I know I’ve touched on how something that you might class as ‘junk mail’ can actually save you money a few times before in my weekly five frugal things post but today, I thought we’d give it a whole post of its own.
(I first published this a couple of years ago but money’s tight for lots of people right now so I thought it was worth a quick update and a reshare to remind you of a couple of different ways to save some money)
Lots of people mentally sort their mail into three piles – you have the boring bills and grown-up life admin stuff, the waste of paper junk mail and finally, what’s left after sorting that lot out is the fun or interesting stuff that you actually want to read.
I feel like most of my mail falls into the junk mail category these days as I went through most of my bills last year and went paperless wherever I could. It took me a good hour one afternoon but it was well worth it as my paperwork piles have reduced drastically with everyone giving me the option to go paperless other than a couple of insurance companies.
What I would have done in the past is to take my junk pile and pop it straight in the recycling bin without opening the letters but at some stage earlier this year, I started to take more notice of what was in the junk pile of post. I did this because (a) I really wanted to try and reduce the amount of wasted paper being sent to us on a daily basis and (b) I realised I was missing out on discounts and offers by not reading what we were getting.
I filter out the true marketing mail first which has definitely reduced since I registered with the MPS (Mailing Preference Service). From what I can see the MPS control the ‘cold call’ marketing mail for companies you don’t have a relationship with – invitations to apply for credit cards for example – so we get very little of these now which is fab but the odd one still slips through.
When it does, I have a super quick read through to find out how to unsubscribe from whoever’s mailing list to stop future marketing before I get rid. I’m not organised enough to do something as soon as I open it but I do take a photo of the instructions on my phone so I can send a couple of emails together every now and again.
Then there’s the mail from the companies we’ve used in some way previously who’ve either automatically added us to their mailing lists or we’ve not ticked the right box to be removed from marketing. These ones I do have a quick look through as sometimes there are some quite good deals to be had when we were looking for a break with Butlins for example, we kept an eye on their (very frequent) mailshots for discounts and we ended up getting a reasonable amount off – 10% I think it was.
Any that I don’t think we’ll use again then, again, I take a quick photo and at some point, I get in touch to get us removed from the mailing list. So using Butlins as an example again, I was OK with getting mail from them when I knew we’d probably visit again at some point but as our Butlins days are behind us I think so we asked to be taken off their mailing list.
An example of a company who’ve added us to their mailing list somehow is Boden who sent us a catalogue out of the blue today with a £10 discount and a 20% off code:
That’s fab but I don’t shop at Boden really so this is on my list to email them to be removed now.
And then there’s the junk mail that’s going to save me money. I’ve been keeping a note over the last few weeks to tell you what I’ve had that could save me money…
Boots – some great extra points vouchers that will be great for when I’m Christmas shopping along with some info about the app which is something I didn’t know about. I set the app up and have even more offers now.
Tesco – some extra points vouchers which are personalised to me and the things I usually buy.
Farm Foods – this was a local mail drop and had vouchers for money off my shopping.
Pets at home – discount vouchers off the grooming services which we do use and also money off the food we buy for the dogs.
Credit card – a 0% balance transfer offer which would be fab if I had anything to transfer. #debtfree
Dominos – I’m not a dominos fan but if I was I’d probably be pleased with some of the deals that have dropped through my letterbox these last few weeks.
Slimming World – I got a leaflet inviting me to join up again for free. 😉
They might not all be offers I’ll use this time around but I’ll definitely use some of them and in the past, I would have missed the savings so if I were you, I’d start taking note of what’s in your junk mail!
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter or BlogLovin and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉
Why not pin ‘Could your junk mail save you money?‘ for later:
