I have discovered that 'saving small' really works for me and leads to some big savings after all! Before I had my first son we planned to set aside about $100 every month for savings to build up an emergency fund. However, by the time I got pregnant we had still not managed to save anything. So instead of $100 a month we lowered our sights to $10 a week - but still it didn't happen. The sum just seemed huge and too much to manage with all the bills we had to pay. After my son was born I told myself I really had to make a start. I began saving $2.00 a day. It was a small amount and did not seem big enough to notice. My son is now two and a half and I have saved a total of $1800 in cash! Now we have our second child and I'm putting aside $4.00 each day. If I continue with this, by the time my children are old enough for school, the cash will really come in handy for their education expenses - or anything else for that matter!

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 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!

I am on a very, very low income, so I budget for every bill and expense. I put away bill money every fortnight and that way I have all my bills covered as they arrive, and we seem to just spend the rest. Last year I decided to pay me as a bill, so every pay day I pay me first, just $50. I now have over $1200 in savings. I can't believe how easy it is; just pay yourself before everyone else. The first couple of pays it was an effort not to touch it, but as soon as I saw it mounting up, I got very excited. I tell myself all the time that money is power. While $1200 is not much to some people, to me it's a fortune. Try it - it empowers you.

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.

People are constantly amazed when we tell them that we have managed to whittle down our weekly grocery bill to just $100 for our family of four. Our income may not be all that we would wish, but with a little dedication, we have made a huge difference.

For example, in recent months, we have saved $50 per week on our grocery bill, since we have started throwing away our supermarket circulars! For years, I eagerly awaited the arrival each Sunday of the supermarket 'junk' mail. I would plan our eating to a large extent on the weekly specials, and would stock up on a few of them, believing it was saving me money.

However, once I began throwing them away without even a glance, it had an unbelievable effect! Not only did it cut down on the clutter in the house, but amazingly my grocery bill plummeted. I now buy only what I need - as opposed to what the stores want me to buy - and the benefit is showing. By throwing out the junk mail alone, our weekly grocery shop reduced from $150 per week to around $100, saving $2,600 per year!

I still use a menu plan to help me stick to my budget, but now it is food of my choice, rather than being influenced by supermarket advertising. A typical weekly menu might look like:

Monday - Baked chicken and salad (whole chicken $2.50 from local butcher)
Tuesday - Fish and chips (fish $2.00 per pack at ALDI, I use potato gems or
chips about $2.00)
Wednesday - Pasta bake & salad
Thursday - Taco's
Friday - Baked beans (ALDI's are really cheap at around $0.40c for two cans)
Saturday - Chicken legs, pasta and salad (chicken legs $2.00 per kilo)
Sunday - Quiche & salad

I usually have all the meat I need already available, as I buy in bulk, so all I need to buy for the week are any other items to complete the meals. I buy salads and vegetables on alternate weeks - one week we have salad with everything, the next week I buy vegetables for all our meals. It may sound an unusual way of shopping, but this way there is no wastage; unlike when I used to buy both.

I don’t buy everything in bulk, but some items work out more economical, such as:
Bread - I buy bread from Coles after 6pm to take advantage of the markdowns - for example, $0.50c for a packet of bread rolls, or a loaf of bread.
Chickens - Patton’s, our local butcher have many great specials, including chickens for $2.50 each. I buy ten at a time and freeze them; they may not be huge, but plenty enough for a family meal, plus leftovers for sandwiches.
Fish - ALDI have oven bake fish for $2.00 per packet (the cheaper of the two
versions). They are like large fish fingers, and perfect for us. Combined
with the chips or potato gems, the whole meal for a family of four comes to $4.00.
This is a standard meal for us, and I make sure I buy plenty to last between ALDI visits. Ice cream - I wait for special offers so I can purchase five litres for $5.00 and buy in bulk.
It also pays to buy washing powder and toilet paper in bulk when on special, as they don't go off and you will always need them!

When I was planning my meals around the supermarket brochures, my shopping list was actually doubling - that was without any impulse buying as well! Another thing I also now do to cut down costs, is alternate a meat meal, with a non-meat meal. You will see from the menu plan above how we eat meat and vegetables one night, baked beans the next, or pasta bake and so on. We enjoy our meat, but find we can cope with every second meal being meat based, and it really keeps costs down.

