Money Hacks - How to save money and get special perks for free
This post lists our most-used and recommended money saving hacks. It will teach you how to get cashback on your purchases, eat at restaurants for free, how to maximise Avios rewards points collection, what to use them for and how to enjoy superb travel perks, like flying long-haul business class for just £350-£450 GBP. Note that some of these hacks will only be available to UK-residents.
FIRETRAVEL
Thru
10/19/202520 min read
Table of contents
This post will tell you about all of our top tips on how to save money, maximise the collection of Avios points and travel in style for very little! The post has several sections and are outlined in the table of contents below for ease of navigation. Every single one of these recommendations below are things we do on a very regular basis and are genuine recommendations and are all life hacks we wish we knew years ago. I am not trying to hard-sell you this, but you will benefit massively from following the below advice. However, I have found that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink - you choose whether or not you want to benefit from this advice.
Each section has a link to jump back to the below table of contents.
Get money back on purchases through Cashback schemes
This is a life-hack everyone should use if you live in the UK, but I am sure similar schemes exist elsewhere. You can get cashback on almost anything under the sun, but probably the most useful ones (and ones I use) include:
Cashback from comparison websites: Money back when you go ahead with any of the quotes from the comparison website for car insurance, home insurance, travel insurance, pet insurance, motorbike insurance or van insurance. Examples include £45 cashback on car insurance, £27 on pet insurance or or £38 on home insurance.
Cashback on your typical high-street shopping like Argos, Currys, Dunelm, Very, B&Q, Tool Station, John Lewis, M&S, Debenhams, H&M, Matalan, Pets at Home, AO, Wickes, Shein, George, ASOS, Nike, JD Sports, Mountain Warehouse, Ninja, Game, the list goes on and on.
Cashback on loads of travel related things like train tickets, tours with Viator, GetYourGuide and others, hotels with popular providers like Hotels, Booking.com, Agoda and so on, flights, attaction tickets, concert tickets, holidays with popular providers like Jet2Holidays, EasyJet Holidays, OnTheBeach and more, airport parking.... the list is pretty long.
... and much more.
On top of the obvious benefits of receiving the cashbacks, you also get sign-up bonuses when you use a referral link, but I have provided mine below:
TopCashback - Get £10 GBP for signing up and get cashback on purchases.
Quidco - Get £20 GBP for signing up once you've earned £5 GBP worth of cashback.
Get an ISA that is 100% flexible and pays you interest on your savings daily
One of the greatest gifts that the UK government has given every living person in the UK are the ISAs - these are tax-free savings accounts where all the profit you make is not subject to tax. There are both Cash ISAs and Stocks ISAs out there, but in my view the Stocks ISAs are WAY more benefitial because you can absolutely skyrocket your tax-free earnings with the Stocks ISA. As I wrote this, I had just made £1400 GBP in tax-free earnings in just over a week on a £6000 GBP investment. That's 23% rate of return in just over a week!!
There are lots of ISA accounts out there, some of which are MUCH better than others. The general rule of thumb is to avoid paying fees altogether if you can, or if you MUST pay fees, go with a provider that charges rock-bottom fees. I have tried a few, including Moneybox, InvestEngine, Vanguard and Trading 212, and I'll say that BY FAR the BEST one was absolutely and definitely Trading 212 - no question. It is the ISA account we both have now, and won't be changing any time soon because it is genuinely great.
Why I recommend Trading 212:
It has both Stocks ISA and Cash ISA within one interface and you can move your money between the two completely seamlessly in a millisecond.
The interest rate as of 19/10/25 is 3.85% on the Cash ISA paid monthly, or 4.05% interest on uninvested cash sitting in the Stocks ISA paid daily. It is unbelievably satisfying seeing the money trickle in every single day.
Purchases of stocks or index fund ETFs are INSTANT so you can take full advantage of dips in the market, which allows you to earn more on investments faster. The abovementioned £1400 GBP earned is thanks to this. Most other platforms just execute purchases 1x per day so you have absolutely no control over the price you end up paying for stocks you buy.
The account is 100% flexible - you'll find almost no other provider that does this! This means you can put your £20,000 ISA allowance into the Stocks / Cash ISA with Trading 212, take it out before April and then put money back in before April, without it affecting your ISA allowance. So say for example you were an absolute genius on the stock market. You put £20k in at the start of the tax year. You made a killing, with £20,000 in profit. You took out your profit. Your ISA allowance is back to as if you never put any money in in the first place - you still have £20,000 to put in, even though you already have £20k in there.
