Thrifty Pages

BabyBay.ie - save money on baby clothes and goods

A new website has been launched to benefit parents and expectant parents in the recycling and purchasing of baby clothes, furniture and equipment. BabyBay.ie facilitates the buying and selling of new and used baby clothes and goods for a minimal monthly membership fee.

The site is the brainchild of Kildare-based mother-of-three and entrepreneur, Mandy O’Rorke. As a busy mum Mandy spotted a gap in the market for an online outlet for mums to buy and sell their used baby clothes and goods. This came from a personal need to offload her own baby clothes and goods amassed over a number of years.

Items available for trading on the BabyBay.ie site include Boys and Girls clothing, Maternity Clothing, Prams and Buggies, Cots and Nursery Furniture, Baby Accessories, Toys, DVDs and Books, Christening Gowns, School Uniforms and more. 

Registration on the site costs €3 for four weeks allowing unlimited postings of baby goods along with your own personal account to manage your ads and receive messages and enquiries from interested buyers.

Not alone helping parents de-clutter and save money, BabyBay.ie has teamed with Ireland’s leading independent children’s charity Barnardos in an effort to help and support children around the country. BabyBay.ie is delighted to be donating a percentage of their profits annually to the charity.

For more information or to get trading yourself, log onto www.BabyBay.ie today.

Save money with online vouchers

Online Vouchers are used on the internet for consumers to receive a discount off product list price. 

They are exclusively valid online and can save you a significant amount of money when shopping on the internet.

Compared with physical shops, online ones can greatly reduce their costs, as they don't need to pay extra store rental fees, no additional staff salaries. And thus they can painlessly launch kinds of promotional campaigns like online vouchers to benefit their customers and make their business expand.

Luckily for Irish consumers there is a website that collects and updates all these online vouchers, deals, free shipping information on a daily basis.

Take a look at http://www.irelandvouchercodes.com/ and see what you can find. There will be something there for you. All online vouchers are provided absolutely free too :)

Home Insurance bills on the increase

Anyone receiving their home insurance bills recently should notice that most insurance bills are increasing quite considerably.  We have seen increases of 30% to over 60% in some cases over the last few months.  Increases are mainly due to the very bad weather conditions around the country over the past year such as the coldest winter in over 60 years and flooding prior to that.  Following bad weather, with the high volume of insurance claims, insurance companies increase their premiums to cover the costs. 

Is there anything you can do?  It can be difficult to stop these increases as all insurance companies in the market are affected and all tend to increase their premiums at the same time.  But you can try to minimise any increase as much as possible by shopping around with various companies, which is so easy to do on price comparison websites.   

If you use a broker, make sure your broker does their job and compares your insurance with all the insurers in the market so you obtain the best deal.  Ask your broker do they deal with all insurance companies and ask them to tell you what companies they do not deal with, as these companies might be the cheapest. Remember that your insurance company is legally obliged to give you 15 working days notice prior to your renewal date to allow you ample time to shop around.   

The insurance  industry don’t value loyalty by offering better discounts to long term customers so don’t be afraid to move company from year to year.  Some companies do offer additional discounts if you have several insurance policies with them such as your home and car insurance with them.  These discounts are worth checking out as they are usually a percentage of the overall cost.  

Check that your buildings insurance is covered at the relevant value as this figure can be higher than required.  Insurance companies tend to increase this value each year to allow for inflation but as the cost of building has decreased over the past 2 years, most people discover that they are paying for too much insurance cover.  Ask your broker or check online for the rebuild cost per square foot for where you live and the type of house you live in and multiply this by the estimated square footage of your house.  You should check your contents insurance also as your contents cover may have been increased by the insurance company to allow for inflation. 

But to be on safe side, you should budget this year for an increase in your home insurance and any savings will be a bonus.

Article provided by Eamonn O'Connor from Home Payments Ltd

Live4Less - a discount card for people on social welfare

With all the new entrant onto the live register, a new service may be very interesting...

Live4Less is a discount card designed exclusively for people in receipt of a social welfare payment. 

Live4Less have enlisted a number of companies including Vodafone, Irish Rail, The Carphone Warehouse, IMC Cinemas, Curves Gym to offer a discounted rate or unique promotion to Live4Less customers. 

