Save money on your leisure time outgoings.
| Category | Detail | Potential Annual Saving |
Flights | Flightchecker is MoneySavingExpert's free budget airline flight price comparison tool. What makes it invaluable is that it searches by price not by date, and compares the main budget airlines. You can ask it to find all flights under, say, £20 (including charges and taxes) to a destination, within a broad date range, rather than only being able to establish the cheapest price for a specific journey like traditional flight comparison services. | Typical saving £70 on flights for 2 people, twice a year £140 |
Rooms | Laterooms is the database of late availability hotel rooms across the globe, with a comprehensive range within the UK. Book late and be flexible and it's possible to save up to 70% - it's a win-win as hotels don't then suffer the cost of empty rooms. Combined with Flightchecker it's a poweful combination, if you're looking for a city break but are flexible about where. | Save 70% on hotel room prices |
Shows | Go watch BBC shows for free. Peruse the list of current shows here, and then register for tickets. NB: Shows are mainly in London and Manchester; Tickets are over-allocated to avoid empty seats by people not turning up, so if you are going get there early - it's first come first served. Or go watch ITV shows for free. See here. Shows are mainly in London, Leeds and Manchester. Or, be on TV yourself. Apply for the gameshows / quiz shows to get on for free but with a chance to win real prizes. Or, make an appearance on a show that will give you free publicity for a certain cause, for instance renovating a property if you are trying to create a name for youself in that field. Or, be the subject of a makeover programme, whether that be a beauty makeover or a financial makeover, you will get the personal rewards for free. See the BBC's current range of opportunities here. | Go watch TV shows live for free, or appear on a TV show with a free opportunity |
| Audio Equipment | Green Home Electronics aim to reduce landfill by repairing, refurbishing and putting back to use quality used hi fi and audio equipment. All equipment is fully tested and comes with a 28 day warranty. You can pick up quality equipment for much less than if bought new, whilst also doing your bit for the environment. | Audio equipment for less |
Luxury Purchases | Saveoo is an internet auction site with a difference - rather than buyers entering a bidding war, suppliers compete to offer the lowest price to a potential buyer. The site covers big-ticket items such as watches, TVs, boats, cars and hot tubs. As a prospective buyer you sign up, type in the item that you want - model, make, colour, trim (as applicable) - and determine how long you want the auction to last. Businesses will then come in and offer successively lower prices until the auction ends. You can then choose from the 3 lowest bids, or walk away if you wish. If you go ahead you then arrange the purchase with the supplying business. Unlike Ebay, all items are new and you get the protection from buying from a business rather than an individual. Saevoo has signed up 10,000 suppliers already. | Quoted sample savings: £650 on a plasma TV, £9000 on a boat |
Computer software | Kit out your PC for free. Instead of buying Microsoft Office software at £125, download the free open-source suite from OpenOffice which contains equivalents to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access. They are compatible with documents prepared on Microsoft Office. Rather than Windows, choose Ubuntu, which is a linux based operating system that comes complete with the F-Spot photo editing tool - all for free. Instead of buying anti-virus software from Symantec or Norton at £50 a year, download Grisoft's AVG, or Avast's software, both of which are free to non-commercial users. Instead of buying anti-adware (against unwanted popups) and anti-spyware (against covert data gathering from your PC) download the free offering from Lavasoft. Get yourself a free customisable firewall from Comodo or Zonealarm for all round protection against identity theft hackers, Trojans, scripts and other unknown threats while on-line. Download the award-winning free Firefox internet browser from Mozilla. Finally acquire your own e-mail, domain and website for free through Microsoft Office Live Small Business - nb: requires Internet Explorer which is free to download here). You get a free genuine domain of your choice, free hosting, easy design tools and upload, free email. No fees until the domain is up for renewal. This site is built on it. Through a domain name supplier it is on average £11 per year. | Kit out your PC for free and save £250 |
| Laptop | UK consumers pay an average £477 for a new laptop. The integrated software from Microsoft can alone cost £120. So Asus launched a laptop in 2007 called the Eee PC which runs on open-source software (free and collectively developed), managing to bring the cost down to £200 for the machine. From 2008, Elonex have brought out the One PC laptop for just £100 new. Again it runs on open source software, and is fairly basic in its specification, but gives you internet, email, word processing and spreadsheets: everything you need to perform the money-making and money-saving detailed on this site. Full details here. | A new laptop for just £100 |
