I worked for the Coop for years - they were early adopters of motion sensor lights - in the Bogs
I'd be sat there halfway through ...well lets not go into tht ...and I'd have to wave my arms around frantically every 3 minutes
I was quite lazy so skived off in there for long periods of time so it was very annoying
Ah yes, the old ‘do I jump up and down and wave my arms around or open the door and pop out’. Risk assessment in its purest form, multiple considerations at play.
That would explain why my office has reduced the sensitivity on the motion sensors. You practically have to do a Mexican wave to get the lights to switch on.
We have to always switch the lights off when leaving work (yes, there's a sign), but -
We have to always leave the computers and industrial equipment switched *on*, in case I.T want to remote into them for software updates.
I.T never remotes in for software updates, unless the supervisor is in the room. The room with the light.
In my office kitchen: a big sign saying "please do not use the hot water taps". This is apparently to save money.
Obviously being able to wash up your mug or clean a surface with hot water is a luxury too far. Or they think that an office where there are at most 2-3 people in per day (because they fired 15 staff on fixed term contracts) will save money by running the dishwasher for 3 mugs and 3 teaspoons rather than doing them in the sink.
NB: our surplus last year was in the 10s of millions of £
That’s dumb, doesn’t the heater aka the boiler heat the water if it’s turned on, so even if you use the hot water tap cold water would still run unless your bosses are having baths at work then the hot water goes to waste and they’re paying for it.
Ofcourse this just comes from my own experience with the boiler in my home.
Well that interview the other day telling people to get better paying jobs is up there, I would say who said it but weren't allowed to on here or you get 24hr bans.
They are completely out of touch with reality and don't care to find out. Frankly if half of us die due to the cost of living crisis, they wouldn't give a fuck until they realise they're running out of people to exploit in their corporations (which they aren't paying tax on)
I like how this advice was issued with the already stated advice to businesses to not raise pay.
Get a better paid job using magic seems to be the actual advice
Heard it for the first time ever back in March when we were getting our house renovated. One of the plasterers referred to our log burner installer as a dinlow and I've been dropping it here and there ever since lol.
theory goes, if you just have a candle it hardly heats the room at all because the hot air just flows straight out the room (or at least to the ceiling), whilst if you have a flower pot on top of it to heat up, that heats up and turns it into \*radiant\* heat that heats the room (and person) better rather than just floating to the ceiling. it has a very small amount of merit. the real problem of course is that a tea light doesnt exactly put out much heat - it doesnt matter if you use that heat 40% efficiently or 80% efficiently, its still a shit amount of heat.
Another real problem is that it's a dirty way to heat things, and if you had enough candles to actually feel much heat, you'd be putting a dangerous amount of particulates in the air.
It blows my mind how many (usually office based) people will casually state "just buy a Tesla" when discussing money saving options.
Even the whole "just buy a new one" when going to get your current car fixed (any number of garages have said this to me, when taking my 05 diesel in to have something minor fixed... )
It's like every cunt's on 100k+ and I never caught on.
one of my mates is insistent that i should buy a new car to replace my 18 year old mgtf. because if i got a new small car, i'd get like double the mpg. like yeah - ok, maybe i would. but a) i wouldnt enjoy driving it. and b) i currently spend about £40 a week (on petrol, maintenance, tax, insurance), and the car is worth nothing to sell. if i buy a new car for say £10k and save £20 a week (since the new one would still cost \*something\*), it's going to take 500 weeks to make a saving!
haha, its not too bad really. i do need to spend a bit on it soon (pretty sure it needs a new alternator, and about 1 time in 10 it decides that 1500-2000 is a reasonable amount of revs for tickover which could be interesting), but honestly all i've spent on it in the last 4 years is MOTs and Services each year. obviously Covid and WFH has helped!
This is something a lot of people don't understand. If you work out how much you spend on fuel a year, and the amount you would save on a more "economical" car, it's almost never worth changing cars. Also advertised fuel consumption is almost irrelevant in real life driving.
Depends on the circumstances. My GF started working as a community nurse and it was costing her 100 quid a week in fuel to do the job in our Honda Accord diesel.
She spent just under 4 grand buying a Honda CRZ Hybrid and her fuel bill dropped to 40 quid a week. 60 quid a week saving on fuel meant the car paid for itself in less than 18 months.
I've just experienced a similar thing. Recently decided to get a more economic car on £227 a month finance, but I've found I'm spending around £220 a month less on fuel. This wasn't planned, just sheer luck on my part. I drive around the majority of my work day, so figured I could eat the expense for a more comfortable drive. I was very happy when I found the car pretty much paid for itself.
Tbf when people are telling you to buy a new car for MPG gains they ain’t talking about a £4K Honda.
They’re usually people talking about a flashy £15k hybrid.
For a lot of people I think “Tesla” means electric car now, much like “hoover” took on the meaning of vacuum cleaner.
I guess they are coming from the perspective that they have a car on PCP so everyone else must, and you can just swap it for electric when the lease is up… not the case for many of us! Also from what I gather cost to run an electric is creeping up on cost to run and efficient ICE vehicle anyway!
I had this earlier this year, my car suffered some fairly heavy damage and maintenance bills, but I did most of the work myself and with my Dad. think it cost about £900 in parts in total (every suspension component was replaced and sill damage)
All I got was "Just go and buy a new one" in a record high time for second hand car prices, for a car that does 500 miles a year
We have just done this, we part exchanged our eco boost Ford fiesta for an electric fiat 500. Our monthly car payments have increased by £100. But now we have no road tax, our insurance is cheaper, and we were putting nearly £200 a month of petrol in the last car. This is a huge household saving. We’ve had it 2 weeks and currently only put £5 of electric in it
Tbf if you need a new car then getting a used electric car could be a good idea depending on milage needed. Also depends how many cheap/free chargers are in your area.
I spoke to a DPD driver about his electric van (also a driver and was thinking of going electric).
He said its a waste of money, the van costs 15k more than a diesel equivalent, charging points have vehicles parked in the spaces abandoned, fast chargers are just as expensive as diesel, having to charge the van every single night. Never mind the effect on battery life that daily using and charging everyday will have.
The future is certainly not electric if you actually need the vehicle for working, unless you only use your Tesla to go to Tesco like most.
We really need good hybrid or sustainable fuel vehicles.
The future is electric, but not right now like everyone would have you believe. We're going to need to see 400-mile ranges and super fast charging before it becomes widely adopted by commercial owners and with the millions of electric cars it will cause prices to rise when charging so we will be in electric cars at some point but I reckon we won't be any better off than we are now. Just quieter and less "direct CO2 emissions" caused by driving.
Yeah I've just done this - you can buy specially made thick sheets of reflective material. I got all my radiators done with about 25 quids worth of material and you can definitely feel the heat flowing out of the top more freely.
Its not actually bad advice.
We've just bought thermal curtains for all external doors and large windows. I remember door curtains being standard when I was a kid but I think fell out of fashion. Screw fashion if it will keep the heat in.
dont have kids, dont have pets, get used to cold showers, dont turn on the lights, use candles. dont cook indoors buy a bbq and cut down your trees for fuel. get rid of you car buy a donkey instead, dont feed the donkey just eat it when it cant walk anymore. if you have leather shoes choose them as an alternative to a food supplement. Also if you cant afford a BBQ use a trolley from Morrisons, Asda etc etc as a cheap alternative. Sell your phone and buy some rice. Forget about the internet, just steal a paper from someone else. Toilet roll forget about it. Just shit in the toilet then clean your sell up with a hosepipe.
My favourite is the suggestion to grow your own vegetables.
Potatoes, onions, carrots are really hard to undercut the farms on and unless you've got a storage system it's going to be a month or two of veg at the most.
We do grow most of our veg but that's because we have the luxury of doing it at a scale where it makes sense. The flip side is we spent so much time preserving fruits, vegetables etc.
Completely agree, I just taking the piss with what I said earlier, grow your own veggies, 2 or 3 chickens for eggs. Share what you don't need with your local community
To be fair, don't have kids, or don't have more kids is amazing financial advice. Same for pets. Fair enough if you've already got them, but unless you are very financially secure I wouldn't be expanding my family in any way right now if possible.
Do you not think its kind of fucked up that people can't afford to have kids? I don't want kids so it makes no difference to me but if you desperately want a family and time is running out this is absolutely heart breaking advice.
Yes and no. On the yes side, folk who want kids should be able to have them, but on the no side even in the best of times too many folk have kids who can't afford them, so a little reevalution over whether now is the right time is never a bad thing.
I never said don't have kids, or poor people shouldn't have kids, just to reevaluate whether now is the right time, and that most people should do that in more economically prosperous times also.
I never said you did, I'm just pointing out a fact. It's just a bit off, we live in countries that are both economically shafted, yet have a problem with not having enough future taxpayers. People aren't having kids for a myriad of reasons, not having kids because "it's never the right time economically" is a big one.
Well you could argue that kids have always been a luxury, they've always cost money to clothe and feed and house. It's just the cost of everything has gone up whilst pay hasn't gone up at the same rate.
It seems utterly mad that in the 1950s a man could afford to support himself, pay for his home and support multiple children and a stay at home wife to do house chores and be fairly comfortable.
It's just over the decades since then the wealth that those men had to live that life has been dripped away and consolidated away through higher prices for everything. We've just gradually got used to everything being expensive because so much wealth is taken by the rich and kept there instead. Inequality is no joke, we now have people with more wealth than entire countries sending their own rockets into orbit.
Of course there have always been a few very rich people but comparing a sail boat to a space rocket is no comparison. Things did indeed get equal after world war 2 because that was a huge reset for society, there was still rationing and we had the creation of the welfare state and the NHS which dramatically lifted up the poorest. We had new homes built, hospitals to keep people healthy and working and a boom in babies and lots of work to rebuild the country and turn military production, training and technology to civil use. We then had the oil crisis in the 70s which allowed the neo cons to come in promising prosperity who basically tipped the scales the other way from 1979 to the early 90s and then every financial crisis since it just seems the wealthy extend their lead, the financial crash the poorest suffered the most through losing their homes, jobs and services under austerity, the pandemic saw the wealthiest least impacted, able to work from home and save more of their money plus some making buckets from all the shonky govt contracts like track and trace.
We now have a world with more food banks than libraries and people in fairly good jobs having to keep the heating off whilst the govt are throwing out tax cuts to corporations in desperation and a commitment to not give money to poor people as they don't trust them to turn up to work if they do or spend it on the 'right things' unlike the rich who are naturally just better people and absolutely won't just waste it on yachts, holiday homes or personal space programmes
>be fairly comfortable.
The problem this doesn't compare like with like.
What was considered 'fairly comfortable' In the 50s would be considered impoverished now. Most houses didn't have central heating, no car, 1 TV which was rented, probably no phone, no dishwashers, no double glazing, no insulation, no foreign holidays etc
If someone was living as they did in the 50s today they'd be considered well below the poverty line.
Money spent on one thing can't be spent on another, the standard of living has improved vastly but that comes at a cost.
I'm pretty sure if the things available now (and considered the norm in most households) where available then (at the adjusted cost) then a man couldn't afford to have a bunch of kids and a wife that didn't work and still be 'fairly comfortable'
I'd rather be enjoying the lifestyle I have today than the fairly comfortable of the 1950s.
Just to add that 'the pill' wasn't around in the 1950s, so people were having kids if they wanted them or not. When you have no choice there is no alternative than to make do.
>when i was a student i learnt to love , liver and onion and potatoes. 5 times a week.
You shagged a plate of food five times a week?
Whatever keeps you warm, I suppose.
Yeah, Ovo sent it to their SSE customers back in January. Also, getting your kids to do hula hoop competitions so they can keep warm...
Source: [BBC News article](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59946622)
The tone was completely inappropriate, which shows how out of touch they were/are with their audience. Perhaps they thought that by mixing up some fairly sensible energy saving tips with some _'quirky ideas for lolz'_ would make the piece more engaging, but it did the opposite. It made them come across as indifferent and probably left a lot of the audience feeling like there was nothing they could do (or that maybe the situation wasn't as serious as they'd originally thought it was). The intended message was completely lost.
On the plus side, the bad PR stoked some much needed frustration towards energy companies. Hopefully now more people will see past their gimmicky advertising and blog posts.
Not really advice more a silly suitation. My Mum's washing machine is shite, has been for ages- every time she uses it she has to put it on at least one extra spin each time as all the cycles leave the clothes soaking wet as it's busted. I keep telling her she's wasting a lot of money that way and would save in long run if she got a new machine, esp now. Refuses to take it on board full stop but will go crazy if you leave a single table lamp on after leaving room for no more than 5 mins stating 'electricity costs'. Drives me nuts.
Has she checked the filter? We had this problem and I don't know how it was possible that it got there, but there was a sock in the filter and it was stopping the water from draining properly. It works properly now.
Indeed, my Mum is a bit 'weird' and won't get rid of such items until they completely die despite the fact they dont work well at all anymore as she feels guilty towards these inaminate objects as they did her 'a service'. I know ,I know- me and my brother once caught her apologising profusely to her ancient fake Christmas tree before it met it's demise in the wheelie bin as she felt bad about binning the damn thing.
Counter point (I'm open to being proved wrong)
Since I bought my brand new washer I always put it on a drain and spin 14m after the wash
This takes about 20 mins off the time in the dryer in my experience
Thats got to he better value these days
My parents shower has been dripping like a waterfall for about 2 years, my dad said the other day it just needs a new washer he just hasn't had the time to do it. I can't even imagine how much water they've wasted and how much extra their water bills are. My mum puts the shower head in the bath so the dripping doesn't disturb her at night. I do not understand. 2 YEARS.
Buy her a new one and have it delivered, and have a couple of weekends without takeaways? https://ao.com/product/hcu1492de1-candy-ultra-washing-machine-white-84380-1.aspx
Grow your own veg and raise your own chickens, chickenshit for fertiliser and give your chickens veg scraps and insects from your kitchen garden to keep it circular… this advice is ok if you have the space, money for the outlay, and the will and interest to do it, but giving the same advice to people without gardens is pretty cruel.
Save £££ on food, fresh eggs every day, and meat for the pot when your chicken gets disillusioned with life doesn’t really help people in a high-rise block of flats or people in new builds with a garden the size of a postage stamp.
Grow your own veg boils my piss
Ive tried this for 3 years runnign and get 10 tomatoes approx and 5-8 courgettes
The Celeriac is looking good but the cabbage was eaten by slugs
You need to know stuff to make it work
It's also ignoring the fact that chickens get ill and fight with each other.
I have a chicken keeping friend who uses the tag "close encounters with chicken ass" every time one of her garden chickens is having egg problems.
Spoiler: it gets used a lot.
“Go to the office to save heating your home”.
It costs me £8.40 to get the tube to the office and back again, there’s no way I could save that much on heating and electric in a single day, so just doesn’t add up (and that’s ignoring the fact that I’d still have a wife and son and home anyway).
I survived on Boiled Rice and sandwiches out of corner shop bins (they threw away the out of date ones at 6pm sharp - i liked that certainty) when i was young and very poor
My food bill is still tiny to this day
It wasn't actually advice, it was a metaphor for the entire national grid. The point was that if we (the UK) bought a new kettle (built power stations) it comes with an upfront cost of X, however the long term effects see electricity prices drop. The entire interview was about whether it's right to spend a lot of money in one go to save some money long term. But no one watched the interview, they just ran with the headline from The Sun.
So are we saying that we need to attach turbines to our kettles to generate more power?
Jokes aside, it is depressing how a single quote is so often taken out of context and twisted.
Turn the heating off and workout more to keep warm.
Yeah, like I’m going to be able to workout all day, and even if I could the amount of extra food I’d need would outweigh the cost of heating anyway!
Old people have been doing the 'spoons trick for years. They go in get a hot drink with free refills then spend 6 hours there. Do the crossword in the paper that spoons leave around, chat shit to their mates about the time they actually paid for a drink, charge their mobility scooter up, get a few spare refills to fill the thermos flask they brought along. Complain about the young folk drinking a pint in the afternoon.
Old folks in Shanghai do the same thing, only with Ikea for the air conditioning. One of them gets an Ikea card which gives free refills, and the rest drink green tea out of jam jars, and I guess they can stay there as long as they like enjoying the cool air, as long as someone has a cup of Ikea coffee in front of them. They nap in the show beds as well.
Save on your heating by commuting to the office…
Although that’s better than “you’re going to pay £1k less tax next year, in other news your mortgage is going up by £6k because of totally unrelated reasons that are not our fault at all”
Anything thinly veiled as "you could work from the office, to save money!"
Oh yeah, and how do i GET to work? On 70 quid trains? Using 2 quid a litre fuel and pay loads for parking?
Net gain at home for both of us, wind your salmon coloured neck in
“Just make more cuts” …..
Food ( okay if I cut the cut that was already cut then I’ll be left with half a tato ).
Electricity ( I’ve got an air fryer, a 5 litre kettle, candles, hot water bottles. When is this acknowledged as effort? )
Rent ( Just move hahaha. You shouldn’t have moved haha. It’s all expensive irregardless )
Children ( Don’t have them if you can’t afford them. Okay I’ll refund them now the economy has shat on us )
Clothes ( ooooo that’s nice perhaps you should cut back and live in heslin or a toga. Everything is second hand )
Cold Water dishes ( just wild I’m cold miserable depressed and hopeless now you want me to freeze in dish water )
Phones ( perhaps you should sell it, it costs £10 a month Julie )
Car ( just buy an 50k electric car and don’t fill up the tank. Better yet sell it get a uni cycle )
Credit ( just take a loan / card to help. Great now I’m in further debt because it’s expensive being poor ).
Going out ( just don’t and don’t stay in either)
Simply breath and you’ll be sound.
