12 The Sunday Times June 5, 2022
MONEY
get coupons for being a loyal customer.”
She times her visits to the supermarket
to get the best prices. “I love Marks &
Spencer’s food, but it is really expensive,”
she said. “If you go at 7pm it has huge
reductions. I buy a lot on Christmas Eve.
Last year I bought over £100 worth of
minced chicken for about £15. I have
picked up a whole turkey worth £35
for 5p.”
When Smith gets the food home she
vacuum-seals then freezes it. She has
built up a large stockpile of dried food,
which she adds to whenever tins or jars
of food the family uses regularly are on
offer. This stockpile is helping Smith’sCashback Apps reimburse you for
items in your weekly shop.
Store cupboard Buy tins, jars and
packets when they are on offer.
Vouchers Get a browser extension
that searches for discount codes.
Give feedback Tell brands which of
their products you like. Don’t forget
to include your address.
Clearance Time your supermarket
visits to get reduced items. Buy items
past their best before dates online.SAVE WHEN YOU SPEND
HAPPY CRISIS!
Forget cash Isas — easy access pays better
The only thing rising faster than
inflation is the number of cost of
living crisis-themed birthday cards
that are available at card shops.
What better way to commemorate
the occasion than with a reminder
that your national insurance bill is
going up, after all? Obviously on the
Money desk we will not send any
other type of birthday card and plan
to get round their high cost by bulk
buying them with our cashback
credit card through the website Top
Cashback. As we all know, there is no
bigger fun than personal finance fun.before you exceeded the
allowance. Higher-rate tax
payers could hold up to
£20,833.
As a result many savers see
no point in sheltering their
savings in a cash Isa — the
amount held in them has
fallen from a peak of
£295 billion in January 2021 to
£287 billion in April this year.
You can save up to
£20,000 this tax year in a
cash or stocks and shares Isa,
or both so long as you do not
exceed the allowance. You
can save another £20,000
next year unless the
government changes this.
Some banks don’t want to
attract cash Isa customers, itBanks are paying up to six
times more interest on
ordinary accounts than on
tax-free Isas.
About 57 per cent of one-
year fixed-rate cash Isas pay
less than their non-Isa
equivalents, according to the
data firm Moneyfacts. It
found that 34 per cent of
firms paid the same while
only about 9 per cent paid
higher rates on their Isa.
It is a clear indication of
how the personal savings
allowance introduced in 2016
has killed off competition in
the cash Isa market as more
people opt for higher-payingnon-tax free accounts. But
experts warn not to give up
on cash Isas as they can be
useful later in life if you build
up a large savings pot.
The allowance gives basic-
rate taxpayers (those who
earn £12,571 to £50,270 a
year) the right to earn £1,000
in interest without paying
tax. Higher-rate taxpayers
(those earning £50,271 to
£150,000) get a £500
allowance, while top-rate
payers, who earn more than
£150,000, get nothing.
But basic-rate tax payers
could hold up to £41,666 in
the best-paying one-year
fixed rate account earning
2.4 per cent (with Investec)Ali Hussain seems. For example Al Rayan
Bank pays 2.4 per cent for its
non-Isa one-year fixed-rate
account but just 0.4 per cent
for its cash Isa.
You would earn £120 in the
non-Isa version if you held
£5,000 in the account for a
year. A top-rate taxpayer with
no PSA would still earn £54
after tax. In the Isa you would
earn £20 tax-free.
Rachel Springall from
Moneyfacts said: “Savers
looking away from Isas will
miss out on the long-term
benefits that holding one
provides, particularly as
there is no telling how long
the PSA or the Isa allowance
at £20,000 a year will last.”We got to
Frankfurt
on half a
tank of gas
Drivers are spending about 36 per cent
more on petrol and diesel than at the
start of the year — but you can still curb
costs simply by changing how you drive.
The average price of diesel was
181.52p a litre, according to insurer
the RAC, while petrol was 170.62p. In
January, they were 131.08p and 126.68p
respectively. Wholesale fuel prices have
increased thanks to low gas storage in
the UK, Russia’s war in Ukraine and an
increase in demand last winter.
Drivers are starting to adapt their
motoring to be as frugal as possible, with
James Medcraft from London being an
exemplary case. “We managed to drive
to Frankfurt on only 26 litres of fuel,
that’s just half the tank,” he said.
“We drove 55mph all the way and only
on motorways, which maximises the
economy of our small car. While this
added an extra 2.5 hours to the journey
we turned it into an adventure to see
what’s possible.”
Drivers now pay about £44 in taxes
on a 55-litre tank of petrol, the Liberal
Democrats said, despite Rishi Sunak,
the chancellor, reducing fuel duty by
5p a litre from March.
If you are feeling the pinch at the
pump, it could be worth making small
changes to how you drive. GoCompare,
a comparison website, said that curbing
bad driving habits could improve your
miles per gallon by 20 per cent.
Harsh braking can reduce fuel
efficiency so it’s worth taking it slow or
easing to a stop. Ensuring that your tyres
are inflated correctly and removing
excess weight from your boot would
also increase fuel efficiency, while air
conditioning can increase fuel
consumption by up to 10 per cent.
“At least a 20 per cent gain could be
made just by being aware that you are
trying to save fuel,” said Karl Dyson from
Hypermiler, a website dedicated to
helping people drive economically.
