How Much Does Smoking Cost You?

The following research conducted by Nicotinell, a company which can help people when they have ambitions of quitting smoking, has provided insight on how much smoking costs across Great Britain by those who have taken up the habit…

Understanding where the research came from

The basis for the research comes from the fact that the average daily cigarette consumption for men across Great Britain sat at 12 cigarettes in 2016, according to the Adult Smoking Habits in the UK: 2016 report put together by the Office for National Statistics. This figure sat at 11 cigarettes a day for women. Over a year, these figures work out at 4,380 cigarettes for men and 4,015 cigarettes for women.

How much does smoking cost you and how much can you save?

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Ways To Save Money On Your Weekly Shop

Now I’m on maternity leave, this past week I have sat down thinking about ways to save money on your weekly shop. Maternity pay isn’t a great deal in fact it’s only £140.98 a week (as of March 2018) so when you are used to working full-time it’s a big drop in wages. In our household I mainly pay for groceries, this is an area I know we can save money on.

I have been thinking about tips on how we can slash our grocery bill each week and have come up with these top tips. I hope you find them useful to help you save money as well.

Ways to Save money on your weekly shop

Top Tips to Slash Your Weekly Shopping Bill

  • Meal Plan – This is the most important one! Before you head out the door sit down with a cup of tea and plan ahead for the week. I’m now doing this on Fridays before we go shopping on Saturdays. I also keep a check of what I’ve got in the cupboards and freezer to see what I can use up for the coming week. I have the husbands birthday coming up this week and while hunting through the cupboard I found I had all the ingredients to make a fruit birthday cake for him except the eggs. When I was working full-time, running a household with a toddler around I never had the time do meal plan as such. Therefore I always bought extra I didn’t need.

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Thrifty Thursday: Cashback Rewards with Checkout Smart

Welcome back to Thrifty Thursday. Last time I shared with you one of my favourite money-saving apps called Shopmium. This week I’m sharing another app called Checkout Smart. This app is all about claiming cash back on your everyday items while you are shopping. A good tip is to have the app open while you are going around the shops so you can scroll through the offers.

Some of the products are free, whereas others are money back. Checkout Smart works in a similar way to Shopmium in that you must keep the receipt and upload it to the app when you have bought the item. The excellent feature of Checkout Smart is that it has a filter option so you can select which shop or supermarket you are in and only show the relevant products to that shop.

Thrifty Thursday_ Cashback Rewards with Checkout Smart

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3 Tips for Improving Your 2018 Finances

“New year, new me!” How many of us have uttered those words before? While it’s great to feel motivated in January for a year better than last, putting that into practice for all 365 days is hard work.

Organising finances is something many of us do at the start of the year. It’s the best time to do it, too. If you set yourself up well in January, it can have a ripple effect for the whole year. Now is the time to sort your PPI Claims, open that savings account and declutter your home to sell old stuff for extra cash.

3 Tips for improving your 2018 finances

There are a few ways to bring in cash when needed. But, we’ve listed three of the very best ways — from saving just a penny, to making a PPI claim — to to get organised with your finances and long-term solutions for the whole year.

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How To Be a Frugal Parent Without Missing Out

If you’re planning to have children, you need to know what to expect. While most parents talk about the reduced sleeping hours – and you will truly have to function on two or three hours a night in the beginning – not everybody is completely honest about the costs inherent to raising a child. Bringing up a child in the UK costs more than the average home, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Ultimately, as a parent, you need to be prepared for a cost of over £230,000, which includes childcare and education until the age of 21. If you compare in terms of household budget, proportionally a British household will spend nearly 40% of their net incomes on raising a child. Of course, the more children you have, the more expensive it’ll be – although, thankfully, one household with two children spends less than two households with one child each.

Unsurprisingly, the costs vary depending on where you live in the UK. However, you’ll still be paying well over £200,000 to bring up a child everywhere in the country.

In other words, there’s no secret to cut down the expenses. But there are ways to maximise frugal living to make sure that you don’t break the bank!

Frugal Parenting Without Missing Out

Each child costs a quarter of a million

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Thrifty Thursday: Want To Try Something New? – Shopmium

For 2018 I want to share with you all my thrifty tips and how you can save money and of course try new things. Each Thursday I will share something with you that I regularly do to save money in our household. Saving money this year is a big must on the agenda due to myself being on maternity leave later on in the year.

Here is the first Thrifty Thursday post for 2018!

I love to try new things. A few months back I discovered an app called Shopmium that let you do just that – try new things. It’s easy to use trust me! While I’m browsing around the supermarket I get my phone out and check out what I can try this week. My husband loves to see what I’m bringing home next with the weekly shopping! Although he wasn’t too fussed with the Chickpea snacks I got the other week!

Thrifty Thursday: Want to try something new? - Shopmium app

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