Shopping and betting guides

Longer reads: how to save on the things you buy often, how odds actually work, and what to check before you spend.

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Buying kit one season out of step is the largest reliable discount in retail.

Almost everything for the home has a predictable month when it is cheapest.

The price of a product and the quality of its formula are only loosely related.

Most of what people believe about booking timing is folklore. Here is what holds up.

Buying something on sale does not reduce your rights. Stores sometimes suggest otherwise.

A discount tells you what a store wants you to think. Price history tells you what is true.

You can usually combine two of the three. Combining all three needs the right order.

Some of these are the best deal a store offers. Others cost you more than they save.

Adding items to save on delivery only makes sense when the maths works. Often it doesn't.

The trick is not finding discounts. It is working out which of them are real.

An expiry date is the last day a code can work — not a promise that it will.

Most codes fail for one of five reasons, and four of them you can fix in under a minute.