Tuesday 11 November 2014

Voucher fun

Vouchers are all around us - most of the major supermarkets have offers on at the moment, and some are quite complicated to understand.  

(image from bbc.co.uk)

Morrison's are banking on us collecting vouchers over several weeks in order to claim a saving on our Christmas shop, Tesco are offering £5 off our next £40 shop when we spend £40 now, and there is the regular Aldi voucher in the newspapers.  Are you managing to keep track of the offers that affect you and your shopping?

And then there are the non-grocery offers too!

I have had to stop and think, and read the small print.  

I've dismissed Morrison's because I just don't have access to that shop very easily and I couldn't commit to visiting one on a regular basis.  I looked into their delivery service, but they aren't covering our area just yet.

Tesco are actually asking me to spend £80 in order to save £5 because I have to spend the initial £40 in order to get the voucher for the next week.......not such a good deal.

Aldi I do support most months, and I grab that voucher from the newspaper to stock up on staples and toiletry items.

But the one I am planning to make the best use of this season?  Sainsbury's has sent me four vouchers - for free with no qualifying spend to get the voucher - each one for £6 off when I spend £40.  And it includes everything in the shop apart from alcohol, so when I used one yesterday, the £9.99 that the YFG spent on a DVD with her babysitting cash counted towards it.  I split the savings with her!  And the best bit? If I am consistent, and use all four of the vouchers, I will receive a boost to my Nectar points - 5000 points added to the balance within 28 days.  Not in time for the Christmas shop, perhaps, but still a boost for us to use!  

I have also had an email from Amazon, letting me know that buying a £20 gift card would bring me a £5 promotional code to use on my purchases.  I bought the gift card because I had other Amazon vouchers and knew that I would be making purchases there for the girls - so an extra £5 bonus was a "no-brainer" as they say.  I exchanged the cash that I would have spent for a voucher, and then just used the voucher and the bonus to make the purchases last night.

I'm almost done with the Christmas shopping, thank goodness, but I am not doing much of it this year.

5 comments:

SusanM said...

I've almost finished my Christmas shopping too but have cut right back on gifts and cards, partly due to finances and time spent on organising it all, and partly because I feel it's not what we as a family want Christmas to be about. Just a personal feeling and I wouldn't dream of telling other people how they should celebrate it but we just want to simplify things and not feel as stressed and tired during the Christmas period. Did you know that you can double up Tesco vouchers up until 14th Dec to spend on DVDs, video games, gift sets of toiletries etc. I always use the Aldi voucher because that's where we do most of our shopping. Yesterday, you were talking about muffins. I have a really good chocolate muffin recipe using vegetable oil if you would like it. I make up batches of them and freeze them for packed lunches x

Morgan said...

SusanM - yes please to the muffin recipe! I am all for the sharing of good recipes. Thank you x

SusanM said...

CHOCOLATE MUFFINS

Dry ingreds: 250 g SR flour sifted,
4 tablespoons drinking choc OR 2 tablespoons cocoa powder, 100g choc chips or chopped chocolate, 175g caster sugar. MIX TOGETHER IN A BOWL.

Wet ingreds: 250 ml milk, 90ml veg oil, 1 egg. MIX TOGETHER IN A BOWL OR JUG.

Combine dry and wet ingredients and stir well. Pour into 12 large muffin cases and bake at 180 (165 fan) for 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. These freeze well.

For chocolate chips I just use half of a 150g bar of luxury dark cooking chocolate from Aldi at 69p a bar and roughly chop. I also reduce the amount of sugar slightly (pretending to be healthy!) Enjoy x

Angela said...

Hello Morgan,

I had notification from Sainsburys, if I spend £75 each shop 5 times they will give me 5000 nectar points.
Not such a good deal as yours!

Best wishes,

Angela

Morgan said...

Hello Angela and welcome. Indeed no, your offer from Sainsbury's is nowhere near as helpful as the one I have had. Tesco did this last year and people got different offers. I certainly couldn't achieve your target now that there are only the two of us here, and I should think that there are a great many people out there who won't even try. They are wasting their time with some of these offers! Thanks for popping in xx