’Tis the season of good will!

Tuesday 14th October, 2008 - £7,899.83 in debt…

It’s Christmas time - there’s no need to be afraid.

Well, it’s not quite, but the keys to managing your money are in preparation and budgeting, so there’s nothing wrong with getting excited two months early. That’s my excuse, anyway.

So what can we do at this early stage to make Christmas a bit more bearable, money-wise? This is what we can do:

     1.  Start your shopping early, but don’t start buying presents yet. Make a list of all the other stuff you’ll need - food that will keep, wrapping paper, decorations, etc - and buy it when you see a good deal. This will prevent panic-buying at a later stage. If you start on presents now, you’re likely to change your mind between now and December, and you might find it’s too late (or too much hassle) to get your money back.

     2.  Talk to friends and family about Christmas decorations before you start buying new ones. You’ll probably find they don’t use everything they’ve got every year, so you can rummage through their leftovers or even have a complete swap.

     3.  If you can trust yourself with it, and you’re currently debt-free, apply for a cashback credit card before you start spending. These can give you as much as 5 percent back on whatever you spend, but pay your balance as soon as the bill comes in or you’ll be charged interest.

     4.  When you do start gift-shopping, do it online and compare prices using sites like Kelkoo and Pricerunner. Equally, using MySupermarket to compare prices from four major supermarkets will save you money on your Christmas groceries.

     5.  If you haven’t got them already, apply for as many loyalty cards as you can handle. Hand them over when you stock up on Christmas food and presents, and spend the points later. Most supermarkets have them, as do Waterstone’s and Boots. Watch out for Boots ‘double points’ days.

     6.  According to the news, there’s some sort of global financial armageddon looming. If I hadn’t had to switch over for Neighbours, I’d be able to tell you more, but suffice to say that everyone will be tightening their belts this year. There is now no shame in buying presents from Ebay or TK Maxx, or going to pound shops for stocking fillers.

     7.  If you know anyone who’d appreciate some sort of greenery for Christmas, now’s the time to get some pots and compost from a garden centre and take some cuttings from your own plants (or your neighbour’s garden, but don’t tell them I said that). With the right care and attention, they’ll be small but beautiful by December.

     8.  The more people you can talk to about your debt, the better. Make agreements with as many people as possible that you won’t be exchanging gifts this year, or that they’ll only be small tokens for the sake of unwrapping something. If you don’t want to confess your debt, blame the credit crunch.

     9.  If you’re likely to be buying presents from Amazon, sign up for Amazon Prime first, which will give you free first-class delivery for a month. Don’t forget to cancel before the month is up.

Keep checking this blog for more ideas as the time looms, but if you’re looking for ‘bah humbug - I’m not spending anything on Christmas this year - boo hoo, I hate it all’, you won’t find it here. I love Christmas and I’m not going to let thousands of pounds worth of debt stop me enjoying it. Bring it on.

 Yeah, cheap stuff….

Wednesday 16th July, 2008 - £8,850.98 in debt…

So, apparently inflation is at an 11-year high, Gordon Brown’s telling everyone not to chuck out their food (maybe he wants it for himself…?), and anyone who’s anyone is trying to save money on groceries. It’s the nearest I’ll get to being fashionable while I’m on a budget, so I thought I’d join in.

Last week I was busy getting geared up for a weekend away with the girls, so I thought I’d use www.mysupermarket.com to check whether my favourite wine was on offer anywhere. 

MySupermarket is a nifty little site that compares prices from four major UK supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Ocado) and tells you where you could save the most money. You can give it a list of your usual shopping and ask it to compare the whole lot, or just have a browse for a particular thing - toothbrush, minted peas, whatever.

The wine I was after always seems to be £5.49 whenever and wherever I buy it, without fail, so I wasn’t hopeful. But, according to the site, it was available for £3.89 at Sainsbury’s - what a result! Hooray! And by the time I got there, it was £5.49.

Is this because it only compares online prices? Was I too slow? Is the universe punishing me for something?

Anyway, four days later I overcame this setback and decided to try again, giving it the details of all my usual monthly shopping and asking it to find the cheapest deals. Obviously it’s impossible to do this properly, as you’ll always end up getting impulse purchases and seeing different deals as you browse through a shop, but it’s good to know which one will be cheapest for the bare essentials.

As it turned out, Asda was the best of the best. As a lifelong Tesco shopper, I was a bit wary, but desperate times call for desperate grocery shopping. Unfortunately, the rest of the world and all its shaven-headed children had clearly had the same idea.

The savings we made included:

* £1 for four pints of milk (some kind of special 1% fat milk though - where will I get my fat from now, eh?)

* Various bready things from 10p because we shopped near the end of the day.

* Lemon drizzle cake for £1.79 (near its use-by date but I’m sure that won’t be a problem, and it solves the issue of where my next chunk of fat is coming from).

* Asda own-brand tinned cat food at £3.68 for nine tins.

An hour and a half later, and we’d spent £78.76 - not bad for a month’s shopping for two people, and a saving of about £10 compared to Tesco. But we spent at least half an hour longer in Asda than we normally do at Tesco, had to navigate a hellish assault course of screaming children and squinting old people, and were served by the winner of Grumpiest Till Person 2008. Was it worth it?

The jury’s out on that one, but if I have to clear up one more pile of Asda own-brand meaty-chunk cat puke, I might have to say no.