Put your points to good use

Rather than sit on those Nectar points, saving them for a rainy day, use some of them to make someone else’s day a little less ‘rainy’. 

Last year my Mum started volunteering with the Citizens Advice Bureau, I called her after one of her first shifts to see how she was getting on. I’d always thought of the CAB as a place for free legal advice, that sort of thing, but it turns out it’s so much more including referring people in need to various services such as food banks. 

There’s been a lot in the press about food banks and the increasing demand they face, I didn’t realise that you had to be referred to them or that there are sometimes limits on how often you can visit them for help. 

We’re all a bit closer to possibly finding ourselves in difficult circumstances than we might realise, not many people have savings to fall back on if work dries up and friends and family can’t always help, so I think it’s important to do what you can for others. 

It got me thinking about all the Nectar points I have stored up. I don’t use them, save for the odd £5 pizza offer once a year, and yet I diligently swipe my loyalty card on every supermarket trip, and keep and scan all the relevant coupons that award you extra points (I have a geeky system, I’ll share it sometime...). Rather than storing them up I realised I could spend some of my points buying food to donate to my local food bank, it would cost me nothing other than my time.

I have to shamefully admit I had the idea months ago and had done nothing about it until this morning when something popped up on Facebook about Pay It Forward Day. This is the eighth year the UK is officially celebrating Pay it Forward Day on the 28th April 2018 when people are invited to join a worldwide movement in performing random acts of kindness to 3 or more people and asking those people to do the same. Last year, people in 80 countries took part in Pay it Forward Day and this year, they are hoping to inspire over 10 million acts of kindness. Whilst I’m not sticking to the rules (I’m a rebel) of doing three acts, I figure it’s still worth counting. 

At 7:30am this morning I took myself and my trusty wheelie-shopper off to Sainsbury’s. Whilst I didn’t have a list, I tried to get stuff I know that food banks ask for and stuck with their basics range as I reckon it would give me more bang for my buck! I have to say, I’m pretty chuffed with my haul, it all came in under £20, but thanks to my Nectar points it was freeeeeee! 

My donations for the food bank - plant not included ;o)

I’m off to the food bank this afternoon to drop it off. If you, like me, store up your points without using them, why not chuck a couple of extra things in your basket on your next shop for donating? You can find a list of the items they usually want here or you local food bank may have a list that they regularly update with the things they are running low on. You can spend you Nectar points in £2.50 increments so as long as it’s over this you’re all good and many big supermarkets have a donation collection point so you don’t even need to drop the items off yourself. 

Happy shopping people! 

**UPDATE** Forgot to include this in my original post (oops!). According to a survey from October 2017, the average shopper belongs to five different loyalty schemes, collectively earning around £5.7billion in rewards annually; whilst some may amass as much as £500 in rewards on average each Briton earns £112 each year in loyalty points. However, separate research from accountancy firm Deloitte shows that more than 10 million have unused loyalty points, with barely half redeeming all their rewards - think of what could be done if just 1% of those points went towards food for those in need?