THIS Father’s Day, we speak to two money-saving dads.
They reveal their ultimate cost-saving tips for cash-strapped parents on food shopping and family days out . . .
Track down grub discounts
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DAD-of-one Tom Church is co-founder of latestdeals.co.uk – an online community where bargain hunters share the best offers they have spotted.
And it seems as if those deal-detecting skills run in the genes as his 20-month old son is already taking after his father.
Tom, 31, from London, says: “I call him Little Deals because on our first-ever trip to the supermarket he started picking out yellow sticker items.”
Here are Tom’s tips
LEARN WHAT TO BUY AND WHERE – when shopping for the family, it is important to know where to shop for what item.
Aldi is brilliant for picking up fresh fruit and vegetables at silly low prices, with its Super 6 offers.
It is fantastic for food and beauty dupes, plus it is cheap for nappies, batteries, tinned tuna and other fish.
But do not assume everything costs less there.
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I have previously found M&S was cheaper than Aldi for eggs and chicken wings.
The Latest Deals app has a supermarket comparison tool so you can check prices on the go.
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FIND BULK BARGAINS ON eBAY – coffee is a must for busy dads with young kids like me.
Now I buy Nespresso pods at huge discounts on specialist eBay stores, along with lots of other non-perishable items that are close to or past their best-before date.
I can’t tell the difference in taste with the coffee because the pods are so well sealed.
This week on eBay store Zenox Health you can get 80 Starbucks Nespresso pods for £19.99 with free delivery, which would cost you around £32 to buy elsewhere.
To find an eBay store go to ebay.co.uk/sns and then search for the shop’s name: Gronets, Priceless Discounts and Superpet are all discount stores worth checking out.
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ASK A ROBOT TO HELP YOU SAVE – to avoid throwing stuff away, when I don’t know what to cook from whatever’s left over in the fridge, I use artificial intelligence to help me.
I’ve downloaded the Bing app, which is an AI tool from Microsoft that works like a chatbot.
So I asked Bing, “I have a banana, chicken, onion. What can I cook?” And it came up with a delicious recipe for chicken with spiced rice and banana sambal.
- For more tips follow Tom on TikTok at @latestdeals.
Cut the cost of family fun
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PRIMARY school teacher and dad-of-two Olly Cator, from Norwich, runs the Savvy Dad blog and Facebook group.
He is always on the look out for cheap ways to keep his energetic sons Max, ten, and Samuel, seven, entertained.
Here Olly, 42, offers his top tips:
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THEATRE TRICKS – I make the most of Kids’ Week at London theatres to take the boys to see a West End show.
It should be called Kids’ Month as it runs for the whole of August.
One child aged 17 or under goes free when an adult pays full price. Booking is open now for gems such as Spongebob The Musical.
This year I’ve booked a surprise show for us . . . it cost £140 for two adults and two children compared to £208 full-price. See officiallondontheatre.com/kids-week.
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DEALS ON DAYS OUT – Theme parks and other attractions can blow a huge hole in your budget but there are lots of ways to get discounts.
The Sun Superdays promotions are great. For example, now you can collect codes for two free tickets to Warwick Castle worth more than £70.
Last year, we went to Chessington World of Adventures with Sun Superdays and the boys loved the Gruffalo River ride.
GAMING GAINS – Rather than pay for expensive consoles, my boys use cloud gaming. I bought a second-hand Nvidia Shield TV Pro for £115 from CeX instead of paying more than £400 for a PlayStation 5. They use this to play on services such as GeForce Now and Boosteroid – essentially Netflix for gaming.
Boosteroid is the cheapest at £6.40 per month. There’s plenty of free content, plus you can buy games that you can then play on the platform.
We bought Hogwarts Legacy for £39.79 from the CDKeys website to use on Boosteroid, instead of paying around £50 for a hard copy to play on a console.
- For more tips, follow Olly’s blog at savvydad.co.uk or at facebook.com/SavvyDadUK.
LOCKED-IN FUEL RATES COULD GET YOU IN A FIX
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ENERGY suppliers are launching fixed rate tariffs as they bid to tempt customers to lock in before a new price cap comes into force within weeks.
Four providers have interesting deals, many for existing customers only, but experts have urged households to think carefully before signing up.
The new offers come just two weeks before the price cap changes on July 1, bringing gas and electricity bills down by £426 to £2,074 a year for a home with typical energy use.
However, government discounts worth £400 a year on bills ended in April, so most households on standard variable rate tariffs won’t see their bills drop by much just yet. The new fixed rate deals might be tempting after energy prices soared last year as they offer certainty that payments won’t increase for a set period.
But you could end up being stuck paying more if prices fall in future.
Utility Warehouse has launched a one-year fix which is open to new and existing customers at £1,974 a year for a household with average energy use.
That’s a £100 saving over the next 12 months if the price cap stays at its current level. However, customers wishing to take up the offer are required to sign up for at least two other services offered by UW, such as mobile, broadband or insurance.
For many this will wipe out any savings from the tariff, especially as anyone who is mid-contract would face hefty exit fees to switch. Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “You need to be careful not to saddle yourself with something you don’t want – or pay more overall because you’re chasing a bargain for one aspect of the package.”
So Energy has a deal that’s open to new customers – a one-year fix that works out at £2,047 annually for a typical household, via Uswitch and Confused.com.
It‘s slightly cheaper than the £2,074 most will pay by remaining on their provider’s standard tariff (based on July’s price cap).
However, if the price cap falls in October, as experts predict, it could end up more expensive. Analysts at Cornwall Insight expect the cap to drop again to £1,969 a year from October, then to rise to £2,026 a year from January 2024.
But for some, paying a little more will be worth it for the peace of mind of knowing that their bills won’t soar should energy prices rise ahead of the current forecasts.
Ashton Berkhauer, energy expert at MoneySuperMarket, said: “If you’re offered a fixed tariff, take a moment to consider if it’s right for you.”
E.ON Next and Ovo Energy are both offering one-year fixed deals which are only open to their existing customers.
E.ON’s works out at £2,050 a year for a typical household — a little under the July cap — while Ovo’s is £2,220 a year, so quite a lot more.
By James Flanders
