Just Four Quid

Alaivani/flickr

No, not some new version of the “Winter of Discontent” but an idea from “The Penny Pincher’s Book Revisited” by John and Irma Thurstoe. They reckon that if you are about to buy something that isn’t a necessity and feel a whisper of doubt about it, you should leave it and wait for four days. That’s enough to give you time to compare prices elsewhere, find an alternative, or even decide that you don’t want to buy it after all.

So, this week, I suggest that we adopt that four-day policy. I applied it today when I went into a posh deli to see if I could find some tea-flavoured chocolate as a gift for someone who I know likes it. Instead of a bar of the stuff I was directed to individual chocolates, each about half the size of my little finger, that cost a jaw-dropping £1.20 each! The assistant was raving on about how fabulous they were and that if I tried one I’d be hooked forever so I pretty much ran out of the shop before I had a chance to develop a taste for them. Can I last four days?

Money I’ve raised today: £0.00

Money I’ve raised so far: £845.01 (see my personal Justgiving pages via the links at the bottom of the sidebar, plus some I accidentally put on the communal pages!)

Matt Stratton/flickr

“Be original! And, if possible, suffer.” This is the insightful advice for how to get people to sponsor you for charity, as offered by Eddie Green, a fellow JustGiving punter.

More about Eddie later but meanwhile, I suggest that this week we follow his spot-on perception of what makes people cough up, think what we each can do that is worthy of sponsorship, and start organising it.

If you’re healthy, by all means do that marathon but if not, you’ll have to offer entertainment rather than sweat. You can be very inactive and still manage this; Hilary Muray, in her excellently titled “from my sofa to your wallet” project, raised an impressive £2,100 by lying on her settee for a day.

This kind of project is where JustGiving really comes into its own – you can set up your own page for your event and, if you want to go beyond your immediate circle of family and friends, contact your local paper and radio station about what you’re doing.

More tomorrow!

Money I’ve raised today: £0.00

Money I’ve raised so far: £828.54 (see my personal Justgiving pages via the links at the bottom of the sidebar, plus some I accidentally put on the communal pages!)

critical thinking asylum/flickr

As in chess, so in shopping: it’s all about thinking ahead. I bet Gary Kasparov has never paid over the odds for a lightbulb in a corner shop because he didn’t have any spares in the house and so this week, I suggest that we all get as near as we ever can to being grandmasters by reviewing what we’re going to run out of in the next few months and making sure we’ve got some in. Cheaply.

I mean the sort of stuff that’s hard to get hold of in a supermarket, because that’s where retailers have us over a barrel. Although most of us keep an eye out for bargain deals on the things we use often (the Week of Charitable Bottoms being a case in point), it’s things that we buy less frequently but can’t afford not to have that we need to be thinking about. 

Printer ink is my personal Achilles’ heel; I know I’ll need it, but when I put a new cartridge in, do I order another one at a low price on the net or wait to run out and pay the painful price at Smith’s? You guessed it, but not any more! I’ve ordered cheap ink today and am donating £3 of my saving.

What’s your purchasing blind spot?

Money I’ve raised today: £3.00 (by thinking ahead and buying cheap printer ink)

Money I’ve raised so far: £822.22 (see my personal Justgiving pages via the links at the bottom of the sidebar, plus some I accidentally put on the communal pages!)

When I was still working I used to fantasise about just working four days a week. In order to do that, I realised I would have to be able to get by on four-fifths of  my income. Could I do it?

“No”, is the short answer, because I couldn’t reduce my mortgage and fixed bills by anything like that amount. I found I could, though, reduce a lot of my everyday spending by a fifth with surprisingly little effort. So, this week, I suggest that whenever you’re about to buy something, stop and consider how you could get at least 20% off.

About to buy a Twix for 58p in your local newsagents? You could get it for 41p in a supermarket (29% off!). Or you could stay where you are but choose a cheaper bar of chocolate instead. Or some liquorice. Or you could just chew on your fingers (100% off! But painful!)

Aiming for twenty percent is very manageable and once you’ve thought how to save that much, you often end up saving even more. And all those twenty percents add up!

Money I’ve raised today: £8.65 (a friend kindly just gave me some stamps to use when selling my books on Amazon for JFQ)

Money I’ve raised so far: £794.56 (see my personal Justgiving pages via the links at the bottom of the sidebar, plus some I accidentally put on the communal pages!)

It’s January, there’s a recession on and restaurants are desperate for our custom during the post-Christmas slump. So desperate, in fact, that they’re scattering vouchers like confetti so this week, I suggest that we cash in; let’s invite our friends out to dinner, organise the discount, and ask for a donation of part of each person’s saving.

Quite a few restaurants have deals involving buy-one-get-one-free main courses, for example, which means an average saving of £4 to £5 per diner. Asking for a donation of say, a quid or two each when you’ve done all the organising, are saving people money and are doing it as a fundraiser is entirely legit, I reckon.

Martin Lewis has a regularly updated page of restaurant offers so let’s get troughing! Bon appetit! 

Money I’ve raised today: £10.62 (saved by switching to a cheaper phone and broadband deal earlier this year; this is this month’s saving compared to my old bill)

Money I’ve raised so far: £774.91 (see my personal Justgiving pages via the links at the bottom of the sidebar, plus some I accidentally put on the communal pages!)

Bruno. C./flickr

Do you do the lottery? Well, stop it! Just for this week! And, as my sister told me to say, only if you pick random numbers every time – otherwise you may decide to kill me if your regular numbers come up.

If you do the lottery every week,  that’s £52 a year you’re slinging down the drain with odds of 14 million to one against the big prize. It’s just rubbish! Save your money! And donate a bit!

I don’t normally play the lottery so this won’t be a saving for me this week, but I saw a quid on the pavement last week and, shamelessly racing forward in case anyone else got there first, snatched it up. Although I was prepared for an embarrassing “superglued on” incident, my luck was in and I will donate it.

Money I’ve raised today: £1.00 (found a quid on the pavement)

Money I’ve raised so far: £728.73 (see my personal Justgiving pages via the links at the bottom of the sidebar, plus some I accidentally put on the communal pages!)

kaymoshusband/flickr

So, here we are again, after our holiday break. Happy New Year, welcome back, and let’s get straight on with our next project!

Got given something awful for Christmas? Then this week, I suggest you flog it, and fast. Don’t let it hang around the house accumulating guilt; just bung it silently on Ebay. And, of course, donate some of your profit!

Does this feel like a moral dilemma? Then imagine for a moment that you are the giver of the dodgy gift in question (I believe I speak here for all aunts). If, despite your best efforts, you managed to inflict an unspeakable present upon someone, would you want them to keep it lurking around the place as a constant reminder of your misjudgement of their taste? Or would you rather they used it to support a fine charitable cause in the interests of their health?

That decision just makes itself, doesn’t it? Off to Ebay we go.

Or then there’s Plan B, which I will talk about tomorrow…

Money I’ve raised today: £30.00 in Xmas presents during the break – one to my personal JustGiving pages (thanks, Mum & Dad) and one to our communal pages (thanks, Fliss!)

Money I’ve raised so far: £623.73 (see my personal Justgiving pages via the links at the bottom of the sidebar, plus some I accidentally put on the communal pages!)