However, if splashing out isn’t your thing, it’s also a great opportunity to bag yourself some freebies and much appreciated discounts. Here’s how.

Free Krispy Kreme Donut

You get a free donut just for signing up to the ‘Friends of Krispy Kreme’ mailing list, but they’ll also send you a voucher once a year for a free birthday treat too. Krispy Kremes are expensive, so this makes for a delicious birthday indulgence! Yum!

Free £5 Paperchase Voucher

I’ve been a member of the Paperchase ‘Treat Me’ loyalty card scheme, ever since it first trialled in Scotland – it was later, thankfully, introduced to the rest of the UK, so even since moving away I was able to hold on to the perks.

Basically, the way the card works, you get a £5 voucher for every £50 you spend in store. You also get a bonus £5 when your birthday comes around. The downside to this is that you have to remember to spend it – you only have two weeks before the credit disappears! Luckily, Paperchase has lots of cute stationery items for £5 and below, so you could even grab yourself a freebie!

Birthday Discounts and Free Prosecco at Restaurants

A lot of chain restaurants will send you special offers when you sign up to their mailing lists. These vary from a bottle of free prosecco at Zizzi, to a free main course at Bella Italia, and £20 off a £50 spend at Ask Italian.

Free Cookie at Subway

If you sign up for a SUBWAY card, and download the app, you can claim a free cookie on your birthday from Subway.

Bonus discounts at M&S

If you have a Marks and Spencer Sparks card you get bonus vouchers when your birthday rolls around, including an extra 10% off food if you feel like getting yourself a Colin the Caterpillar cake to accompany your free cookie and doughnut. If you know where to look, you can find a lot of different discounts. If there’s a shop that you use a lot, it might be worth signing up to their mailing list just to see. If you don’t like receiving a lot of potentially ‘junk’ emails, you might want to quickly create a throwaway email account so that you can receive relevant offers.

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From polystyrene cups of mulled wine at £4 to fairground rides for a fiver, you name it – I’ve been fleeced.

But kids need entertaining over the festive period (three, in my case) and money doesn’t grow on Christmas trees – not that I know of.

There is a saviour…just don’t remind Andre Walker, of the New York Times.

“Nobody goes to libraries anymore. Close the public ones and put the books in schools,” he tweeted.

If the London-based columnist thought this post on a late October Sunday would quickly slide away into the Twittersphere, largely uncared for, he was in for a rude awakening.

My children started going to the library from just a few months of age.

One of the most impassioned defences – among thousands – of the library came from Alex Halpern, eponymous ‘Angry Librarian’ who fired off a torrent of Tweets, including:

“[The library meets] a community’s need for educational and recreational materials, PARTICULARLY FOR YOUNG FAMILIES…”

And so they do.

While my chief reason for library usage right now is to entertain my children, the facilities and activities provided – either free of charge or heavily subsidised – do indeed bring a whole community together.

My children started going to the library from just a few months of age, making the most of the ‘rhyme-time’ classes often hosted by the librarians themselves, whose role has vastly expanded in recent years.

Over the summer, my four-year-old got her first taste of the theatre at her local library: ‘Alan In Wonderland’ by the Booster Cushion Theatre for Children. A one-man show, I take my hat off to anyone who can keep a group of kids enthralled for more than a few minutes, let alone the near one-hour performance that day.

There is far too much required reading out there to not require a bit of borrowing from time to time.

Over the course of the summer holidays there was also a reading challenge to encourage repeat visits as well as arts and crafts tables set up for youngsters, to produce their own masterpiece for the eye-catching backdrop.

Throw in a sensory area, puzzles and games (my four-year-old has now learned to lose as well as win at ‘Connect Four’ as well as being a dab-hand at ‘Guess Who’) and even a ‘normal’ day with no particular activities planned can offer a whole world of discovery.

And I have barely touched upon the books.

As an author, I should, and do, encourage people to go out and purchase books as often as they can but there is far too much required reading out there to not require a bit of borrowing from time to time.

Even in this digital age, there is only so much a student, author or aficionado can learn about a particular subject via the Google search engine.

Even the poor, put-upon Mr Walker – appropriately as we are approaching Christmas – has now become a wise man:

“Dear (and I can’t believe I am saying this) all 110,000 people who replied to my Tweet about libraries.

“Your sheer numbers have proved the point that libraries aren’t as unpopular as I believed this morning…”

From ‘Christmas Craft’ sessions to writing a letter to Santa, my local libraries have my kids and me heavily pencilled in for a few visits between now and the New Year…guaranteeing a warmer glow than any thimble-full of gluhwein could ever provide.

