Coupons and Vouchers

It's the time of the year that the quarterly coupons and vouchers pop through our letterbox ... along with the charity begging letters containing 'complementary' Christmas cards, raffle tickets to sell and free pens, none of which even get properly looked at.  I choose who gets my charitable donations, and any organisation wasting that much money on postings are not included.

 Anyway in years gone by when we've been using our M&S and Tesco credit cards to pay for building supplies and larger items (always paid off in full at the end of the month of course from the money we had saved to make the purchases) the amount of coupons we received were brilliant and helped out during many a blog money saving Challenge.  Now with everything necessary purchased and our spending cut right back,  tbe coupons are much lower in value ... but still worth having in my opinion.

As you can see we have got £8.50 in Tesco Clubcard vouchers ...

...and our M&S card has given us a total of £6 in vouchers. 

We no longer have a Tesco credit card and just use a Clubcard to pick up points, most of which we accrue for fuel for the vehicles.  Although with Alan now predominantly working from home even our fuel bill has plummeted , thank goodness.

So my question to you ... what would you do with a grand total of £8.50 to spend in Tesco and £6 to spend in M&S?

Sue xx

Do I Still Do the Things

I've been asked a couple of times if I still do any of the things I used to post about on my various Challenge blogs and on here ... well the answer is a resounding YES  :-)

As you can see from the top photo I religiously check after I have shopped at Asda to make full use of their Asda Price Guarantee thingy.  They don't advertise this anymore either in store or on the receipts, but it is still very much in operation.  Nine times out of ten I get a voucher after I check my receipt online.  

We still get our Tesco Clubcard vouchers, and make good use of them to buy things that we can't grow or produce ourselves.  Although we have now cancelled our Tesco credit card and use just one credit card to keep things simpler (of course paying it off in full every month).

We went out to buy Alan some new jeans the other day as he has lost weight and was having real trouble keeping his jeans up, at the checkout we were given this voucher along with our receipt ...

... when we got home our latest quarterly Marks and Spencer's vouchers were laying on the doormat. 

So if I put one with the other and I will be able to get £35 worth of food for just £15.  Yes ... a little happy dance was danced :-)

Oh and although I have stopped buying this magazine on subscription, I just couldn't resist this offer when I was in Tesco the other night after the Trelawnyd Flower Show,  I must have had growing things still on my mind.

But I just couldn't say no to almost £24 worth of free seeds and a free dvd (which isn't brilliant but I did get a good recipe from it for Cucumber Pickle).

Inside the magazine was this, now the question is  ... can I resist the thought of another £36 worth of seeds and three copies of the magazine for just £5 ?  You just have to be very careful to cancel the subscription before they take the next payment out, something they are relying on you not to do.

So as this all shows I am still a sucker for coupons, vouchers and freebies ... but as hobbies go this isn't so bad  :-)

Sue xx

Bargains, Coupons and Plans

I splurged the other week when I was in Tesco, they had the latest edition of Gardeners World in a bargain bag with gardening gloves, six packets of seeds and a year long '2 for 1 entry' card to gardens all over the UK.  As we are going to the Eden Project soon and this was included as one of the 'gardens' it really did make sense to have this particular splurge.  It's £25 to get into the Eden Project for an adult, so my £6.75 purchase price of this special edition was well worth it.

And of course I have now have some more vegetable seeds to add to my ever growing stash, the flower seeds have already been sown, as this year we are working on expanding our planting to attract bees, ready for next years bee keeping plan.

We spent Monday morning planting shrubs in Nut Wood and already this is having the desired effect, the place is suddenly alive with bees, other insects and of course this in turn has meant that more small insect eating birds are to be seen flitting in and out of the nut trees.

It's nice when a plan starts to come together  :-)

Of course, as I used to blog about on a regular basis, we still get our money off vouchers from both Tesco ....

... and M&S for using our credit cards.

(We still pay the amount owed off in full every month to avoid interest payments.)

Obviously the amount we are getting has gone down significantly and will be going down even more from now on, but a couple of months ago I did persuade Lovely Hubby to make a large company purchase on the M&S card and then pay it off with company money hence the large amount of M&S vouchers this time ... every little helps ... to quote the other supermarket   ;-)

In our push for self sufficiency we have done brilliantly with vegetables and not too bad at all with fruit but obviously there will always be things we can't produce ourselves, so we have decided that coupons, vouchers and all the money from the sale of vegetable plants and surplus vegetables will form our money pot to buy the things that we can't produce ourselves.  Just things like various flours, brown and basmati rices, pastas, olive oil etc.   In that way hopefully we will be self sufficient with food, because the foods we can grow ourselves will finance the foods that we can't grow ourselves.

Anyway enough for now, time to get on with some chores in any shade that I can find.

Sue xx