15 SIMPLE STEPS TO SAVE YOU MONEY

For Martin’s cost-of-living survival kit, go to moneysavingexpert.com

MARTIN LEWIS’S Money Saving Expert (MSE) website is packed with great advice, and his team has even pulled together a 90-point cost-of-living survival guide. Here’s our pick of them. 1

16MILLION people are out of contract on their broadband and mobile – and could easily halve their bills. Many are on older contracts still paying the bog-standard full price. Yet two minutes on MSE’s comparison tools can often find deals saving more than £200 a year. Or do you qualify for a broadband ‘social tariff’? If you’re on a lower income – for example, claiming Universal Credit – MSE has a list of social tariffs, from £15 a month.

2

MORE than 800,000 qualify for state pension top-up. Pension credit is a tax-free, means-tested benefit aimed at retired people on low incomes – and it can be worth thousands of pounds a year. Plus it’s a gateway benefit that may make you eligible for council tax discounts, free TV licences for over-75s and more.

3

WHILE banks turned the tap off during the pandemic, the switching cash has begun to flow again. MSE has a list of providers that pay £100 or more to switch to them, including HSBC (£175) and Nationwide (£100).

4

WHETHER you have a tot or a big teen, childcare costs can be huge. Yet hundreds of thousands of working parents are missing out on thousands of pounds of help. MSE has a childcare costs guide that covers the available schemes.

5

DIRECT debits, standing orders and recurring payments all let money drip from your accounts without needing your approval. Your bank should be able to provide you with a list of the first two. Recurring payments are little known, and hidden. This is where you give firms permission to take a ‘payment’ each month from your debit or credit card.

Finding recurring payments takes a little digging through statements. Once you’ve got the payments, decide if you still want the goods or service. If not and you’re out of contract, cancel.

6

IF YOU live alone, with students, have a ‘ severe mental impairment’, have a live-in carer, receive pension credit or are on a low income, you could get a council tax discount. They range from 25 per cent to 100 per cent, depending on circumstances.

7

DO AN annual stocktake – if you haven’t used something for a year, sell it. Smartphones go for hundreds of pounds. MSE has tips for selling on eBay and Facebook plus tips on selling clothes. There are even ways to make money from crisp bags, empty jam jars and wine corks.

8

LAST year, more than a million people in England would have been better off using an NHS prescription prepayment certificate, a kind of season ticket. It’s a one-off fee that covers all prescriptions for a period of three months or one year. If you use more than one a month, it’s worth it.

9

WATCH the weather. Using your washing machine on a 30-degree cycle and drying clothes outside rather than in a tumble-dryer saves about £28 a year on your energy bill, according to the Energy Saving Trust.

10

CHECK if you’re in too high a council tax band. Due to the bizarre way properties were valued when the council tax system was launched in 1991, more than 400,000 homes are in the wrong band. Use Martin’s council tax check ’n’ challenge on the MSE site.

11

CUT dishwasher tabs in half, plus 41 more household hacks. From cutting open toothpaste to get the last bit out, to saving wrapping paper from opened gifts, we might not always admit to using the hacks, but however small (or strange), they all add up to save cash.

12

CAN’T afford to clear credit and store cards in full each month? You can’t afford not to check if you can get a 0 per cent balance transfer. This is not us advising you to borrow your way through the crisis. But if you’ve got existing credit and store card debt and are paying interest, it’s always worth seeing if you can save with a balance transfer card. These allow you to shift debts from old cards to a new one with 0 per cent interest, so every repayment cuts your actual debt.

13

IF YOU’RE able to treat yourself to cinema tickets or eating out, there’s a way to get a year of two-for-one deals for £1. The ‘meerkat trick’ gets you a discount at thousands of restaurants from Sunday to Thursday and at cinemas on Tuesday or Wednesday.

14

GET paid to recycle old clothes or beauty containers. Many high street stores offer incentives for recycling their old clothes and beauty containers – from £5 for old clothes, to ‘free’ MAC lipsticks and more. See the website’s recycling rewards list.

15

KNOW the best times to get the biggest ‘yellow sticker’ reductions. Yellow stickers are a stock-in-trade for bargain-hunters. These are the items near their best-before dates that supermarkets reduce in price. But the key is to be ready to pounce at the perfect time. MSE has gathered insider info from supermarket staff and shoppers on when stores want to offload stock.