Free train travel into London

I wrote back in January about how I had lent my partner money so that she could buy an annual train ticket before the new price rises came into effect. The benefit to me would be that I could save 1/3 off rail travel when I travel with her and as she has already paid back the money any lost interest is virtually nil.

A surprise benefit was also receiving 6 free weekend tickets that we could also use throughout the year and we used the first of these this weekend travelling up to London to watch the England v Slovakia friendly match yesterday. This saved me £17.90 compared to what I usually pay and also finally meant I got round to getting an Oyster Card, which will hopefully save me more money in the future rather than lazily just adding a travelcard onto my train fare even when I am only doing a single return journey within zone 1.

Wasted food is costing you £420 per year

Research report “The Food We Waste”, published by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) reveals that the average household in the UK throws out £420 of good food a year, approximately one third of the food we buy. For some families with children it can be as much as £610. This is equivalent to filling Wembley Stadium with food waste 8 times over!

The cost of needlessly wasted food to UK households is £10 billion a year, £2 billion higher than previously estimated. Researchers found that more than half the good food thrown out is bought and simply left unused or untouched. For example, each day 1.3 million unopened yoghurt pots, 5,500 whole chickens and 440,000 ready meals are thrown away in the UK. The study revealed that £1 billion worth of wasted food is still “in date”. (more…)

Restaurant Vouchers

The UK’s restaurant industry is being hit hard by the current recession as people are opting to stay at home and save their money. So to get customers through the doors just about every major restaurant chain is offering vouchers, with savings of 50% frequently available.

I have found one of the best sites to print off vouchers is VoucherCodes.co.uk which has an excellent collection of high street and restaurant vouchers on one single page.

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Are you paying for your neighbours electricity?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been focusing on understanding my electricity consumption, with my post about how much it costs to run a freezer being one of the most read posts on MillionaireAdventure. A couple of months ago I started taking daily meter readings to see how much electricity I used and noticed something very odd. Bizarrely on Sundays and Wednesdays my electricity consumption doubled.

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The costs of being half sized

One of the downsides of losing weight recently has been the amount I have had to spend on downsizing my wardrobe. Now that my weight has finally stabilised I have found myself in the unfortunate position of being half sized, not in the dwarf sense, but as a size 14 and a half collar and a size 7 1/2 foot.

Whilst people don’t call me names in the street I am however excluded from the majority of high street stores who either simply do not sell these half sizes or rarely have them in stock. So whilst others were over indulging in the post Christmas sales my search for a new pair of shoes was hampered by the lack of availability of anything in my size.

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