We have saved $500 a WEEK and I've got my life back again! My husband lost his job in October last year, just weeks after I had gone back to work part time to 'supplement' our household. At the time, we had over a dozen payments going out every week, and I really thought the solution was to work more in order to get more money. However, after 6 months of missing my two small children, and working 70-90 hours per WEEK, we made some wise, life-changing decisions. Firstly, we moved house, which automatically saved us $150 per week in rent. the house is further from town but, unbelievably, we now spend LESS per fortnight on fuel than we used to because instead of just jumping in the car now, we plan our trips. This alone gives us a $75 weekly saving. We finally finished paying off our car (another $100 per week), I took our children out of daycare to be the mum I wanted to be (another $50 per week), I on-sold our gym memberships ($26 per week), and we cleared up four other outstanding debts that had been hanging over our heads (totalling $2000) simply through recognising that I had to make the little money we had work for US, not vice versa, and that NEEDING LESS was more important than caramel lattes, trips to Mcdonalds and new clothes. (Oh, and now we have 3 weekly payments, rent, power and insurance- magic!)

My husband is still job searching, and I work 25 hours a week which is what we comfortably live on. I reduced our WEEKLY expenses by nearly $500, which is almost 50 odd hours per week that I no longer have to work. It is SO empowering, and even though we 'have' less, as a family, what we have gained is immeasurable.

Imagine getting 14 meals out of a single cooked chicken! It's my biggest food saving and this is how I do it.

Buy a whole chicken (on special of course)! Get a large pot. Place chicken in it and add chunky chopped carrot, onion, celery and mixed herbs (I grow my own so save more money here)!

Boil until the meat is starting to fall off the bone (I have a wood heater so I cook on that, saving gas in winter) Take the meat and vegetables out, reserving the liquid. Serve some of the meat and all the vegetables with mashed potato and white sauce.

With leftover meat, make up some chicken sandwiches and freeze them for quick lunches. Use the rest in curries or whatever other suitable recipes you have.

Back to the liquid. Add a little more water, chop up whatever soup vegetables you have or add lots of lentils, a dash of paprika and salt and slowly simmer to make a few meals of wonderful thick soup. This way, I feed two of us 14 meals out of the one chicken! Not only is it cheap, it is good for you and has helped the purse strings through many tight times over the years.

Here's how to lose weight and save!

A couple of years ago I joined Weight Watchers and went to four meetings. Joining was free from a coupon in a magazine but the meetings cost something like $15.95 each. I couldn't get motivated!

A few weeks ago, as I was bucketing the bath water into the toilet cistern to save water (a tip from Simple Savings), I realised that I am doing the exact same thing that Weight Watchers meetings could not motivate me to do. At WW the main things they encourage you to do are to eat 10% less at meals (this also helps the budget at shopping time) and to exercise more (this comes from carting water between the bath and the toilet and using the rain water tank to water the vegie patch and so on).

I am now losing about half a kilogram a week without even trying and I'm not paying $16 to do it. In fact, I'm making other savings as well - our last water bill was $40 less than that for the same time last year.

What has also happened for me in the last few months is that while saving money I have also become better at time management - planning meals for a month and shopping with a list have cut out a lot of unnecessary trips to the shops (not to mention the extra expense). I have cut $60 from my husband's spending money by supplying his lunch every day, along with some soft drink, a large bottle of water and a snack. He is happy because he still has a small amount of 'sanity money' in his pocket to splurge with every week.

My food budget absorbed this when I switched from a lot of brand name products to BI-LO brand products - I save from as little as $0.10c per item up to a couple of dollars per item. The biggest savings I make come from bulk buying - last month BI-LO had five kilograms of potatoes for $5.00, but when I went to the greengrocers they had them at $6.00 for a 20 kilo bag. These lasted for about a month and I couldn't bring myself to go to the fish and chip shop when I had 15 kilograms of 'free' potatoes in the pantry, so we had home-made wedges instead, saving another $6.00.

The excitement of saving money has also inspired me to do the things that I don't enjoy so much, such as mending and ironing, and I am gradually working my way through every room and cupboard, taking inventory of what can be used and how best to use it in a way that will save me money. I never thought I would actually look forward to going through years of accumulated junk! By organising my house, I am becoming a 'cleanie' and leaving the old 'messy' me behind - and I am enjoying every minute of it!

We have saved over $150 in seeds alone this past year. Instead of paying up to $5.00 for packets of seeds which may or may not sprout, we have started grabbing packets of seeds from the herb sections of Woolworths, Coles and IGA. Most mustard, coriander, fennel, cardamom or celery whole seeds that you get as a spice for cooking will sprout for you in your garden. These normally cost around $1.05 per packet and you will get a lot more seeds than if you bought them from a gardening shop. We also get the full dried peas (not freeze dried) from the soup section and have planted these successfully for three years now. They give us the sweetest sugar snap peas ever! A packet normally costs $1.53 and you get close to 100 seeds. In comparison to buy 'packet' seeds it would cost you over $12.