If you need your money at any point, Trading 212 won't make you wait for days to get your money. They'll give you a disclaimer that it may take up to 3 business days to get the withdrawal money but in reality (or this has been my experience), it will literally appear instantly in your bank account.
They often run promotions where you get a free stock worth up to £100 GBP when you sign up with a referral. At the time of writing, one had just finished, but I will include the referral link here if and when this promotion comes up again.
If you are however thinking about starting a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension) which returns 20% tax to you automatically, then Trading 212 does not have SIPP option (YET!). If it's a SIPP you're after, you're only just starting out and want to avoid fees of any kind, then InvestEngine is the way to go. You can also have a Stocks ISA with InvestEngine (though you don't get the daily perk of interest paid daily on uninvested cash, as you do with Trading 212). A bonus is that when you sign up with a referral link, you can a bonus of between £20 to £100 GBP! What's not to like.
Get money back on your debit card spend
This is another shout-out to the awesome Trading 212 - no question. I have already discussed the huge benefits of their Stocks ISA, however their General Investment Account (GIA) called "Invest" on their app is also excellent for different reasons. They offer you the Trading 212 debit card, either as a virtual card, or if you pay for the shipping of the card, a physical card with contactless payments (but no magstripe). Any time you use the debit card, you get a 0.5% cashback in cash into your account, which is quite nice, especially when you're forced to use a debit card (we use Avios-earning credit cards on every single transaction we can).
The other plus side of this card is that the only money that can be used on the virtual or physical card is the money you've moved into a special "Spending pot". So even if your Invest account has loads of money in it, nobody could get it off your card in the event your wallet got stolen or something. Likewise, if you DID have lots of money in your spending pot but your walled got lost or stolen, then you could simply REMOVE the money from the Spending pot, so people couldn't touch it.
Learn how to make 10% returns on your money per year on average
OK, OK, a bit of a click-bait - however it is true that you can make over 10% returns on average with the help of the stock market. "But the stock market is risky, you can lose money" I hear you say. "It goes down as well as up" I also hear you say. It is true, if you panic and sell when markets are down, you WILL lose money but if you hold until the market recovers, you will own as many shares as you always did. What's even better is that you can use the dips in the market to make even more money - is your porfolio in a minus? A GREAT time to buy shares on offer! I did this when the "Trump Dump" occurred on 7th April 2025, I had just received my Danish pension through, put it into my SIPP and by 17th October 2025 the market had not only recovered, but I had also made 30% return on my investment because I bought the dip.
Also it is true that the market goes down as well as up, but that's just the nature of volatility, but if you're investing in a global index fund, the markets always go up in the long term, and have done so for decades, even during crashes, it's gone up way more than what the markets were like before the crash. Just don't put money into the stockmarket that you think you'll URGENTLY NEED in the next 5 years, so that you can ride out any short-ish term volatility. Think about the stock market like this: The stock market is like a yoyo you're playing with as you walk up the stairs - the stairs are the market going up in the long term but what you see is the yoyo flying up and down (volatility) - but as you walk up the stairs, the yoyo keeps going up even when it's going down in terms of volatility.
I could go on and on with this, but what I would really like to recommend you do if you're interested in learning more about the stock market, learning how to take full advantage of it and learn how to make 10% returns on your money per year on average, I SO VERY MUCH RECOMMEND you go through the FREE financial education course run by a lovely couple called Alan and Katie called Rebel Finance School. They do this purely on a volunteer basis because they want to genuinely help people - and they have helped SO many, myself and Joe included. There's no catch, there's nothing they're trying to sell you, they are just helping you:
Get your finances in order and get out of debt.
Gain confidence in managing your own money yourself so that you don't have to pay a costly financial advisor.
How to make money work for you rather than work for money.
Make more money than you could have imagined.
Understand the unbelievable and mind-blowing power of compounding
Retire early (if you want) - some people are suprised to find they could actually already retire, after having done the course!
Reach financial independence - i.e. have enough of a money pot that grows fast enough every year so that you and your loved ones don't have to worry about money in the event of redundancy, burnout, illness or death.
Plus so much more!
