How do you stretch your home budget?

Making the home budget last all month can be a difficult task, often robbing Peter to pay Paul or on occasion going without. We all have our little tricks and ways of doing things that helps make the money last until payday, or puts that extra little bit in our rainy day savings. My question to you is, how do you do it?

We'd love you to share how you stretch your home budget. Whether you shop in the offers sections of the supermarket, only ever buy second hand, regularly save by finding the best renewal rates for insurance or simply make your own lunches for work, we want your best tips.

We're surrounded day in and day out by lots of tips and helpful hints on how to save money. Often, it's hard to see how much you'll really save for all that effort and sometimes it can really feel like penny-pinching or just too much hard work.

The easy places to save money are in the home on things such as food shopping, energy supplies and insurance, but the examples given by the companies involved are often meaningless, and often come across as a marketing ploy.

The examples given by are based on the 'average' household, but what exactly is an average household? How many kids is that and how big is the average house? Sometimes it makes no sense, so it can be hard to see if the savings actually stack up.

How to share your ideas

We're looking for tips and ideas about the home budget. That includes anything to do with the home, such as food shopping, clothes shopping, utilities bills or insurance.

• Tell us your best trick, how you go about saving and how much it saves you
• What you intend to do with your saving
• Your name and location
• A picture of your saving (if you can, we understand that might be a bit tricky, but hey, be inventive. It must be your own photo though!)

A few minor points

These must be your own ideas and true stories of how you save. You can remain anonymous, but a name always goes down well. We may edit your submission a little so that it reads well, but we won't change the context of what you say. If your tip has already been submitted, then it won't be published, so check other reader's ideas below first. No links please!

Simply fill in the form below (it will expand) and tell us your best home budget tricks. Start typing...

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Our readers home budgeting tips

Here are the best budgeting tips posted by visitors to this site.