| Mobile broadband | Much of the money-making and money-saving on this site involves a PC or laptop. So let's consider broadband-on-the-move to enable you to make and save wherever you are. If you don't want the cost of a subscription to mobile broadband then McDonalds and Wetherspoons offer free wireless access. Clearly you will be expected to consume in both, but there is no limit to how long you can stay and use the service. You may also find that your local library offers free PC and internet use. Typically you will be restricted to one hour's usage a day. However, for delimited use you will need to sign up to 3G broadband which uses mobile phone networks and provides an internet speed that is faster than dial-up but slower than home broadband. The cheapest is 3Mobile's broadband lite, which is restricted to 1MB of downloads per month and is a 24-month contract at £10 per month. For heavier usage, 3Mobile's Broadband Plus and Vodaphone's Mobile Broadband both offer 3MB's of monthly downloads for £15 per month. Check the coverage maps on the sites of both providers to see how good the 3G service is in the areas you typically frequent - it will be 'turbo' speed in some select areas. Note that using 3G broadband abroad does not usually fall under the contract, and is often very expensive - however - 3Mobile's contracts include the following countries as if you were on-line in the UK: Austria, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, Hong Kong and Sweden. Just plug the 3G USB modem into your laptop and you're in business. | Get internet access wherever you are, for money-making and money-saving on the move |
Freeview and PVR | Fancy Freeview plus a PVR to record shows in advance for less than £20? Then consider buying a USB digital freeview receiver to plug into your PC or laptop. Here is a link to such products on Amazon. Plug directly into any spare USB slot, the device can either be used with the provided portable antenna or with your external home aerial, giving you free access to digital TV channels and radio stations. By using the PC's harddrive it also allows you to schedule the recording of your favourite shows, so you can watch them when you want. There is also a remote control. No other software is needed - your PC is instantly a freeview TV and PVR (personal video recorder). Check your PC meets the minimum system requirements listed and that your USB ports are suitable. | Freeview and PVR for under £20 |
DVD rental | Free DVD rental trials - there are several on-line DVD rental companies who will give you a 2 to 4 week free trial. Use them all and enjoy 6 months of free DVD rentals. Full details here. | Save £18 in DVD rentals |
Cinema | SeeFilmFirst is a company used by major film companies and the media to distribute tickets for film previews. By signing up you will be emailed the latest showings on offer - but you need to be quick as it is first come, first served. | Free cinema tickets for previews and advanced special screenings. One pair of tickets per year is worth £15 |
Cinema | Orange mobile phone customers can get two tickets for the price of one on Wednesdays | Save £5, 4 times a year = £20 |
Cinema | Most cinema provide a Saturday morning kids club - youngsters can see films on Saturdays and Sundays at Vue ciemas for only £1.50 and an adult per child can go free. Odeon cinemas offer a similar deal. | Save £10 on a regular cinema trip for 1 adult and 1 child, twice a year £20 |
| Festivals | Fancy going to Glastonbury or Reading/Leeds festivals and making a profit out of it? Work as a steward or campsite assistant through SLS Security or DC Site Services and get free entrance to the festival, minimum wage pay for (typically) three 8-hour shifts, a more luxurious camping location on site than the masses are allocated, plus hot showers and food and drink subsidised and available 24/7. So, you can expect £120-£130 in pay and you can enjoy the festival for free during the hours when you are not working. The work will typically involve standing at a gate checking wristbands and directing people or assisting with the general running of one of the festival campsites. They normally ask for a deposit which is refunded at the end of the festival, to stop you running off and avoiding working once you have been let in. The minimum age is 18. | Go to music festivals for free |
Days Out and Dining Out | Check in regularly on these 2 pages on MSE: Latest Day Out Deals Latest Restaurant Deals They list all the latest offers and vouchers - sometimes you can click and print, sometimes you need to buy something costing a few pence in order to get a discount of several pounds. | Days out and meals out for less |
| Magazines | Subscribe to magazines using this site on 3 month trial subscriptions for £1, sometimes including a free gift. Call to get dates of issues and direct debit - cancel dd after £1 comes out then call to cancel subscription at the time their offer states (can vary). You keep the magazines. Also: Subscribe to Viz Comic on a 3 month trial subscription for £1, includes free gift. Cancel within trial period to prevent on-going subcription at regular price. You keep the comics and free gift. Also: The Magazine Group has various magazines on introductory subscription trials: typically 3 issues for £1.
Topcashback will pay you a minimum £4.80 for each subscription that you take out through The Magazine Group (type "Magazine Group" into the Topcashback search facility), and this includes such introductory trials.
Add the two together and you get FREE magazines of your choice PLUS a typical £3.80 cash profit each time! Joining Topcashback is free and there is no limit to how many times you can take advantage of The Magazine Group cashback.
