Local Shops for Local People

People assume that local shops are more expensive than the supermarkets. Very often that isn't the case.

In season fruit and vegetables are, for example, very often cheaper at your local greengrocer. Fishmongers may be more expensive for the common types of fish available in supermarkets, but they tend to have a far wider range of produce, including cheaper, but tasty, varieties such as mackerel and whiting. Local butchers do tend to be a bit more expensive than the supermarkets, but the meat is usually of a far higher quality, so it makes sense to use them for special occasions.

http://www.eattheseasons.co.uk/ tells you what foods are currently in season.

Farmers' markets offer top quality produce but can be very expensive. If you search thoroughly amongst all the stalls you may however find one or two that are also very good value. We have a game stall at our local farmers' market which sells venison, rabbit, game birds and sausages at a fraction of what you would pay for beef or lamb in a supermarket. (http://www.blackmoorgame.co.uk/)

We tend to buy a mixture of fresh, good-value produce locally and stock up on all the cheap staples at Lidl. That's what people on the continent have been doing for years.

Local Food Advisor lists the best local food shops in the UK. You just type in your post code to find those nearest to you:

http://www.localfoodadvisor.com/

There is now even a loyalty card scheme for local, independent shops. Have a look at:

http://www.wedgecard.co.uk/

It's just London based at the moment, but they are planning on extending the scheme to the whole of the UK soon. 

Food co-ops, which are springing up around the country, are another good and cheap alternative to supermarkets:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/dec/10/ethicalfood-foodanddrink

Supermarkets

Lidl really is cheaper!

If you shop at Lidl rather than one of the large mainstream chains you are likely to save 20-30% on your weekly shopping bill.

There is a popular myth that the food at Lidl is somehow not as good as at the behemoths. In my experience that is certainly not true.

From recent shops:

• 1kg English Coxes apples: £1.29 (reduced quite often to 99p or 64p on special offer)
• 6 Free range eggs: £1.27
• 100g real Italian salami: £1.49
• 200g real Spanish chorizo: £1.00 (was on special offer, alas no longer, now back to £1.99)
• Bag of three large mixed peppers: 99 p (was on special offer, now £1.25 again)
• Whole cucumber: 34 p (was on special offer, now 79 p again)
• 100g organic fairtrade instant coffee: £1.75
• 20 recycled refuse sacks: 99 p (were 79 p a few weeks ago)
• 100g 70% cocoa fairtrade chocolate: 89 p
• 1 litre of delicious Italian chocolate icecream with chocolate chips: £1.69
• 750ml extra virgin olive oil: £2.49
• 400g lean British beef mince (less than 10% fat): £1.99
• 30 dishwasher tablets: £1.73
• 5.13 kg non-bio washing powder: £5.86

As well as excellent quality, good-value food, Lidl also has special offers every week in goods ranging from DIY equipment to sportswear.

For a look at what's on offer on any given week, have a look here.

You can use this storefinder to find your nearest Lidl. I have to admit that we are probably quite lucky with the neatness and friendliness of our local one, not that that affects what's being sold of course.

You may also, again contrary to popular belief, find shopping at Lidl a far more pleasant experience than traipsing around the huge aircraft-hangar like sheds of the main chains. If you're concerned about the risk of ditching your conscience to save money, you'll be pleased to find that Lidl now has a range of organic and fairtrade products and that a lot of its fruit, vegetables and fresh meat are sourced in the UK. (Whether large companies are ever capable of being truly ethical is of course an entirely different matter, and there were some serious concerns raised in Germany last year about how Lidl treats its staff. That said, you might question whether any supermarkets treat their staff particularly well, with the possible exception of Waitrose, but if you can afford to shop at Waitrose you're unlikely to be reading this article... Also, I worked in a Waitrose as a teenager and I can't say I found it that pleasant an experience.)

There is a website in Ireland guiding people to the best and tastiest bargains to be had in Lidl. The products are the same in the UK, so it's well worth a look:

http://www.lidltreats.com

Aldi is of course also extremely good value, but I personally don't like the produce or the shops quite as much as Lidl.

Some of the bigger chains are now trying to undercut Lidl and Aldi on their "value" lines. You'd want to take a very close look at the labels before buying any of the food though. See this article:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5258303.ece

If you're determined to carry on buying from the mainstream supermarket chains...

Have a look at:

http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/

This very clever site lets you select a basket of products and then choose the cheapest supplier from Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda and Ocado. The price differences can be enormous.

For the sake of your health and your wallet

Don't buy products high in artificial colours, flavours, preservatives or sweeteners.

There is increasing evidence that low fat and diet products may have the opposite effect to the one intended. See:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1578260/Diet-drinks-may-make-you-gain-weight.html

and 

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/features/low-fat-diets-not-fit-for-purpose-1057806.html

A healthy diet is based on meals you cook or prepare yourself from fresh, natural ingredients.

This article from Wikipedia may be enough to make you think twice about the artificial sweeteners in diet drinks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy

You're best off sticking to fruit juices and water.

If you're a snacker, try snacking on fruit for a change instead of chocolate bars. (Big brand UK chocolate tends to have high levels of hydrogenated fats which stops it melting on the shelves in the summer, but also clogs up your arteries.) 

If you can't kick the chocolate habit straight away try buying high-cocoa content (70-74%) chocolate bars (without the hydrogenated fat) from Lidl.

Internet Shopping

Before you buy anything on the internet, have a look for it first on Pricerunner:

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk

You will almost certainly find what you are looking for at another site cheaper than where you first found it.

Google Shopping search (aka Froogle) will sometimes also locate some bargains:

http://www.google.co.uk/prdhp?hl=en&tab=wf

but it's a bit more inconsistent in what it turns up than Pricerunner.

