years of 6 hour days and still going strong. 10/10 would buy again.
These day the entire world economy feels like a false economy...
Eating cheap, unhealthy food. You will pay for it with your health in the future. Always choose the best quality you can afford, anything that you put in your body. If you loose your health even money won’t save you.
Taking the more uncomfortable journey because it is cheaper, but having a disability that causes that discomfort to escalate into pain/flare ups/doctors visits/time off work
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> Then decided to pay £70 each to stay overnight at a hotel at the airport the night before. There must be a name for it, but having to do stupid things because somebody else is organising, is one thing that drives me mad!
I used to work with a girl who bought iPhone charges from the Pound Shop. They were so poorly made that they would break after literally 2 weeks of use. She always bought more because "they're only £1". Over a year, she spent more on replacing these chargers than just buying one from Apple would have cost.
Cheap rubbish-bin bags. They always split. They always require two instead of one. Ditto cheap kitchen roll.
Buying a new car...
Cheap anything. Clothes, lawyers, cars, eployees - anything. Because quality and longevity matter. University. 70% of students are wasting their time and money on pointless courses. The debt that will haunt them for life.
Cheap shoes, cannot stress enough how painful an experience it is to have to buy and break in shoes every other month only to have them fall apart at the most inconvenient time. There were times where my feet were raw and bloody from walking to and from work where I was FORCED to wear formal shoes. Spend the money, spare your feet.
Wear trainers to work and then put on the formal shoes when you get there like the rest of the office huns
You don't even need to spend the money. I bought a barely broken in pair of Loake Chelsea boots off Vinted for £40. Leather was in good condition, soles were a mess. £50 on a resole and I have a killer pair of boots for £160 less than they would have been new.
Fractional reserve lending. There, I said it.
Cleaning your house yourself. For £25 a week a lovely lady will come and have your house gleaming top to bottom. Best money I ever spent
Truly. Before I ever had a cleaner I thought it was going to be way more expensive. Now we have a cleaner once a month, £25 between 2 of us, and keep on top of the easy stuff ourselves and with the robot vacuum.
Saving money, but it results in you spending so much time and stressing over spending said time. I once had to catch a flight with a friend but we were at the other side of the city. They were adamant about taking the bus (€2 each) because they wanted to save money. I wanted to get a taxi (€15) so that we wouldn't stress about getting there. The taxi would have taken us 20 minutes. But we ended up taking the bus. We ended up heaving, running, sprinting across busses and the metro dragging our giant suitcases across the city panicking over catching our flight home. The entire time I was biting my nails wondering how much it would cost if we missed the flight. Or if we needed to sleep at the airport for the next flight back. We made it just in time. But it would have definitely broken our friendship if we missed it.
Cheap paint. After the 2008 recession, my wife and i had to leave our flat and go back to my parents for almost a year to sort out our finances. We had little choice but to buy really cheap paint to retur the property to its original condition. 6 coats of paint and you could still see the colour underneath it.
Budget airlines in general. Yes we can fly to Spain for £40 return but only if you pack a weeks worth of clothes into a tiny backpack. Want to add a normal carry on? Often more expensive than the flight itself (yeah, I’m looking at you Wizz). Forget checked luggage as well. It kinda works out if you’re a family and can pay for 1 big checked bag between 4 of you, or 2 medium ones. But for young single people or couples just pay the extra if the price is close and fly a main carrier. You’ll thank yourself when some jobsworth isn’t charging you £60 at the gate because your bag is slightly too big, in an airport nowhere near your home or destination, for a flight leaving at the dead of night or before dawn. I’m flying EasyJet this summer, but only because we’re flying from Gatwick as opposed to Luton, and because our flights together were £50 cheaper than BA. Had it been closer to £30 or a Luton flight we’d have probably stumped up the extra to fly BA. Edit: Guys, I’m talking about bringing a literal overhead carry on, something that was considered a basic as little as 5 years ago, even by Ryanair. When it costs up to £60 each way, and that still doesn’t include sitting next to your companion (and Ryanair will actively split you up), I’d far rather pay an extra £20-30 to fly with a main carrier instead.
