the times | Wednesday May 25 2022 3times2
to save (start with fining your kids)
leaving, you may find that the cost
suddenly drops. As you get older you
may be cheaper to insure — drivers
over the age of 50 are considered
much safer by insurers.20 Bulk buy
Bulk buying is an entirely sensible
hedge against inflation. Prices are
going to continue going up for a good
12 months, so if you can afford to buy
goods that you will use in the next
year and aren’t going to go off, do. You
can do this at your usual supermarket
or take it up to the next level and
get a membership with Costco, the
bulk-buying supermarket which starts
at £26.40 a year (only certain
professions can get membership).21 Use supermarket apps
Sainsbury’s, Lidl and Tesco offer
discounts through their apps.
Sainsbury’s SmartShop gives you
30 per cent off regularly bought items
and Lidl Plus up to £12 a month in
coupons. If you shop at Tesco you
definitely have to have a Clubcard
because you get lots of food cheaper
for just holding the card — it can get
you a cheaper loan too.22 Free kids’ bank account
Don’t go for GoHenry — which costs
£2.99 a month — or Starling’s kids’
account (£2 a month). Instead, open a
kids’ account with HyperJar, which is
free. It’s a prepaid debit card, giving
them a card so they can feel like a
grown-up (next they will be worrying
about how to pay for the home’s
energy bills). Available from the
age of six.12 Cheap double glazing
While you’re at it, if you’ve only got
single-glazed windows or are worried
about leaky seals, do some DIY
insulation. Buy secondary glazing film
— companies such as Stormguard or
Tesa sell their wares on Amazon or in
Wickes. It isn’t as effective as double
or triple glazing but it’s better than
clingfilm and will cost about £40 to
£50 to cover all the windows in the
average home.13 Insulate behind
your radiators
If you’re really taking this seriously
you can put reflective foil (such as
Radflek) on the wall behind your
radiators. The idea is the heat will
bounce back into the room rather
than seep into the wall.14 Slow cooker
Slow cookers run on far less electricity
than an oven and are great for making
batch-cook classics such as casseroles
and stews. You may feel like Fanny
Cradock but you will be pretty smug
when you open your next bill.15 Flog it
Sell any items you don’t use around
the home at a car boot sale. This
usually costs about £10 for a stall. The
trick is not to allow yourself to look
at what anyone else is selling, so you
don’t buy other people’s tat at the
same rate as losing your own.16 Tackle your overdraft
Overdrafts are debts, and one of the
most expensive. If you’ve beenoverdrawn for a while, consider
moving the debt to a personal loan,
which you pay off monthly, or speak to
the bank about reducing the overdraft
limit in stages as you pay the balance
off. Arranged and unarranged
overdrafts cost from 15 to 40 per cent
in interest while a personal loan can
start at 2 per cent.17 Two-for-one cinema tickets
Who has the money to go out for
a meal these days? Cinema is a
relatively cheap night out, particularly
if you get two-for-one tickets. You
can do this through some employer
schemes (such as Perks at Works —
you pay on the scheme’s website and
receive a code which you then give to
the cinema as payment). Also, if you
buy a product through Compare the
Market (an insurance policy or credit
card, for example) you can get two-for
one-cinema tickets on a Tuesday and
a Wednesday for a year with most of
the big cinemas participating.18 Cheaper childcare
The government’s Tax-Free Childcare
scheme is a faff but it’s worth it: it adds
£2 to every £8 you spend on childcare
up to £2,000 a year for each child up
to 11. To qualify, parents need to have
an income of less than £100,000. Set
up an account on gov.uk and you can
use it to pay any childcare provider on
the government’s approved list. You
then have to reconfirm you are
eligible every three months.19 Haggle
If you phone Sky, BT, Virgin and RAC
and tell them you are thinking ofKATIE WILSON FOR THE TIMES; GETTY IMAGESI admit it, I’m now
a supermarket tart
Harry Wallop, supersaver!
