Ten commandments of savings

Thanks very much to everyone who entered the Moneysupermarket.com competition to find the best ‘ten commandments of saving’ or top savings tips. There were some really great entries, but here are my ten favourites:

- Get children saving at a young age.  My parents set me up a post office account, but it can be anything, as long as they can ‘save their pennies’ themselves.  If they’re aiming to save ‘for’ something rather than just save for savings sake, it helps to see the commection and builds good skills about the value of things, but it’s important to keep the savings going and not take them all out. Debbie Ruppenthal

- Only use cold water for washing hands during the day to save igniting the gas boiler. Only wash up once a day and rinse with cold water. Kay Smith

- Juggle your bank and savings accounts about.  Getting a lower rate and regularly switching can save tens of pounds a year especially if you don’t clear the card monthly.  The same goes for savings accounts – attractive rates only have a limited lifespan – move it when it runs out to something more attractive.  Debbie Ruppenthal

- When towels and clothes start to look old and need a boost but are still usable and fit, dye them the same colour to refresh them or a different colour to make them feel like new. This works really well for jeans when the colour fades. Maxine Sells

- This year I’ve saved over £300 by complaining about faulty items – things that didn’t do what they said, or have given up the ghost well within the warranty periods.  Normally, I’d let it go, so I’ve got the initial layout and then the cost of repair and replacement.  This last year I’ve girded my loins and made myself complain – why should people get away with shoddy stuff when I have to hand over my hard earned cash? Debbie Ruppenthal

- If you have kids avoid the “baby chino” in coffee shops – just ask for an espresso cup and split a hot chocolate. Loyalty cards at coffee shops are great, be cheeky if others ahead of you don’t have one and get their stamps! Emma Gray

- Don’t discard your old shoulder pads – sew them into the knees of chilldren’s rompers to prevent wear.  If you don’t have a proper steamer for fish, use a metal colander over a pan and cover with the lid.  Sylvia Kent

- Buy spices from Indian corner shops as you still get more for your money than at the supermarket. If at the supermarket, buy spices in the ethnic sections as again they’re cheaper than the spice section. Emma Gray

- Ask the butcher for a bag of bacon bits (left on the machine after slicing). You can get  a big bag for about £1.50 – put some in the freezer for future use and use some for making a big pot of soup with added vegetables. Kay Smith

- Learn how to do hyper-miling in your car! When you’re on the motorway, keep your speed at around 55MPH and you’ll save around 10% on your petrol bill. Simon West

Well done to everyone who entered. The winners will be announced by Moneysupermarket on Friday 5th April.

Competition: Your favourite savings tips

Are you canny with your money? Fancy winning yourself £100 or more? Moneysupermarket have been in touch and are running a competition with personal finance and frugal bloggers as part of ISA season to see which of their readers can come up with the best savings tips – their ’10 commandments of savings’.

All you have to do is email me your favourite moneysaving tips to piperterrett@googlemail.com

The deadline is midnight on Friday 29th March – so tomorrow night.

I will then publish my favourite ten tips, along with the contributors’ names, and these will go forward to the competition.

The judges at Moneysupermarket will then select the best 10 commandments and if you have submitted a winning commandment, you’ll win £100 to put into your savings.

Fancy having a go? Why not get your thinking caps on, then?! Good luck!

Our first organic veg box

It’s like Christmas already!

Just for a change, Doug has started ordering us a weekly organic veg box to experiment with. Believe it or not, it’s the first time we’ve ever signed up to a veg box scheme – mainly because for years we had our own homegrown stuff to eat from the garden in our old house in Essex. But now that we’re renting in Hertford (the house hunting has yet to be fruitful…) and the allotment isn’t productive yet, we no longer have our own lovely homegrown organic veg to enjoy and we miss it.

The ‘gourmet box’ we’ve signed up to is £16.60 a week including £1 for delivery. It might sound a lot, but after going through our monthly spend recently and looking for ways of trimming it again, we realised we were spending this or more each week on the same old boring veg at the supermarket anyway. We’d like to eat more seasonally and support farmers in the UK who care about the way our food is produced – especially after all that’s been going on with the horse-meat scandal – at least until Doug’s plot at the allotment is in production later this year. We’re also trying to eat less meat during the week to save cash, so the more interesting veg we have, the more we can experiment with our meals.

