We are saving over $600 a year on shoe deodorisers! My husband has terribly smelly feet and is very embarrassed by the problem. It was costing us approximately $12 every week to buy different shoe inserts and powders, all of which were only temporarily effective. Now it only costs us $2.00 every two months! My husband has discovered that just a few drops of waterless hand sanitiser on each foot kills all the bacteria that causes the feet to smell. It takes just a few seconds to apply and evaporates very quickly, meaning no mess on his feet, socks or the carpets. He buys the large bottles of sanitiser for only $2.00 in the bargain stores and they work brilliantly. All his shoes, including his work boots, are now completely odourless!

I had been living beyond my means for some time and knew I needed to trim my spending. For the last couple of years, I had been pretty careful with purchases, but was not succeeding in 'cutting my coat according to my cloth'. About eight or nine months ago, I decided I would only spend cold hard cash. I withdrew what I could afford to once a week from the bank and forced myself to make do with that until the following week. What a shock! The first couple of weeks, I was penniless within 24 hours and had long lists of unpurchased 'necessities'. My grocery shopping barely covered the bottom of the trolley. (What a joy when it came to unpacking it!) I discovered I could do without many things and started making all food (including bread) from scratch. Most things tasted better and I enjoyed cooking. I started buying vegetable seedlings and growing them, but have had to trim that back to seeds to supply us with enough. The junk food and alcohol are long gone - the money never makes it that far. I lost weight! But I still wasn't making ends meet, so I had to cut back on contents insurance. The result has been that I am more careful with what I do have and am becoming less concerned about material possessions as I am not acquiring expensive new ones anyway. I had more free time on the weekends as I didn't 'have' to scour the newspaper for the best buys and then rush around putting them on the credit card. However I still needed to trim my expenses, so I had to forgo my medical insurance. I find I am now so much more careful with my lifestyle, diet and exercise and I suspect it is because my subconscious knows that there is no comfortable private hospital or top specialist waiting for me if anything goes wrong.

Petrol is still a thorn in my side and I am very conscious of the percentage of my hard-earned money that is going on harming the environment just to get me to work. Tomorrow I have an interview for a less 'glamorous', but otherwise similar job within walking distance of my home. This would also increase my exercise. So far, the follow-on effects of spending only cash I have in my hand have not ended. But each time I have had to make a tough decision about which 'necessity' to forgo to live within my means, I have discovered that going without is not as bad as I feared and that, oddly enough, I am now healthier, happier, less rushed, more in control of my life and proud of my resourcefulness than I ever was when I had everything I thought I needed.

At 12 years old, my daughter is already helping our family save money on snacks using her Simple Savings skills! With five children in the house, we do a big shop just once a month and are careful to make our food and treats last until the next shop. Recently we were nearing the end of the month and getting low on food. I arrived home one day to find my daughter baking biscuits. 'They're Doos!' she told me. 'You always said if there was nothing in the cupboard, we had to make do, so I made Doos!'

The name has stuck in our house and now whenever we have 'nothing' in the house for lunch boxes, snacks or afternoon tea, she just makes a batch of 'Doos' using whatever she can find in the pantry to 'make do' with. She is proving to be very inventive with her recipes and is turning out to be a real baker. She'll turn out simple but delicious treats such as honey joys, choc chip biscuits, Anzac biscuits, pikelets and pancakes in no time at all! She really has shown that you can make something from almost anything in the pantry and would be wonderful at the $21 Challenge! Here is the recipe for her latest creation, called 'Sort of Scones!'

1 cup oats
1 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup sugar
125g butter
1 egg
1/4 cup milk

Mix all ingredients together, then roll into balls and place on a greased baking tray. Bake in a moderate oven (around 180C) for 10 minutes.

I couldn't be prouder of my daughter's efforts to help us save money and keep everyone well fed. Whenever we think our parenting has a lot to be desired, it's moments like this which prove we have to be doing something right - good things do rub off too!

A novel idea to help my Mum save on new ceiling fans has led to some fantastic and unexpected long-term savings! After being quoted a whopping $160 per unit (pensioner rate) to get ceiling fans installed, we took matters into our own hands and placed an advertisement on local notice boards. It read: 'Experienced licensed electrician required to install three ceiling fans. I would like to trade the costs by doing your washing and ironing for one month.’

Within a few days, Mum had received several enquiries and selected a nice, young single guy who needed a 'mother's touch' to some of his clothes - a lot of stain removal and buttons re-sewn. He installed the fans and dropped and picked the clothes up from her place on a weekly basis. To our surprise we learned he also had connections to plumbers and gardeners and she was soon able to have her bathroom wall retiled in exchange for scrubbing out an oven and re-organising a food pantry for a couple that were having a baby soon.

It didn’t stop there! Before long she was taking up hems, sewing on buttons and doing basic mending in exchange for garden maintenance and mowing lawns. These guys are ripping up old items from homes every day with their trades so these days they even search around to find her the cheapest - or even free - items if she needs them, as well as providing an oven door and dials on her heater for free. They often come across things that others could use but end up in the tip instead.