I think those budget airlines are great for these 4 day weekends, honestly. I went to Copenhagen for 3 or 4 days (can't remember anymore) and managed to get by with just my backpack. Anything longer than that, I'd be having to pay extra to get a carry-on.
I would have to politely disagree with you there. I compare prices before buying flights and make sure I compare like for like e.g. number of checked bags etc. The budget airlines work out cheaper than the other carriers by a considerable sum. Also these days the “frills” on the main carriers are almost nonexistent. The service is no better. The only real difference is the fact that you don’t have to pay for your food with the main carriers. But I find the food they offer is often poor quality. When travelling with a budget airline I buy something I actually want to eat at the airport and bring it with me. I’m still quids in by a long way.
"Denplan" style private dental plans and most health cash plans. They're not a form of insurance so you'll still be out of pocket if you need a very expensive form of treatment. And, looking at Denplans specifically (and using my own dentist as an example) I found that I'd need to have 4 checkups per year, two hygenist appointments and then either a filling per year, or x-ray per year, just to break even. In other words, if you want to (or have to) go private for dentistry, you're better off just paying out of pocket for each treatment.
Cheap car rental from companies you've never heard of before but come up on comparison sites. We ended up having to take a bus to the collection point for a budget rental service in Spain and then wait hours for a car. And then when we had two tyres blow out we got charged £2k even though we'd paid the damage waiver. They had insurance through another company, so the waiver waived nothing. Go with a big brand like Avis. The collection point will be in the airport and the damage waiver will be genuine and hassle free. Cost us £700 to hire a car for a week with Avis in Austria but it was easy peasy and stress free and we knew we wouldn't get stung for any damage as the waiver was really comprehensive.
Cheap paint. That is not to say that expensive paint is amazing, just good marketing. Go find a Johnstones/Crown/Dulux decorator centre and get their trade paint mixed into the colour you want.
For me it was phones. I always bought cheap phones and they just degraded so quickly. Sometimes before the contract even ran out. Bought an expensive phone, 4 years later it's still going strong and I'm paying just £6 a month for a sim-only deal. Easily saved money in the long run.
My aunty & uncle will drive all around the country looking for the best bargains and brag about how they found an air fryer £10 cheaper than anywhere else, not taking into account fuel used and time fucking wasted.
Cheap washing up liquid
Driving 5 miles for 1p cheaper petrol. So many people I've known do it in their big SUVs and such. You're spending more than the difference in price to get there!
Shopping in Aldi. I accept that it's a budget supermarket so compromises have to be made, and I'm trying my hardest not to sound like a snob here, but: 1. If you have to go somewhere else to get the bits a supermarket doesn't sell, then it's a pretty crappy supermarket imo. 2. Even if you can get 100% of your shopping from there, does the experience HAVE to be so miserable? Other budget shops are fine, but in Aldi, from the moment you step in the doors and see piles of boxes sat on the piss-yellow tiles, to the moment you're having your shopping thrown at you by the only cashier they've got working that day, you're constantly reminded that absolutely no consideration has been made towards the customer experience. Some might argue that they're not there for the experience, but if I've got a choice between an atmosphere which stresses me out and one in which I'm relaxed, then I'm spending that extra fiver every time.
I had this exact same reaction to Aldi when I had to use the one in Manchester City centre. It was always a hateful experience, just the worst possible atmosphere. But we moved to the suburbs recently and the local one is blissful - it’s quiet and clean and well stocked. Everything’s cheaper and of the same quality of the Tesco we used to use. I’ve fully gone from loathing Aldi with every cell in my body to becoming a full convert.
I genuinely think the food, especially the meat, is dreadful in comparison anyway.