SOME folks are Driving Home for Christmas, some are off on their very own National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and others are leaving their Homes Alone.

So if you’re travelling this Christmas, here’s A Wonderful List of festive tips to cut the cost of travel and ensure the home you leave behind is protected.

  •  Free tank of fuel via extreme couponing trick: If you’re planning a big spend at any one of 50+ retailers (including House of Fraser, Homebase and PC World), buy the gift card in Morrisons and you get 1p/litre off fuel per £10 spend. So £100 gets 10p off and £1,000ish gets a free tank.
  • There’s a full list of retailers and more info at www.morrisonsfuelsaver.co.uk.
  • Turn your heating down, but not off if you’re going away: If it gets cold, no heating risks burst pipes. So much so that some insurers won’t cover you for damage if your home’s unoccupied for more than five days and you turned the heating off.

The rule of thumb is keep it to a minimum 14 degrees.

  •  Buying two tickets for one train journey can save you £100s: Split ticketing makes about as much sense as Chewbacca, but it works. It’s where you buy tickets for a journey’s constituent parts separately to slash the price. It’s allowed by the conditions of carriage – the only rule is that the train must call at the stations you buy tickets for. To help find if you can do this for your journey, use my free TicketySplit tool at mse.me/ticketysplit.
  •  Free winter car check (normally £15) from Halfords: Halfords is offering a free £15 winter car check. It’ll check your battery, bulbs, wiper blades, oil levels and top up screen wash for free.
  • Cheap boiler cover – you don’t need to stick with your energy firm: Boiler cover is a free market, yet energy firms like you to think you need to stick with them. You don’t. While British Gas charges £12/month, you may be able to get similar cover for as little as £6.
  •  Cheap Christmas and NewYear train tickets still on – never think it’s too late: Even this close to Christmas, you can still bag cheap advance tickets. This week, my team found London to Edinburgh singles at £40 for Christmas Eve – check via booking sites such as Takethetrain.co.uk and RedSpottedHanky.com.

And even if you don’t know your plans yet, never just assume you’ll need to buy at the station – some rail firms still let you book cheap advance tickets (if they’re still available) up to 15 minutes before the journey.