At present there are over 90 businesses where cardholders receive a discount and they are adding new ones every day. To avail of the discount Live4Less customers simply need to produce their card or include the associate discount code at the time of purchase.

The card is also available for purchase as a gift card which means people can buy the card as a gift for someone they know who is receiving a social welfare payment.

The card costs €10 and is valid for one year. You can purchase a card online or by downloading an application form and sending it by post.

Live4Less is also beneficial for businesses as there is no cost to get involved and provides an easy way to meet their corporate social responsibility. In return for providing a discount, businesses are promoted and advertised through our various channels free of charge.

For more information or to purchase a card log onto www.live4less.ie

No such thing as a free lunch, but maybe a cheaper one!

If you want to get a cheaper treat at lunchtime, then a new website is the one for you...

Having noticed that there are some great lunch offers available the guys at mylunch.ie thought it would be a fantastic idea to make people more aware of them, and so www.mylunch.ie was born.

No longer will you have to go to the effort of walking aimlessly attempting to decipher handwriting on many a dusty blackboard in order to find the best lunch value around. 

Instead, a few simple clicks on a daily-updated website provides you with all you need to know.

Happy eating :)

Link: http://www.mylunch.ie

Enjoy the Summer for Free With OnOffer.ie

Consumers can now enjoy a wide variety of free rewards like free hotel rooms, free beauty treatments, free drinks promotions, free competition giveaways and free meals from the website OnOffer.ie. There are no sneaky terms and conditions and no hidden fees –it’s all free.. 

Registering with OnOffer.ie is completely free and you can also keep track of all the latest and greatest special offers and deals from around the country, enter the free weekly competitions and share your bargains and money saving tips with everyone else in our members’ forum.  

Simply check out www.onoffer.ie for details. It is worth a look.

The number 1 tip on making paying bills easy

I am regularly asked what my #1 tip is for making paying bills easy and here it is…  Having the money to pay them!  You might think, very funny, that is obvious, but think about it. The actual payment of the bills is not the main problem as you can pay them yourself or pay someone to do it for you, so long as you have the money. 

Where bills become a real hassle is where you don’t have the money when they are due or a few bills hit at the same time and you are left with little or no money. 

Now that we have stated the obvious, it is not obvious that since we know the problem, we should resolve it.  How do we solve it, again stating the obvious, we budget for our bills and put money aside out of each pay cheque to cover those bills.  These bills have to be paid anyway, and the cost of them will not change by waiting to pay them. Over the period of a year, you will pay out the same amount for these bills, no matter how you pay them. 

But imagine this… you put aside the same amount out of your pay cheque to cover your bills, that way you are left with the same amount out of every pay cheque to cover your other expenses – seems a no brainer.  Then when it comes to actually paying each bill, you pay the bill out of the money you have put aside. Simple, you now have the money each time a bill fall due and paying bills becomes easy and you never give bills a second thought.  

If you think you cannot do that, pick a bill such as Electricity, average what your bill should be for the next bill in 2 months time and put aside 1/8 of the bill amount each week, or ½ the amount each month. When the bill comes in, see how easy it is to pay the bill as you the money put aside.

Article provided by Eamonn O'Connor from Home Payments Ltd

How to Afford Anything

An enlightening and amusing article from Ken Rockwell.

It arose from questions to the author about how he could afford such expensive camera equipment. His reply is interesting and appropriate for many Irish households today:

...I realized that I've always had a knack for buying expensive toys long before I'd ever had a job. Hopefully my cheapskate tricks can help you, too, which is why I share them here.

Our ability to buy expensive toys has nothing to do with how much money we do or don't earn. Like everything in life, it has everything to do with how well you use what you have.

Link: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-afford-anything.htm

A free tool to help you track your cash...

A great free tool to help you track how you spend your money everyday from Permanent TSB.

You can compare your spending habits with others and perhaps give us that cappuccino habit?

Link: http://www.spendometer.ie/

Special Offers 29/06/10

Our regular round up of what special offers you can find in the Irish grocery chains.

• Lidl Current Special Offers
• Aldi Special Offers
• Tesco Special Offer of the Week
• Dunnes Special Offers Grocery
• Superquinn Special Promotions
• Centra Hot Offers
• Spar Special Offers
• Eurospar Special Offers
• SuperValu Special Offers
• Londis Special Offers
• Best Buys Republic of Ireland from smartshopper.ie