My gut reaction, like a lot of people I imagine, is “how on earth am I going to afford that?” but after sitting down and thinking about things I’m a little calmer.

First off I didn’t think “How can I get more money in?” but rather “How can I make the best use of the money I’ve got?” and I’ve come up with several, rather common sense ways to stretch out the money I’ve got and I’m hoping some of these will help you out.

Switch of the Sky box and TV when not in use

I don’t know about you but I’ve got my Sky Box, TV and DigiSender in the living room and another TV, DVD and the receiver for the DigiSender in the bedroom. That’s a lot of things to be turned on just for watching TV, especially when we’re only watching TV between 6pm and 10pm. I’ve now got in the habit of turning it all off for the other 20 hours a day that it’s not in use. Those of you who have Sky+ may be aware that it has an Auto Standby feature where it goes into standby when it has not been used for 2 hours after 11 pm.

PC Power Saving

Apply a power saving scheme to your PC and switch it off if it’s not needed – A PC switched on and left running 24 hours a day would result in electricity costs of £139 per year (Source: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/efm/1-2-20.html). In addition, if you have an old CRT monitor then consider upgrading to more energy efficient TFT one.

Energy Saving Adapters

A lot of people leave their monitors and speaks on even though the computer itself it turned off which will again be wasting energy. Now you can purchase Energy Saving Adapters which have 1 master and 2 slave sockets on them and the appliances in the slave sockets will only be turned on if there is power being drawn through the master socket. So, plug your PC into the master socket and the speakers and monitor in the slave sockets and then when you turn of your PC the speaker and monitor will automatically be turned off too!

Energy Saving Light Bulbs

I’ve just changed all my light bulbs in the house to energy saving ones and fair enough it’s a different colour of light and takes a little time to warm up but I’m looking forward to the price saving. You can buy the bulbs for a couple of pounds each in Tesco so it’s not like it’s a big expense. Take the advertised energy saving with a pinch of salt though… I saw the big save 80% compared to your traditional bulb but on closer inspection this was based on the equivalent wattage i.e. if you buy a 20W Energy Saving Light Bulb (equivalent to a 100W traditional bulb) and you’re using it to replace a 100W bulb then you will save 80% however in my case I was replacing 60W bulbs so I’m only saving 66% but it’s still a good saving.

Also, if you’re a British Gas customer then you should be receiving 4 free Energy Saving Light Bulbs absolutely free courtesy of British Gas so you’ve got even less reason not to change!

Solar Powered Chargers

I’ve been meaning to get one of these for a while now and the look like fantastic looking gadgets. You can leave your Solar Powered Chargers on your window sill at home catching the rays and charging up and then use it at night to charge up your mobile phone, or your MP3 player. If you do that on a regular basis you could probably stop charging your phone from the mains completely! It comes with a variety of connectors so you’re bound to find something you can charge with it.

mySupermarket.COM

I’m a regular Tesco shopper because that’s right beside my house but I often pass by a couple of ASDA stores and recently I’ve stared using mySupermarket.COM to see if I’m better off getting my shopping from ASDA. Some things only have a few pennies difference, but on the cart total it can make a big difference. Why not see if you can save money by getting some of your shopping at a different store!

So now I have a few things to try before I start panicking again and hopefully some of these ideas will help you out too!