Vinted: The Convenient App for Secondhand Shopping

In recent years, sustainability has become an increasingly important issue for many consumers. People are becoming more aware of their environmental impact and are actively seeking ways to reduce their carbon footprint. One way to do this is by shopping secondhand, and there's no better way to do it than with Vinted. It's something I have really grown to love and have both bought and sold on Vinted. You can check out my listings here.

Tips to Make Your House Warmer

In the winter months, you might find yourself and your family are shivering often, even when you are at home. Even if you are wearing thick socks and cosy jumpers or boiling the kettle for constant hot water bottles, you might not be warm enough. Nobody wants to feel cold while they are at home, so here are three methods that will make your home warmer.

 

Block Out Any Draughts

It is easy to overlook draughts at home. You might even forget they are there. Maybe you subconsciously avoid sitting in a particular seat because you know there is a chill, or maybe you just turn the thermostat up a couple of degrees to try and warm up the house. This is not only wasteful, it is just plain pointless. Why spend money and energy heating up the house when there is a cold breeze or draught coming in?

One of the simplest ways to warm up your home is to eliminate this problem. Check around windows and doors in particular, as these are key spots for draughts to occur. You could replace caulking around windows or just buy a simple pack of draught-excluding tape – it takes very little effort to install and can make a big difference. You could use an animal-shaped draught excluder for your children’s bedrooms. They look like toys but will keep your kids warm and prevent breezes, keeping everyone happy.

Insulate Your Loft

Heat rises, so if your loft is not properly insulated, a huge amount of heat will be rising up and out of your house rather than staying in the property.

Installing proper insulation can be a bit of effort – if you have problems with damp or a flat roof, you may need to bring in an expert. For most people, though, it is easy enough to install loft insulation yourself. You just need to buy a few rolls of loft insulator and lay it between the rafters and along the ceiling joists in the loft.

Loft insulation will keep your house warm, but it will also save you energy and money – it could actually save you up to £250 a year on your heating bill, so it’s definitely worth the effort.

Install Better Radiators

If your radiators are old, they probably are not fit for purpose any more. Radiator pipes can easily rust, and rusty pipes leads to a build up of sludge. When the pipes are full of sludge, radiators cannot heat rooms efficiently. This means you might be turning up the thermostat or keeping the heating on for longer than necessary.

High-quality radiators make an enormous difference to the warmth of your home, as do radiators that are the right size for a room. Too small and you will not be able to warm the entire room; too big and you will use unnecessary energy. You can buy a variety of horizontal and vertical column radiators from warmrooms.co.uk, and they come in different sizes and styles to suit any room in any house.

Bonus tip: Avoid putting furniture directly in front of a radiator – it will prevent the heat from properly circulating.

When you think about it, it is easy to see why your home is not as warm as you would like. Make these changes and see the difference it makes to the warmth of your home – you will be glad you did.

K Elizabeth xoxox

*Collaborative Post

Increasing Your Home’s Value – 5 Proven Tips

Parting with your home is difficult, and you deserve to get the highest financial compensation possible. Forget about negotiating for the best price in the market – you need to find a way of increasing its value. Fortunately, many factors count in determining a house’s value – and improving on these factors will give your home a bigger price tag.

Here are five tips to increase your house’s overall value:

5 Ways to Add Value to Your Home

Pixabay

If you plan to put your home on the market at some point in the future, you want to be sure you will get a high return on your investment. Your home is likely your most valuable asset, so you want to be able to capitalise on your investment. The more money you can get for it, the higher your chances of being able to afford your dream home.

Before you sell it, it is wise to do whatever you can to maximise the value of your home. This can range from keeping it clean and well-maintained to more extensive renovations that completely transform your home. Whatever your budget, there are steps you can take to add value to your property. Here are five ways you can do so.

Keep it well-maintained

Nothing drops a home’s value quite like dirt and disrepair. Don’t let your home fall into a bad state. It seems obvious, but you should always take care to keep your house clean and tidy and get any problems fixed before they get too serious.