As a pensioner, Mum has time on her hands and is very experienced in household chores but has a limited income. This trade of skills and services means she can now carry out tasks within her ability and has made some fantastic friends. Her place looks amazing and is she even happy to do babysitting for the families. In turn they really appreciate having a cuddly grandmother figure around. She has a new purpose and a whole new social network too - in fact she looks 10 years younger!

I can make hundreds of litres of liquid plant food from just $12 worth of Dynamic Lifter pellets! This will buy a 10kg bag. Just add around four handfuls of pellets to a nine litre bucket of water and let steep for a couple of days, mixing occasionally. When you have a nice 'tea', pour a couple of litres of the liquid, into a nine litre watering can, top up with water and give your garden a drink. Repeat until all the 'tea' is gone, then add more water to the residual at the bottom of the bucket and repeat this process. As the mixture gets weaker, you can use on seedlings, vegetables and more delicate plants such as azaleas and gardenias. The 'weak' mixture can be used as a health tonic or sprayed directly onto the foliage of plants (remember not to spray if the weather is over 20 degrees Celsius, as this will burn the foliage). Once you get to the real weak stuff, simply pour the residual under a tree and water in well.

You can also make hundreds of litres of liquid fertiliser from a 10kg bag of Blood and Bone pellets at an initial cost of approxiamtely $1.20 per kilo. Compared to a litre bottle of liquid plant food (such as Seasol) which costs about $10 and will make just over 300 nine litre buckets (going on the manufacturer's average of 30ml per bucket), your bag will make many hundreds of buckets of first grade solution followed by many more second and third grade 'weak' solutions which are ideal for foliar feeding. A huge saving, which will give you enough fertiliser to last you a whole year or more!

Making your own pizzas is a brilliant way to save money on buying them - but I bet you haven't tried this! You can save even more money on takeaway pizzas by making your own bases using just TWO ingredients!

This recipe makes two medium sized pizza bases:

2 cups self raising flour

1 x 200g tub natural yoghurt

Simply combine your two ingredients in a bowl and mix together until well combined. Turn out onto a floured board or surface. Knead together as usual, then divide into two equal parts. Roll out your pizza bases, add your chosen toppings and pop into the oven for 15 minutes at 220 degrees.

The results are so delicious. Simply use up whatever you have in the fridge to top your pizza and you've got a super cheap and filling meal. I've converted all my family and friends too! I dare you to give it a go, you'll be amazed!

Instead of adding up when you do your shopping, why not deduct? This hint explains all.

I no longer use a calculator when I do my grocery shopping. Something to do with always pressing the wrong button and clearing my calculations!

Now, I simply write how much I can spend on my shopping list and when I put something in my shopping cart, I subtract a rounded amount from the total. For example, if I have $100 to spend and I buy milk for $3.89, I subtract $4.00, leaving me a total of $96 to spend on the rest of my groceries.

By making these deductions with every item, you always know how much you have left to spend. Makes it easier to budget and certainly beats using a calculator!

My husband and I have set a goal to pay off our mortgage within five years. We have a way to go, but keeping this goal in mind has helped us to curb our spending.

I worked out that any amount I put on our mortgage is actually worth five times that amount due to the saving in interest. So when I am thinking about spending $20 on a top, I multiply this amount by five and realise that I do not want to spend $100 on a $20 top! That $20 would be much better invested if it was put into our mortgage.

After reading every newsletter on this fantastic website, I decided to make changes to our household budget.

I started by rummaging through the cupboard, where I found an insulated plunger coffee mug that my husband and daughter had given me as a gift. The mug had never been used as I found it easier to grab a 'latte to go' on the way to work. I bought a tin of ground coffee beans for $6.65, figuring that this tin, with its plastic lid, could be refilled. I now keep this tin in the fridge at work. So, instead of buying three lattes a week at $3.50 each, I now allow myself one a week or sometimes just one a fortnight.

While buying my latte I would sometimes purchase an English muffin with bacon and egg. I now have muffins in the freezer, bacon rashers trimmed and have perfected the three minute poached egg. The bacon takes one minute in the microwave and the muffin is toasted in no time. If I am in a hurry, I wrap the bacon and egg muffin in a small piece of alfoil and take this to work. So instead of paying $14 per week, or $672 per year, I now buy the ingredients for the equivalent of $1.45 per week, saving just over $600 per year. Wow!

You have no idea of how proud I feel. I have saved so much money and it's thanks to your wonderful site.

Hard glasses cases are a great, cheap storage solution. I was looking for something to carry my make-up in for the holidays and my old hard case was perfect. It fitted everything I needed and the hard cover prevented any breakages. You also avoid the hassle of tipping out a soft make-up bag to find what you need! I then put the loose things in my glove box (screwdriver, scissors and pen) in another hard case and made myself a travelling tool kit. You could use them to store miniature sewing kits when travelling and much more. These cases are cheap to buy in second hand shops, and many are nicely decorated or you could do this yourself.