Up the chimney, and start baking!

spend. Once you’ve got ten points, you get £10 off your next book purchase.

It keeps me away from Amazon and its click and collect service means that books I can’t find at my local Waterstones are delivered to it if I want to order and pick it up a little later on.

40 Unsubscribe from mailing lists

RETAILERS now routinely ask for email addresses when you make a purchase, or offer you a discount if you sign up to their newsletter.

But all this does is increase temptation. It can be hard to ignore a notification about an ‘unmissable’ sale at your favourite shop.

To avoid extra spending, unsubscribe from the lot.

41 Don’t store card details online

RETAILERS make it as easy as possible to shop on their websites. One way they do this is by storing customers’ bank details so they don’t even have to enter them when making a purchase.

However, friction in the payment process can be enough to slow you down and question whether you really need what you’re about to pay for.

Remove your payment details so that you have to enter them every time you buy something.

42 Go incognito when browsing the web

WHEN you search for a potential purchase online, that information is often stored on your web browser and you are then sent adverts enticing you to buy it.

However, if you do your shopping research in an incognito window – a special type of window that does not record what you have been searching for or reading online – your browser does not know what you’ve been looking at and so you will not receive tempting, personalised adverts.

43 Don’t check out online immediately

WHEN shopping online, put the item in your shopping basket, but then wait at least 24 hours before completing the transaction. This has two benefits. One, having slept on it you may realise you don’t need or want it that badly after all. And two, sometimes the retailer will see the item in your shopping basket and offer you a discount to coax you into buying it.

44 Ask for a price match in store

HAGGLING is often thought of as something done in markets. But you’d be surprised how many high street retailers will drop their prices if you ask. See if you can find the item cheaper online and then ask them to price match. Or simply ask if that is the cheapest price they can offer or if there are any further offers or discounts available. It doesn’t always work, but there is nothing to lose in trying.

Occasionally, I haggle if I have brought in more than a dozen shirts to get dry cleaned at the excellent Country Cleaners And Cobbler in Wokingham. Sometimes, James and Peter relent and give me a small discount. They keep my business as a result.

45 Shop at the wrong time of year

THE cheapest time to shop is always just after an event has ended. If you can afford to, stock up on Christmas cards, decorations, and wrapping paper in January, on summer clothes at the beginning of autumn – and buy Valentine’s Day cards later this month for use next year.

46 Claim cash you are entitled to

MILLIONS of households miss out on boosts to their income that they do not realise they are due. Retirees on low incomes may be eligible for pension credit, help with energy bills, housing costs and prescription costs.

Carers may be able to claim a carer’s allowance while parents who are not working may be able to claim for years towards their National Insurance record, boosting the state

47 Use all of your tax breaks

WE have lots of allowances that shelter our savings and investments from the taxman. Use them. For example, if you have investments held outside a tax-friendly Isa or pension, consider an arrangement called ‘bed and Isa’. This means shares held outside an Isa are sold and then immediately repurchased inside your Isa. Although there are charges involved – including stamp duty – it results in more of your portfolio sitting inside a taxfriendly wrapper. The amount of shares sold and rebought under a bed and Isa is limited by the £20,000 annual Isa allowance.

Also, if you are married or in a civil partnership, consider the inter-spousal transfer of shares and funds. By doing this, it means couples then have financial assets in their own names and can use separate annual capital gains tax allowances (£12,300) to mitigate any tax on

48 And track down old pensions

WE change jobs around 11 times during our working lives on average. With all that chopping and changing it can be easy to lose track of our pensions. There are around

1.6 million pensions worth around

£19.4 billion that have gone unclaimed. Yet, they are not hard to track down. Go to gov.uk/find-pensioncontact-details or phone the Pension

Tracing Service on

0800 731 0193. pension they eventually receive. People who live alone may be eligible for a discount on council tax bills. Go to gov.uk/benefits-calculators to check if you are eligible for anything you do not currently receive.

49 Include your oven in a deep clean

GIVING your home a good early spring clean can help reduce your energy bills. A clean oven door will stop the temptation to open it and check on your cooking, losing heat in the process.

A defrosted freezer and limescale-free kettle require less energy to work efficiently. Cleaning light fixtures and bulbs may render them brighter, and require fewer of them to be switched on to light up a room.

Added together, these steps could shave a few pounds off your annual energy bill.

50 Give old furniture a new lease of life

JOIN the modern craze of upcycling – in other words turning tatty junk into something of value. With a tool kit, lick of paint, varnish and imagination, you can save a fortune on new furniture by turning old pieces destined for the scrapheap into things of beauty.

For inspiration check out websites such as wikiHow and DIY Doctor – or look for tips on YouTube. If you master the upcycling art, you can even sell your works of genius on handcrafts trader Etsy.

M We would love to hear your top money-saving tips. Email money@mailonsunday.co.uk. We’ll publish the best of your ideas next week.