Just to give you a taste of the power of compounding - say you put £100 GBP into savings for your child from the day they were born until they are 20 years old, and then they keep putting £100 GBP per month for the next 20 years, by the time they are 40 years old (our age-ish) savings every month, then £48,000 of actual money had been saved. However, thanks to the power of compounding, the £48,000 will have turned into £530,000 a
Then by this point when you have £530,000 GBP sitting in a global index fund in a Stocks ISA, you have very much reached the point where the snowballing effect of the stockmarket is evident. growing by approximately £53,000 GBP over the course of their next year of life, then snowballing into £58,300 growth in their 42nd year and then £64,000 growth in their 43rd year, without putting in A SINGLE EXTRA POUND of their own money. How crazy is that! How much money do you need to live off? By which point can you just simply stop working because you're money that's working for you makes you more money than your day-job?
The above graphs are from a compound calculator on Investor.gov - click the link and play about with your own numbers.
Please do your future-self the enormous favour of doing the Rebel Finance School course. It is free, it takes 2 hours per week in the evenings out of your life (when it's running live) or you can do the course on catch-up on YouTube at your own pace. Links below:
Rebel Finance School 2026 - Sign up for next year's round of the live streamed course.
And if you are still reluctant to do the course, AT THE VERY LEAST do your future self the favour to watch the videos on
Beyond the Rebel Finance School, which I 100% recommend, I can also recommend a few books that you can either physically read or listen to as audiobooks, which are super inspiring, if you're not convinced already! See my Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) book recommendations here.
Get free money to spend at restaurants using TheFork app and enjoy discounted price at restaurants
It should come to no surprise to those who know us that we love our food. We love going out to restaurants, tasting traditional and typical dishes of the countries we visit, I love cooking and BBQing at home. Food is one of those simple pleasures in life that we really enjoy. Therefore, imagine my excitement when I found out about TheFork App.
You can use the app to book tables at restaurants in many contries across the world. For us this is very handy as it takes out the language barrier in many places when booking a table, but also the nightmare we have OFTEN faced when travelling where we have NOT booked a table, wandering between restaurants and they're all full! Now we can actually just book somewhere and be sure we get a table!
Many of the restaurants on the app run special discounts for people who book with the app, giving you 20-50% off your food bill! Current offers when I write this include 50% off at the Landsdowne by Mother India in Glasgow, 20% off at Laz Turkish Tapas, 20% off at Momo Hub Mother Nepal, for example.
Last but not least - you get a SUPER BONUS when you book your first table, as long as you put the following promo code into the booking request: 85732A3C
If you do this in the UK, you will get a whopping £50 dining credit to use in restaurants that accept the rewards currency (known as "Yums") as payment. In our city (Glasgow), Yums are currently accepted at Civerinos in Finnieston, Bawarachi Indian Restaurant in Anniesland, Obession of India in the city centre and Wishaw and Spice Indian Cuisine in Hamilton.
I got a referral code myself from another person, which I used to book a table at the Sichuan House, a Chinese place frequented by people at my work, where I got myself a lunch time special for £14 GBP and got £50 worth of Yums to spend in the UK. However, we ended up using the 2000 Yums I earned in Barcelona, where the redemption isn't as good, but we still got €25 EUR off our food bill at the very tasty Cumpanama Peruvian restaurant near the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
The app is used by The Michelin Guide for restaurant table bookings and it is a TripAdvisor company, so it has a great reputation. Download the app and use the above code when you book your first table and get the £50 to spend next time you book.
Get massive discounts on food using Too Good To Go
One way to save money and the planet at the same time is to use the Too Good To Go app. It is an app that was developed in Denmark but works in many countries across the world, including the UK. The ethos is to reduce food waste, while you save money on food. There's just one caveat - you don't get to choose what you get, the goodiebags are always a surprise. What you get is typically at its sell-by date (but not nearly always use-by date!) and you get really good value for money.
What I have found is that the ALDI goodiebags are usually rubbish (unless you need week's worth of salad that's on today's use-by date - maybe you have rabbits??). However, those that have been consistently good goodiebags for us have been Pret a Manger, Greegs and Panku. Below are a few examples of goodiebags we have received and how much they cost.
