General Saving Tips

On Money Saving Expert’s website you can sign up to Martin Lewis’s Weekly Money Tips email. He gives you all the latest bargains, discount codes, offers and tools to help you make savings. 

The Tips, Tricks and Treats page pulls together everything from health and well-being suggestions to travel hints on how to make the most of your money. 

You can even give yourself a Money Makeover to check your bills and save money by working through your finances to get the best deals on your living costs from broadband to fuel. 

You might be able to save money on your bills by switching to a better deal. Using Open Banking, ApTap is a free and easy to use tool to help you stay on top of all of your bills and subscriptions across all of your bank accounts.  

ApTap will automatically find and organise all of your bills to find the best deals on the market based on your spending and service usage. It can help you take take control and simply switch broadband or energy within minutes. 

Saving money can be difficult when you're are on a tight budget, but it can be equally hard if you spend money when you know you shouldn’t. 

Martin Lewis has developed a free, wallet-sized Money Mantra Card to help you. You can print, cut and pop this into your purse or wallet and use it before you buy. There are two sides; one for if you’re skint and the other if you’re not. Use the side which best suits your circumstances and check it every time you shop to remind yourself if you should spend money or not. 

Money Saving Expert's Stop Spending budgeting tool has top tips on how to take control of your spending habits. It is aimed at people who might need more than switching or saving tips to help improve their finances. 

If you can save, knowing where to save can be the key to making the most of your money. Savings accounts have seen dramatic drops in interest rates meaning you might not earn much money on your savings but you can still gain the overall benefits of savings. 

The Money Helper and Money Saving Expert websites both have sections on Saving Accounts which breaks down the different features including:

• a savings accounts need to know guide
• the best saving accounts on offer
• a savings calculator to help you work out how much interest you’ll be paid, how long you need to save for something or how much you should save to reach your savings goal.

Credit Unions can be useful for saving and offer a wide range of options including Christmas saving accounts, junior saving accounts and even cash ISAs. Some credit unions offer their members to pay into savings directly from their pay. This involves a direct deduction from your pay that goes straight into your savings account before you get your wages. 

Credit union members also receive a dividend on their savings. This is a cut of the credit union’s profits and can be as high as 3% in some cases.

If you get Universal Credit or Working Tax Credits, you might be eligible to join the UK’s Government’s Help to Save Scheme. 

This scheme will give you an extra 50p for every £1 you save over four years. The GOV.UK website explains how it works, how to apply and if it will affect your benefits. 

There's a Money Saving Expert (MSE) guide on the Help to Save Scheme to help you consider if this is a good option for you, including what you need to know about the scheme and how to use your Help to Save account.