This is a photo of our first one from Abel & Cole. It sounds daft, but it was quite exciting when it turned up on Friday morning a couple of weeks ago – a bit like Christmas. We couldn’t wait to open it up and see what was in it. There was celery, broadbeans, cherry tomatoes, spring onions for Doug (I discovered a couple of years ago that I am intolerant to all aliums, which is a nuisance…) and a pak choi among other things, but also some more unusual things like kohlrabi and chioggia beetroot (which embarrassingly I failed to identify when I opened the box).  Doug ordered the gourmet box, which features some more offbeat stuff in it, because he thought it might be interesting for us to try out some more unusual vegetables.

This week we also got some bleu d’auvergne potatoes – crazy-looking things which are purple inside and out – and some Jerusalem artichokes. We have tried Jerusalem artichokes before but not for a while, so I’m looking forward to eating them again. Helpfully you do get some guidance on what to do with the more unusual veg, in the shape of little leaflets in the box and then also recipes on the company’s website.

It said on the packet that the potatoes were good roasters, which surprised us a bit. A few years ago I grew some purple potatoes – I can’t recall the variety – but didn’t get on with them at all. I later realised that they cooked really quickly and I had been overcooking them. But these chaps were really nice roasted, although, it has to be said, I did embarrass myself on Sunday by attempting to peel a strangely potato-like lump which had also appeared in the brown paperbag with them. After spending two minutes carefully peeling pieces of mud off the thing, it dawned on me that it wasn’t a potato. At first I thought it was a stone and then Doug determined that the mystery object was just in fact a big piece of…er…mud… Call yourself an apprentice gardener, Terrett?! Hmmm…

The kohlrabi baffled me a bit. It’s a cabbage-like vegetable that, frankly, resembles an alien but is also said to be like a turnip. It’s a perennial brassica and apparently its name actually means ‘cabbage turnip’ in German. In the end, I cut it into cubes and roasted it with the potatoes. Some of it got a bit burnt, so next time I’ll do bigger cubes – or cook it separately from the potatoes – and I’ll also peel it. Doug advised me not to bother, but on eating it became obvious that this was in fact necessary. It has an interesting, slightly turnipy and slightly spicy flavour to it so I’d definitely eat it again. Meanwhile, looking forward to what next week’s box will bring. If you’ve got any good recipe ideas, then let me know!

New TV show – Something for Nothing

Just a quick message for anyone this might interest. A nice lady who is helping developing a new TV show for Channel 4 called Something For Nothing called me last week. She is looking for interesting frugal-minded people to feature on the show.

The programme will look into the things that you can get for free – busting or proving popular money-saving myths along the way and featuring meeting everyday heroes who’ve used their skill, knowledge and persistence to achieve Something For Nothing on an amazing scale.

It could be someone who’s lived off skill-swapping for 3 years and has achieved services worth over £5,000. Or an example of it going wrong. Somebody who has furnished their whole office / house from skip findings – or maybe they’ve made money by doing things up and selling them on ebay. Or anything similar that might be a good story.

If you can help, please contact Lucy Weston at RDF TV on 0207 013 4275 or email Lucy.Weston@rdftelevision.com

Good luck!

The allotment takes shape

The greenhouse is finally up

At last, it’s March and the growing season is upon us. I don’t know about you but it feels like this winter has been going on for at least six months and shows little sign of abating! Doug and I have been so cold in our draughty rental house that he kindly bought us several pairs of thermals each to wear under our clothes. I don’t know why we didn’t invest in them years ago! I am a convert.

Now that that spring is almost here, and hopefully slightly warmer weather may be around the corner, Doug is busy growing his seedlings. As you’d expect, there’s barely a window sill free in the house. The seedlings are mostly salad leaves, although he does plan to plant some tomatoes in the coming weeks. We spent the other weekend putting up the greenhouse which used to be in the garden in our old house in Essex at the allotment. Not the most fun thing you can do when it’s zero degrees, granted, but it had to be done. It has been sitting piled up in the garden for the past 16 months, so it was good finally to get it up and being used.