D
uring the recession
of 2008 my
mother-in-law
announced that
she’d stopped getting
all her shopping from the
upmarket Booths supermarket
and sometimes branched out
to Morrisons. “Morrisons’ wet
fish counter is far better value,”
she said, slightly smugly.
“So you spent £1 or £2 on
petrol to drive to get some
cut-price herrings?” I answered,
rolling my eyes. “Ah, but the
herrings were £3 cheaper,” she
answered.
Reader, I have become my
mother-in-law. Now you too
can roll your eyes.
I was a fairly loyal Ocado
shopper (with the occasional
top-up shop at my nearest
Tesco and impulse visit to the
butcher), but the cost of living
crisis has forced me to become
the grocery equivalent
of a “rate tart”, the
phrase used by
Martin Lewis
to describe
people who flip
from one credit
card to another.
Apart from
my now
monthly trip to
Costco to stock up
on the big, dull items,
I find myself cycling to
Aldi and Lidl each weekend
with a rucksack to pick up
basics. Half a dozen large
free-range eggs cost £1.15 at the
German discounters, but £2.10
at Ocado; butter is 40p cheaper
a pack; ham is half the price.
Sliced sourdough costs £1.35 at
Aldi but £1.85 at Ocado.
Yes, of course, if you are
quibbling over the price of
sourdough you risk sounding
like the Marie Antoinette of
Islington, but the point is that
everyone is feeling the pinch —
from those who can afford
only sliced white to those who
like ancient-grain brioche.
And sometimes a 49p pain
aux raisins from Lidl tastes
especially delicious because it is
49p, not because of the quality
of the crème pâtissière that is
used. Although Lidl’s is decent.
“It doesn’t matter how well
off you are, everyone has
noticed the price of food go up,”
says Fraser McKevitt, an
analyst at Kantar, the research
group that tracks the spending
pattern of 30,000 households.
A year ago 41 per cent of
consumers described
themselves as “comfortable”,
rather than “struggling” or
“managing”. Now it is 33 percent. “That’s a big change,”
McKevitt says.
Unwavering allegiance to one
supermarket died out around
the time that we lost faith in
politicians and the police. But
it’s striking how much the
present crisis is making people
shop around. The average
household visited five different
supermarkets last month,
according to Kantar, and the
biggest winners from the trend
are the two rival German
discounters. Between them
they account for £15.90 in
every £100 spent on groceries
in the UK. A decade ago it was
£5.40. Most of the country
shops in either one of these
discounters in any given month.
This week I found myself in
conversation with a committed
savvy shopper from Stockport
who told me that she, her two
teenagers and her husband
downsized from two
cars to one and, as
a result, she had
invested in
“one of those
shopping bags
on wheels”,
which she uses
to go from
shop to shop.
In Farmfoods, a
frozen food chain
with a reputation for
appealing to those on
very low budgets, there are
noticeably more middle-class
shoppers, she says. “Even
in Aldi a small punnet of
blueberries is [nearly] £2. But
you get huge packs of frozen
berries in both Iceland and
Farmfoods for the same price.”
Consumers are not just
shopping around, but also
swapping brands and products
in a bid to save money. More
of us are choosing own-label
rather than big brands. At
Booths, which has a high
pensioner customer base,
shoppers are increasingly
buying sliced meats and
cheese from the deli counters,
rather than in packs. “People
can control the portion size.
Consumers don’t want to waste
food, and ‘little and often’
purchases are what we’re
seeing,” says Nigel Murray, the
commercial director at the
supermarket.
Perhaps the most telling sign
of consumer sentiment is a
Pulse of the Nation survey,
which Asda conducts monthly
among its shoppers. In the
most recent poll they were
asked to pick the word that
best described their mood.
The answer? “Tired.”hep
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very low budgetsReduce kids’ use of
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ditch the coffee
Jessie
Hewitson