Photo by Oscar Chevillard on Unsplash

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This year, UK Money Bloggers has partnered with BT MyDonate and come up with a waste-less, give-more kind of gift swap. Where, instead of your secret Santa picking your name out of a hat and then buying you a gift, you state whether you’d like them to make a charity donation in your name instead using #GiveOrGift.

If you’re doing the donating on behalf of another, all you have to do is to visit BT.com/GiveOrGift and follow the simple steps to donate your present fund. If you’d like to give a little something in the grand handover, you can print out this snazzy gift certificate.

Generally, Secret Santa calls for a spend of between £5 and £10, but you can donate as little or as much money as you like – this is up to the discretion of your Secret Santa organiser. When you donate, your money will be evenly split between these six wonderful charities:

• The Trussell Trust (food poverty)
• Shelter (housing and homelessness)
• Citizens Advice (money and legal help)
• Children in Need
• Stand up to Cancer
• DEC (humanitarian crisis)

How do I donate?

If you’d like to run #GiveOrGift at your place of work (or with friends and family), then download the Secret Santa pack here which contains your #GiveOrGift instruction sheet, poster, certificate, and signup sheet – where all those taking part in either gifting or giving can make themselves known.

What are we doing here at Mouthy Money headquarters?

Being the kind souls that we are here at the Mouthy HQ, everyone has chosen to donate their Secret Santa gift to #GiveOrGift – what a fab result. We’re so proud of our team!

We really like the certificate idea, too, so each person who is donating money on behalf of another will give a fun personalised certificate. We’re also going to hold a little competition for the most creative certificate. Yes, we’re really stretching out the fun here!

If you’re giving #GiveOrGift a go, we’d love to know! Tweet us @mouthymoney using the hashtag #GiveOrGift.

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Take advantage of regular eBook deals

If you constantly have your head buried in a Kindle or e-reader, like me (normally to avoid making eye contact with anyone on public transport), you are probably already aware that although eBooks are cheaper than physical books, they aren’t that much cheaper – and buying them regularly can still put a pretty big dent in your wallet.

Luckily for you, readers, big eBook retailers like Amazon, iBooks and Kobo are constantly promoting new and slightly older titles for a fraction of the price.

Amazon run daily, weekly and monthly Kindle deals – allowing you to buy eBooks for as little as 99p, saving you a whopping 75%. If you’re a traditionalist and eBooks aren’t your thing, they also run paperback promotions offering 3 paperbacks for £10 – a significant saving on a £7.99 paperback.

iBooks offer similar promotions along with a Free Book of the Week and if you join Kobo you can get a free £3 account credit that you can put towards some of their fab buy-two-get-one-free deals.

Swap books with friends

Swap with friends, swap with family, swap with the person sitting next to you by the pool looking forlorn because they, like you, didn’t stuff enough books into their suitcase. It’s easy, free, and you might discover an author or genre you wouldn’t have picked up yourself.

If you have exhausted all your possible swaps you can turn to Read it, Swap it for the opportunity to swap your old beaten-up copy of Of Mice and Men you’ve had on your shelf since you did GCSE English for one of their 295,435 books. It’s super easy, too, and the Telegraph has stated that ‘even the most leisurely reader, averaging a book a month, can save £100 a year this way.’

Once you find a book you would like, you can request to swap it. That member can then browse through your virtual bookshelf and find something to trade. Once you have agreed all you have to pay for is postage, and voilà you are one step closer to a whole new library!

Audio books don’t have to break the bank

If you prefer listening to your books instead of reading them, then you can still build up your library without shelling out the big bucks. When you sign up for a 30-day free trial with Audible you can download any audiobook for free. I chose the biggest book I could think of, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It lasted hours – and at 832 pages I really do mean hours and hours – of listening.

After that, audiobooks can cost anywhere between £15-30, but you can sample them beforehand to make sure they’re worth the investment and ensure you’re not going to rip your ears off at the sound of the narrator’s voice.

Another way to get your audio fix is by tuning into BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime. They showcase readings of the latest fiction and break it down into bitesize episodes (15 mins) so you can download and listen on the go. And the best thing? It’s completely free!

Second hand books

 I view second hand book shops as treasure coves; you never know what you’re going to stumble upon. I once found a signed paperback from a beloved author and audibly gasped so loudly and dramatically, the old lady next to me had to ask if I was alright.