There's a wide range of other specialist price comparison sites. See our list of them here:

http://www.thrifty-living.org.uk/shopping/price-comparison.html

For consumer electronics ebuyer is often the cheapest. It used to be Dabs (until BT bought them), and still is occasionally. Pcnextday is also worth a look, particularly for things like computer monitors. Novatech offers very keenly priced computers, with the option of no operating system, which is perfect for installing Linux (see free stuff). Argos is actually difficult to beat for small appliances.

Whatever you're going to buy though, do use the price comparison sites first. Ciao is very good for seeing what other people think of the product, or service, before you buy it.

Special Offers

Hotukdeals is a website listing the latest and best bargains to be had online and offline:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/

Clothes Shopping

For high quality, good value basics, it's very difficult to beat Uniqlo these days. Merino sweaters and cardigans for £20 for example. 

http://www.uniqlo.co.uk/

Even more cost-effective is to be around when clothes-addict friends are chucking out stuff that they've hardly ever worn - or if your friends are less generous than that, you could always try swapping or pooling. 

If you like bargain, vintage clothes you can now buy online from Oxfam as well as on the high street:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/

Kitchenware and Homeware

The best place for ultra-cheap but high quality pots, pans and kitchen utensils is TK Maxx. You do need to hunt carefully for the genuinely high quality stuff, but some of the bargains are amazing. We bought a heavy French iron casserole there for £12 a couple of years ago that would have cost £70 + in a department store. They are also surprisingly good for some homeware items like cushions or duvet covers - again far, far cheaper than department store equivalents, but you may have to go back several times before you find something decent. Children's toys and books are also the same as you would get elsewhere but a lot cheaper. Even if you don't want to cover yourself in brand names it's worth the occasional look in TK Maxx just to remind yourself how crazy you'd have to be to buy that stuff at full price elsewhere.

Lidl also occasionally do some very good value, high quality kitchenware.

For crockery that will last, even though it might not sound that thrifty, there's a strong argument for John Lewis at sale time. They do make reductions of up to 50%

Unless you're buying stuff just for the sake of it, which is never going to be cheap at any price, it's very difficult to beat £1 for a price. Poundland has a website where everything for sale is priced at £1, as well as physical shops dotted around the country:

http://www.poundland.co.uk

As with low-cost supermarkets, Poundland is welcoming hordes of new customers who previously would have turned up their noses at the idea of saving a bit of money:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/06/poundland-recession-creditcrunch

Wilkinsons is extremely good value for things like gardening tools and camping equipment. We bought a double airbed there this summer for half the price of the equivalent item in Blacks or Millets. (Argos were out of stock at the time, which often seems to be the case.)

http://www.wilkinsonplus.com/

One day we may be lucky enough to have Hema in the UK:

http://producten.hema.nl/

It's like Woolworths was before it became rubbish. If nothing else the front page of their website is very entertaining.

Books

Clearly the cheapest source of books is your local library. If you ask nicely, usually they'll even order a book for you. They'll certainly find out whether the book you want is in another local library and transfer it for you. Our local library even gives away the books it no longer wants to stock.

Next cheapest source is charity second hand book stores. We have one next to the local station which sells practically brand new paperbacks that would have cost £10 for 50 p.

Another good source of second hand books is Abebooks:

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/

which covers 13,500 booksellers selling 110 million books.

Though, sad to say, AbeBooks has now been bought by Amazon, so you might want to have a look at the following link before purchasing:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article5337770.ece

If you're going to buy a new book online, make sure you use Pricerunner first:

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/books

and / or BookBrain:

http://www.bookbrain.co.uk/

The Book People offer a selection of new books at very substantially reduced prices:

http://www.thebookpeople.co.uk/

Scholastic also offer big reductions on children's books:

http://www.scholastic.co.uk/

Lulu.com is a company which enables authors to publish books in small print runs without having to rely on the big publishing houses. They sell both paper books and e-books. The physical books aren't usually that cheap, but quite a lot (though by no means all) of the e-books are free:

http://www.lulu.com

Presents

Instead of buying pointless plastic tat or gadgets that will end up in landfill in a few months' time, why not buy something hand made, beautiful and good value instead. Etsy is a website with hundreds of small suppliers of handmade arts and crafts.

Etsy looks a bit American at first glance but in fact has suppliers from all over the place. Here's a list of the UK suppliers on Etsy:

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5117278

You can also enter your location on this page, to find the suppliers close to you:

http://www.etsy.com/shop_local.php?utm_source=Homepage&utm_medium=Nav&utm_campaign=ShopLocal

You could even take the hand made pledge at:

http://www.buyhandmade.org/

Folksy

Folksy is a UK equivalent of Etsy, though perhaps with not quite the same breadth of suppliers:

http://www.folksy.com

Markets

Markets such as the Old Market or Up Market in Spitalfields  or Portobello in London also have a wealth of small suppliers selling good value hand made and second hand goods. Colombia Road flower market on a Sunday offers incredibly beautiful flowers and plants at a fraction of what you would pay for them at a large commercial garden centre.

For beautiful, and often very good value, second hand furniture and ornaments, try an antiques market, such as the enormous one in Sunbury:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/05/antiques-markets-homewares

There are excellent markets all around the country with more character and better value than the clone high streets. The National Market Traders Federation has information on markets all across the UK:

http://www.nmtf.co.uk/ 

Energy

Instead of repeating all the information about low energy light bulbs, cavity wall installation and A-rated appliances, I'd recommend that you have a look at these two websites which provide pretty much all the information you could ever need on energy saving and saving money on energy:

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/

http://www.uswitch.com/