We also cut the ends off shallots and replant them, it takes about three weeks before they start to recover, but then you have an endless harvest of shallot leaves to use in salads. We do the same with old onions that have hidden themselves away in our cupboards and have sprouted. Plant them in your garden, let them go to seed and you will have a great seed stock for the next few years. No need to buy more!

Garlic can be done in the same way. Grab a clove and plant it flat end into the ground. After about four months you will get a great bulb of garlic from your original clove. Be aware that garlic from China or Mexico has been treated with Bromide (cancer causing agent) so only use Australian grown garlic.

Old potatoes and sweet potatoes that start sprouting can be replanted and will give a good yield. Just cut a 3cm piece around the sprouting part of the potato and plant it, from one potato alone you could get up to seven new plants.

Pumpkin, cucumber, capsicum and other vegetable seeds can be cleaned, dried and then planted out to give you more seed stock to play with. Try planting two different types of pumpkins near each other and you might get a hybrid created which tastes great. Our family had a butternut mix with a jap pumpkin and it was the sweetest tasting pumpkin we'd ever tried. We also let one or two of each vegetable go to seed so that next years planting will cost us even less. Our goal is to go totally self sufficient in the garden. So far we have an abundance of butter lettuce, silverbeet, rocket, mint, corn, tomatoes and sugar snap peas all from previously saved seeds.

I no longer use disposable cloths to wash the dishes and wipe down benches.
 
I recently bought two bulk packets of face cloths, giving me eight cloths. Each cloth is the perfect size and thickness for washing dishes and wiping down benches. I use a cloth for a day or two and then throw it into the wash with the tea towels.
 
I have been reusing the same cloths for over a year – just think of the savings now that I'm not buying disposable kitchen cloths every month!

I'm saving money, time and sanity by serving dinner much earlier – here's how! With three young school children, I was finding they were coming home really hungry from school, eating up and were not hungry at dinner time. This meant I was struggling to find healthy, economical after school snacks and throwing away perfectly good dinners! The solution? I changed our dinner time to 3.30–4pm! They have a healthy, nutritious meal when they're hungry and a small snack such as fruit later in the evening. No wasted dinners, no stressed mummy! I have their dinner ready when they get home and then have more time to help them with homework. They are also helping out more with dishes and so on, which is a great help to me.

Try this impressive five star dinner for any special occasion (perfect for Valentine's Day!) for under $25!

This Valentine's Day, instead of the obligatory card swapping and outrageously priced meals at restaurants, my husband and I decided to make a concerted effort and have dinner at home.

He wanted to suprise me by serving Chateaubriand (eye fillet steak with Bearnaise sauce), which he adores. I, in turn wanted to make him Tiramisu, which has always been his favourite.

While he was out shopping, I whipped up dessert and then locked myself in the study.

After searching the Internet for intimate dinner ideas, I found every possible candle in the house and arranged them throughout our dining & lounge area!

Church candles on candlesticks and on plain white saucers, a runway of 15 tealights on gold tulle ribbon along the middle of the dinner table and on various other side tables and shelves (from my '$6.95-for-100' pack I bought at the Warehouse three years ago and am still using)!

I set the table for two and found some Miles Davis jazz CDs, bought from the Sanity bargain boxes for $6.99 each.

I then went back to my PC and set about writing not a Valentine's card, but a Valentine letter, which I bordered with clipart from a free site. After two pages, I knew that my words were more personal than any Hallmark card, and also it saved me $5.95.

I lit the candles, put on the music and our room had transformed with all the ambience of a private dining suite at a five star restaurant. My husband was lost for words!

Dinner and conversation was wonderful and during the night, our discussion turned to the cost - and saving - of our meal and we both agreed that it was far better to have stayed in than gone out.

Chateaubriand normally costs between $60-$70 for two; ours cost a grand total of $20.45 for two, including vegetables. We could have easily served three from it.

Tiramisu can cost between $7.50 up to $15 each at a restaurant. I bought the ingredients for half the recipe I found and at a total of $7.34, I still made 4 serves ($1.84 each).

Our wine was chosen from our wine rack, saved from previous dinners and occasions, saving us up to $40 on a restaurant bottle.

Altogether, our 'restaurant' dinner cost us $24.12, as opposed to a potential bill of up to $120 if we had dined out. We further saved on fuel, parking and a babysitter as the baby was home with us (asleep).

With the time we saved on travelling, we continued to talk, dance and enjoy each others company without any interruption.

The letter I wrote my husband brought him to a tear, and us just a little closer. As I sat there I realised the effort and surprise we gave to one another was priceless!

When you are going out for a picnic or taking lunch to work or school, use cloth to wrap the sandwiches. This is much better than cling wrap or foil because it's cheap and reusable. I use tea towels, napkins and chopped up table cloths to wrap my sandwiches. The sandwiches stay fresh and when I've finished, I just shake off the crumbs and take the cloth home to be washed and used again.

There is something pleasantly old-fashioned about this method - and just think of all that plastic not going into landfill.

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!