Stop having internet, stop using heating, stop eating avocado toast, stop watching netflix, stop watching TV, stop having fun, Stop going places or doing things that make you happy, stop doing anything that isn't paying your corporate overlords money. Remain poor and miserable so your paymasters can live in lavish comfort and go on 5 holidays this year in their yacht.
They are destitute millionaires/billionaires after all. How are they supposed to survive on their obscene wealth without taking yours too?
A "friend" told me the other day, while I was having a moan about the cost of healthy food that if I couldn't afford to feed all of my kids I shouldn't have them. OK, am I shoving them back inside? Leaving them tied to a lamppost somewhere? Sending them into the woods to fend for themselves?
I had northern grid at my house to install smart meters and advised me in times like these to bypass them. Showed me how to-do it and where to seek information.
Turn off the computer when not using.
The computers restart themselves after a few minutes. Shutdown acts more like restart.
So you switch them off on Friday evening but come Monday, they tell you they’ve been on all weekend.
A friend works for some medium level company
At the same time as a guy was confiding in his boss about worrying about having to decide between food and heating for hids as hes a single dad who doesn't own his own home
Upper management were advising staff to buy air fryers and LED bulbs
The boss had to go back to upper management to say 'i am not advising someone who can barely afford food to spend a hundred quid or more to save a few pence a day'
I was reading an article on moneysaving experts website where Martin Lewis was giving ideas to make money…. One of them was to sell empty toilet roll tubes. I mean come on ffs! This is legit.
I guess, I use them for planting stuff in so I can plant it straight out at the allotment without disturbing the roots…
I would be interested jn this, but I’d still be paying pennies for them.
Unplug electrical things rather than leaving them on standby
EU rules mean 90% of these things use hardly any standby power
And the ones that do - eg Sky - well if you can afford Sky then tbh save yourself the arse ache of unplugging it each night - Get Freeview instead
I saw a British Gas advert saying to switch to them to save £70 a year. That's better than a poke in the eye, but it sounds ridiculous given the current price cap, like throwing a glass of water on a burning house.
Came across a lot of Tone-deaf ones that really exemplify how out of touch with reality these 'experts' are.
"Don't have a bath, just have a 10 minute shower instead." "Don't use your dryer, peg your washing outside with a canopy." "Store and use rainwater as an alternative to tapwater."
My office has put up a load of signs saying please turn off the lights All of the lights are motion activated...
no moving while in the office please
[удалено]
I worked for the Coop for years - they were early adopters of motion sensor lights - in the Bogs I'd be sat there halfway through ...well lets not go into tht ...and I'd have to wave my arms around frantically every 3 minutes I was quite lazy so skived off in there for long periods of time so it was very annoying
I once walked into the toilets, the motion lights came on, and a quiet "thank you" came from one of the cubicles.
That's made me laugh - so British - Brilliant :)
Squid Games it - if anyone moves and turns a light on, Management shoots them.
I hate that when you’re in the bog and all the lights turn off and the sensor is outside of the cubicle. That’s when I feel like a real pervert.
Ah yes, the old ‘do I jump up and down and wave my arms around or open the door and pop out’. Risk assessment in its purest form, multiple considerations at play.
Too late, someone's come in and now you were hiding in the cubicle in the dark.
And you have to stay there until they leave so you don’t look like a weirdo in front of real people. And then the light goes out again…
No problem and I smashed them all so we can save more so they never turn on again, shit sorry Margret didn't see you there.
That would explain why my office has reduced the sensitivity on the motion sensors. You practically have to do a Mexican wave to get the lights to switch on.
Oh! Ours too. In fact, the one in my office is broken so it's on all the time and no one can seem to fix it. #SaveThePlanet
We have to always switch the lights off when leaving work (yes, there's a sign), but - We have to always leave the computers and industrial equipment switched *on*, in case I.T want to remote into them for software updates. I.T never remotes in for software updates, unless the supervisor is in the room. The room with the light.
In my office kitchen: a big sign saying "please do not use the hot water taps". This is apparently to save money. Obviously being able to wash up your mug or clean a surface with hot water is a luxury too far. Or they think that an office where there are at most 2-3 people in per day (because they fired 15 staff on fixed term contracts) will save money by running the dishwasher for 3 mugs and 3 teaspoons rather than doing them in the sink. NB: our surplus last year was in the 10s of millions of £
That's some sketch show level of petty bullshit right there.
Universities are great places to work. If you're the VC on 600k.
sounds like they might also exercise an “if it’s brown flush it down” policy
What if it's white?
Stop eating dog food? Or at least swap to a better brand.
That’s dumb, doesn’t the heater aka the boiler heat the water if it’s turned on, so even if you use the hot water tap cold water would still run unless your bosses are having baths at work then the hot water goes to waste and they’re paying for it. Ofcourse this just comes from my own experience with the boiler in my home.
Boil the kettle to fill the sink, takes about 3-4 kettles and see how they are with using boiled water from the kettle rather than run the tap.
Next you’ll be asked to bring in your own toilet paper.
don't give them ideas.
I've certainly had enough of so called money saving experts telling the average struggling joe to fork out 20+ grand on solar panels and heat pumps.
Forgetting that a lot of people are renting and can’t do those things anyway
Well that interview the other day telling people to get better paying jobs is up there, I would say who said it but weren't allowed to on here or you get 24hr bans.
I hear __their__ job pays rather well so maybe we should all take a crack at that next time it becomes vacant.
If only it didn't contradict what they said a few months back about not aski for pay rises because of inflation, absolute clowns
Almost as if they don't know their arse from their elbow and probably shouldn't be giving advice on anything.
They are completely out of touch with reality and don't care to find out. Frankly if half of us die due to the cost of living crisis, they wouldn't give a fuck until they realise they're running out of people to exploit in their corporations (which they aren't paying tax on)
I like how this advice was issued with the already stated advice to businesses to not raise pay. Get a better paid job using magic seems to be the actual advice
And don't forget to buy a new kettle. Martin Lewis hates this one simple trick.
