For many people juggling work, family and study, time is the most important saving they can make. I work four days a week, have a three-year-old and studied part-time for a diploma for a year. I got by with these time-saving tips:

1. Lowering my expectations for the house. I don't need a spotless house, but a tidy and lived-in home.

2. Doing my housework little and often, rather than spending huge amounts of time tidying up. I do things like:

- put my little one's daycare bag together for the next day as soon as we get home in the afternoon.
- cook my lunches (pasta and sauce, muffins and so on) once a week and freeze them.
- put my lunch box together from the freezer in the evening.
- clean the toilet by putting a teaspoon of Napisan in it each night. It soaks overnight and the bowl is clean with the next flush.
- do laundry when enough for a load accumulates so we don't have a sudden clothes drought, then an avalanche of laundry to do and put away.

3. Exercising on a stationary bike in front of the TV in the evenings after my little one is in bed.

4. Programming our DVD recorder once a week (Sundays when we get the new TV guide) so I don't miss my favourite shows.

5. Filling cereal bowls with water if I am rushing and have to leave the breakfast things. This makes them easier to clean later and stops ants.

6. Trying not to double handle things. Rubbish goes straight in the bin, meat is put in meal size portions in plastic bags and frozen as soon as it gets home, magazine subscriptions go straight to magazine rack when they arrive in mail.

7. Leaving rooms better than when I arrived, so the need to tidy doesn't build up. It only takes five minutes to put laundry from the floor to the hamper, make the bed, wipe a bench, replenish the toilet paper.

8. Recruiting my little one to help - she's only three but she can put dirty dishes in the sink, put toys away in her room, dirty clothes in the hamper.

9. Shopping for groceries by myself in the evening so hubby can watch his TV shows in peace and I am not tempted to go to other stores as only the supermarket is open. Also many things are marked down at that time.

10. Trying to do three things for myself that make me feel happy each day, like listen to podcasts while I do the housework.

11. Writing the shopping list progressively through the week so I can pick it up and go when it's time to do groceries.

12. Storing the bedding in storage containers under each bed so it's quick to make the bed, especially when changing my little one's wet sheets in the middle of the night.

13. Shopping for presents at sales during the year (online or in stores) so I don't need to go to crowded stores during the Christmas rush.

14. Not beating myself up if I find lifestyle changes tricky at first - I am afterall human!

I make home-made yoghurt in my EasiYo maker for as little as $0.50c per kilo. You don't need to buy the special sachets, all you need is milk powder and a couple of tablespoons of plain yoghurt. I just use 1 and 1/3 cups of milk powder and two heaped tablespoons of yoghurt (saved from the last batch). Easy, cheap and delicious!

I held a very successful and inexpensive party for my daughter and her 12-year-old friends by doing my own version of the 'Amazing Race'! When sending out invitations, each person was allocated a team colour and asked to wear clothing in that colour. On arrival they were given a back pack containing water bottles, maps of the town (we live in a small town and had all activities within a few blocks of home) dry biscuits to snack on, a list and bag for a scavenger hunt to find things on their travels, a dictionary, sunscreen and their first clue.

I had friends in the area lined up with different tasks to be completed (these included windows to be washed, shooting a set amount of goals at a basketball court, sorting books into alphabetical order, separating peas and corn with chopsticks and many other easy to prepare tasks). Each team had a passport to be stamped when each task was completed and the next clue was handed over at each destination. For the final clue, they had to use the dictionary to work out the coded directions to their final destination - our local swimming pool where they spent a couple of hours playing around before heading back to our place for the party food!

This party really didn't take much to organise once I got into it; just a few friends willing to give up a little time for each task and some imagination. I used items from home to make up the challenges, such as books, jigsaws, basketballs and frozen vegies. It was talked about for weeks afterwards and I used photos from the day to make a photo slide show, which I burnt onto discs for everyone who came!

School holidays are more affordable with the help of the $21 Challenge! Money seems to slip away so effortlessly while out having fun with my teenage kids. Budgeting is something I am trying to teach them about but it is hard to make it relevant sometimes. Then I had a great idea that would make them pro-active with the weekly budget over the holidays, without me being a 'budget nag'.

It is the $21 Challenge week, with a twist. THEY have to go and log all the food in the freezer and pantry, and make up the meal plan for the week. Then all the money THEY save us for the week can go towards some guilt-free fun. It's a great incentive and my kids are learning important household skills.