I volunteered to help out after Doug was let down by a flaky man with a van he’d booked to deliver it to the allotment and help erect it. The guy backed out by texting him at 5.30am on the morning he was supposed to come, saying he couldn’t make it. Turns out he was going skiiing instead! Luckily, in the end, Doug managed to find another chap who was more reliable to deliver it to the site. And, thanks to our efforts in the freezing cold, it’s all up now. There’s just one pane of glass in the roof that needed replacing as it got accidentally smashed when we moved in 2011 and he picked that up at the weekend. You can watch a quick time lapse video here of us putting it up…

Doug has just left his seedlings up at the allotment, in the greenhouse, for the first time today. Now we’re just hoping it will get some sun…Fingers crossed!

Before I go, here is a link to the spot I did most recently on the Chrissie B Show which I forgot to put up before. It’s a bit late for Boxing Day now, but perhaps early in time for next year! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ay_fFGHASc

Merry Christmas

Sorry, this is later than advertised as I’ve unfortunately been ill lately with a nasty cold bug, but here is the interview I was telling you about that I did on the Chrissy B Show recently. It’s about 15 minutes into the piece but do watch the first segment with Michelle Nicholson, who runs the Being Creative blog, as it’s really interesting and inspiring. I’m back on again in a pre-recorded interview on Boxing Day on what to do with unwanted Christmas presents. If you have Sky channel 203 you can catch it at 9.30pm-10.30pm then or it’s repeated again on Thursday 27th December at 2-3pm.

Wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas. Have an amazing time. Also wishing you a wonderful 2013. I’ve got a good feeling about next year! Take care, love Piper x

Talking moneysaving on the Chrissy B Show

On the Chrissy B Show!

Hope you’re having a good week. As I mentioned in my last post, recently I was invited on the Chrissy B Show - a London-based talk show broadcast on Sky channel 203 – to talk about living frugally and saving money. Also on the show was the lovely Michelle Nicholson from Lincolnshire (on the left in the photo above – Chrissy B is on the right) who runs a fantastic craft blog called Being Creative. She brought lots of her amazing craft items and delicious chocolate truffles along for us to sample.

Technology is great when it works. Unfortunately there was a problem with the satellite that night so the show wasn’t broadcast (no, for once I didn’t sit on the transmitter!). It will now be broadcast this Friday 23rd November from 9.30pm to 10.30pm in case you want to catch it then. Otherwise, if you don’t have Sky, it will be available to watch on YouTube about a week later, so I’ll post the video here once it’s up.

We had lots of fun!

In the meantime, here are some photos of us there to give you a flavour of what went on! We had a lot of fun – that’s us above tucking into Michelle’s homemade truffles. I will be going on the show again soon for a show to be broadcast on Boxing Day to chat about what to do with unwanted Christmas presents, so I’ll let you know more about that very soon.

Have a great week!  Piper xxx

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Christmas Budgeting

Christmas is coming…

Have you started planning for Christmas yet? I’m really looking forward to it this year. I love the festive season anyway, but this year I’m especially looking forward to the break from work as it’s been a busy few months since I started a new job this autumn. This year I thought I’d try getting ahead of things by squirrelling away Christmas-related items each week before we actually get to the holidays to spread the cost. It’s easy enough to source these things - after all, the shops have been brimming with Christmas tat since September! But I thought it might also be a good way to take advantage of some bargains and to avoid the December rush.Of course, it isn’t possible to buy everything ahead of time. I was tempted last week by some all butter mince pies for sale in our local Sainsbury’s, for example, but then they will go off before Christmas. I would happily eat them now but I think I might have trouble fitting into my work trousers. And that’s before the Christmas feasting itself begins. We’re all bound to put on a few pounds during the holidays, but I don’t want to start off that way if I can help it.

So far we’ve managed to take advantage of some booze bargains we’ve seen on offer – picking up some cut-price Chilean Casillero del Diablo (cellar of the devil – a bit of a favourite in our house) merlot last weekend and some reasonably-priced cava. The tricky thing, though, is not being tempted to drink it before the 25th December so I have separated the Christmas items from the normal household items. So far we have the red wine, cava, a Christmas pud, Christmas cards and wrap squirrelled away in a box in the spare room. I’m also saving my up Nectar points with the idea that I can spend them on Christmas food or put them towards presents too.

