What changes have saved you the most money?

As a start:

Skype, even if you use their paid for services you're likely to save money.

I also used this to cut down my mobile phone bills (both my wife and I use skype on our phones now). Result is cutting our monthly contracts down from over £40 to £20

I always find car insurance renewal time saves me a fair bit of cash.

My wife cuts my hair now. This might sound weird, but I invested £30 in a pair of clippers and I now save £10 a time! They've paid for themselves over and over and over and over. Definitely worth it (and not to difficult to get a good short back and sides)

As for my wife, she gets her hair cut at the college. Students hacking away, but it's all overseen by a professional. Costs just a tenner.

We don't buy many cleaning chemicals. Most do the same thing anyway

Slow cooker for making up meals to go in the freezer

For those with babies: reusable nappies (we just use them at home, and disposables when out and about), breastfeeding (saves on formula!), hand me downs (of course) and cooking and liquidising your own baby foods (I recommend Anabel Karmel)


If I think of any more I'll let you know!

Definitely top of the saving hit parade is choosing the NFU as our insurance provider - several hundred a year there.
The other thing is changing electricity providers, but reducing our stated number of bedrooms. The hike in Direct Debit was huge this year, and seemed to be pretty level across providers. We are giving them money for their savings for nearly a year, instead of keeping it in ours, so I changed provider and stated we had one less bedroom - while still keeping up with our consumed leccy! Saving £11 a month.
For cleaning I use Bicarb, Borax and Vinegar plus some solid green Fairy soap that makes me feel like a Land Girl every time I rub those collars and cuffs! Plus although I do use a detergent, I have halved the recommended dose without noticing any less effect.

Yep, agree with the cleaning tips - similar to what I say in that most do the same job, and some bicarb can work wonders.

My biggest saving has been on food shopping. I used to race around the supermarket several times a week picking up anything that took my fancy. I now take the time to make a weekly meal plan and a shopping list. I do one online shop per week and try to get everything we'll need for the coming week, including snacks, drinks etc, for lunches, days out and so on. I'd say I have halved our shopping bill.

That's a brilliant one TracyG. If I go without a list, I end up paying a fortune for a couple of days meals! I have gone as far as making a month's worth of menus before I shop, and used up all those store cupboard items that have gathered dust in the process - even the Quinoa!!

The first thing to do is to find out where all the money is going. Going back through all the payments of any kind for the last six months and listing them will give a good idea.
Then making a list of every single penny spent during a week by each person daily - that might good for a few bad arguments, of course!
With that information, it is simple to decide priorities and saving possibilities.