A freebie hunter who refuses to pay full price for anything has shared how she is able to save £300 a month on purchases. Georgia Thorney Nash, a 27-year-old customer administrator from Bournemouth, earns £1,771 a month and constantly scours the MoneySavingExpert website and TikTok for the latest freebies. She has made £600 in the last few months just from switching banks.
How she saves £300 a month
Georgia estimates she saves around £300 a month with her savvy tips. Last year, she was able to make £240 worth of free cash to buy her Christmas presents with, just from doing her food shop. "Everything I do, I always try to make money from it," she told SWNS. "I’m always checking the Martin Lewis website, the advice on there is amazing."
"TikTok is also great," she added. "You can literally just type in 'what can I get for free this week?' I use student discount even though I’m not a student anymore. I refuse to pay full price for anything. In total I probably save around £300 a month."
From childhood frugality to university reality
Georgia has always been super frugal, even as a small child. "I remember my granddad would always give me £20 when I saw him," she said. "People would always be asking me what I was going to spend it on, but I’d always just put it into a savings account."
After leaving university and entering the world of work in 2023, Georgia was disappointed by the reality of her salary. Instead of accepting her situation, she began desperately hunting for things she could get for free, or ways to boost her income. "I came out of uni thinking I’d be making loads of money, then I realised what things are like in real life," she said.
Georgia began looking at money saving newsletters and on Reddit for ideas, and in her spare time would try and make extra cash. "My job wasn’t the most exciting, so I’d do surveys if I had a spare five minutes, or in my lunchbreak," she said. She used sites such as Google surveys, which offer users between 10p and 80p per survey.
Freebies and cashback tricks
Georgia is also constantly scouring the internet for freebies. This month, she has bagged free pizza, crisps, lemonade and ice lollies through Tesco’s Freebie Thursdays, which is running through the Tesco app throughout September. She uses Voxi as her mobile phone company, and every month the provider does a monthly draw where customers can back freebies. "I’ve got Sainsbury’s vouchers, a cinnamon bun kit, a bucket hat and a bum bag," Georgia said.
Despite no longer being a student, Georgia still manages to use student discount to get money off her purchases. "If you went to uni, you can still use your uni email to log in to Student Beans or Uni Days to get discounts," she said. She has also bagged a free M&S cake this month as a reward just for having an M&S credit card.
"I’ve just bought my boyfriend’s birthday present and I didn’t want to pay full price for it, so I used a new M&S deal where you spend £60 and then get £12 back, and also used student discount," she added. "I saved £17 in total."
Whenever Georgia buys something, she uses cashback sites such as JamDoughnut or Top Cashback, so that she can make money back whilst spending. "If the item I want to buy isn’t available on a cashback site, I’ll just buy something else instead," she said. She buys a voucher through the sites (making sure it has the highest interest possible) and then gets money back in her account after she’s spent the voucher.
Georgia usually spends around £400 a month on her food shop and gets around £20 in cashback. She then keeps this money in her cashback account and uses it for her Christmas food shop and presents at the end of the year. "Last year I had about £240 in there by the end of the year, and it was so nice because I didn’t even have to think about saving that money," she said.
Bank switching earnings
Another one of Georgia’s hacks to bag freebies is to switch to a different bank account. Many banks offer free cash for opening up a new account with them, and in the last three months Georgia has gained £200 for switching from Santander to NatWest, £200 from switching from NatWest to Nationwide, and £200 from switching from Nationwide to Barclays. "I’ve made £600 in the last few months, bank switching is amazing," she said. "I’m hoping to do HSBC next, and I’m waiting for Lloyds to come out with one."
She shares tips on where to bag the best freebies on @georgiamaythornley. Here's a breakdown of Georgia's monthly freebie savings: bank switching £200 for the past few months, surveys £20 a month, Tesco freebies £15 a month, student discount savings £20-£30 a month, cashback £30-£40 a month, M&S credit card and club rewards (have had a freebie a month on my app that would have cost around £5-10), and Voxi mobile monthly drop (gift is usually about £5-20 in value).