Last weekend Doug and I were browsing in Wilkinson’s in St Albans, looking at the wine-making kits, and we started wondering about whether it might be a good idea to get some homemade beer on the go for the festive season. It takes about six weeks to make, so now would be a good time to get it going. The problem is that, with still lots of our belongings in boxes in various rooms in the rental house, neither of us is too sure where Doug’s brewing kit is. We’ll have to have a root around to see if we can find it.

Now that we’ve been renting in Hertford for a year, we’ve unpacked most of the things that we use all the time but lots of other things remain in boxes. This is not only from laziness (although obviously that has played a part…) but also because we’ve been house-hunting much of the year and thought it wasn’t worth unpacking things that we would just end up repacking again. But, with nothing much on the market at the moment, who knows how long it will be before we need to do that? I’ve also wondered that if we haven’t used some of these things in boxes by now, whether we really need them. There may very well be some things that we could either take to the charity shop or sell online. Perhaps during the holidays it might be a good idea to go through these boxes and take a look.

This morning I found a half-used jar of goose fat we bought from our local farm shop last year and saw that the best before date says 2015, so I’m wondering whether this will still be OK to use this Christmas, rather than have to buy a new jar as they can be expensive. Meanwhile, we’re still deciding what to have for Christmas dinner this year. Last year we had a delicious joint of beef raised on the same local farm – Foxholes Farm. It was gorgeous, melt in your mouth stuff. I’ve been wondering about whether to have turkey this year but the problem is that, when there’s just two or three of you for Christmas dinner, you end up eating it for days and getting fed up with it. So I’m wondering if chicken, duck or beef might be better options.

Next up is planning the Christmas presents. My Mum has already been organised and has started asking us what we would like, so that is in the works, which is good. Then hopefully that will allow us to spread the cost of Christmas and avoid any nasty financial surprises in January. I always like to set a budget per head when I’m buying Christmas presents so that I can stay within my spending limits.

Meanwhile, I was invited to go on the Chrissie B talk show on Friday night, broadcast on Sky channel 203, to talk about living frugally. It was great fun and I met a lovely crafty lady from Lincolnshire called Michelle who is also a blogger. She is sending me her details so that I can tell you more about her blog soon. The show will be available to view on YouTube in a week’s time so, in case you fancy a peek, I will be posting the link here.  In the meantime, do get in touch and let me know how your plans for Christmas are going.

Have you started planning your Christmas spending yet? How will you be saving money this year? Do get in touch and let me know.

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A Year in Hertford

Doug’s new allotment – end of day 1

On Hallowe’en it will be 12 months since we sold our house in Essex and upped sticks to Hertford. I still can’t quite believe it. The year has gone by so quickly. We’re really enjoying living here and getting to know the area, even though things haven’t quite worked out in the way that we’d planned yet.

We’re still renting at the moment. We didn’t intend to - it just worked out that way. We’ve spent the last couple of years looking for somewhere to purchase, albeit in various different places, unsure quite where we’d end up but dreaming (unrealistically!) of somewhere with a bit of land, or at least a bigger garden than we had in our old house. Douglas, my other half, loves gardening and has been planning to set up his own part-time venture growing salad leaves along organic lines. You can find out more about this by checking out his website Sweetpeasalads.co.uk. We liked the idea of him being able to do this at home so that he could keep a closer eye on pests trying to munch their way through the produce, etc..

Over the past few years we’ve looked at houses all over the place –  in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Kent, Colchester – anywhere where we might be able to get some land with a place, but nothing has worked out yet. More affordable properties always tended to be too far away from London for work and places that were closer were beyond our budget. Being fans of Grand Designs, we experimented with the idea of self-build but the sky-high price and scarcity of building plots in the South East means this isn’t really viable for us.

In the end, when we sold our house in 2011, we still couldn’t find anything to purchase and so we decided to rent so we wouldn’t lose our buyer. From our old house in Billericay, Doug’s work commute to Victoria was a bind (1 hour 40 on a good day) so we thought that we may as well rent somewhere where his journey would be easier, and so we set on moving to Hertford. We liked the place when we visited here last year while preparing to get married nearby, so we thought it would be a good place to try out.

It’s worked out well so far. Hertford is very green with lots of attractive old buildings, surrounded by countryside and with three rivers going through it. It’s easier to get into central London from here, plus we get a small taste of the country life – our rental house backs onto fields and there is a wood nearby where we can go for walks, full of deer and pheasants.

