Loyalty pays off

Continuing my search for hidden wealth I turned my attention today to my wallet full of loyalty cards. I regularly cash in the points on my Tesco clubcard and my Game loyalty card so there is nothing to claim there, but I have never bothered with my Nectar card as I only ever collect a few points per transaction. However all those small transactions have built up over two and a half years to give me a total points value of 8,500!

Martin Lewis recommends spending Nectar points on DVD boxsets or Theme park vouchers but I don’t think either of these offer good value. DVDs can be found much cheaper by searching the net for the best deals and I have used half price theme park vouchers the last 2 years anyway. So I have opted to claim money off my shopping at Sainsburys as this gets me £42.50 of free food, let the feast commence!

20% off @ Debenhams

I needed to buy a new shirt today and resisting the shrine to consumerism that is our local shopping centre I instead chose to shop online where I could shop from the comfort of my home and focus solely on purchasing what I need, rather than being sold what I don’t need.

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BT changes its calling tariffs

Last week BT announced increases in their line-rental charges which means that my monthly bill will go up by 75p a month. This has caused outrage in the popular media although I am not sure why as this is the first increase in 2 years and a 7.1% increase is roughly in line with inflation over that time (it of course depends on which measure of inflation you believe!).

BT are also going to increase the discount for customers who opt for paperless billing from 50p per month to £1.25 per month. So I made sure I signed up for this today which will effectively protect me from the line-rental increase and net me a £5.50 saving for the year too!

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MySupermarket.co.uk

I used the comparison website mysupermarket.co.uk today to save me money on my regular food shop online. The site was very easy to use as I could import my favourites from Tesco and reserve a delivery without having to leave the site.

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New Year – New Budget

A new year brings a new opportunity to budget and that’s just what I have been doing. This year it’s been easier for me to set a budget as I tracked my spending in 2007 against the budget I had set at the beginning of the year so I had a good baseline to start from. However it looks like inflation is going to drive many of my costs up in 2008 adding a lot of uncertainty into my figures.

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