From Skoob Books in London, to Westwood Books in Cumbria, second hand bookstores are beloved up and down the country – and they are the perfect place to pick up a new read on the cheap. And if you find yourself on the South Bank, killing time before a show, or waiting for that friend who is always late for dinner, then make sure you check out the Southbank Centre Book Market whose rows and rows of books are just tucked under Waterloo Bridge.

Special mention has to go to Oxfam Books, my favourite haunting ground. Depending on the format (hardback or paperback) and the edition, you will probably spend somewhere between 99p- £2.49 per book meaning you can stock up on four or five guilt-free.

Finally, never underestimate a good car-boot sale. After years of trawling round rows of cars with my father I can guarantee that you can pick up some absolute gems for as little as 20p.  So then it’s really down to you to figure out how many you can carry back to your own car!

Happy reading!

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Bedrooms must be an actual bedroom. Not a cupboard under the stairs!

It’s rarely an uneventful fortnight. We lurch from one tearful teenage crisis (Spanish sim card not working) to another (lost earrings/sprained ankle/fall-out with friends). The teachers aren’t without their dramas, either. One Russian guest lost a dozen 15 year-old girls. She hadn’t told them which station to get off the train at. Some girls ended up stranded, and hysterical, at the end of the line in Portsmouth & Southsea. Others had taken it upon themselves to make their own way back , oblivious to their teacher’s frantic search.

We lurch from one tearful teenage crisis to another.

It’s a fascinating lesson in our cultural differences. And time differences, too, as I once discovered at 5am. I was woken up by loud skype chat coming from the landing, just outside my bedroom, where the wifi signal was presumably strongest. She wanted to catch her family at home in Turkey before they went out for the day.

Bedrooms have to be, and I quote from the agency guidelines, an ‘actual bedroom’. This wording was chosen to dissuade those hoping to pass off their under-the-stairs cupboard as adequate sleeping space for two. This was rumoured to have happened, once, when an unscrupulous chancer rigged up a bunk bed in a space most of us would only use to store the hoover. How he escaped the usual rigorous home inspection visit I do not know.

Plan to spend as little as possible on groceries to maximise the profit from the hosting fee, but without leaving guests hungry. Shopping at Lidl often means, ironically, serving food that more closely resembles meals from their home country than from Britain. The agency suggested I should dish up whatever I would normally cook (this would be so much more fun if I routinely made beans on toast). At mealtimes, hosts are expected to offer cultural insights and encourage the students to speak English. Initially, dinners can be awkward affairs. Suspicious, they’re prone to inspecting each morsel of unfamiliar food on their plate. I try to overlook the ‘is this arsenic?’ expressions on their faces and ask them about their day. Their language skills improve dramatically during their stay, gradually becoming confident enough to chat happily about their excursions and – more importantly – their latest purchases in Top Shop.

 Here are some examples of Homestay agencies.

English Language Homestays

Embassy English

Sul-Schools

Tempted now? Ask your local language schools for information on applying to be a homestay host.

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1.  How long have you been brewing?
   About three years, I started out with kits.
2.  How long, or how many attempts, did it take til you made something drinkable?
   I wasn’t really happy with the results from kits, mostly due to buying cheap kits and using table sugar. As soon as I started brewing all grain there was a massive improvement, it tasted like real beer.
3. How much were the initial set up costs?
   For kit brewing you only need a fermenter (a large vessel that cultivates the yeast), large spoon, syphon (to move liquid upwards), hydrometer (an instrument which measures the density of liquids) and a crown capper for bottling (a tool which fits beer tops to bottles and costs about £35).
   For extract brewing, you just need to add a large pan and a thermometer.
   All grain brewing requires more equipment and costs more but can be done fairly cheaply if you get creative. You can buy a mash tun (a vessel used to heat and mix milled grain and water to a pulp), boiler and chiller for less than £150. I used a secondhand Burco boiler, a £6 cooler box with a filter made from braided steel hose with a syphon tube and a copper immersion chiller. It cost me less than £50 to step up from kits.
4. How much does each brew cost?
   I can make 40 bottles for less than £15 (after the initial set up costs).
5. What are the highlights of your brewing career? What’s the biggest batch you’ve made?
   One of the beers I brewed with a friend came 3rd in a homebrew competition at Brewdog in Manchester, another came 4th. I’ve now got a 70 litre pan so that can do 50 litre batches. I did 90 odd litres in a day for a friend’s wedding.
6.  Are there any downsides to making your own beer?  Do you have any advice for a would-be brewer?
   It can be pretty messy and doesn’t always make you popular at home, you can spend a lot of time mopping up. Make sure everything is cleaned and sanitised. Fermentation temperature can make a big difference. Give the finished beer time to condition.