Greggs early morning goodiebag on Too Good To Go for £2.99
Tim Hortons Evening goodiebag on Too Good To Go for £4.99
Pret a Manger Dinner Bag on Too Good To Go for £4 GBP
Greggs early morning goodiebag on Too Good To Go for £2.99
Panku in ASDA afternoon goodiebag on Too Good To Go for £6.75
What I'd say is you need to be a bit on the ball with getting the best offers, as they sell out quick! But if you're lucky, you'll get tasty stuff that will feed you and the family for a day or two for less than £5.
To see more examples of contents of goodiebags people have received, you can follow the TooGoodToGo Facebook group.
What are Avios and how to start collecting them
What are Avios?
Avios are a type of travel reward currency used by several airline loyalty programs, including British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus and Aer Lingus AerClub. Members earn Avios by flying with partner airlines, booking hotels, renting cars, or using certain credit cards and using the airline's shopping portals, which operate similarly to the UK Cashback sites discussed in the section above, except in this case you get Avios rewards points instead of cash.
These points can then be redeemed for flights, seat upgrades, hotel stays, car rentals and other travel experiences. The value of Avios varies depending on how they are used, but they are often most rewarding when redeemed for off-peak flights or short-haul routes, however if you want to use them to travel Business Class, you must use it on long-haul or else you're not getting any proper value out of them. Essentially, Avios function as a flexible travel currency that helps travelers save money and enhance their travel experiences.
They get 500 Avios when they've completed a qualifying activity with the Avios app.
Sign up for a British Airways Club account and get a club account number (free)
Download the British Airways' Avios app and connect to your club account number (free) - plus using the link will ensure you get a good start, as a referral will grant you a 500 Avios bonus for free! You are rewarded the bonus after your first in-app transaction.
Use the BA Avios app whenever you shop for hotels, tours, price comparison websites for insurances, high-street shopping, etc. to earn Avios at no extra cost to you.
The rate of earning varies depending on the company you're purchasing products or service from, as well as any particular offers these companies might be running. It is common to earn anywhere between 1 to 10 Avios per £1 GBP spent, sometimes more. Further details are discussed in the next section of this post.Whenever you fly with OneWorld Alliance airline, remember to input your BA Club account number and you'll earn Avios in your account for the flight. See a list of OneWorld Alliance airlines here.
Get an Avios-earning credit card. Just remember to always pay your balance in full, or you'll be in trouble! The most popular card is American Express and you get a very good enhanced bonus when you sign up with a referral see our referral link here. There are lots of different cards, not just the Platinum as you see when you open the page - just scroll to the bottom to where a link says "All Cards". The sign-up bonuses on the Avios-earning cards range between 15,000 to 55,000 Avios, depending on the card you choose (15,000 for the free card). You may want to have a backup card when businesses don't accept American Express, and here, Barclaycard comes to the rescue with their Avios-earning MasterCard. If you’re new to Barclaycard, you collect 5,000 Avios if you spend £1,000 in the first three months.
How to maximise your Avios collection rate
Below are some of our top-tips on maximising your Avios collecting. Some of them have already been mentioned, but are discussed here in more detail.
The Avios App
If you are interested in maximising your Avios-collecting, you very first port of call should DEFINITELY be the BA Avios shopping portal, as this portal will provide you with a constant stream of Avios coming in over the course of each year. Just to give you a bit of flavour of what you can be looking at earning by using the app:
Hotel bookings: You can for example earn 8 Avios per £1 spent on Hotels.com (at the time of writing), meaning if you spent £150 per night on a hotel for a week's long holiday, you could be earning 8,400 Avios on that booking.
Travel Insurance: If you need travel insurance for your week-long holiday, you can click through the Avios app to use travel insurance comparison websites. At the time of writing, MoneySuperMarkey was doing 23 Avios per £1 spent on travel insurance policies taken out through their price comparison tool. We were quoted £90 for our annual cover for the two of us, excluding USA, Canada, Mexico and Caribbean, which meant we could earn 2250 Avios for taking a travel insurance cover.
Day tours: If you like going on tours when travelling, such as food tours, walking tours, tours that take you out of the city to see natural places, etc then you can book those through Viator or GetYourGuide while clicking through the Avios app. We have done this multiple times, for example when we booked our Egypt River Nile Cruise for £240 per person with Viator. At the time of writing, they were offering 14 Avios per £1 spent. That's 6720 Avios banked from the River Nile Cruise!
