Everyday hacks that will save you money, from fixing leaky loos to DIY recipes

Push-button toilets commonly have undetected leaks. A leaky loo can waste up to 300 litres of water a day, which could be increasing your bills – so it can pay to know if your loo is leaking. But how do you check?

Wait 15 minutes after the last toilet flush, then dry the back of the loo pan with toilet tissue. Place a dry sheet of toilet tissue at the back of the pan. Leave for three hours. When you return, check the condition of the tissue:

■  If the toilet tissue stays dry – good news, there’s no leak.

■  If the tissue is a little crooked or wet, there may be a small leak, so use this process regularly to check it isn’t getting any worse.

■  If the tissue has broken up and moved into the water below, there’s a significant leak and you will need to get this fixed by a plumber.

Free beauty advice

If you want to learn more about money but don’t know where to look, MyBnk is a charity that delivers expert-led direct, virtual and online financial education programmes to five to 25-year-olds in UK schools and youth organisations.

Together with young people, MyBnk has created innovative, high-impact and high-energy workshops that bring money to life. Anyone aged 16-25 and based in Scotland, London or the Midlands can refer themselves on to MyBnk’s youth homelessness prevention programme, The Money House. Teachers and youth workers can also book a range of programmes for seven to 25-year-olds, most of which are fully funded.

Earn money for 
walking your dog with a new app.

Biscuit Pet Care tracks your walks with your furry friend and you earn points every time you’re out for a stroll.

To use it, you have to create an account and enter details about your pet, such as date of birth, breed, general health and weight, and how often you go for walks. You will then be given a target of how many walks to go on each week, which is calculated using the age and breed of the pet.

For completing a daily goal, you get 25 Biscuits, which can be put towards discounts on pet care, dog food and dog treats. Additionally, 850 Biscuits can get you £10 vouchers at supermarkets such as Tesco, Asda, M&S and Iceland.

An effortless way to find the lowest price on Amazon is to use a browser add-on for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome that supports Amazon.

The Camelizer, for instance, lets you view price history charts without leaving retailer product pages, and makes it easy to create price watches when viewing 
retailer sites.

All you do is click on the Camel icon in your address 
bar to see historical pricing data or set up watches and get an email when the price drops.

Bump up your bonus

Are you earning more than £50,000 per year? Do you want to reduce your tax bill? Then you might want to consider a bonus sacrifice.

Depending on your earnings, it’s likely that some or all of your bonus will be taxed at 40 or 45 per cent. And you will also be paying National Insurance contributions at between two per cent and 12 per cent.

But if you opt to have your bonus paid into your pension instead of having it paid into your bank account, you will avoid paying tax on your bonus. What’s more, your employer won’t have to pay any National Insurance contributions (usually 13.8 per cent). In many cases, employers will pass this saving on to you.

Boost your savings

Believe it or not, the average person in the UK has £17,365 in their savings account, according to research from the Building 
Societies Association. And those savings could earn free money.

If you like the convenience of a recipe box, but your budget does not, download the Lollipop app.

This free online planner lets you tailor your weekly meal plan from thousands of recipes but rather than sending pre-measured ingredients, it uses normal supermarket products. These are automatically translated into a shopping list for you to order directly from Sainsbury’s, and can be combined with your regular shop.

Lollipop’s own recipes, crafted by expert chefs and nutrition partners, are included on the app, along with recipes from BBC Good Food. And a ‘spend less’ range of 80 recipes has been designed to be more than 50 per cent cheaper than the main recipe box companies.

The recipes include full amounts of all the ingredients you’ll need, while duplicate ingredients are highlighted across recipes when you check out, to help you avoid buying more than you need as you plan multiple meals for the week.

The best part? The app doesn’t mark-up prices for external products, so you’ll pay the same as you would if you were to buy the ingredients elsewhere.

High-end welly-maker Le Chameau is raising money for The Prince’s Countryside Fund, enabling you to get your hands on a pair for as much as 65 per cent less than the standard retail price.

The company is selling boots that are fit for purpose but have minor imperfections such as discolouration, scratches, marks or other slight damage. It will donate ten per cent from the sale of every pair to the countryside fund which was founded in 2010 by King Charles III, right.

These boots have a small drill hole punched in the top to mark them as imperfect, and will arrive in a non-branded brown box with no tissue paper.

A staggering 3.1 million slices of cheese are thrown away every day in the UK, according to Wrap – the Waste & Resources Action Programme – so it’s time to clear out the cheese drawer and learn to love our leftovers.

The good news is that cheese freezes surprisingly well. Its high fat and low moisture content mean it retains its texture well and there’s no loss of flavour once it has defrosted. Freezing will make it a bit crumblier though, so, once thawed, it’s 

best used for cooking – whether in a creamy risotto or a delicious cheese sauce.