Want to know more? Here’s a great guide to home brewing.

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Here I am, yours truly, a very keen recyclist (is that a word?) While I use lots of rubbish to make pieces of fine art, with all other rubbish I have to admit defeat and commit to the recycling pile in my cupboard. All the time I am hoping that someone else will make

something of them, not just burn them or bury them in landfill.

Lately though the situation has developed into a story, or even mini tragedy. My boxes were taken from outside my house. It has been quite amusing watching the changing of boxes since the system began and now the street is a charming patchwork mixture of green, black and random boxes for the storage of waiting recycling. When my boxes disappeared, I rang the council to get replacements.  I had to pay £6 each for the new boxes which ’would arrive in two or three weeks.’ Seemed a bit steep at the time having to pay again for these boxes so that someone could help themselves, but I coughed up.

Why should you have to pay to get your boxes replaced if they were stolen?

Guess what? Six weeks came and went and no boxes arrived, so I rang the correct department at the council. To get through I had to call three times and ended up waiting on the phone for 31 minutes in total. I hope you are counting! Meanwhile I dutifully took some of my rubbish to the tip and found some other receptacles for the rest.

Weeks later, still no recycling boxes. Saving the planet is an expensive business

I have since rang twice more to be told that the boxes had been delivered (they hadn’t) and that I would have to register a complaint. So I got given another reference number and a number to call to complain. By this time, when I called the complaints number, they

had all gone home. Try again tomorrow, and then the next day. Are you still counting?

Meanwhile my erstwhile keen desire to recycle has worn a little thin. But I am not giving up. How much more has it cost me beyond my first rather grudging payment of £18?

Has anyone else had their boxes stolen, or had to cough up for the boxes?

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But somehow the minute I fell pregnant, the notion of a bargain was swiftly replaced by the thrill of a whole new shopping category. That and the fact that I was sucked right into the ‘spend over £50 on nine different occasions and get £20 off your 10^th purchase’ trance.

Even typing that now makes me shudder. But at the time, in my sleep-deprived state, spending more than I needed to in order to get a tiny bit of money off a future purchase seemed entirely normal. And I fell right under The Money Spell.

My compulsive shopping ended up with many unnecessary items – high-chair-only toys anyone?

£40 for a baby seat (that basically celebrates your wee one being able to sit up) along with £14 for a teething toy giraffe easily constituted a quick shopping sprint during little missy’s morning nap. And meant I was on my way to the elusive £20 off – maybe another giraffe – at the end of the spending rainbow!

Besides the fact that my compulsive shopping ended up with many unnecessary items (high-chair only toys anyone?) along with many unused ones – travel blackout blinds I invariably forgot to pack – it also highlighted how easily blindsided I was by retailing magic. And black magic at that.

Don’t get me wrong, there were other high street brands out there I could and should have chosen from. Supermarkets, for example, should have been my friend. Tesco’s baby club is brilliant and brimming full of special offers and genuine baby bundles for mums. And I wish M&S’s shiny new Sparks Card had been around when my little princess first arrived. A proper loyalty card with regular rewards, bursting with weekly offers on clothes and food.

Nowadays, I still nurture my shopping gene. I just do it slightly differently; almost like my mum used to careful managing her ‘family allowance’ (Google it, peeps). I save up my Nectar points and use them on Sainsbury’s amazing Tu range for kids rather than splurging more cash to get to the measly money off.

And the result is genius – if I do say so myself – as Princess gets a full outfit (including dress and accessories), I have more money for coffee and cake and I don’t need to hide receipts from my husband anymore! Bonus.

Emma Evans is Founder of Wylie Communications Ltd.

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I am a coeliac. This means that I have coeliac’s disease. I am, consequently, medically intolerant to gluten. I am not doing it as a diet and I am not self-diagnosed.

Thank goodness we got that sorted out.

It’s not that I have anything against those who choose to cut gluten out of their diet per se, I just don’t understand why you would deliberately restrict your menu choices and increase the cost of your weekly shop.

Believe me, there’s no debate to be had here. A gluten-free diet is unequivocally, astronomically more expensive. Illustrating the disparity is simple: a bag of Tesco Value plain flour costs 45p; whereas a bag of Doves Farm gluten free plain flour comes in at £2.19.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the side effects, I’d be buying it by the hundredweight, cutting it into lines, putting on the Hendrix and closing the curtains.

