10 Ways To Spend Less Preparing Food

You can save money planning your meals and shopping carefully. You can also save money in the kitchen by cooking and storing food economically to reduce your electricity and gas bills.

Make The Most of The Oven’s Heat. Oven share – When you have the oven on to cook a meal or do some baking, consider what else could share the oven. You may decide to have baked potatoes and roasted vegetables instead of boiled. Or make some scones or bake a cake.
Get Steamed Up. Steaming vegetables helps to keep its vitamins and saves energy if you place a steamer over boiling potatoes, or pasta, as you will save on using another hob
Turn It Off. Make use of residual heat by turning off the hob or the oven a few minutes before the end of cooking time. The food will carry on cooking. You only need to actually boil an egg for just one minute, then turn off the heat. Find out more here.
Don’t Overfill Your Kettle. Only boil the amount of water you need in your kettle. Measure it out if you can, so you don’t boil water, only for it to go cold again
A Full Freezer Is An Efficient Freezer A full freezer uses less electricity than an empty one. Stock up on bread and freezable food, that has been discounted towards the end of the day. Make ice, or even fill a plastic bottle with water to freeze to fill gaps (leave some room in the bottle for expansion).
Overnight Fridge Defrosting Frozen food that defrosts in the fridge, keeps your fridge cool and saves on using the microwave to defrost. So when you need something defrosting, put it the fridge the night before.
Cook One Pot Meals. One pot meals are easy to prepare and only use one source of energy whether on the hob or in the oven – saves on washing up too! Try Lentil And Vegetable Casserole
Use A Saucepan The Size of The Hob Ring. Otherwise heat is wasted. And put a lid on it to stop heat escaping.

Don’t Put Warm Food In The Fridge Or Freezer. It will raise the temperature and the fridge or freezer will need extra energy to lower it again. Make sure food is completely cool before freezing or putting in the fridge. Speed up the process by putting the food in a plastic container, and stand it in a bowl of cold water
Cook Double – Freeze Half. Cook twice the amount you need and divide the rest into portion sizes to freeze. It uses less energy to reheat than to cook from scratch, helps to keep your freezer full and you can defrost overnight in the fridge. And you always have ready meals in the freezer for when you have no time or are too tired to cook!

For lots of low cost and easy meal ideas see Penny’s Recipes. Sign up for the newsletter and get a free Meal Plan – 7 family meals for less than £30

Happy Cooking!

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Is your mortgage your top priority?

Regardless of your financial situation if you have your own home with a mortgage it should always be your priority to pay it above all other debts. If you are in debt and owe money to many different lenders you will probably have experienced creditors chasing you for money.

Chasing from unsecured lenders is often different from secured lenders. Unsecured lenders have a faster process and when a debtor misses a payment, or makes a reduced payment, they will begin chasing procedures straight away.

Secured lenders, on the other hand, commonly take longer to process missed payments and are usually less active with their chasing for the missing payments. It is usually because of this that debtors find it less hassle if they pay their unsecured creditors over their mortgage.

If you are experiencing financial difficulty, here at Payplan we would always advise that you pay all of your priority payments first and with then share any left-over funds between your creditors. If you need assistance then please speak to a trained debt specialist for free and impartial advice.

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New year, new you. Changing your spending habits

The New Year is always a good time to try something new or change things in your life that you are not happy about.

With the state of the economy getting worse and families seeing the biggest squeeze to their budgets for 60 years, many may be seeing the New Year as an opportunity to change the way they are spending their money.

If you are looking to change your spending habits, here are a few top tips.

Write down all of your expenditure and see where you are spending your money. From this you can look at areas that are excessive or where you know you spend too much.
For all of your utilities you can use comparison websites to see how much you can save. If it turns out that you have the best deals then you haven’t lost anything. However you could save yourself lots of money if you find a cheaper deal.
On your grocery shop, why not switch to the supermarket own brands. Alternatively why not switch supermarkets? Try going to your local supermarket to buy cheaper fresh fruit and vegetables or visit one of the low budget supermarkets.
Make use of loyalty card points and use them wisely. Tesco Clubcard and Sainsbury’s Nectar Card have double value vouchers if they are spent on certain items, so it is always worthwhile checking.
Instead of cutting out luxuries, sign up to discount websites such as Groupon to get the things you love, for less.

How will you change the way you spend?

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Preparing for the New Year

With the New Year fast approaching many of us are reflecting on the last year’s events and preparing for the new year ahead of us. For many of the people who contact Payplan, they may be looking for free debt advice or some assistance with their financial issues.

At this time of year we see many new clients contacting us as they resolve to start a fresh.

By contacting Payplan early on with your debt problems you can get everything in order before things spiral out of control. Many who come to us say ‘I wish I’d called you sooner’ in doing this they would have avoided further hassle from creditors, legal action or unnecessary distress.

This New Year, what are your resolutions?

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