Moving House Doesn't Have To Cost The Earth

It's no secret that we're finally moving house this weekend, so I just wanted to share with you the money saving tips I have learnt along the way.

Cut the Middleman or Barter
Selling your property yourself can take a lot of hard work and energy, but if the price is right and you market it like mad, it will sell. However, if like me, you are not so brave, shop around before choosing an estate agent. Lowest isn't always best, get a couple of quotes to compare. But always barter on fees with a high street agent to save on selling costs.

Money Matters
Let your finances, not property lust, dictate the process of buying a new home. Ensure to remember all the hidden costs including estate agent fees, surveys, mortgage arrangement fees, valuation fees and stamp duty. Make sure you keep some cash aside from your deposit to cover them.

Haggle
Get thrifty and start haggling over everything from your estate agent fees and removal costs to the property price and any extra fixtures and fittings. Don't forget, if the survey finds any major problems you should ask the vendor to either fix it before completion or knock the repair cost off the price.

Shed The Weight
Moving house is the ideal time to sort through your belongings and decide what you want/need and what you don't. I try to stick by William Morris' words of wisdom:

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful"

Getting rid of excess belongings, whether you donate them to charity or raise some extra pennies by selling them, is the best way to save money. The more things you have, the bigger the removal van you'll need -  professional movers charge by weight and distance. My fella and I found a local indoor car boot sale to flog our unwanted belongings. I can highly recommend!

D.I.Y
Do the removals yourself. Get a group of friends around for a weekend, hire a big van (a very very big van) and pack and move your possessions yourself.

Time Your Move
If opting to use a removals company, timing is everything. It would seem we've accidentally timed our move well. During the winter months removal companies are quieter (everyone wants to move in the summer because of the weather apparently) so you're in a better position to negotiate. Consider a mid-week move because they have much less demand than on the weekends. I found that pushing my move to the beginning of a month saved hundreds, as solicitor's prefer to finish associated paperwork as a month draws to a close. Remember to get a few quotes from different removal companies.

Keep Expensive Items with you
If you are using a removal firm, let them move the big and bulky stuff while you keep all your important documents and expensive items such as laptops, cameras and MP3 players with you.  These items can travel in the car with you where it is more secure.

Pre Christmas Weekend Deals

With Christmas only a week away, we all need a bit of thrifty goodness in our lives, and thankfully there are some cracking (no pun intended) deals to be had. No need to break the bank, just read on for my weekend's favourite money saving potential Christmas gifts, as sourced from HUKD.

Stuck for a present idea for your bachelor brother of hard-to-buy-for husband? Head to Currys and pick up a Whoopie Pie Maker for a mere £7.99 reduced from £34.99. This 'idiot friendly' pie maker is perfect for pot pies, fruit pies, quiches and more. Simply combine ready made dough with fresh, frozen or canned ingredients, and cook. It's cheap and easy to use, an ideal gift.

Thrift-Queen Misprice Alert: News of another brilliant supermarket pricing mistake. Tesco's are selling Binatone B350 Sat Nav's for £6. They're usually priced at around £60 on Amazon, this is a misprice worth investing in. Some stores are also selling Logiteck Ultra Flat Keyboards for a bargain £1.25.

If you've managed to not spend all your money on Christmas gifts, why not make a thrifty investment in summer 2012 with this elegant Stone Falls Water Feature. It is currently being sold at B&Q for £20, reduced from £199.98. An absolute snip! Tight on space? They're also selling a smaller Bubbling Barrel Water Feature for £10, reduced from £99.98.

Know of any other amazingly thrifty deals? I'd love to hear about them. Just comment below, or on my Thrift-Queen Facebook Page.

Have Yourself A Very Thrifty Christmas: Food

Saving money doesn't mean you have to become Scrooge, it is possible to serve fabulous food over the Christmas period without breaking the bank. Try following these few simple thrifty tips to save money at Christmas to help you on your way.

• Share The Load: If you have friends and family coming round for Christmas or Boxing day lunch, ask them to bring a dish with them. An extra trifle, piece of Stilton or bottle of wine will always come in handy over the Christmas period. Besides, people like to contribute.
• Make It Yourself: Don't be tempted to buy everything ready made, get creative on the run up to Christmas and make your own chutneys, cranberry sauce and stuffing and save yourself a fortune. Christmas desserts and cakes can also be baked by you. Not enough time? Delegate!
• Home Grown: If you've grown vegetables throughout the year, Christmas is an excellent time to serve them up. My parents always have masses of potatoes left from their haul earlier in the year to get roasting and mashing.