A gluten-free diet is unequivocally, astronomically more expensive.

Anyway, leaving my strange mind to one side for a minute, I thought that I would share my wisdom today with my fellow sufferers about reducing the expense of life without bread.

The first – and most important – lesson that I learned, when I was diagnosed back in 2012, is that shop-bought baked goods are crushingly expensive. Also, with few exceptions, the contents taste like the boxes they come in. Home baking is much more salubrious to both the taste buds and bank accounts. I am no baker, despite having watched Bakeoff in its entirety*. Nonetheless, I have churned out some brownies, lemon drizzle cakes and the odd Victoria sponge. Be warned… it takes a while to get used to the quirks of the flour but, if you persevere, you can save yourself a bit of money.

In a similar vein, cooking standard meals becomes something of a minefield. My advice here is this – turn to the exotic. Whereas heavy British stews and pies are loaded with expensive meats, flour and pastry, Moroccan (other countries are available) dishes invariably make use of cheaper cuts, pulses and less flour.

Having conquered cooking, you must now turn to face the spectre of bread.

Want gluten-free? Try eating something more exotic than British food.

Have you ever eaten a sandwich, filled with the silt that clings to the underside of Brighton pier? I think I might have. The last time I tried to make myself a sandwich using untoasted gluten-free bread I choked for ten minutes, before publicly coughing up the offending item. As well as being basically inedible, an average loaf costs 15p per slice. Consequently, my advice is to limit your consumption of bread. I opt for soups, vegetables, pulses and rice instead. A comprehensive list of alternative ideas can be found here.

What is the message that I have tried to convey here? As usual, I’ve sort of forgotten.

Ah, here we are. If you are a diagnosed coeliac, take some time to familiarise yourself with different cuisines rather than blundering on with pricey ingredients and substandard results. This will yield greater satisfaction in terms of both budget and taste. Similarly, it must be recognised that sandwiches are… unpleasant… and unnecessary, especially since we have ready access to a plethora of alternatives at any local supermarket.

Nonetheless, as I stand in this abandoned quarry, shirtless and yelling into the abyss, my real question is this: why would anyone ever choose to ‘go gluten-free’?

*This does not stop me criticising, loudly, when someone’s Créme Pâtissiere curdles.  

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I have a complicated relationship with exercise. At school I was the kid who cowered whenever a ball approached.

As a student I tried yoga and several dance classes, but never fell into a routine to go often enough. Around that time I also got a DVD on Yogalates, which is apparently a trademarked exercise routine combining yoga and Pilates. It’s quite good if you actually have the discipline to plough through the entire disc on your own volition.

Lately, I have managed to drag myself to the gym intermittently. Several times in some months and then not at all for the next couple. And no, I’m not foolish enough to pay for a membership.

I was the kid that ran away from the ball.

The boyfriend’s mum lives in a building with a gym and swimming pool. So we visit her and also the gym. It’s a small one, with two regulars (meaning, always there) – a white-haired man of indeterminable age, who likes speedy walking on the treadmill and leaving the steam room door open (to let out the extra steam), and a guy with a large sweaty belly, who stands around the gym area making conversation, then goes to the sauna and jumps in the pool afterwards without showering.

Sadly I had to share the steam room with the man and his large sweaty belly.

As inspiring as this sounds, going there takes time and it’s a shame to be indoors when it does happen to be sunny. So last bank holiday weekend, when the sun was shining and the Thames was glistening, I proposed running instead. And it went well, mostly. Well, I survived. And even have some observations to share with you.

Running tips for absolute beginners:

• Get proper attire. Nothing too floppy, trainers that fit (with properly tied laces) and proper socks. During the last half a mile I realised I need to invest in some better socks to replace the random stripy pair I got from H&M 7 years ago that are thinning around the heel. Good news is that the blister went away after two days.

• Vary the pace. Speeding up and slowing down makes the whole thing more bearable and keeps you going. The boyfriend taught me that. He is fitter than I am and knows stuff about exercise.

• Have a buddy. The boyfriend became somewhere between drill sergeant and life coach, but even having a friend who is going through the exact same pain is good (as long as they don’t drag you down with them).

• Pick a nice route. We kept to the river, so the route was sufficiently scenic and mostly devoid of crossings and traffic lights. Parks are another great option, as long as you steer clear of the main cycling, ballgames and dogwalking areas (which unfortunately make up most of most parks).

• Don’t be embarrassed. Easier said than done, but not making eye contact with people is quite a good way of forgetting they are there. As long as you don’t then run straight into them.

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