Clothes shopping: There are lots of high-street shops on the app, one of which is for example Brastop which sell bras for bigger large-busted ladies like myself. At the time of writing, Brastop was doing 10 Avios per £1 spent, meaning if I purchased a couple of bras from them, I'd be up another 500 Avios.
Any other high-street shopping and more!
Just on those examples above, that would have been us over 17,000 Avios richer just for going through the Avios app, rather than going straight to the merchant's website. You can get a return flight from Scotland to Florence for that amount of Avios by the way!!!! And all these Avios came at absolutely no extra cost to us! #Winning
Avios-earning Credit Cards
American Express
The most popular Avios-earning cards are the American Express cards, but at the time of writing American Express was doing an excellent offer on the Blue Amex card with a referral - see our referral link here. You can get the FREE blue Amex card (no annual fee) and they'll give you 15,000 Avios bonus as long as you spend £2,000 in the first 3 months of having the card. The earning rate is 1 Avios per £1 GBP, so by the time you've spent the required £2,000 to get the bonus, you will also have received the 15,000 Avios bonus plus an additional 2,000 Avios for the spend (and even MORE if you used the Avios app to purchase anything, as mentioned above). There are lots of different cards, not just the Platinum as you see when you open the page - just scroll to the bottom to where a link says "All Cards". The sign-up bonuses on the Avios-earning cards range between 15,000 to 55,000 Avios, depending on the card you choose (15,000 for the free card).
Barclaycard
You may want to have a backup card when businesses don't accept American Express, and here, Barclaycard comes to the rescue with their Avios-earning MasterCard. If you’re new to Barclaycard, you collect 5,000 Avios if you spend £1,000 in the first three months.
The key is to put as much of your usual daily spend, bills and holidays on the Avios-earning card as possible. Not only does putting your expenses on a credit card protect you in the event of anything happening (service not provided, airline failures, you fall for a scam, etc), but you'll be banking those Avios very fast.
Compare Rewards
While the Avios app often has the best reward rates out there, it's still worth checking if you might be able to get a better deal getting a cashback through the websites mentioned earlier and just use the cashback you receive to BUY an Avios boost. The best sense-check is to price up the rewards, because Avios have a rough monetary value of £0.01 per Avios. So if a company is offering you 4 Avios per £1 spent, that's like getting £0.04 cashback per £1 spent or 4%. If the Cashback sites are offering you more value than that, then you're better going for the cashback. It is rare though, normally the Avios App is the best value.
Follow the latest news on special offers
The reason why we know a lot about Avios and how to earn them at an accelerated speed is because Joe reads the forums and posts on HeadForPoints literally every single day so that we don't miss out on amazing opportunities to earn Avios boosts.
Check out HeadForPoints here.
How to use Avios points to your benefit
I keep going on about collecting Avios - but why should you? We horde the points because we love travelling. We love exploring faraway countries but flying in Economy Class on long-haul can be absolutely horrendous, barely having elbow space to be able to eat the food that they give you on the plane and having to be woken up any time someone wants to go to the toilet, or feeling uncomfortable having to wake someone else up to do the same. The reasons why long-haul in economy is bad are many. However, after a particularly traumatic economy class experience to Chile, now fair few years ago, Joe wanted to pay to upgrade our seats on our way back home but found out that it could only be done using Avios. However, we had none, so we slummed it in economy again. However, this was the start of us collecting Avios and now we just regret not knowing about this life hack years earlier!!
When you have Avios, you can:
Upgrade your seat on the plane (provided there's availability) with any OneWorld alliance airline that accepts Avios as currency.
Book Premium Economy, Business Class or First Class from the get-go without risking there not being availability to upgrade on long-haul flights.
If you have a companion voucher, you can get 2 flights for the Avios price of one. If you earned the companion voucher with the Blue Amex, then you can get 2x return economy class tickets, if you got it with the Black Amex, you can get 2x return tickets in whichever class you want.
You can get return short-haul flights for as little as £1 GBP per person.
You can get INCREDIBLE value on Iberia flights from Madrid, way better value and way better availability compared to British Airways, and they accept Companion vocuhers as well! Just to give you an example, we got 2x return business class flights to Cuba for 100,000 Avios + £400 GBP (£200 p.p) in taxes and charges. Same price to Colombia, where we went at the end of 2024. That is an insane bargain.
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