• Set a Budget: and stick to it.
• Write a Shopping List: Before you go shopping, write a list of everything you need for all of the festive period. No matter how appealing the fresh lobster looks, if it's not on the list, don't buy it.
• Use Your Leftovers: Get thrifty in the kitchen. A turkey (or any poultry) carcass left to boil in water, vegetables and herbs will make a wonderful stock which you can use as a base for turkey curry's and soups. Even leftover vegetables can be fried up for some bubble and squeak This Busy Cooks website is full of wonderful inexpensive ideas and recipes to serve up delicious meals, from leftovers, for friends and family.

My Top 12 Uses for Foil

We all have a roll of aluminium foil sitting in our cupboard, and yes it's good to store your sandwiches in, or wrap around a jacket potato in the oven. But there are many other fabulous uses for the stuff to help simplify everyday tasks. Get thrifty, save money and become a foil god/goddess!

Some of these tips I use ALL the time, and some are courtesy of the wonderful Reader's Digest.

In the Home

1. Clean pots and pans - Don't have a Brillo pad to hand? Scrunch up some foil and get scrubbing (works well on barbeque's and silverware too). Foil can also be useful for preserving the life of your Brillo pads. Prevent rust after initial use by wrapping it in foil and storing in the freezer. Go on, get your money's worth!
2.  Move furniture with ease - To slide big pieces of furniture over a smooth floor, place small pieces of aluminum foil under the legs. Put the dull side of the foil down, the dull side is actually more slippery than the shiny side. 
3. Speed up ironing - I hate ironing, it's such a boring chore. So anything to help speed it up is a winner with me. When ironing your clothes, a lot of the iron's heat is sucked up by the board itself, requiring you to make several passes to remove wrinkles. To speed things up, put a piece of aluminum foil under your ironing board cover. The foil will reflect the heat back through the clothing, smoothing wrinkles quicker. You can also use foil to clean your iron. Simply run your hot iron over a piece of aluminum foil. 
4. Sharpen your scissors - I use this method all the time to sharpen up my dull scissors. Fold a piece of foil about seven or eight times and cut a few times with the scissors. It works a treat. 
5. Keep a paintbrush wet - Going to continue painting tomorrow morning? Don't bother to clean the brush, just squeeze out the excess paint and wrap the brush tightly in aluminum foil (using a rubber band to secure). For extended wet-brush storage, think paintbrush ice-pop. Put your wrapped brush in the freezer. But don't forget to defrost the brush for an hour or so before you paint.

Out and About

1. Protect tree trunks - Mice, rabbits, and other animals often feed on the bark of young trees during winter. A cheap and effective deterrent is to wrap the tree trunks with a double layer of heavy-duty aluminum foil in late autumn. Be sure to remove the foil in spring. 
2. Put some bite in your compost - To keep hungry insects and slugs away from your cucumbers and other vegetables, mix strips of aluminum foil in with your garden compost. As a bonus benefit, the foil will reflect light back up onto your plants. Be eco-friendly and try using Lovechock's biodegradable foil.
3. Keeping your sleeping bag dry - When camping, place a piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil under your sleeping bag to insulate against moisture. Stay warm without spending a fortune on gadgets and gizmo's
4. Keep matches dry - It’s a tried and tested soldier's trick worth remembering (I learnt it in Scouts): Wrap your kitchen matches in aluminum foil to keep them from getting damp or wet on camping trips. 

Do you know of any amazing uses for regular household items? Leave a comment, or email me at thrift-queen@hotmail.co.uk.

Hot UK Deals

Just a quick Thrift-Queen recommendation: Hot UK Deals is an amazing community website which searches the best money saving deals to be had. They find and share the best deals, promotional codes, special offers and vouchers from on and off the web. A perfect site to visit before embarking on Christmas shopping. Go on, get yourself a bargain.

My favourites deals at the moment?

1. Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard. £7.99 at Staples.
2. Muddy Fox Hustle Mountain Bike. £25 in store at Tesco.
3. Binatone F350 UK SatNav (with full 12 month warranty). £27.98 at Argos.