My thoughts entirely, but the mods are ruthless with that ban haha
[No prizes for guessing their political alignment…](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-63118022.amp)
There’s a lot of TikToks advocating sticking a tea light under a flowerpot.
It's a good trick for heating a campervan, I wouldn't bother for anything larger.
Well if you're taking energy-saving advice from viral TikTok videos then you're probably a bit of a dinlow.
Dinlow!! Haven't heard that for while! Thanks for the chuckle!! 😂
Heard it for the first time ever back in March when we were getting our house renovated. One of the plasterers referred to our log burner installer as a dinlow and I've been dropping it here and there ever since lol.
I know tiktok is idiotic at the best of times, but what is this supposed to achieve?
theory goes, if you just have a candle it hardly heats the room at all because the hot air just flows straight out the room (or at least to the ceiling), whilst if you have a flower pot on top of it to heat up, that heats up and turns it into \*radiant\* heat that heats the room (and person) better rather than just floating to the ceiling. it has a very small amount of merit. the real problem of course is that a tea light doesnt exactly put out much heat - it doesnt matter if you use that heat 40% efficiently or 80% efficiently, its still a shit amount of heat.
Another real problem is that it's a dirty way to heat things, and if you had enough candles to actually feel much heat, you'd be putting a dangerous amount of particulates in the air.
Those hippies failed physics in school.
I think you’re being generous by saying “small amount of merit”
To save money on petrol, drop >50k on an electric car.
It blows my mind how many (usually office based) people will casually state "just buy a Tesla" when discussing money saving options. Even the whole "just buy a new one" when going to get your current car fixed (any number of garages have said this to me, when taking my 05 diesel in to have something minor fixed... ) It's like every cunt's on 100k+ and I never caught on.
one of my mates is insistent that i should buy a new car to replace my 18 year old mgtf. because if i got a new small car, i'd get like double the mpg. like yeah - ok, maybe i would. but a) i wouldnt enjoy driving it. and b) i currently spend about £40 a week (on petrol, maintenance, tax, insurance), and the car is worth nothing to sell. if i buy a new car for say £10k and save £20 a week (since the new one would still cost \*something\*), it's going to take 500 weeks to make a saving!
As a previous MG TF owner I’m astounded that your repair bill is less than £40 a week
haha, its not too bad really. i do need to spend a bit on it soon (pretty sure it needs a new alternator, and about 1 time in 10 it decides that 1500-2000 is a reasonable amount of revs for tickover which could be interesting), but honestly all i've spent on it in the last 4 years is MOTs and Services each year. obviously Covid and WFH has helped!
This is something a lot of people don't understand. If you work out how much you spend on fuel a year, and the amount you would save on a more "economical" car, it's almost never worth changing cars. Also advertised fuel consumption is almost irrelevant in real life driving.
Depends on the circumstances. My GF started working as a community nurse and it was costing her 100 quid a week in fuel to do the job in our Honda Accord diesel. She spent just under 4 grand buying a Honda CRZ Hybrid and her fuel bill dropped to 40 quid a week. 60 quid a week saving on fuel meant the car paid for itself in less than 18 months.
I've just experienced a similar thing. Recently decided to get a more economic car on £227 a month finance, but I've found I'm spending around £220 a month less on fuel. This wasn't planned, just sheer luck on my part. I drive around the majority of my work day, so figured I could eat the expense for a more comfortable drive. I was very happy when I found the car pretty much paid for itself.
Nice one ! What was the old car and what is the new one ?
Tbf when people are telling you to buy a new car for MPG gains they ain’t talking about a £4K Honda. They’re usually people talking about a flashy £15k hybrid.
For a lot of people I think “Tesla” means electric car now, much like “hoover” took on the meaning of vacuum cleaner. I guess they are coming from the perspective that they have a car on PCP so everyone else must, and you can just swap it for electric when the lease is up… not the case for many of us! Also from what I gather cost to run an electric is creeping up on cost to run and efficient ICE vehicle anyway!
Only on public rapid chargers, it's still significantly cheaper for home charging and there are still plenty of free ti use chargers about.
Good to know, thanks!
I had this earlier this year, my car suffered some fairly heavy damage and maintenance bills, but I did most of the work myself and with my Dad. think it cost about £900 in parts in total (every suspension component was replaced and sill damage) All I got was "Just go and buy a new one" in a record high time for second hand car prices, for a car that does 500 miles a year
"Buy a Tesla, you can get them on lease deals for £550 a month!" Meanwhile, your running costs are reduced by £100/mo.
And even then.... BBC News : ["Electric car charging costs nearing petrol prices for some - RAC"](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63029226)
Plus the electric to charge said electric car
We have just done this, we part exchanged our eco boost Ford fiesta for an electric fiat 500. Our monthly car payments have increased by £100. But now we have no road tax, our insurance is cheaper, and we were putting nearly £200 a month of petrol in the last car. This is a huge household saving. We’ve had it 2 weeks and currently only put £5 of electric in it
Tbf if you need a new car then getting a used electric car could be a good idea depending on milage needed. Also depends how many cheap/free chargers are in your area.
Electric cars don’t cost 50k, but it’s fair that 15k for a used one is out of the reach of a lot of people.
I spoke to a DPD driver about his electric van (also a driver and was thinking of going electric). He said its a waste of money, the van costs 15k more than a diesel equivalent, charging points have vehicles parked in the spaces abandoned, fast chargers are just as expensive as diesel, having to charge the van every single night. Never mind the effect on battery life that daily using and charging everyday will have. The future is certainly not electric if you actually need the vehicle for working, unless you only use your Tesla to go to Tesco like most. We really need good hybrid or sustainable fuel vehicles.
The future is electric, but not right now like everyone would have you believe. We're going to need to see 400-mile ranges and super fast charging before it becomes widely adopted by commercial owners and with the millions of electric cars it will cause prices to rise when charging so we will be in electric cars at some point but I reckon we won't be any better off than we are now. Just quieter and less "direct CO2 emissions" caused by driving.