Motorists are making money by
cashing in on their cars. The cost of
second-hand vehicles rose by about
30 per cent in 2021, according to Auto
Trader, the online trading platform, due
to a microchip shortage that has limited
the supply of new vehicles.
The Finance and Leasing Association,
a trade body, said that an increasing
number of drivers were paying off their
car finance loans early so they could
sell their cars and cash in on the rising
prices.Imogen TewI have
picked
up a whole
turkeyfor 5p
family to absorb the shock of rising pri-
ces. “It helps with inflation. We’ve got a
lot of stuff in our stockpile, which is
worth a lot of money now because the
prices have gone up,”she said.
With prices rising at their fastest rate
since the 1970s, trying to cut costs can
feel like a losing battle. However, Smith is
always thinking of tips and hints to help
her followers to save money.
“Even when I go to sleep I’ll be dream-
ing about money saving,” she said. “I
don’t stop — I think it’s because of my
autism. I have to have a notebook by my
bed because as soon as I go to sleep, I’ll
get an idea.”H
olly Smith, 37, has been fasci-
nated by saving money for as
long as she can remember.
As a child, she felt frus-
trated if her mother missed
out on savings at the check-
out by buying expensive
brands or ignoring money-
off deals. “I’m autistic, and
from a young age I struggled
to socialise with friends,” Smith said.
“I would go shopping with my mum and
I became obsessed with prices and
shopping.”
One day, when Smith was 11, her mum
gave her £20 to do the week’s grocery
shopping alone. She came back with all
the items on the list and £10 in change.
After that, family members started asking
her to help them to save money on their
weekly shop on a regular basis.
“My family calls me the coupon
queen,” said Smith, who has made a
career out of sharing her expertise. “I’m
obsessed with helping people save to
money. And that’s what I love doing.”
She launched her blog Extreme Cou-
poning in 2013 after winning a competi-
tion in which the first prize was to have a
website designed. The blog’s private
Facebook group, where users can share
offers, has 1.9 million members. She once
paid for a £1,200 shop entirely with
vouchers, and donated the goods to
charity. In 2020 she released a book
sharing her best money saving tips.
Smith, who lives in Great Yarmouth,
Norfolk, saves her family £3,5,00 to
£4,000 a year by making the most of
discount codes, cashback apps, loyalty
cards, coupons and bargain sites. She is
not alone. Searches for food and drink
discount vouchers have surged 550 per
cent on Latest Deals, a website that
has 2.5 million UK users. Shopmium, an
app used by 2.2 million UK households
that provides cashback on groceries, has
gained 35 per cent more customers in the
past two months.
Smith has seen a huge increase in the
number of people visiting her site. On
Monday afternoon 1.4 million people
used her Facebook group to search fordeals, she said. Last year she typically had
no more than 100,000 at a time. “People
who haven’t used a coupon in their life
come to me and ask how I do it,” she said.
Couponing used to mean handing over
a piece of paper at the till, but now there
are apps. “It takes two seconds to load up
an app and see what you need to buy.”
Smith, who lives with her husband and
four young children, spends £60 on the
family’s groceries each week. She shops
around to compare prices, but her
favourite supermarket is Lidl. She cuts
costs by using apps such as Shopmium,
GreenJinn and CheckoutSmart, which
give users cashback on specific items
after they upload receipts. Deals availa-
ble last week included £2 cashback on
Kellogg’s Bran Flakes at Morrisons with
CheckoutSmart, and 45p on raspberries
at Sainsbury’s with GreenJinn.
Using coupon apps to get discounts
and cashback every time she goes gro-
cery shopping saves Smith about £1,500
a year. “People used to go to the checkout
and be embarrassed about using cou-
pons. Now, having these apps means
that no one’s going to know.”
Smith scours internet forums, web-
sites and apps for discount codes when
she is shopping online. She has down-
loaded an internet browser extension
called Honey, which runs while you are
shopping and automatically looks for
coupon codes, suggesting ones you have
missed when you come to check out. Last
year browser extensions saved her more
than £1,000.
She saves a further £1,000 buying food
that is approaching or has just passed its
best before date. She gets up to 90 per cent
off snacks, cereals and packaged goods
by using the website Clearance XL, which
sells out-of-date food. “A lot of people get
confused by the difference between
use-by date and best before dates. In gen-
eral, with best before dates it’s perfectly
safe to eat the food afterwards,” said
Smith, who tried to convince her You-
Tube followers of this by eating food eight
months past its best before date while
pregnant. Another top recommendation
is the Too Good To Go app, which allows
users to buy unused food from cafés and
restaurants at a fraction of the price.
While apps are useful, some of Smith’s
favourite money-saving hacks require a
bit of legwork. She regularly writes to
brands letting them know she enjoys
using their products to secure discounts.
“A lot of people think to get coupons
they need to complain to a brand, but
that’s not the case. You’re more likely toI’ve saved my family money
since I was 11. Here are my tips
Holly Smith saves £3,500
a year using coupons,
and millions read her
blog to find out how,writes Lily Russell-Jones
£60
Smith’s weekly
spend to feed
her family of six9%
The CPI rate of
inflation for the
year to AprilHOLLY SMITH