Log into Topcashback (or sign up for free if you are not a member, read the Help section for how to ensure cookies are enabled on your internet browser, and clear cookies before logging on). Link through to the Magazine Group and go to the Special Offers tab. Sign up to a magazine that's on a £1 offer. You will need to give bank details and they will advise of a date at which the full price subscription will kick in. Read the T&Cs of the promotion and cancel your subscription before the end of your free trial. Tip: use on-line banking to cancel the direct debit from your account before the advised full direct debit date, for belt-and-braces.
Repeat the Topcashback / Magazine Group routine for another magazine offer of your choice. Each time you will typically be getting 3 free monthly magazine issues worth £8-£12 plus £3.80 cash profit on top (£4.80 cashback minus the £1 offer fee). The cashback should show in your Topcashback account as tracked within a couple of days and will be paid out to you within a couple of months.
Also: Get a free 12 month digital magazine subscription - choose from Popular Science, PC Magazine, Reader's Digest, Penthouse and more popular titles - and read the magazine on-line rather than buying the physical magazine. This is the Read Green initiative, aiming to help the planet by saving paper. All you need to supply is your email address (no payment details) to get your chosen magazine monthly for free for 12 months. | Slash the cost of magazines |
Arts & Crafts | Canon's Creative Park contains free downloads for 3D papercraft to make anything from model toys and animals to buildings and even whole model towns. It also includes download patterns for pop-up Xmas cards and Origami too. If you have a colour printer (doesn't need to be Canon), Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC, scissors and glue, you're ready to go. For the 3D art you need 170g matt paper (the stiff kind) or just regular plain paper for the origami. Some examples: A simple Spaniel that young kids can make. A pop-up Xmas tree card suitable for older children and adults. An incredible Santa Claus's House with intricate detailing for those who like a challenge. There is a vast library of creations that will keep you and the kids busy for hours, days or weeks. It's all free. The cost to you is in printer ink and paper - however the simple models consume only 1 to 2 sheets. | Free paper craft library - only pay for paper and ink |
| Educational | Lots of freebies on offer from the Open University: Free Child of out Time Info cards
Free Children activity Cards
Free Guide to Paris
Free Survival Pack
Ozone Magazine & Family ties (find out about your family history)
Landscape Detective Leaflets
Nobody's normal (disability info)
Recipe Cards
Wall Planner
Space Poster (Venus)
Coast Poster | Educational Freebies |
| National Trust | Joining the National Trust on an annual individual membership usually costs £43.50, however they have a special offer currently for paying by direct debit that reduces it to £32.62 (see here). Go through Quidco (search for National Trust) and get £20 cashback too, which means you're getting free entry to all the National Trust properties for 12 months for just £12.62. NB: If you're not yet a Quidco member, note that Quidco take £5 from your annual earnings as a fee. Also be aware that you need Cookies enabled on your internet browser and then clear the existing Cookies before you link through from Quidco to National Trust, to ensure tracking. Also note that cashback may not be honoured if the named person for the National Trust membership is not the Quidco account holder, if you were thinking of it as a gift. If you and your partner both want the subscription, both set up Quidco accounts and both apply for individual memberships. If you're considering the family membership then be aware that kids under 5 go free. Laslty, as an aded sweetener you get a free picnic rug for joining. | National Trust annual membership for £12.62 net, rather than £43.50 |
Days Out | Working parents with two children of school age can typically spend £1200 over the course of the summer on entertaining their offspring. Dofreestuff gives the lowdown on places in the UK and Northern Ireland that you can visit without paying for a ticket. Cut that £1200 in two. | Save £600 |
Music
Free legal music plus a profit
Sign up to Emusic through Topcashback (type Emusic into the Search) and get 25 free tracks to download plus £4 cashback. Topcashback is free to join, if you don't already have an account. Just make sure your cookies are activated and that you clear your cookies before clicking through to Emusic, to ensure the cashback tracks. For the Emusic trial you need to give payment details then cancel your subscription before 2 weeks elapse. Just sign up one weekend when you have some time, download your 2+ albums and then cancel your subscription under the Account section. You get to keep the 25 downloads and they play with the standard players such as Windows Media Player. Emusic doesn't have the full range of songs and albums - you won't find all the latest chart offerings. However, you will find some, and they have a very large catalogue of all kinds of stuff, which is well categorised. Sign up your partner, if applicable, and claim another 25.
Free legal music
Free Albums has a susbtantial catalogue of links to albums available freely and legally on the web. A broad range of music styles, many independent artists, some well-known, all available for free to download.
Myfreedownload has links for many new bands' internet campaigns, including songs from Ash, Battle, Director, Fields, Foals, Funeral For A Friend, Gallows, Ghosts, Jeff Finlin, John Butler Trio, Lost Prophets, Switches and The Enemy.