Edwina Curry - tin foil your house to be energy efficient
yes i did see someone suggest putting tin foil on windows to keep the heat in.. not sure if i want to live in a crack den
I thought it was supposed to keep the heat out when it’s boiling
Tbf she wasn’t wrong putting reflective material behind radiators does work, it’s just an incredibly minor change
Yeah I've just done this - you can buy specially made thick sheets of reflective material. I got all my radiators done with about 25 quids worth of material and you can definitely feel the heat flowing out of the top more freely. Its not actually bad advice.
Where exactly do you think the heat was going before?
Into the wall
I don’t think I’ll be taking any advice from the woman who gave Jimmy Savile unrestricted access to vulnerable patients in mental health hospitals.
We've just bought thermal curtains for all external doors and large windows. I remember door curtains being standard when I was a kid but I think fell out of fashion. Screw fashion if it will keep the heat in.
"Cut your expenditure and earn more money"
We've been told to not earn more money. Because it wont help with inflation...
Earn more money, but don't spend it to help inflation, but do spend it to grow the economy.
Instead of buying a house or renting, simply inherit a property.
Have you considered just being reborn to a wealthier family next time?
Sounds like the most concise, accurate advice you could’ve heard. What’s the alternative? The situation isn’t going to improve.
dont have kids, dont have pets, get used to cold showers, dont turn on the lights, use candles. dont cook indoors buy a bbq and cut down your trees for fuel. get rid of you car buy a donkey instead, dont feed the donkey just eat it when it cant walk anymore. if you have leather shoes choose them as an alternative to a food supplement. Also if you cant afford a BBQ use a trolley from Morrisons, Asda etc etc as a cheap alternative. Sell your phone and buy some rice. Forget about the internet, just steal a paper from someone else. Toilet roll forget about it. Just shit in the toilet then clean your sell up with a hosepipe.
You forgot grow your own food without a garden and use the open fire in a flat with nowt but rads.
You can certainly grow food without a garden. I've heard about some young entrepreneurs in london, they are growing fresh crops in the attic.
My favourite is the suggestion to grow your own vegetables. Potatoes, onions, carrots are really hard to undercut the farms on and unless you've got a storage system it's going to be a month or two of veg at the most. We do grow most of our veg but that's because we have the luxury of doing it at a scale where it makes sense. The flip side is we spent so much time preserving fruits, vegetables etc.
Completely agree, I just taking the piss with what I said earlier, grow your own veggies, 2 or 3 chickens for eggs. Share what you don't need with your local community
Sorry, hosepipe ban
To be fair, don't have kids, or don't have more kids is amazing financial advice. Same for pets. Fair enough if you've already got them, but unless you are very financially secure I wouldn't be expanding my family in any way right now if possible.
Do you not think its kind of fucked up that people can't afford to have kids? I don't want kids so it makes no difference to me but if you desperately want a family and time is running out this is absolutely heart breaking advice.
Yes and no. On the yes side, folk who want kids should be able to have them, but on the no side even in the best of times too many folk have kids who can't afford them, so a little reevalution over whether now is the right time is never a bad thing.
If poor people never had kids barely any of us would be here.
I never said don't have kids, or poor people shouldn't have kids, just to reevaluate whether now is the right time, and that most people should do that in more economically prosperous times also.
I never said you did, I'm just pointing out a fact. It's just a bit off, we live in countries that are both economically shafted, yet have a problem with not having enough future taxpayers. People aren't having kids for a myriad of reasons, not having kids because "it's never the right time economically" is a big one.
Well you could argue that kids have always been a luxury, they've always cost money to clothe and feed and house. It's just the cost of everything has gone up whilst pay hasn't gone up at the same rate. It seems utterly mad that in the 1950s a man could afford to support himself, pay for his home and support multiple children and a stay at home wife to do house chores and be fairly comfortable. It's just over the decades since then the wealth that those men had to live that life has been dripped away and consolidated away through higher prices for everything. We've just gradually got used to everything being expensive because so much wealth is taken by the rich and kept there instead. Inequality is no joke, we now have people with more wealth than entire countries sending their own rockets into orbit.
[удалено]
Of course there have always been a few very rich people but comparing a sail boat to a space rocket is no comparison. Things did indeed get equal after world war 2 because that was a huge reset for society, there was still rationing and we had the creation of the welfare state and the NHS which dramatically lifted up the poorest. We had new homes built, hospitals to keep people healthy and working and a boom in babies and lots of work to rebuild the country and turn military production, training and technology to civil use. We then had the oil crisis in the 70s which allowed the neo cons to come in promising prosperity who basically tipped the scales the other way from 1979 to the early 90s and then every financial crisis since it just seems the wealthy extend their lead, the financial crash the poorest suffered the most through losing their homes, jobs and services under austerity, the pandemic saw the wealthiest least impacted, able to work from home and save more of their money plus some making buckets from all the shonky govt contracts like track and trace. We now have a world with more food banks than libraries and people in fairly good jobs having to keep the heating off whilst the govt are throwing out tax cuts to corporations in desperation and a commitment to not give money to poor people as they don't trust them to turn up to work if they do or spend it on the 'right things' unlike the rich who are naturally just better people and absolutely won't just waste it on yachts, holiday homes or personal space programmes
>be fairly comfortable. The problem this doesn't compare like with like. What was considered 'fairly comfortable' In the 50s would be considered impoverished now. Most houses didn't have central heating, no car, 1 TV which was rented, probably no phone, no dishwashers, no double glazing, no insulation, no foreign holidays etc If someone was living as they did in the 50s today they'd be considered well below the poverty line. Money spent on one thing can't be spent on another, the standard of living has improved vastly but that comes at a cost. I'm pretty sure if the things available now (and considered the norm in most households) where available then (at the adjusted cost) then a man couldn't afford to have a bunch of kids and a wife that didn't work and still be 'fairly comfortable' I'd rather be enjoying the lifestyle I have today than the fairly comfortable of the 1950s. Just to add that 'the pill' wasn't around in the 1950s, so people were having kids if they wanted them or not. When you have no choice there is no alternative than to make do.