It is no secret that I love a bargain, but I love a freebie more. I am happy to report there is even a section for this! Other great deatures include competitions and deals in your local area.

Frighten That Spider Away

Common house spiders are useful for getting rid of annoying insects in the home, and are probably more scared of us than we are of them. I, personally do not have too much of a problem with them. But if you are a bit more on the frightened side then this thrifty tip, recommended by Thrift-Queen reader Jennie, is for you.

My son collected an enormous amount of conkers this autumn, which are now collecting amount of dust in his bedroom. So why not put the conkers to good use? Spiders are terrified of conkers, believed to be something to do with the smell.

Place one conker in each corner of a room and keep spiders at bay. An inexpensive, but effective tactic.

It's Been A While...

Sorry for my absence in the blogging world. I FINALLY managed to sell my house, but it would seem the finding somewhere to live and relocating 180 miles is pretty time consuming. But I'm back, with a vengeance.

Hope Halloween's were appropriately spooking and bonfire nights' sizzle-tastic. For those who like to cook, I'll be blogging about my favourite pumpkin recipe's shortly. With many other top thrifty tips to help save you money on the run up to Christmas, heading your way soon. Watch this thrifty space...

Fruit-tea (fruity) Fresh

Instead of buying expensive drawer liners or lavender pouches to keep your clothes smelling clean and fresh, get thrifty and pop a fruit flavoured tea bag in the drawer. The fruity fragrance will infuse beautifully into your clothes and you'll save yourself money in the process. Thrift-Queen winner! This purse friendly solution also works well with peppermint tea bags in smelly shoes.

Alphabet Accessory

 

When your child has outgrown their alphabet building blocks, why not re-use their forgotten treasures to make your own unique and thrifty word displays. You could spell out 'Noel' for the mantelpiece at Christmas, or use them for a feature in your bathroom with the word 'Relax' spelt out. Display words can be quite expensive in the shops so save yourself money and make your home style-savvy.

Thrift-Queen's eBay Buying Tricks and Tips

I'm not going to lie. I ♥ eBay. I use it to buy all sorts of goodies from clothes and toys, to furniture and accessories. But knowing where and how to look can be mind-boggling. So I thought I'd share with you my tips and tricks to achieving eBay buying success.

Where To Search

A must for anyone looking for a specific item, is to remember not everyone can spell! Spelling mistakes are rife on eBay. If you're looking for the perfect wedding dress, for example, try searching instead for a 'weeding dress', or let Fatfingers.com do the work for you. They search eBay for hidden treasures that would otherwise end up no bids, as nobody can find them!

Another top tip that I often use, is to remove the word 'and'. A higher itemised result can be found if you were to search for 'Lyle Scott' as opposed to 'Lyle and Scott'.

How to Search

My ultimate top tip in searching for anything on eBay, albeit a generic 'antique furniture' search or a more specific 'Harry Potter Lego' search is to personalise the search. There are many tools for you to do this and sniff out a bargain. The three that I have the most proven success rate with are:

• Dictate to eBay how you want the results to be arranged using the 'Sort By' drop down list. The options include 'Ending Soonest' and 'Price: Lowest First' but I always opt for 'Nearest First'. This option will ultimately save you money as you'll be able to collect the item as opposed to paying for postage or shipping by couriers. It's not uncommon for eBay sellers to up-quote the cost of postage and packaging to make a bit more money for themselves.
• Narrow down your search by searching in a chosen category - this option is particularly useful if you know what you are searching for. Choose from a drop down menu along the top of the search results page. But be aware that items often cross over into different categories. When this does happen, eBay lists (on the left side of the page) the actual categories where the search items were found.
• Set a price limit. The light yellow column on the left-hand-side allows you to choose the amount you are willing to spend in the form of two boxes. In the first box you enter in the lowest price and the second, the highest price you want to pay for an item. Such as £0.01p - £28.77p. A much more purse friendly way to search. Some websites might recommend u looking at forums, for the average price varying items should be sold for, but I say just go with your gut.

How to Bid

Congratulations! You made it this far.