Decorate

A little bit of decor can turn a drab, uninspiring home into a highly-appealing property that buyers will jump at the chance to get their hands on. A bit of painting, a new colour-scheme, and changing out fixtures such as lights, mirrors and door handles will be inexpensive but can completely revitalise your home’s interior.

Increase curb appeal

What a house looks like from the outside is one of the key factors in people’s buying decisions. No matter how beautiful it looks on the inside, an overgrown lawn and cracked peeling paint will make it look rundown and unattractive. Increasing your home’s curb appeal doesn’t even take much time or money, but will add a huge amount of value. By simply giving your home a new coat of paint, weeding the driveway and clearing out any dead leaves and branches, you can make an enormous difference. You can take this a step further by adding new garden furniture, outdoor lighting or plants.

Renovate kitchens and bathrooms

Kitchens and bathrooms are two of the most important aspects buyers consider when looking at properties, and investing in a renovation can pay off when it comes to selling your property. To save costs, you can keep your existing layout so the electrical and plumbing systems won’t change, but updating surfaces, fixtures and tiling with a cleaner, more modern style will pay dividends.


Convert your loft


Changing a two-bedroom house into a three-bedroom house will instantly add an enormous amount of value to your home. And you don’t need your house to magically grow in size either. The attic is usually an underused part of the house, but by converting it into a bedroom, or even a new living area, you can increase the amount of living space in your home and make it more appealing to any buyer. You will, of course, need to check that the structure of your house can support conversion and that it conforms to building regulations. To get you started, here are some ideas for a loft conversion.

K Elizabeth xoxox

*Collaborative Post

How To Turn A Hobby Into A Business

Are you tired of claiming unemployment benefits? Have a great hobby that you think might be able to make you money? Well, maybe its time to turn your hobby into a business. Most of us have dreamed about doing so at some point, so what’s stopping you?

In this article, we are going to give you some great tips for getting your hobby-based business off the ground. 

How to Meal Prep for 2020

Meal prepping is something I swear by. It helps me save money, feel organised and eat more healthily   - when I meal prep I feel like I’m already winning the week and if you haven't started doing this, do it now!

Reverse Mortgages | What are they & do you need one?

There are lots of adventures to be enjoyed when you retire. However, it takes a healthy nest egg to enjoy them. You also need funds for medical or emergency situations. It can be difficult to amass those funds sometimes, especially after you are no longer receiving your working income. A mortgage can help, but the question is what type should you get? Once you retire, you have the option of either a traditional or a reverse mortgage.

Five Things Mobile Phone Networks Don't Want You to Know

Mobile phones seem to cost us more and more every year. In some cases these costs are hidden, or at least not fully explained by networks. Here are five things you need to know before you take out your next contract.

Make Changes Today to Avoid Food Waste

As I'm getting older and maybe (and I say maybe!) getting wiser, I'm becoming more conscious of the amount of waste our family produce. I don't want to be driven by consumerism or negatively impact our environment and so I'm looking to make improvements to the way we live and one of the first areas I know we can definitely improve is the way we shop, eat and minimise waste and prepare food. Some companies are really recognising this, such as Grundig. Recognised for quality, Grundig is a German heritage brand with a 74-year history and well-known for its consumer electronics. In 2013 Grundig launched home appliances in the UK for the first time, exclusively through Currys PC World and really are promoting a more sustainable lifestyle through their brand.

Staying House-Frugal Even With A Disposable Income

Now and then, we might be lucky enough to find ourselves in a financially strong position. We might find ourselves with a good amount of disposable income thanks to our singular or pooled income with our partner. Also, now that cryptocurrencies have become more popular, more of us are finding ourselves better off due to trading and investing. It's become even easier now that automated trading systems are available - check out https://kryptoszene.de/bitcoin-robot/the-news-spy/ and similar websites to research into these. So, there are many people benefitting from this and enjoying a financially strong lifestyle. Of course, this might be before kids, but even with kids this can be a wonderful thing. However, should this mean you can head out at any opportunity and pay for whatever you can afford? Well, of course, if you feel like it.