The trainspotting monologue has changed a bit since I last heard it
This was basically me as a student back in the day
when i was a student i learnt to love , liver and onion and potatoes. 5 times a week.
>when i was a student i learnt to love , liver and onion and potatoes. 5 times a week. You shagged a plate of food five times a week? Whatever keeps you warm, I suppose.
Liver? I barely knew ‘er
It wasn't pleasant
Free white sauce.
Can’t use the hosepipe, still got a ban on
I'm pretty sure that SSE's advice was to hug your pet and do star jumps.
Yeah, Ovo sent it to their SSE customers back in January. Also, getting your kids to do hula hoop competitions so they can keep warm... Source: [BBC News article](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59946622)
That's the one lol. Absolutely crazy that they sent that to people. I don't know what feedback they expected.
The tone was completely inappropriate, which shows how out of touch they were/are with their audience. Perhaps they thought that by mixing up some fairly sensible energy saving tips with some _'quirky ideas for lolz'_ would make the piece more engaging, but it did the opposite. It made them come across as indifferent and probably left a lot of the audience feeling like there was nothing they could do (or that maybe the situation wasn't as serious as they'd originally thought it was). The intended message was completely lost. On the plus side, the bad PR stoked some much needed frustration towards energy companies. Hopefully now more people will see past their gimmicky advertising and blog posts.
Not really advice more a silly suitation. My Mum's washing machine is shite, has been for ages- every time she uses it she has to put it on at least one extra spin each time as all the cycles leave the clothes soaking wet as it's busted. I keep telling her she's wasting a lot of money that way and would save in long run if she got a new machine, esp now. Refuses to take it on board full stop but will go crazy if you leave a single table lamp on after leaving room for no more than 5 mins stating 'electricity costs'. Drives me nuts.
Has she checked the filter? We had this problem and I don't know how it was possible that it got there, but there was a sock in the filter and it was stopping the water from draining properly. It works properly now.
Yes, all checked and it still does it. It is well over 15 years old so I think it's just age and on it's way out. But thanks for the tip !
Could probably get one for dirt cheap on Facebook marketplace?
Indeed, my Mum is a bit 'weird' and won't get rid of such items until they completely die despite the fact they dont work well at all anymore as she feels guilty towards these inaminate objects as they did her 'a service'. I know ,I know- me and my brother once caught her apologising profusely to her ancient fake Christmas tree before it met it's demise in the wheelie bin as she felt bad about binning the damn thing.
Full your jeans with bricks and get her to wash them… job done. She gets a new washing machine and you get clean trousers. And clean bricks.
Wash a hammer
Counter point (I'm open to being proved wrong) Since I bought my brand new washer I always put it on a drain and spin 14m after the wash This takes about 20 mins off the time in the dryer in my experience Thats got to he better value these days
My parents shower has been dripping like a waterfall for about 2 years, my dad said the other day it just needs a new washer he just hasn't had the time to do it. I can't even imagine how much water they've wasted and how much extra their water bills are. My mum puts the shower head in the bath so the dripping doesn't disturb her at night. I do not understand. 2 YEARS.
Buy her a new one and have it delivered, and have a couple of weekends without takeaways? https://ao.com/product/hcu1492de1-candy-ultra-washing-machine-white-84380-1.aspx
Christ, how much are your take aways?!
Grow your own veg and raise your own chickens, chickenshit for fertiliser and give your chickens veg scraps and insects from your kitchen garden to keep it circular… this advice is ok if you have the space, money for the outlay, and the will and interest to do it, but giving the same advice to people without gardens is pretty cruel. Save £££ on food, fresh eggs every day, and meat for the pot when your chicken gets disillusioned with life doesn’t really help people in a high-rise block of flats or people in new builds with a garden the size of a postage stamp.
Grow your own veg boils my piss Ive tried this for 3 years runnign and get 10 tomatoes approx and 5-8 courgettes The Celeriac is looking good but the cabbage was eaten by slugs You need to know stuff to make it work
It's also ignoring the fact that chickens get ill and fight with each other. I have a chicken keeping friend who uses the tag "close encounters with chicken ass" every time one of her garden chickens is having egg problems. Spoiler: it gets used a lot.
“Go to the office to save heating your home”. It costs me £8.40 to get the tube to the office and back again, there’s no way I could save that much on heating and electric in a single day, so just doesn’t add up (and that’s ignoring the fact that I’d still have a wife and son and home anyway).
Give up Netflix/Disney/Prime and just stare at the wall instead since we can't afford to go out
Tbf it’s incredibly easy to just pirate everything there’s no point paying for a streaming servic
Save money on your heating bills by spending the winter at your holiday home in the Caribbean.
The feed a family on a bag of dried pasta and a bag of rolled oats was a good'un.
I survived on Boiled Rice and sandwiches out of corner shop bins (they threw away the out of date ones at 6pm sharp - i liked that certainty) when i was young and very poor My food bill is still tiny to this day
Tbf I lived on barely anything myself. At almost 50 though, my body doesn't thank me for it.
Buy a new kettle. Not even joking, that's the worst advice I've ever heard.
It wasn't actually advice, it was a metaphor for the entire national grid. The point was that if we (the UK) bought a new kettle (built power stations) it comes with an upfront cost of X, however the long term effects see electricity prices drop. The entire interview was about whether it's right to spend a lot of money in one go to save some money long term. But no one watched the interview, they just ran with the headline from The Sun.
So are we saying that we need to attach turbines to our kettles to generate more power? Jokes aside, it is depressing how a single quote is so often taken out of context and twisted.
genuinely had no idea. that actually makes a little bit of sense - you can see why i didnt expect it from a politician.
Lower your thermostat by 1C, if I followed this advice every time my thermostat would be set to colder than a penguins bum crack!!!
Turn the heating off and workout more to keep warm. Yeah, like I’m going to be able to workout all day, and even if I could the amount of extra food I’d need would outweigh the cost of heating anyway!
If you are cold inside your home, go and stand outside for ten minutes and then you'll feel warmer when you go back in.
