ENTERTAIN YOUR KIDS FOR FREE

Sometimes on my site I tend to state the obvious, but on occasion the best things are hidden in plain sight.

When money is a bit tight and you can't afford to bring your kids to expensive play centres or buy them expensive toys, you can look to the toys that nature has provided.

Credit: andythedub

I am lucky enough to live in Dublin in Ireland, an area that is surrounded by natural beauty only a short drive away. 

Cancel Sky TV, save over €500 a year and still get great channels

I was paying out approximately €45 per month for my Sky TV package, this was money I could no longer afford to pay with my salary slashed in the recession.

So I called them up to cancel. I was eventually successful after sitting through the begging of the sales person to not leave and offering me all sorts of delights (all of which were going to cost me money of course).

A simple trick to save money on Insurance.

Two years ago when I was renewing my home insurance, I happened to have a particularly helpful guy on the other end of the phone. Sure he was trying to close a sale but I can usually tell the real ones from the fake ones.

Credit: Wikimedia

Anyway, by chance I happened to be renewing on Friday afternoon, little did I know, this was the reason I was able to haggle my way to a great low price.

When our transaction was complete the salesman told me that all of the sales staff in his company have weekly sales targets and quotas so if they are failing to reach them come Friday afternoon, they give out great quotes to customers in order to close the sale before close of business.

Save money by avoiding hardware stores!

A few years ago when I was renting an apartment with my girlfriend (now wife), she accidentally dropped a bottle of perfume in the sink. This resulted in a massive crack down the middle of the inside of the basin. We had only moved in a couple of months and as this was our first time renting, we freaked out! 

Not the actual sink!

I phoned the landlord and explained what had happened, I asked him if he wanted to take care of it and be reimbursed or was he happy for me to pay for the replacement sink and installation. Being a middle aged stoner, he asked me to take care of it and keep him updated.

I then set about trying to figure out how much this was going to cost me, we didn't have a lot of money between us but we needed a sink so this needed to happen soon!

We went to the large hardware stores in our town with our measurements and had a look at similar sized white sinks. The sinks we found that matched the size we needed were €129 in one store or €230 in another. We didn't have enough for either so we had to put our thinking caps on.