7digital is often used by bigger labels for their campaigns. Sign up for a free account and pick free downloads from the likes of Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Cute Is What We Aim For, Switches, Gym Class Heroes, Alterkicks, Underoath, Cerys Matthews, Frank, Belle, Jim Noir, The Flies, Zero 7, The Miller, Lady Sovereign, Grandaddy, Josh Ritter, The Modern, Fith Gear, Battle and James Morrison. Also see Indiestore, a specialist offshoot of 7digital, for free indie tracks to download.
Nokia offer free music downloads - featuring artists like Kasabian and The Futureheads - see 'free' in red next to the download. "You can download each track up to 3 times on different computers" but once on your computer you can play it as many times as you like (as you do with normal mp3/wma files).
The online version of the american magazine Filter Mag has great free downloads and anything with MP3 beside it can be downloaded. They have songs from bands like Arcade Fire, Albert Hammond Jr, Bright Eyes and Cary Brothers. Click "older media" at the bottom of the page for more bands.
For podcasts The Times offers a great diversity in artists, with a little chat between the music. They currently have podcasts with Travis, The Bravery, LCD Soundsystem and Air. You can download the newer ones as MP3s from the site, or if you have iTunes you can subscribe & have access to download the older ones.
For millions of free mp3 files and podcasts go to Odeo.
You may have heard recently on the news that a campdown on illegal file sharing has resulted in a significant shift to payable music download sites amongst internet users. You don't need to download illegally, but nor do you need to pay for it. Youtube is the answer. Get some decent speakers for your PC and away you go. Although known as the ultimate video vault, its audio library is equally huge. Songs are uploaded with a still image if no video accompanies the track, and by opening a Youtube account (for free) you are able to create (and share) playlists, thereby building up your own organised library of music on-line. Think of an artist you want to hear - they will be there on Youtube. There is a range of quality in the audio, so often users distinguish the superior stuff for listening by adding "high quality" or "HQ" to the clip title, so search for those.
Now, if you download the latest version of RealPlayer video media player (get the free version here), you are able to download the videos from Youtube and store them locally on your PC. That means you don't need to be on-line to listen, and you no longer will get any problems from buffering or broadband signal (if either affect you). Whatsmore, you can transfer your music from there onto an MP4 player. As you'd expect, on RealPlayer you can organise your music into playlists and rank tracks and so on. Once you have downloaded the RealPlayer you will automatically see the download option pop up if you hover over the top right of the video playing on Youtube. Just click and it will be downloaded to your RealPlayer library before the track has finished playing.
Is it legal? Real says it is. Here's the thing: the programme will not download programs prohibited by digital rights management software. That 'DRM' is built into the track/video so you are prevented from downloading anything that would be illegal. The good news is the vast majority of the music on Youtube does not have DRM. Furthermore, "the technology we have enabled is for personal use, and that is within copyright laws," says Real. That's the 2nd key issue. If you are only downloading for your own personal pleasure you are in the clear.
What we have found is that songs are continually uploaded on to Youtube by users and Youtube periodically purge those where they believe there may be copyright infringement. If you have downloaded them to Real Player in the meantime then you have got the track for good. We have found hardly any tracks have the inbuilt DRM to prevent downloading. Were there to be any clampdown on these failings, then the authorities would take action against Real, Youtube or the Youtube users uploading tracks that break copyright, whilst you are protected by the T&Cs of Youtube and Real.
Also Songza have produced an audio site that searches Youtube for music only (plus results from elsewhere too). Again you can create playlists (though use the US version if you wish to save the playlists). Simply type in the name of an artist (remove the "The" from the band's name, if applicable) and it will pull back all the songs available on Youtube's servers, capped at 50 results. Like Keane, for example? 50 tracks are returned, and instantly playable, in the order of you choice. It's all free, but is it legal? Yes, it is - Songza has no music on its own servers - if there is any copyright infringement it is on the source server. Much like Google is not liable for content held on its search results, Songza is just a search engine. Furthermore you as a user are not downloading any content and therefore own nothing - you are in effect just browsing.
Webupon have produced a list of the 45 best websites for free music - see here and click through on the links to the music sites.
Say goodbye to buying CDs, a format which will soon be dead. Upload your existing CDs to your PC, sell them, and get your music on-line thereafter. Music Magpie is a site that will help you with stage 2 of that process - paying you for those CDs that you own, and making the process of offloading them for cash painless.
The rate they pay for a typical CD is 60p to £1. Go to their site, enter the barcodes of your CDs one at a time and they will come back with an instant offer. You need to be offering up at least 5 CDs but you can get rid of as many as you like. They will then send you packaging, into which you pop your CDs. They inspect the CDs on receipt and will pay you less than quoted if the quality isn't OK, such as the CD is scratched or the casing broken. Once your CDs have gone through inspection, they then send you a cheque.