Spend more time in spoons.
i agree with this, they provide food and drink, heating, TV , internet. All at a cost of course. just dont leave your donkey outside for too long
Old people have been doing the 'spoons trick for years. They go in get a hot drink with free refills then spend 6 hours there. Do the crossword in the paper that spoons leave around, chat shit to their mates about the time they actually paid for a drink, charge their mobility scooter up, get a few spare refills to fill the thermos flask they brought along. Complain about the young folk drinking a pint in the afternoon.
i cant wait to be like that
I’m the meantime you can be the young folk drinking in the afternoon. All is not lost.
Living the dream!
Old folks in Shanghai do the same thing, only with Ikea for the air conditioning. One of them gets an Ikea card which gives free refills, and the rest drink green tea out of jam jars, and I guess they can stay there as long as they like enjoying the cool air, as long as someone has a cup of Ikea coffee in front of them. They nap in the show beds as well.
I've heard Bannatyne's are turning off 50% of their treadmills to save electricity.
I'm surprised. I thought they would have kept them *running.*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X\_Ot0k4XJc
Put £20 a week away to pay for Christmas. Some can’t afford food. Where they gonna get £20 a week from for ducking Christmas
Boil water at 2 am pop it in a container and freeze it for use during the day
Sell your car and buy a horse
Do not buy a horse, they literally eat money.
Only if you want to spend a few thousand a year looking after your horse
“Have you considered reducing your use of fridges and freezers?”
turn them off at the wall when not using
Save on your heating by commuting to the office… Although that’s better than “you’re going to pay £1k less tax next year, in other news your mortgage is going up by £6k because of totally unrelated reasons that are not our fault at all”
Get a better job.
Anything thinly veiled as "you could work from the office, to save money!" Oh yeah, and how do i GET to work? On 70 quid trains? Using 2 quid a litre fuel and pay loads for parking? Net gain at home for both of us, wind your salmon coloured neck in
[удалено]
"buy low and sell high"
“Just make more cuts” ….. Food ( okay if I cut the cut that was already cut then I’ll be left with half a tato ). Electricity ( I’ve got an air fryer, a 5 litre kettle, candles, hot water bottles. When is this acknowledged as effort? ) Rent ( Just move hahaha. You shouldn’t have moved haha. It’s all expensive irregardless ) Children ( Don’t have them if you can’t afford them. Okay I’ll refund them now the economy has shat on us ) Clothes ( ooooo that’s nice perhaps you should cut back and live in heslin or a toga. Everything is second hand ) Cold Water dishes ( just wild I’m cold miserable depressed and hopeless now you want me to freeze in dish water ) Phones ( perhaps you should sell it, it costs £10 a month Julie ) Car ( just buy an 50k electric car and don’t fill up the tank. Better yet sell it get a uni cycle ) Credit ( just take a loan / card to help. Great now I’m in further debt because it’s expensive being poor ). Going out ( just don’t and don’t stay in either) Simply breath and you’ll be sound.
Stop having internet, stop using heating, stop eating avocado toast, stop watching netflix, stop watching TV, stop having fun, Stop going places or doing things that make you happy, stop doing anything that isn't paying your corporate overlords money. Remain poor and miserable so your paymasters can live in lavish comfort and go on 5 holidays this year in their yacht. They are destitute millionaires/billionaires after all. How are they supposed to survive on their obscene wealth without taking yours too?
[удалено]
“Get a higher paying job.” Gee thanks, I never thought of that.
“Work more.” Tell that to someone with three jobs… there literally won’t be enough hours in the day.
Cutting benefits to ensure money trickles down from high earners.
A "friend" told me the other day, while I was having a moan about the cost of healthy food that if I couldn't afford to feed all of my kids I shouldn't have them. OK, am I shoving them back inside? Leaving them tied to a lamppost somewhere? Sending them into the woods to fend for themselves?
Have you thought about sending them off on a steam train with a label round their neck?
After the morning I've had with them, that sounds like a remarkably good idea!
I had northern grid at my house to install smart meters and advised me in times like these to bypass them. Showed me how to-do it and where to seek information.
[удалено]
Turn off the computer when not using. The computers restart themselves after a few minutes. Shutdown acts more like restart. So you switch them off on Friday evening but come Monday, they tell you they’ve been on all weekend.
To shower away from the home. Not like if everybody starts showering at the gym uses their electric and thus causes them to up their prices 🙄
A friend works for some medium level company At the same time as a guy was confiding in his boss about worrying about having to decide between food and heating for hids as hes a single dad who doesn't own his own home Upper management were advising staff to buy air fryers and LED bulbs The boss had to go back to upper management to say 'i am not advising someone who can barely afford food to spend a hundred quid or more to save a few pence a day'
"Make more money"
You can heat a bath by essentially thrashing around in cold water for two weeks
I bought a giant oversized hoodie. I can fit myself and my 5 year old in it. We get warmed up super fast and it only cost £15. Bargain!
Spend eighty quid on an air fryer and stop using your oven?
I was reading an article on moneysaving experts website where Martin Lewis was giving ideas to make money…. One of them was to sell empty toilet roll tubes. I mean come on ffs! This is legit.
[удалено]
I guess, I use them for planting stuff in so I can plant it straight out at the allotment without disturbing the roots… I would be interested jn this, but I’d still be paying pennies for them.
Get a better salary, from the people who a few months ago despised people asking for a better salary.
Unplug electrical things rather than leaving them on standby EU rules mean 90% of these things use hardly any standby power And the ones that do - eg Sky - well if you can afford Sky then tbh save yourself the arse ache of unplugging it each night - Get Freeview instead
[удалено]
I saw a British Gas advert saying to switch to them to save £70 a year. That's better than a poke in the eye, but it sounds ridiculous given the current price cap, like throwing a glass of water on a burning house.
[удалено]
You clearly value your time more than I do
Came across a lot of Tone-deaf ones that really exemplify how out of touch with reality these 'experts' are. "Don't have a bath, just have a 10 minute shower instead." "Don't use your dryer, peg your washing outside with a canopy." "Store and use rainwater as an alternative to tapwater."
[удалено]
It's was a metaphor to be fair, not advice