Your 18 stingiest money-saving tips

Are you serious? Have you read your "Work" section?

It amounts to nothing more than blatent theft in the workplace. Something is immoral, illegal and could even cost you your job.

Great advice guys. Classic.

Make your own wine:

I didn't think much of the winemaking site. Basically, you buy 5 litres of grape joice or apple juice and 5 Kg of sugar to make your wine. Acid is important, grape and apple juice are both high in Malic acid. You can use citrus fruit juice - but the wine if much sharper. The wine will be low in tannin and so you can buy grape tannin, but it's usually low quality. To get around that problem use a good quaity tea. Just make a pot of tea using 10 teaspoons of tea or 10 teabags! You also need yeast, a wine yeast from a decent supplier.

Now it's easy. Make the tea. Pour the sugar into your 25 litre formenter. Add the hot tea and stir or shake up. Add your 5 litres of fruit juice. Now dilute with water up to around 20 litres. Not too much as it will froth and make a mess. Now when it's cool add a good wine yeast. i used to use Vinkwik, because as the name suggests it was quick. Now leave it somewhere warm for a week. Allow the gas, carbon dioxide to escape or your formentor will explode! That is easy just cover the top with a plastic bag secured with an elastic band - that lets the carbon dioxide out and also keep out nasty bugs like fruit flies and ants. At the end of the first week top up with water once the initial fermentation has settled down.

Use filtered or boiled water if possible for dilution as it will give you a better flavour. You can test it with an hydrometer. Buy one at your local wine making shop and a jar and they will show you how it works. You will also need a couple of syphon tubes. You ferment the wine until the specific gravity on the hydrometer is 1.000. Then add a fermentation stopper, something like pottasium sorbate and some crushed campden tablets (about 10). This will help stabilise the wine and stop the yeast growing and keep out nasty bacteria. Leave it for 24 hours and then syphon some wine into a bottle, a 2 litre lemonade bottle is ideal; add the isinglass wine finings and shake the bottle to disperse the finings in the wine. This mixture is then added to the bulk of the wine and will clear the wine. You then syphon the wine from the sediment (the yeast). If you want it crystal clear run it through a Harris filter. You now have just under 25 litres of wine for five or six pounds. That's around 35 normal 70cl bottles. The price is good and you get better at it you can make two lots alternatively so as to never run out. You can also add a vintage wine to your plonk and it will improve the whole wine. Try too, adding Spanish sherry to a wine and leaving it to mature for a while and the whole lot will taste like sherry. I did sherry for a wedding like that and no one knew the difference. No one knew I had made all the wine either. You can use your computer printer to make nice labels. I like to put jokes on like CONTAINS GENUINE TOXIC WASTE. You can also get corks from a decent winemaking supplier and the plastic seals to make your own wine look very professional. The wine be arounnd 12% alcohol. To make a stronger wine use more sugar and a yeast like Tokay that will withstand the higher alcohol content; that takes a lot longer to ferment - maybe a few months.

Good Luck!

Why not get an in-car charger.

That way you can charge mobiles, I-pods etc for free as well as help the environment by charging stuff during journeys you were going to make anyway.

Use a cardboard coffin, a lot cheaper than wood & biodegradable.

Regards,

N. 

Brewing Beer can also save money but great beer is rather tricky to make.

I brew 40 pints at a time for 55 - 70 pence / pint

My suggestion / rules are as follows:

1 Always use an expensive two tin concentrate (ie Woodfords) £16 -£18

2 Always filter your water with a new water filter jug cartridge

3 Buy a 100g pack of dried hops and make the kit with hop tea (Hops add flavour, bitterness and are an essential preservative)

4 Cask in a 40 pint pressure barrel and wait 4 - 5 weeks for the beer to drop clear naturally.

5 Sterilize everything! (Camden tabs or Milton)

6 Subscribe to free Beer Podcasts like "Basic Brewing Radio" or "Craft Brew Cast".

7 Get fresh yeast from your local Brewery its better + faster than dried yeast.

Cheers!

common items like paracetemol/asprin can be bought in most supermarkets/pharmacies for a fraction of the price that branded ones will set you back. e.g. own brand paracetemol (16-tablets) can cost as little as 30p (or less sometimes), whereas Nurofen, Anadin and all these brands are well over £2.00, sometimes into £3.00.