But we’d recommend taking a few moments to sit back. To consider your long-term financial goals, and how you might stay house frugal even with a disposable income. Here you can use your funding to better the lifestyle changes you most want to see and build for, and those that leave the longest impact on your life for the better. Even with a disposable income, an inquiry like this can likely help you enjoy a better and more prominent sense of worth. Let us explore that together:

5 Ways To Boost Your Christmas Budget This Year

Christmas is a time of year many of us look forward to and dread simultaneously. While it’s a fun time to spend with family and friends, it’s the amount of money you spend that can cause problems. Even if you’ve devoted the year to diligently saving to buy gifts, food, and everything else, there’s still a chance that your current budget doesn’t quite match up with your plans. Although you can make compromises and cut costs where possible, many would rather find the extra cash somehow. With that in mind, here are five ways to boost your budget this Christmas.

1. Ask For Extra Hours

Regardless of your job, many companies get much busier throughout the festive season. Unfortunately, this can make life particularly difficult for bosses, who have to ensure that work still gets done, even though most employees would rather be at home. For this reason, managers are always crying out for workers who are willing to put in a few extra hours over Christmas. If you pick up a few yourself now and then, you’ll make them happy and earn some extra money. 

How to build a good credit score

It's this time of year when our finances are taking a bashing in the pursuit of a perfect Christmas. Whilst it may be tempting to put everything on credit some of us may not have a glowing credit score to begin with. Having a good credit score is incredibly important, especially if you need a loan, which is inevitable at some point in your life or are purchasing your own home.

Getting More for Christmas this Year

Christmas is the time of the year for spending and most of us start worrying about it as soon as September comes around. Instead of using all that energy worrying, this year you should put it into forward planning and smart spending so that you’ll make your advisors at Credit Fix proud!

5 Lifestyle Changes That Will Help You to Save More Money

Want to get financially fit and improve your health at the same time? Then you've come to the right place.

5 Tips to Properly Buying Commercial Real Estate

American Financier and Politician Russell Sage once said, “Real estate is an imperishable asset, ever increasing in value. It is the most solid security that human ingenuity has devised. It is the basis of all security and about the only indestructible security.” This is indeed true. When done the right way, real estate is a keystone of wealth, both of financial affluence and emotional security. It is also one of the few extremely tax-efficient investment methods around. With that said let us go through some of the major aspects to consider before investing in real estate.

5 Ways to Save Money on Your Food Shop

If you're looking to make cut backs and save a little money, one of the areas you should take a good look at is your food shopping. It can be an area that you can make some big savings, by just doing a few simple things. 

#changeyourbills and Start Saving Money

Contact Numbers UK have asked me to see if I can save my bills in their #changeyourbills challenge. As you will know, if you're a regular reader, I'm always looking for ways to save money and having already made some big savings this year on our bills. So, I was curious if I could make any further savings.

#SagaSpendingDiary The Results

You may remember a few weeks ago Saga UK challenged me to a two week spending challenge, to see if I could change my spending habits in order to make myself better financially. Well, the results are in! I have managed to save over £2,000 (per year) just by changing a few small things. See my latest video to see how we managed to do this. 

Do you have any tips on saving money?

Mummy B xoxox

#SagaSpendingDiary

The fantastic people at Saga have challenged me to take part in their two-week #SagaSpendingDiary challenge. As someone who is wanting to reduce debt and save for a huge trip and potential business, I knew this was something I had to take part in. I have created a short video introducing the challenge and my plans for the next two weeks.

Do you have any tips for reducing spending or way's to generate income? I would love to hear your ideas.

Mummy B xoxox

5 ways to add value to your home

Buying and selling a home can be a daunting task. When we first got into the property ladder I thought, hurrah we've made it! But now, with the intentions of wanting to upgrade our home to a bigger one in a couple of years time, I have started to take more notice of property prices in our area. Guesstimating how much our home is worth, can we increase that in any way? So I have been doing a little research in ways we can increase the value of our home.