I came up with a great low cost, low stress way to feed the crowds at my son's 21st birthday party. With the weather being chillier, the food needed to be warming and more robust than usual. I came up with the idea of a crockpot party! I am borrowing family members' and friends' crockpots and am filling them in the morning with different dishes, then I can 'forget' about them until the evening! When it's time for everyone to eat, I can then just plug them all into a power board and put them on the table. This is a triple whammy saver for me! It saves time as I don't have to spend all day in the kitchen and can get other things ready for the party instead. It saves money as I can use cheaper cuts of meat to achieve tender dishes and - as I don't have to use serving dishes, it even saves on washing up!

I make this vegetable pasta sauce for three reasons - it's cheap and healthy and it uses up leftover vegies (cooked and uncooked) so I save three times!

Whenever I serve up a dish of vegies for dinner (usually broccoli, carrots, beans and zucchini in my house) and it isn't all eaten, I put the leftovers in a ziplock bag and throw it in the freezer. Then, when my fresh vegies are starting to get to that 'oh dear' stage, I start cooking!

In a big pot, with a bit of olive oil, I fry onion and garlic and add all the 'oh dear' vegies - sometimes there is a fiddly bit of broccoli that is too small to use in a meal or carrots that are starting to wilt. Other vegies I have added include celery, cauliflower, broad beans, spinach, cabbage and capsicum. I chop and cook all of this - in summer I add fresh tomatoes, in winter I throw in a couple of cans of Home Brand tinned tomatoes. To this I add the frozen leftover vegies, a squeezie stock concentrate or stock cube and some water.

I cook the whole lot until everything is soft, and then I blitz it in a food processor or with a Bamix until it looks like pasta sauce. I then freeze this in meal-size portions and use it for everything - I add it to mince for bolognese, or just use it neat. My kids don't know it's full of vegies - they just think it's another jar of commercial pasta sauce!

I was renting for nearly three years on a medium salary and really just living day by day. I decided that I wanted to get out of the renting cycle, so thought I would become educated financially. I started reading the 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' by Robert Kiyosaki series of books and immediately I saw there was no way out unless I changed my psychological views dramatically and acted on them.

I started a savings plan by setting up three bank accounts - one for daily spending (which gave me a small amount of easily accessed money), one for bills (which I used to pay credit cards and so on) and one for long term savings (through ING Direct) which was only to be touched for large goal purchases.

I requested my employer split my pay 30% in the daily and 70% in the bills accounts. Once the 30% ran out, I just sacrificed a bit more and went without the usual luxuries until the next pay. I soon found that I would spread the money out for longer until I hardly ever ran out. At the end of each month (or whenever the deadly credit cards had been paid), whatever balance was left in the bills account was transferred to my savings account.

I am happy to say that after three years, I have managed to save nearly $25,000 for a deposit for my new home, whilst accumulating 5.25% interest!

A few simple lifestyle changes have helped me lose 26.5kg AND slash my food bill by $35 a week! Over the past six months I have developed my own healthy eating and exercise regime. I began by pushing my one-year-old for an hour a day to the park and around the shops at a brisk pace, using our $20 eBay running pram. I also invested in some second hand hand weights and after extensive research on the Internet, I started my own regime of weight training exercises.

Food-wise, I began buying in bulk and made my own nutritious meals, rather than relying on 'ready to eat' microwave health meals. This way I knew exactly what was in each meal and there was never any waste. I started making my own meal plans and eating smaller portions, going from a 3000 calorie-a-day diet to 1500-1600 calories per day.

Under my new regime I soon began to lose the weight, but the real bonus for me has been in the savings I have made. Changing the way I ate and my portion size has resulted in me saving $35 a week over the past 26 weeks! A win-win situation all round. No personal trainers, fancy diet shakes, pills or supplements - I simply used what I had. I feel fantastic and have the energy levels of a teenager! If I can do it, anyone can!

