Wednesday 21 October 2015

Frugal Cookie | What I do | How to be FRUGAL/Savvy

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick post to recap on some of the things I now do since challenging myself with frugal living.

Firstly a little about why I am doing this, it's not to be cheap, it's to be smart and efficient with my money. I want my money to work harder for me, essentially I love spending and buying new things, however I need to be careful. With adulthood there is responsibilities such as mortgages, bills, rent, etc, basically, enjoy being young! Enjoy living rent free and appreciate the benefits it brings while you can - that would be my advice to you.

Before buying our house I spent most of what I earned without much thought about 'what if?', these days I have to save for things that may or may not happen such as the need to replace a boiler or a detrimental piece of machinery or furniture within my house. It's worth being sensible, redundancy is very common in today's current situation and I've been there before.

Don't get me wrong, I still splash out on things but in order to do this I make sure that I'm saving in other areas.

Here are some of the things that I have done to date, hopefully these may even give you some inspiration too.

1. Streamlining/ getting the best deal
  • Swapped from a mobile contract costing £35 per month to a PAYG top up of £20 per month.
  • Less visits to the hairdresser, gone back to natural roots and rather than paying £60 every 6 weeks I am now spending £30 - £40 2-3 times per year.
  • Less visits to beautician and home waxing saving £25 per month
  • Selling lots of clothing, furniture and things that are no longer required on local facebook groups
  • I am shopping smarter, I have swapped certain products for cheaper brands and sometimes even a stores own brand, there are some things I wouldn't dream of swapping and other things where I wish I'd done it sooner! I am also using coupons and vouchers wherever I can, take a look  at in store magazines such as that from Boots, Tesco and pets at home as they usually contain some great coupons.
  • SUPERSAVVY ME - Frequently has coupons for Proctor and Gamble products such as Pantene, Ariel and many well known brands. They also run a lot of competitions and do several giveaways each month.
  • MYMAIL - Printable coupons, sometimes for the amount that the product is on offer for, therefore sometimes FREE.
2. Freebies and Prize Wins

There are so many Freebies out there it is unreal! Online there are many freebies, see below for some of the sources that I have used.
  • SOPOST - This  is a fantastic freebie tool, businesses use this company to distribute free samples of their products to the general public and potential future consumers. I have received in excess of 10 great beauty and food freebies this way. Some SOPOST are obtainable by entering a persons email, others you will need facebook for and some you will need twitter for, the idea is you send one to a friend and they send one to you. Obviously in order to receive the item you will need to provide your name and address.
  • GOOGLE FREEBIES - I googles freebies in UK, you will come across lots of resources which will point you in the right direction of the latest freebies. Here are just some of the websites - http://www.latestfreestuff.co.uk/ , https://www.magicfreebiesuk.co.uk/ , http://www.freestufffinder.co.uk/

3. Review and Campaign freebies | (WOMM) Word of Mouth Marketing Campaigns
 
I have received a considerable amount of free items to review from the below links.
 
With these websites all you need to do is sign up and provide information about yourself and your shopping habits, they will ask you to complete surveys from time to time, usually this is the gage whether you are compatible with a  product and whether they can then offer it to you to test.
 
Once you receive  your free product you then normally have around 60 days to try it and spread the word about your experiences. There is also activities such as sharing on facebook, twitter, submitting photos and videos and more.
 
The more surveys you do and the more active you are the more chance you get for future campaigns, I have found I go for ages without being offered one and then all of a sudden I get 3 invites.
 
The campaigns can be for anything, to date I have received lots of food items (they will usually send vouchers, especially for fresh food), body and skincare items, I even received a Dyson hoover worth £420 form a campaign, I would recommend doing this if you like to try new things, or even if you just love a freebie! Remember though, if you don't complete any of the campaign activities afterwards it is unlikely that you will receive further items.
  • BZZAGENT UK
  • ORCHARD AT TESCO
  • TESCO HOME PANELS 
  • SUPERSAVVY ME 
  • TOLUNA
  • AMAZON REVIEWS -  For this you just sign up to the website and you will need to have an amazon account. There is some free items and some really discounted items which you can have in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. I have just started doing this and have received a few freebies this way, thanks to Amber for the great idea (check out her blog here)
  • BLOGGERS REQUIRED - This is a great resource, this lists blogger projects that you will need to apply to, if you are accepted you will usually be sent an item to review, each project will differ make sure you read the description to see if its definitely something your interested in.
  • BRANDBACKER - This works in a similar way to bloggers required, you will need to apply to trial a product, therefore you will need to sell yourself with an effective pitch.
4. Surveys

You can make a few quid completing online surveys, however this can take time so I personally don't do these as I work full time and for the return I would get its not worth giving up my evenings.
  •  INBOX POUNDS - Along with paid surveys inbox pounds also does paid emails, they will send an email into your inbox and you can get a penny for clicking on the link - this takes a long time but it does mount up and it's very little effort, I am on nearly £20, yes it's taken me a year but all I have had to do is visit a few websites.
  • TOLUNA
5. Reviews for companies

Another way that I have received quite a lot of review items is by approaching companies asking to try products in exchange for a review. I also welcome companies contacting me to ask me to review items, if you would like to send me something to review please feel free to get in touch by email: rebellious_cookie@hotmail.com

6. Be inspired

Finally I haven't being doing this alone, there are so many people who have influenced me along the way from thrifty friends and relatives to YouTubers and bloggers alike. I will be putting up a post soon sharing some of the best frugal/freebies bloggers and YouTubers around, please watch this space.

I hope this post have gone some way toward inspiring you to use your money a little more wisely and perhaps to seek out relevant freebies where possible. As always if you have any questions please feel free to comment below or contact my by email (details on my Contact Me page or above).

Please leave me comment below if you could like me to expand on any of the topics I have mentioned above. I do plan to do some more posts going forward where I go into more detail on certain aspects such as sourcing review items and WOMM campaigns.

Cookie x

2 comments:

  1. Shame you missed out loads of good freebie sites in that list, I like latest free stuff, but there is also freestuff.co.uk, 4freeuk.com, free-stuff.co.uk and wowfreestuff.co.uk, which I check out all the time.

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  2. Hi Tina, thanks for sharing, however if I were to name them all there would be far to many which is why I said to google freebie sites as there are new ones being created all the time. To be perfectly honest these types of freebies are usually the smaller low value ones and also the ones that command more effort which is why I tried to focus more on WOMM campaigns and that sort of thing.

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