Tomato paste doubles as cheap puree

Tomato paste saves me valuable dollars on buying puree! Whenever a recipe calls for tomato puree, I just use a sachet of tomato paste and then add water to it to make it up to whatever quantity of puree is required. It works as well and tastes just as good. I like to buy the Delmaine concentrated tomato paste, which comes in four little tubs of 70gm each. It is so versatile, and compared to tomato paste takes up far less room in the pantry!

Sock it to draughts with cheap 'door snakes'

With every winter, it's important to make our heating systems as efficient as possible. Draughts under doors (both to outside and to rooms not currently being used) let heat escape, driving heating costs up. Door snakes are often advertised at around $10 each. This means for a whole house you may be looking close to $100. Instead, you can use a pair of men's long, knee-high socks! These can be filled with rice (or sand if you have easy access to it). Either tie a knot or see the top to seal. You can purchase ind the socks at cheap shops or ok shops, use the cheapest rice you can buy and you can make a house-full for less than the price of one commercially produced door snake.

All new parents love this gift

When someone you know has a baby, it can be hard to choose a gift that will be appreciated – but this gift is always well received!

I like to give new parents the gift of dinner for a week, which is delivered each night. In the weeks leading up to the due date, I cook and freeze meals that will feed my family and theirs. It gives the new parents one less thing to worry about as they are settling in with their baby, and ensures they are not living on takeaway food.

I make things like pasta sauce, casseroles, soup and garlic bread. Roast dinners and chicken salads are easy to make fresh in large amounts and I also bake cakes and biscuits so they have something to offer their visitors. If they have school age kids, I even give them food for their lunchboxes such as slices of cake, sandwiches, pizza rolls and muffins.

This may not be as spectacular as a large gift with a bow, but all my friends say that it was their best gift, as they are so tired by the afternoon that the last thing they want to think about is cooking dinner.

Asking for damaged stock saved a fortune

When shopping for large furniture items, it's well worth asking the furniture retailers if they have any damaged stock. We saved over $400 on our beautiful new dining table. Thanks to putting into practice some hints from Simple Savings, my husband and I found ourselves with enough money saved to spend on a new kitchen/dining table.

We shopped around for a long time. We knew we wanted something big - an eight-seater preferably, with a beautiful wood grain and lots of character. We looked at second hand as well as new, then finally found one we loved. But the price, at $930 was still beyond our budget. We sadly let it go.

Several days later I had a thought and I convinced hubby to go with me back to the shop again. We got talking to a sales person and I decided to be completely honest. 'We love this table but we just can't afford it at that price - can you do a better price?' He did a few calculations but the answer came back 'No'. I said we'd even be willing to consider a damaged table if they had one.

He thought for a minute, and then rang one of the guys out in the warehouse. Sure enough they had the table we wanted, in the eight-seater size, with a scratch on it. He arranged for us to go and look and - we got our beautiful mahogany table, imported from India, for half price (a saving of $465).

We don't mind the scratch at all - in fact, when people admire our gorgeous table (which they do all the time), I proudly point out the scratch to them (which they would probably not even notice otherwise) and tell them the story of how we would never have got the table if it weren't for the scratch!