Image by Andres Rueda

If you’re getting a bit low on cash, the idea of making a budget or planning your spending can sound like a nightmare.

Never fear! There are little steps that you can take that are little effort but could save you hundreds of pounds. Read on to discover our top tips on saving money without (too many) painful sacrifices!

Write everything down in a money diary

If you have an empty bank account and have no idea why, chances are you are spending money without even thinking about it. In this age of debit and credit cards, it’s frighteningly easy to buy things without realising you are spending money.

Bring things back into perspective by keeping a note of every single penny you spend. By writing everything down you are forcing yourself to think about your purchase and justify it to yourself and seeing all your impulse buys in cold black and white will give you a very real idea of what all those little treats add up to.

You might even get to the stage where the idea of admitting to a silly purchase in your diary is enough to put you off buying the thing entirely!

Sort out all your credit cards

If you have a whole pack of credit cards in your wallet, then it might be an idea to pay some of them off. Buying things on credit is really expensive and it will only get worse if you only make the minimum payments.

Look at the APR (Annual Percentage Rate) of all of your borrowing and see which is the lowest. If you can, shift as much debt as you can to the card with the lowest APR. The lower the percentage, the less interest you will get charged and the less the debt will cost you.

Now make a point of paying your debt with the highest APR FIRST. Pay the minimum payments on the rest of your cards and divert the rest of your money towards paying off the most expensive card. The quicker you pay off the expensive debts, the less those debts will cost you.

Once you have paid off the most expensive card, move on to the next most expensive, and once that’s paid off start paying off the next most expensive… and keep going until you are debt free.

Buy own-brand at the supermarket

By switching to own-brand stuff, like washing up liquid and cat food, you can cut nearly a third off your bill at the supermarket.

Don’t be snobbish – just because something has plain packaging doesn’t mean that it won’t taste great.  On some products you might not even taste the difference in quality.

The branding that suggests that stuff is of higher quality is all show… There have even been rumours that different brands of food are made in the same factory using the same ingredients, so make sure you prefer the taste of the food itself rather than the packaging it comes in!

What are your favourite money saving tips? Let us know in the comments section below!

Not something I have ever really thought about before, but I just stumbled on a post on LifeHacker about How To Clean Your Credit Card and I guess it does make some sense if you are someone who constantly has to get a replacement card because the magnetic strip keeps refusing to swipe properly everytime you are in a shop with a queue of people behind you.

For myself it is always the signature and security code which tend go first and there is little I can think of (most obviously the use of clear nail polish) which will cure that problem without the risk of constant queries over whether you have tried to tamper with the card.

If anyone does have any suggestions, please let us know otherwise I will just have to continue eating shop assistants to get over my embarrassment at having my card rejected again.