Remember self-care and freebie treats for yourself in these tough times, Money Saving Amy shares her latest handy hints and tips

This week I have enjoyed not one, but two free spa treatments! Firstly, I went to the Clarins counter and had a free 10 minute hand and arm massage. After the lovely massage I was given some lovely free samples of products to try. There is a choice of nine treatments to choose from such as “Ready Steady Glow” that’s a 15 minute “powerful mini facial” and “Eye ritual” which is a 10 minute eye treatment to refresh tired eyes. You can enjoy one of these treatments completely free every month. You can book these treatments, but if you’re out and about passing a counter, you can just pop by and see if they have availability.

Secondly, I went to the Origins counter and enjoyed a lovely 45 minute facial that also involved a hand and arm massage. You can book this online and you also get at least one mini sample to take away with you.

I hope that these ideas give people a little “pick me up” and some self care during these difficult times. If you can tie up these treatments with perhaps a free o2 priority coffee at Greggs, or a free sign up offer coffee from subway (if you use my referral code X-61LH6XO you can get 250 points when signing up which is enough for two free hot drinks or one free side) you could have a lovely couple of hours of relaxation for free.

Which brings me onto some other freebies that again could be tied up to make for a free day out. Did you know that lots of shops and food outlets offer birthday freebies?

I think my personal favourite of these is a free slice of cake at Costa, who doesn’t want free cake! My next favourite has to be the free sweet treat at Greggs. Doughnuts are great, but they taste even better when they’re free. These birthday freebies also don’t require any other purchase to claim them.

To ensure you have access to birthday freebies you must be signed up to the apps and reward schemes for each place. Many don’t require another purchase, but a few do so please always check terms and conditions. The best thing is that a lot of the offers last for a few days or even a month, giving you plenty of time to claim them.

Here are some more birthday freebies to take advantage of:

•Free £5 spend at The Body Shop

•Free doughnut at Krispy Kreme

•Free birthday drink at Starbucks (if you’re a gold member)

•Free Subway cookie

•Free £5 spend at hotel chocolate

•Free Burger King burger

•Free Lidl donut

•Free Muffin Break muffin

•Free £5 Hobbycraft spend

•Pizza express offer a free dessert when you spend £10+ if you’re a bronze member, it’s a free pizza for silver members and for gold members it’s a free pizza or bottle of wine or Prosecco

•Boots offer double points for your birthday month

Many other restaurants such as Frankie and Benny’s, Zizzi and Bella Italia plus more, also offer birthday freebies but these do require an additional spend. Shops such as New Look and ASOS offer birthday discounts.

It’s always worth being signed up to all the reward schemes available to see what birthday freebies or discounts you’ll be given. When times are hard, like they currently are, with the price of everything soaring, it really can help to have a little freebie as something to look forward to and add a bit of fun into your days.

On the subject of loyalty schemes, many shops now offer these and it really does pay to be signed up to these. Even if you don’t shop there often, you’ll be surprised how quickly points can add up.

Lidl and marks and Spencer’s can often randomly add freebies to people’s accounts such as a free pastry at Lidl or a free loaf of bread at Marks and Spencer’s.

With the Tesco Clubcard scheme, you can swap your points for meals out and days out and when you swap them they double in value. So if you’ve got £5 worth of Tesco Clubcard points, you could get a £10 voucher for places such as Pizza Express and West Midland Safari Park.

Asda have a brilliant rewards app, they offer regular new saving and extra bonuses on a wide range of products, along with personal offers such as “spend £5 on cupboard stock up products and receive a £1 bonus”. Asda also have a new Christmas scheme on their rewards app, you can swap your normal cash pot to a Christmas saver cash pot and they will add a bonus! If you have £10-£19 they’ll add a £1 bonus, £20-£24 gets you a £2 bonus, £25-£39 gets you a £3 bonus and £40+ gets you a £5 bonus! You can then swap this saver pot to voucher to use across Asda & George between November 24th and December 31st.

Other shops that have good points schemes and reward cards are Boots, The works, Superdrug, Greggs, Sainsburys, Morrisons, McDonald’s, Co-op, KFC and more.

I hope these tips have been useful, you can find me sharing daily tips and tricks on my Instagram _moneysavingamy and Facebook moneysavingamy.