Knowledgeable money hacks paid for mum’s Christmas shopping

A mum has shared a ‘brilliant’ money hack which saved her more than £650 – and paid for it all Christmas shopping. Kate Richards has been using the same savings trick for the past three years.

The 33-year-old starts by saving 1p on January 1, then 2p on January 2 and so on – reaching £3.65 on December 31. This makes a total of £667.95 stashed away by the end of the year – enough to buy presents for her whole family.

Kate, from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, said: “It’s an app and it automatically transfers money into your account for you. At the end of the year you have £667.95 and you don’t notice it coming out every day.

“I’ve been doing it since 2019 and using it every year for Christmas shopping. They also do it in reverse and start at £3.65 and go down.

“It connects to the bank and you get a notification every day, you don’t have to think about it and that’s great. I’ve already wrapped all my presents and everything, everything’s done.”

Kate uses the app IFTTT, which automatically saves an increasing amount of money each day, to help you control her spending. And the teacher says that she has also used another idea put forward by money saving expert Martin Lewis – a secret Santa with his relatives instead of buying each person a present.

Where she previously spent £20 per person on seven people, totaling £140, the group of them now have a £50 limit in a secret Santa game where they only have one person to buy for – cutting costs by almost a third. She also uses a website called thingstogetme.com to organize Christmas lists for her son.

The site allows people to enter their Christmas list and links to items, meaning it can be passed around to friends and relatives. And once a gift has been “reserved” by someone, it shows everyone viewing the list – meaning no risk of duplicates.

Kate said: “I bought for seven people at £20 each and instead this year we’ve done a Secret Santa with a £50 limit so you only spend £50 instead of £140. It’s more fun because you have to think about one person and what they really want – with one person you can think a little more.

“I use a website called thingstogetme.com – you put yours Christmas enter and send it to everyone and they can reserve an item ticking so there are no duplicates. You can find the item on Amazonput in the link and any extra info like color or size and people can just tick, buy it and it’s sorted.

“You can do a good range of prices – some gifts were £4 and some were £40 – and I had loads at the lower end so people could pick and choose what they could afford and reserve it.”