Introducing the UK's savviest family

Today, a HGV driver and his family from Pontefract, Yorkshire, are announced as the UK’s savviest family in 2012, after showcasing their money-saving talents in the national Nectar Savvy Family competition.

Dean and Ashlea Stenton and their two sons Dawson and Ciaran were originally selected from over a thousand hopefuls, to go head to head with six other families in a blogging competition. For six weeks the families kept thousands of readers updated at nectar.com/savvy with advice on how they save money on everything from shopping and days out to holidays and household bills.

Winning Dad, Dean Stenton comments, “We’re completely over the moon to have won. We’ve always shared our advice with friends, but we never thought that thousands of people would want to read about our tips online. There are hundreds of ways to watch those pennies, but the key to finding a good deal is patience – understand the market value of a product or service and then wait for the right price to come up. You should always remember that it’s your money you’re spending, money that you worked hard for, so why not try to get the most you possibly can for it.”

As the country as a whole continues to tighten its belt, people worried about their finances should take heed of some of the Stenton’s top tips and simple advice to help their money stretch further, including:

•  Save on electricity bills by charging mobile phones, iPods and satnavs in the car on the way to work

•  Learn the prices of your weekly shopping items and write a list down of all of the everyday, every week items that you buy, and carry it with you to compare prices in stores you visit

•  When visiting places in the UK, search the website of the local radio station for the area you are visiting for deals and vouchers. Some of these sites also connect to cashback websites

•  Save water by using toilet bags. These are bags that swell up to occupy up to a litre of water space in your cistern, thus saving water with every flush. Many suppliers give these away for free

•  The rail companies put their tickets on sale 12 weeks in advance. To get the very best prices check daily once you are 12 weeks away from your travel date

Jasmine Birtles, Nectar Savvy Family competition judge and founder of Moneymagpie.com says: "With family budgets becoming increasingly stretched, it’s encouraging to see that people like the Stentons are so passionate about saving money and wanting to help others do the same. By involving the whole family, they showed that being careful with your finances doesn’t mean you can’t have fun together. It was a very close call in the end, but the Stentons truly deserved to win the 2012 Nectar Savvy Family competition.

“This is the fourth year I’ve judged the Nectar Savvy competition and it’s fascinating to see how the nation’s money-saving skills have evolved, in particular with the almost daily use of online resources and voucher sites. However, many tried and tested traditional household tips dating back years are clearly still very popular.”

Fellow judge James Frost, Nectar Marketing Director, adds: “This year’s competition has been a great success. Not only did we receive more entries than ever before, the final families have been fantastic at getting involved and sharing their intriguing money saving tips with the nation. The economic climate is clearly still taking a hold with more families than ever before wanting to pull together to help each other save money.”

As a reward for all their penny-watching the Stenton family have won a recession-busting prize package that includes four easyJet flights to any destination; a Sainsbury's giftcard worth £500; £500 from BP to spend on fuel; £500 for the family to spend at Vision Express; a free week's car hire in Europe courtesy of Hertz; a year's cover from British Gas on a Home Care policy; a Nintendo Wii console package courtesy of American Express and 50,000 Nectar points.

To read all the Nectar Savvy Family blogs visit nectar.com/savvy

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