I use a simple principle every day, which helps me save money in all areas of my life. I try to reduce my use or consumption of what I normally do by 10%. The rewards are enormous. For example, if you spend $200 a week on groceries, try reducing it by $20 over 52 weeks and straight away you have $1040 extra in your pocket. You and your family won't even notice the difference, as it equates to less than $3.00 a day!

If you apply this principle to all areas of your life - petrol, electricity, phone calls and so on, the savings are huge even though the sacrifice is not even felt. It not only saves money but also the planet by reducing your overall consumption. Once I achieve this 10% reduction, I do it all over again! Every quarter after the electricity bill comes in, I then set myself the 10% goal anew to keep myself on track and to challenge myself to reduce further. This means the $180 grocery bill then reduces by a further $18 a week and so it goes on. I have done this only to a point where it is comfortable and achievable. Because it is baby steps it is easy and fun and not painful! We have saved hundreds, if not thousands, in the last year or two and are not feeling so pressured by the mortgage rate rises. Best of all is that we haven't noticed any difference to our lifestyle.

I was usually a pretty prudent shopper but was always looking at the money I saved as potential cash for more purchases. This meant that in the long run I didn't really save anything and ended up with a heap of things I didn't really need.

I started taking a 'savings purse' with me to the supermarket when I did my grocery shopping. Instead of buying the product I would normally have bought, I would choose the cheaper alternative. For example, I would purchase the 'home brand' biscuits for $1.00 less. That $1.00 would go into my head as a saving. At the end of that shopping trip I would put any 'savings' into the savings purse. I was stunned. After two weeks of shopping and 'saving' this way, my savings purse contained $100.

I began to use my savings purse in other ways. If I managed to refuel my car with cheaper fuel, I would put the difference in the purse. If I wanted a chocolate bar, and I resisted buying it, I would put that money in my savings purse. Even with those small amounts, the savings became huge. Doing this began to be fun; it was a challenge to find extra ways to put money into my savings purse!

To top it all off, not only was I saving money but, by 'resisting' the sweets and chips so that I could put the money into my purse, I was also eating healthier and losing weight. I am so happy with the results.

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.

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!

One year a friend gave me a money tin and on the side of it was printed, 'If you fill this tin with only gold coins by the time it's full you will have at least $500'. It really didn't look big enough to hold that amount of money, but I love a challenge so I decided to find out if it could!

We started in March and any gold coins we had went into the tin. Our goal was to open the tin at Christmas and use it to pay off lay-bys plus have some spending money over the Christmas break.

November rolled around and the tin wasn't quite full. However, when we opened it up and counted our 'gold' we were very surprised and extremely happy to discover we had collected $700 in our little tin!

Because of that little treasure chest of gold we enjoyed a fantastic stress-free Christmas! I was able to pay for all the presents for our immediate and extended family as well as cater for a great Christmas day feast, AND we had spending money left over for the holidays.

Now it's a family tradition. My sceptical husband happily donates all his gold coins to the tin and my 12-year-old will go hunting for gold coins just to add them to the collection! I know that I don't have to worry about the financial strain of Christmas any more as my tin has got it covered.

These bath bombs are great to give as gifts or to pamper yourself with! This recipe should give you at least four to five good sized 'bombs' and cost as little as $1.00 to make. All you need are the following:

1 1/2 cups bicarb soda

1/2 cup citric acid

Scent or fragrance of your choice (you can use essential oils if you have them)

Food colouring of your choice

Sweet almond oil or any cooking type oil

Flower petals if desired

NOTE: Make sure everything is dry. Even the smallest hint of moisture will make the ingredients fizz.

Sift the bicarb and citric acid into a large bowl, add petals if desired then divide mix into four separate batches.

In another bowl, mix one tablespoon of oil, enough fragrance to suit you and enough food colouring to get the desired colour. Mix well. This mix is enough for one of your small batches of dry mix.

Add the colour and fragrance mix to a batch of dry mix and mix in with fingers very quickly, making sure that it does not fizz. Mix well to make sure the colour and fragrance are distributed evenly.

Press firmly into lightly oiled moulds. You can use just about anything as a mould. Try using the plastic lid from a can of hairspray or jelly moulds if you have some. You can buy bath bomb moulds from some craft shops. Make sure that you press the mix firmly into the mould, otherwise it will crumble.

Leave in a dry spot for about 24 hours, then gently press them out and enjoy!