Make Valentine’s Day smell like roses

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and if you’re stuck on ideas for presents for your loved one, perfume or after-shave is often a heaven-scent of an idea. But don’t get the smelly stuff from an expensive department store. Make sure you shop online to get the best deals as the top online retailers can undercut the high street by up to 50%.

You can compare the cheapest online retailers at a nifty website, www.fragrancescompared.co.uk. It will quickly check the prices of most of the big online retailers to find you the cheapest. Simply enter the perfume you’re looking for and it will list the cheapest, including delivery. In addition, www.cheapperfumeexpert.com searches a few the other misses.

Once you've found the cheapest retailer you may be able to get additional cashback by purchasing via a cashback site. Plus, to get it even cheaper you could opt to buy sample bottles with no packaging at websites such as www.fragrancesdirect.co.uk. Simply tie a ribbon around the bottle and hey-presto!

To make sure you get your fragrances in time for Valentine’s Day don’t waste any time as delivery can take between three and ten working days.

For more cheap fragrance buying tips, read Martin's full article on Cut Price Perfume Buying.

Help maintain a healthy credit rating

More than five million people missed a credit card payment over the past six months – that’s more than one in ten of us.

And this is an enormous problem. Not only do you get fined £12 every time you miss a payment but it is a massive smack on your credit file. With the current credit crunch, it is becoming harder to get credit, so if your credit history gets worse, your chances of getting cheap credit to help you out of trouble diminish.

To make sure you don’t miss any payments, set up a direct debit to pay the minimum amount. But just paying the minimum means you aren’t reducing the debt and that will cost you a fortune, so while it stops you defaulting, you should still pay more towards your debt when you can.

Either call your credit card company to pay more, do it by internet banking or send a cheque. And do you remember our show a couple of weeks ago about reclaiming credit card fees? Well, if you have any of these nasty £12 fines then you can claim them back.

Complete details on How To Maintain A Healthy Credit Rating are described in Martin’s guide.

Spectacular savings...Eyes tests for free

If you need your eyes tested you can do it for free at Optical Express. Go to its website at uk.opticalexpress.com, head for the spectacles section and then click on special offers where you can find a voucher for the free eye test which expires on 31 March.

London to Manchester for less than a tenner

Anyone travelling from London to Manchester, or Manchester to London, in the next few weeks can get a single ticket for under £10. To get these mega-cheap tickets, go to www.virgintrains.co.uk and click on the tickets@home link.

They are only available until 25 April so hurry as they're likely to sell out fast.

Eating out over the coming days? Nab some money off vouchers

For example, you can BOGOF (buy one get one free) at Pizza Express if you are a Sky customer as the February Sky subscribers’ magazine comes with a voucher for 2 for 1 on main courses.

And if you’re really quick, you can get 50% off at Yo Sushi. Get your voucher at www.yosushi.com but the offer ends on 31 January (now expired). Take a look on the MoneySavingExpert.com Food Voucher Festival note for extra deals and offers.