Transforming myself from a shopaholic to a smarter consumer has enriched my whole life. Not only am I saving money, my life has become deeper and more meaningful since I decided to live by the following rules:

• Keep away from the shops.
• Buy only what you need.
• Buy second hand if you can.
• Be stylish, not fashionable.
• Don't buy what you can borrow.
• Stop reading glossy magazines that encourage shopping.
• Borrow books and magazines from the library.
• Read about simple living.
• Do it slowly.
• Spend more time with your family and friends.

These rules may sound simple, but they have changed my life. For as long as I can remember, I have loved shopping. I could easily do it all day, every day and never tired of it. I enjoyed the quest to find bargains or something I had 'always' wanted or didn't yet have.

When I felt angry, sad, lonely, fat, old, poor, disappointed, rejected, embarrassed or simply 'not good enough' - I went shopping. It made me feel better.

When I felt happy, confident, rich, delighted, loved, appreciated and 'on top of the world' - I celebrated by going shopping.

Although I work full time, I had never paid off my credit card and financially I was always struggling. Then I heard about climate change and the impact my shopping was making on the environment. That's when I decided I would stop shopping all the time.

At first, this decision left an enormous vaccuum in my life. I used to be very busy - 'Never enough time in the day' was my mantra. Then suddenly I had lots of free time! I didn't have many really close friends, except my mother and sister. We often used to meet for a coffee and a chat while we were out shopping. But with all the free time I now had, I realised I had been too busy to make other meaningful friendships because of my constant shopping.

I don't meet my mum or sister at the shops any more. We now get together in each others' homes and, although I have always enjoyed their company, I rediscovered a deeper connection with them. We talk, laugh and cry for hours and hours. I am learning so much more about them. I have started to deepen the friendships I have with people who were just 'acquaintances' before. Instead of shopping, I invite them over for a cup of tea or lunch or for a walk along the beach. I'm even starting a book club.

Due to the money I was able to save from not shopping so much and because I wanted to entertain more, I rented out my small unit and moved to a lovely old house. However I soon realised I needed more furniture, so I bought it all very cheaply, secondhand from eBay. Everyone who visits my home says how wonderful and stylish it is. I love making cheap, affordable meals for my friends. I had my first party on New Year's Eve and 35 people came, each bringing their own meat, drinks or salads. To any shopaholics out there like me, it IS possible to change - I'm living proof!

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.

I love making scones, and my Mum passed on this wee hint which makes my scones even better.

When the scone recipe calls for milk, use half milk and half water. For some reason, the water makes the scones extra light with the added bonus that it drastically cuts down on your milk usage.

Our wonderful daughter is a saver on the grandest scale. At 29 years old and earning a modest wage, she is building her first mortgage free home on five acres; as well as flying out to Bali for a holiday! She has had several serious health problems but is amazing in her efforts to follow her plan, thanks to the support of her equally admirable husband. Their two horses and two dogs are greatly loved and their lifestyle is totally free of unnecessary expenditure. They own their block of land, furniture and vehicles as they need them to drive to work.

To save rent while rebuilding they bought a duplex then removed junk, scrubbed, painted and renovated by finding the best way to build fences, roof a pergola and fix the faults. Meanwhile they have fenced their own block of land, installed gates, had a bore sunk, built open stables themselves with salvaged material and negotiated the big expenses of shed, driveway and site costs.

They are not without experience as she purchased her first property at 19, a unit which she and her father gutted and renovated. Her husband joined in and renovated a property, then they renovated a joint property before they purchased five acres, built a house and developed it for resale so that they could buy their current land. Recycling has included rescuing old baths for horse water troughs, finding a kitchen sink for a fish cleaning bench and rebuilding an old horse float. They planted and watered tube stock trees, had family members grow cuttings and even used the horses to mow the lawns. In fact one horse was purchased for the knacker's fee and the other was free.

No, she hasn't benefitted from a first home buyer's grant as she was too young at the time of her first unit, or from family gifts. Just planning, following her dream and sticking to the budget. It works!

I add a supermarket gift card to my weekly grocery list and use them all up to shop for Christmas! After doing some calculations I realised that the ready-made Christmas hampers that you pay for weekly cost three times their actual value, not to mention the fact that they can include many products you won't ever use. My new system for buying Christmas groceries lets me buy my own hamper full of items at the current price or on special.

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!