There are various tricks of the trade to eBay bidding. I would advise, if you're buying more than one item from the same seller, to contact them and ask if they offer combined postage (if you're unable to collect, as previously mentioned). Sometimes sellers might have a 'Best Offer' option whereby instead of straight bidding, you are able to offer them a price which you are willing to pay. The advantage of this is that you can see the previous offers that have been made by other buyers, to gauge how much to pay and provide the change to haggle.

My golden rule for bidding would be to wait until the last few minutes before entering your offer. Bidding too early will boost the price of your wanted item and you might thus miss out. When using this method, I tend to enter the highest possible amount I'd be willing to pay for the item, such as £43.77. Then I just hope that I am not outbid.

Unless paying cash on collection, I would always advise using 'Paypal' as they offer payment protection on items that are lost in the post.

Follow my simple guide and you too could enjoy eBay at its thrifty best! Need anymore advise? Drop me an email at thrift-queen@hotmail.co.uk and I'll be happy to help.

Birthday Brilliance

The inspiration for this amazingly thrifty idea, came from a group of friends of the Thrift-Queen 'The Freddy's Girls'. Essentially the concept behind a Birthday Club is to save money individually, without the feeling of guilt. But the best bit? The birthday boy/girl still receives a fabulous present. It's a win:win senario.

The Freddy's Girls have about eight close friends in their Birthday Club, each with one - three children. That's a lot of birthday presents to be buying throughout the year. Their thrifty solution? Every month each adult pays £10 into a joint account. Then, when it is someone's birthday, there is up to £30 in the kitty to be  spent on a gift for them.

The real brilliance of the Birthday Club is that adults and children alike actually prefer to receive a one-off, bigger present, as opposed to lots of little bits. A perfect money saving solution to an otherwise expensive predicament.

One, Two, Three

Ahoy there, it be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. But don't be a scurvy bilge rat and get swindled out of all your pieces of eight, save your loot with a one, two, three.

The Thrift-Queen's top tip? Always get three quotes and ask for references. Be it for plumbing work, selling your house, or hiring a dj for a wedding.

Money Saving Website

Just wanted to share with you all this amazing new [to me] website I've found. It's called Cheap Bargains (UK) and is Thrift-Queen heaven with top tips galore on saving money and deals to be had. My recommendation of the moment is to buy the Skullcandy Full Metal Earbud Headphones on play.com for £14.99 (RRP of £79.95) which is a massive saving of £64.96. Perfect for a thrifty Christmas present. Check out other bargains to be had at http://www.cheapbargains.org/

So Long Summer

The evenings are darker, the kids are back at school and the post-summer holidays blues have kicked in. Sounds like a perfect time to get thriftful.

Sell any summer clothes or accessories that you no longer want on Ebay  or Gumtree, late summer holiday go-ers will snap them up. But don't go crazy for Autumn/Winter clothes just yet. Get style-savvy and save yourself money by updating your favourite summer clothes for the cooler weather. To a pretty summer dress, try adding a pair of leggings and a mac. Or team your favouite shorts with tights and a wool knit jumper. Reinvention is the key to thriftful wardrobe sucess!

If you have children, hit the pre Autumn/Winter sales and buy the next size up clothes for them to wear next summer. Similarily, maybe you could partake in a car boot sale for any outdoor toys your kids no longer play with/ have grown out of. As for their school packed lunches, instead of buying pre packaged single serve items, use tupperware or other reusable containers. It will save money in the long run. My five year old son's favourite lunch time snack is humous and cucumber/carrot sticks. Easy and cheap. But don’t forget, lunch boxes aren’t just for kids. Taking your leftovers to work the next day will also help save money.

The beginning of autumn is a good time to get thriftfully prepared for the change in season. Shop around using a price comparison site to check you're getting the best possible deal on your services, such as gas and electricity. Some companies are introducing fix rate payments over the next couple of years, and with fuel costs predicted to rise it's a good time to be prepared. As for Christmas, now is the perfect time to start shopping for gifts to help spread the cost. Plan for your next trip abroad and invest in a set of portable digital luggage scales. A good quality set will set you back a mere £15 and as http://www.digital-luggage-scales.co.uk/ notes, "for every kilo you are over your bag allowance it could set you back at least £7.50 with some long haul flights even charging £30 per kg extra". Thriftful preparation at it's best.

Taste Test

A Thrift-Queen's recommendation. See if you can taste the difference between known brand and own brand products. You might soon save yourself a small fortune.