2014

If you’re planning a New Year’s Eve party with fireworks and sparklers, it’s important you are safety-conscious as well as MoneySaving. For Bonfire Night 2014 we ran a Fire Safety Twitter Q&A with the Manchester Fire and Rescue Service using the #bonfirenight hashtag. One key point made by the fire team was that shoppers should make sure...

It’s easy to get carried away with a festive food shop. Christmas is, after all, an indulgent time of year. But with a bit of planning it’s still possible to cut costs. Here I reveal how much you save if you shop around, ‘downshift’ on branded items – and avoid stocking up for a zombie apocalypse.  1. Compare...

With my role as a money analyst here at MSE and my previous experience working in a bank, I like to think I know a thing or two about the financial world. However, for many people, growing up involves being thrust into the financial world without knowing the basics of managing money – it’s something many haven’t...

They say you can’t put a price on the magic of Christmas –  but it’s worth remembering MoneySaving too so you avoid spending a fortune on a Yuletide feast. In my family’s home Christmas is very much the time for indulgence (you’ll find multiple Terry’s Chocolate Orange wrappers as evidence). And the turkey, along with all its...

I admit it, I’m a secret, but lapsed, comper. Admittedly work and kids mean I’ve not comped (entered competitions) much lately but I encourage my kids to have a go when we see a free one and I’d encourage anyone else to join in too. First and foremost it’s huge fun. On Mothers’ Day this year my...

I recently downloaded the Addison Lee app on to my phone – after slipping a disc in my back six weeks ago the need for taxis has increased somewhat. It’s a well-established, seemingly trusted company (that even had a TV show made about it if my memory serves me correctly). So when I had to put my...

We moved into our flat a year ago. We did all the usual things, bought a tonne of furniture from Ikea, tried to locate the stopcock (someone had put it behind an inaccessible wall) and got all the essentials sorted like gas, electricity, phone, TV and internet. We’d had Sky TV and internet in our previous flat,...

Many MoneySavers will already know that the idea of making money online is not a myth. I’ve been looking for ways to boost my income for two years now and so far I’ve made around £200, but it’s possible to make more if you’re willing to put in the hours. If you’re looking for ways to make...

Additional reporting by Megan Clark. Last month’s National Chocolate Week really got us thinking – we work for a website that prides itself on fighting for the consumer, so surely it’s our duty to take the fight to the supermarket chocolate shelves, right? We put the quality vs price theory to the (taste) test, gathering some surprising...

Any resident or visitor to London will have seen the warnings about card clash on the tube – the idea that you could be charged for a journey more than once on multiple contactless cards. But I wager fewer people have heard of coupon clash (mostly because I just made it up). I’ve been doing quite a...