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To effectively save money it is important to identify why you are saving money. It is much easier to stick to a saving plan if there is an end goal, which can be envisioned, being it a new house or a treasured holiday, or saving up for retirement. If you are not sure exactly why you want to save here are some ideas to get your started.

• Saving up for retirement can be a strong reason to start saving now, generally the support provided by the government is minimal, depending upon where you are located. At some point in your life you may want to slow down, or have to due to the effects of aging. In this case it is ideal to have a good pot of money saved up so that you don’t have to keep on working even though you do not feel up to it
• Saving up for a holiday another good reason to save up is a holiday, this can help to recharge the batteries as well as give a good opportunity to further bond with your family or friends
• Saving up for your children’s education another fantastic reason to start saving, giving your kids a good education is one of the primary things you can do to improve their life
• Saving up to get out of debt helps you to improve your situation by not having a constant drain on your income. Especially important if you are paying very high interest rates on your debt. Getting out of debt is more than possible, it just takes commitment and a recognition that you can’t have everything, at least not right away

Food is normally a significant portion of budgets, so finding significant savings in this area can make a real difference to how much money is left over at the end of the month, especially with a large family. Here are some money saving tips on how to reduce your expenditure

Before going shopping make a list: Making a list of all the things you want to buy is essential to staying in budget. When you are at the shop make sure you stick to your list. That way you won’t be tempted by special offers or products which you did not really need.
Shop quickly: this will reduce the temptation to buy, shops spend billions to entice you to buy what you don’t need, and the shop itself is their playground, it has been designed specifically to make you buy
Use unit price to compare products: When comparing between two products make sure to compare the unit price, rather than the total price displayed, as packaging can make two products look different sizes. Also the largest size is not necessarily the least expensive, be sure to check the unit price to see if this is true. If the largest size unit price is not that much cheaper consider staying with the smaller size as otherwise you may end up consuming more of the product than you where intending
Beware the product placement: in the shop the most visible product are not necessarily the cheapest, instead these are the products which have had the most paid for them by the brand owners to get visibility with you
A bargain is not always a bargain, super markets (as well as all other shops) will mark up their products then mark them down again so that they can say they are deeply discounted when really they are not if you consider their long term cost.
Don’t buy in bulk just because you get a discount: often the discount is very small, and you will end up consuming more than you intended and spending more money
Buy own brand or no brand stores tend to have different prices to differentiate the customer when in fact the product is exactly the same produced by the same manufacturer. So it is worth trying the own brands at least once to see if they are good enough, often times you can save 30% or more this way. The saving may not be great, but because these are products which you buy on a weekly basis the saving will add up.
Check over your receipts at the till: given the many items of food which is bought every week it is not surprising that mistakes are often made at the cash register, the most common being an item being double counted, so be sure to give your receipt a good once over and see that everything is in order
Write a list before you go shopping and stick to it. You need a very good idea of what you are going to buy before going into the store, otherwise you will end up getting more food than you wanted to. Do not put any items shopping cart if they are not on the list, you should save a significant amount.
Make your own lunch, don’t buy it as eating out for lunch every day can quickly add up, it does not take much preparation to make lunch, and when you cook you can always cook more than you need for one mean and have left overs on the next day.
When you cook, cook for 10, that way you can freeze the rest of it and have it later. Once you do this with a few different meals you will have a large selection and you will need to spend less time cooking, and need to spend less money outside buying food. This also allows you to buy ingredients in bulk that way you can save even more.
Get a large freezer or an extra freezer this will end up saving you time and money and will mean that you can cook greater quantities of food, and buy more in bulk and thus save more money. Another benefit is that you will have less times when you run out of food as you are able to keep stock levels higher, even if everyone decides they suddenly like one thing one week.

There are three main ways to cut your heating bills.

Changing heating provider or change how heat is provided to your house.

Often times you will have an alternative to heating your house, whether it be from gas, oil or even underground heating. Also sometime in your area there may be more than one provider of gas, so it pays to look around and see which is the cheapest source of heating

Improving the insulation of your house.

• Windows are a top priority as most heat is lost through windows, if you don’t have double glazing now could be the time to install it, generally this is a more long term strategy though as the cost of the install will not be paid off by the energy saving for at least five year, if energy prices go back up again though this may change.
• Identify any drafts in your house, these can be sealed up simply and once eliminated will lead to a significantly warmer house. Generally drafts will be coming from either the floor or any joints, or can be coming through poorly sealed windows. You can consider covering windows with plastic sheets as a cheap form of insulation, this is only really useful on windows which are not usually opened.
• Choose the right house this is probably the single most important aspect, see if you can choose a house which is already energy efficient. Unfortunately so much of the house stock currently has been built poorly in this regard, that this can be easier said than done.

Changing your behaviour

There are simple ways that you can change your behaviour to improve the energy usage in your house. You can make sure that you turn off lights whenever you leave a and are not planning to come back any time soon. You can switch your light bulbs to energy efficient light bulbs. You can turn down the heating temperature gauge a notch, you can turn off your heating over night and add an extra blanket.

Use online bill pay with your bank. This will ensure that you keep better track of your money, so that you can check for any incorrect debits and makes sure that you do not suffer any late payment fees or go into overdraft and get charged by your bank. It also saves you on the time and hassle of stamps and paper checks.
Change your cell phone to pay as you go often times you will find that you have two benefits to this which end up saving you money, first is that you can’t spend too much in one go, so if you accidentally do a call which is costing too much you will get cut off before you can go over budget, second is that you will only pay for what you use, rather than paying for minutes that often times you never end up using
Check through your phone bills and check if you have any services that you don’t use on there, for example if you don’t text at all then it makes little sense to have 1000 free text every month. Cancel those right away. See if you have any expensive calls that you are regularly making, you can often times change your plan to reflect your usage and save. like a surfeit of text messages or web access or something to that effect.
Ditch your land line as we have already come to the point that cell phones have replace land lines as the main way to contact us. It may be time to cancel your land line.
Cancel or cut down cable or satellite channels you don’t use much. Often times people tend to watch a small subset of channels and never deviate from those, so why pay for channels that you are never watching. If its only for the odd movie, then you can get your movie fix from many other sources or even buy the DVD with the money you save.