Now check the back of the packets. The contents will normally state "contains 500mg of paracetemol"; occasionally it may state a few "E" numbers. But otherwise these are exactly the same in every regard as brand name offering.

Sometimes these cheaper alternative aren't always 'advertised' as much especially in pharmacies, but there is nothing wrong with simply asking at a counter for 'alternative paracetemol products' or 'economy paracetemol'. No need to be embarrassed. I'm not.

This principle actually applies to a great deal of other daily/common items that we may buy.

Ladies, if you have run out of shaving gel for your legs simply use a cheap creamy supermarket conditioner.  It does exactly the same job, promise.

MoneyMachine

Not sure if your tongue may be slightly in cheek, but you are on dangerous territory here, particularly if a bus company employee happens to catch you. Most such tickets- certainly in London -say "not transferable", even though they don't require a photocard.  Transport for London have had a real problem with Travelcard "touts" picking up and selling on unwanted Travelcards, and to do the same with your own ticket is no different in a travel operator's eyes.  It's understandable- after all, if everybody did it, there would be no money left to run the buses.

However, there is a legitimate way you can avoid having to buy your own ticket and perhaps save a little too.  Oyster Cards can be transferred.  Also, they ensure you never pay more than the price of a bus pass or travelcard- the daily price is capped to give you the best deal.  So, if you've made all the journeys you need to make in one day but your partner or a friend needs to make more journeys later that day, why not lend them your card? They'll actually pay nothing (assuming, of course, you have sufficient credit on your Oyster card) if you have already gone past the 'cap' for that day.  This, on London journeys, could save at least £2 per journey.

use public or works toilets for "nuber 2s"  That way you could be being paid for what you are doing. buy own brand tissues & loo paper, 32p for 150 and 43p for 4 rolls in summerfields.

If your council offers free swimming take your shampoo and conditioner and go for a free shower, saves using water when on a water meter.

@ tonygogo - One of my personal favourites is this one:

DON'T waste money on expensive iPods. Simply think of your favourite tune and hum it. If you want to "switch tracks", simply think of another song you like and hum that instead.

Eat raw food, saves gas or electricity and you'll become 100% healthy - google "raw food" and read the info on why and recipes.

Gentlemen, if you are tying to squeeze every last bit of shaving foam out of a can then please consider why you are even using it in the first place.

The people who make shaving foam do not care about your skin, they just want to sell you shaving foam.

I have not used it for about three years now and break-out far less, have less soreness and fewer nicks and scrapes.

This will not work for everyone. Everyone's skin is different but just try for a few weeks with a couple of drops of ordinary olive oil. It will hurt like hell at first, but your skin will adapt. Don't use dull razors and keep at it. Shaving foam just keeps your skin spongy and delicate - meaning you keep needing to use shaving foam.

Origins do a really nice oil which is quite expensive but lasts a while. Otherwise, regular olive oil will do you. So much 'male grooming' is a con.

You can save money immediately by installing a hand bathroom bidet sprayer with your toilet. With these you almost don't need toilet paper anymore just a towel to dry off. It can usually be attached without a plumber to the same water line as the toilet. Not only saves you money but it's very green by cutting back on toilet paper use and manufacture and it also has health benefits when it comes to hemorrhoids. It's a great gadget! 

I had a friend who doesn't use his watch during the week, only at the weekends.  He pulls the pin out on a sunday night to stop it for the week, thus saving the battery!!  He was quite serious when telling me about it but once he realised what he has said he was quite embarrassed!

He does have a bit of a reputation for being tight!