Tag Archives: Finance

Top Tips for Selling at a Car Boot Sale

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The Bloke and I are hoarders. We’re not obsessive – we don’t keep things like old newspapers, boxes or general household goods, but we both are easily attached to things that we consider to be of sentimental value. As a result, our house is filled with stuff, even more so now the wedding is over.

On a whim, we decided to try and downsize and sell some of our things in a car boot sale, creating some space and hopefully earning some cash in the process.

It was an eye opening experience.

We found a reputable car boot about half an hour away that didn’t require you to sign up and only charged £8.00 per car. We were ruthless and threw together a load of things that we could possibly sell, and at 5.45am we found ourselves stood in a muddy field in freezing temperatures… as you do.

Six hours later, we had sold all but one box of the stuff we had brought, and I had a brilliant time talking to loads of lovely people. I learned a lot, and I was already planning the next one by the time we drove home. Continue reading →

How I Saved Thousands On My Wedding

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Wedding money saving tips

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small amount of money if you make a purchase from any of the Amazon links included…

Right from the beginning of my wedding planning eighteen months ago, I was determined that I would do my absolute best to keep the costs as low as possible. Of course, I wanted the day to be beautiful, but our budget was small and I didn’t want us to still be paying it off for years after it was over.

Essentially, I wanted it to be as cheap as possible, but I didn’t want it to LOOK cheap.

The problem is, the minute the word ‘wedding’ is mentioned, the prices of everything are automatically increased and there are numerous places that aren’t always upfront about their total prices – we discovered that there were lots of hidden costs in all sorts of different areas.

The key to saving money lies in forward planning, lots of research, asking for help, being patient and shopping around. It also helped that we had a long engagement, giving us sufficient time to work out what we wanted and how much we were prepared to budget for it. Continue reading →

How to Save Money on Christmas Presents

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How to save money on Christmas presentsThe new John Lewis #ManOnTheMoon advert has been released today, and the Christmas countdown has started…

I love Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but unfortunately it is also usually the most expensive.

Last year, I left my shopping to the last minute, and consequently found myself rushing around in the middle of enormous crowds a few days before Christmas Eve in an effort to get everything done as quickly as possible. When I returned home, I realised that I had spent an enormous amount of money, with seemingly very little to show for it.

This year, I decided to do things differently, and at the beginning of November I realised that I had nearly completed my shopping for a fraction of what I spent previously. This is what I did:

1. I decided to go for quality rather than quantity. I’ve made the mistake in the past of frittering lots of money away on small novelty items (which I refer to as ‘padding’) just for the sake of buying them. Inevitably, I’ve found that these have been left in drawers, on shelves collecting dust for the next twelve months or re-gifted and were a total waste of money. This time, I decided that I would buy one or two things for each person that would be of use and/or have some sort of meaning. Continue reading →