We were very, very lucky to sell our house – not everybody in our old road who wanted to has been able to do so. But finding a new home (with a decent-sized garden, at least to fit Doug’s greenhouse in) to buy here has proved difficult so far. Even though the market here isn’t anything like as bad as it is in other areas of the UK, there is very little in the way of properties coming up for sale. In the downturn, the only people who are selling are those who have to sell – ie. they’re relocating, downsizing, divorcing or they’ve inherited the property. And most prices remain high, too. There isn’t much that’s good value for money and, when there is something, it tends to go very quickly. We nearly bought a house earlier in the year because it was the only one we’d seen that we could imagine living in, until there were problems with the chain and I had second thoughts about it.

I still daydream about us living on a smallholding some day, with Doug growing his vegetables and a merry band of chickens and goats keeping us company, but it is unlikely to happen. Fortunately, Doug has a sensible, can-do attitude and has taken some decisive action in the past week. He has got himself an allotment on a nice plot which is a ten minute walk from our rental home.

Doug’s allotment – end of day 3

Our rental has a small garden which gets very little sun and so Doug hasn’t been able to grow much in the past year besides a few courgettes, beans, sweetcorn and sweetpeas in the one tiny flowerbed that faces south (and that was battling with Dougal the cat who liked to use the sweetpea patch as a litter tray/bed…). Hopefully Doug will now be able to get cracking and grow all the many vegetables and salad leaves in 2013 that he has been wanting to grow all this year. As far as Sweetpea Salads goes, the plan is that he will eventually start up his salad business on a plot that he plans to rent from a local farmer. But while he waits for various unrelated planning applications to through go at the farm, at least he will have the allotment to satisfy his horticultural talents.

Meanwhile he has already been out in the back garden this weekend in the freezing cold, planting sweetpea seeds for next year’s crop. That’s dedication for you! I’ll let you know how he gets on. In the meantime, here’s wondering what 2013 in Hertford will bring…

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A Norfolk Farm Walk – Garden Farm Produce

Sam Eglington of Garden Farm Produce

Yesterday Doug and I braved the steaming hot weather and spent several hours in a boiling car driving up to Dereham in Norfolk. There were a few occasions during those hours on the road when I wondered to myself – if not out loud – why on earth we were doing this when we could be safely at home under a nice cool tree, lazily sipping a pleasant cold beer and watching the hens run about the garden, but Doug was determined to make the trip and fortunately it was well worth it once we got there.

We were driving all that way in the crazy heat to go on a farm walk around a very special bit of Nelson’s county. Enterprising Sam Eglington, who runs Garden Farm Produce, has taken over 2 acres of land in Gressenhall in Dereham and has established a beautiful market garden which is grown along organic lines. When he took over the field in 2008 it was just meadow land and full of thistles. Plus he also had to contend with the fact that a year later the financial crisis hit and the bottom dropped out of the organic veg market, with many box schemes which had flourished in the years before sadly forced to fold. Fortunately due to a keen sense of business and a strong belief in what he is doing, coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of growing, he has managed to keep going and made his first profit last year.

Sam grows a variety of crops, including potatoes, lettuces, tomatoes, brassicas (broccoli, cabbages etc.) and radishes which he sells to a local wholesaler and restaurants. He is also growing some green manure to improve the soil, including a beautiful crop of red clover which unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of. As we are busy researching launching our own venture at some point soon, the visit – and listening to Sam’s excellent advice and interesting experiences – was invaluable.

It was also interesting to meet members of a community supported agriculture project called Farm Share in Norwich who were also taking part in the walk. CSAs are popular in the US but are gradually gaining traction here in the UK. Farm Share have 100 members who each contribute a set amount every month to the project and receive a share of the produce each week, as well as volunteering there for nine hours a year. The team had five acres and recently took on another three, which dwarfs the modest one acre we are hopefully taking on next year to grow salad leaves! It was really inspiring to meet them and if you’re in the Norwich area why not think about joining their CSA?

After a two and a half hour tour of the plot in the searing heat, and patiently answering all our questions, Sam very kindly treated us to homemade flapjacks and ice-tea in the shade. How quintessentiallly English and a great way to finish off the afternoon! Needless to say there was a lot to talk about on the drive home.

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