We don’t eat cereal every day for breakfast, it works out too expensive - it’s actually more expensive to eat than steak! We have toast, eggs or grilled tomatoes. With the children, lunches are mainly sandwiches; the kids like their Vegemite, peanut butter and Nutella; the adults make use of any leftover meat. For school lunches, I dropped most of the expensive packaged goods (for example, Rollups) in favour of two sandwiches and a piece of fruit. They still have a lunchbox treat now and then, but it’s sometimes, not everyday.

One tip I have learned which has really helped me is that the family actually prefers me to cook from their range of ‘family favourites’, rather than consulting cookbooks or fancy magazines. If this is what they enjoy - stick to it and save yourself the time and money!

I have discovered that reversing my old way of shopping is much easier on my pension! Previously I always used to menu plan first, then go to the shops and walk up and down the aisles getting the things on my list (plus plenty that wasn't)! However once we retired I soon realised this was no longer working. I was spending more than we could afford at the supermarket and greengrocer. I needed to find a better way - and I found one!

These days, I do my menu planning and shopping the other way round. I go to the supermarket once a week and buy whatever is marked down. For example, this week I found Wagyu sausages down from $6.95 to $3 for six. That's enough to make three meals for the two of us! I also bought 4kg of chicken breasts marked down to $5.99 a kilo. I can mince some for lasagne, chop some for curries, cut strips for sate or just poach some for sandwiches. Either way I will get at least at least 20 meals for the $45 I spent!

The same goes for the greengrocer. Instead of planning what I was going to buy in advance I now only buy what he has outside in boxes on special. I pick out the best deals, then come home and menu plan around what I have bought. I am finding this so much better on the wallet and would encourage anyone to give it a go!

We are a family of only two adults who cook often with a large crock pot. However we do find ourselves with a heap of left overs after cooking a pot full of food. So, instead of filling the crock pot with enough food for one meal several times over, we now take two oven bags and divide our meat/chicken/fish between both bags. We add different flavourings to each bag then arrange both bags in the slow cooker and cook on low for eight hours. I have just made Chicken Korma in one bag, using drumsticks that were on special with an extra pinch of cinnamon and some chilli, and Mediterranean Chicken with olives in the other bag. The conflicting smells are surprisingly delightful and the final result is two delicious meals both cooked with the same amount of power I would have used for one. Any extras we don't consume straight away I simply freeze and save for a later date.

When I separated from my husband and was left with three children, I had no income apart from the pension. Food was getting very scarce, so I had to become creative. Every second week I drove to Flemington fruit and vegetable markets in Sydney (about closing time when most food is the cheapest), bought food by the boxes, and spent the whole day processing it. I made vegetable lasagnes, which I would freeze, all sorts of sauces, vegetable selections for stir frying and steaming, mango ice blocks (pureed mango only) and so on. We would use the most perishable fruit and vegetables the first week and the others later. Eventually we started to have an overabundance of food.

Then I told a few friends of my system, and very soon I was running a little co-op. I started to go to the markets every week and buy a greater variety of food. I got my fruit and vegies free and could also split up my petrol bill for the week amongst participants of the co-op. They got their food much cheaper than in the shop, and I got my food and petrol free.

Apart from that we had the freshest food, with fresh fruit or vegetable juices every day. Out the window went fizzy drinks and any convenience foods. It is now about 14 years since we started to eat like this, and we don't even have a family doctor, because we hardly ever get sick. How much we saved on medicines I cannot even begin to calculate.

Going out of my way to present well to prospective landlords has really paid off for me. I recently had to find a new rental property and found that the open inspections where attracting many families at a time. Being a single mum of four, I knew I had my work cut out for me trying to get something over the two-parent families.

I decided I would write a covering letter as an introduction to the land agent/owners. I wrote about who we were and even what schools the kids went to, to show we were already established in the area, where I worked for the same reason. I got friends, my employer and my pastor to all write character references for me, which I copied and added with the letter. I also have a dog, which can be a problem so I got my then-current agent to write a reference for my dog too, which I also copied and added with the letter. I then attached these to the application, along with copies of my last four weeks' payslips and a payment summary from Centrelink.

The first house I applied for had more than 20 families and most of them were two-parent families. I added all the above mentioned stuff to my application and I was happy to receive a call the next day to say I was successful. I asked the agent if my letters and other details had helped and he told me that they had been the deciding factor. They liked that I had taken the extra step and cut out some of the work for them. They also appreciated that I had been so open with them. I would recommend this to anyone trying to rent a place. It takes only a little time and effort but could be just what you need to secure a house!