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Everyone's feeling the pinch this month and it’s particularly tough if you're in debt. How can you save enough money to pay them off and have a life at the same time. Follow our ten top tips and you will be well on your way.

1. Get cheeky

When the going gets tough, the tough get cheeky. Working on the basis of ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’, why not try these wheezes:

• Any time you have dinner in a restaurant, make sure you tell the waiter that it’s your birthday (or the birthday of someone else in your party). You could get free champagne or even a special cake thrown in for nothing.

• Always be the third person to buy a round in the pub. It tends to be the cheapest one so if you buy that you’ll look generous without actually being so.

• Haggle. Yes, haggle in shops every time you go in. Even high street stores will consider a discount now if you pick the manager and ask nicely enough. If you can’t get a discount see if they will throw in free delivery or maybe two for the price of one.

2. Call in debts from friends

According to PayPal, the average amount of money we’re owed by friends and family is a whopping £823 each. If you’ve got friends who owe then now’s the time to get them to cough up. If they’re struggling too then see if they can pay in bits over the next couple of months. Even small amounts of money help when you’re paying off debts.

3. Share

When times are tough, united we stand, divided we fall. Get together with friends, family and neighbours to share things that you don’t use all the time. Can you share a car with your mum down the road? Can you share a lawnmower with your neighbour? If you’re a single parent, talk to other single parents about sharing childcare between you. That way you could all get out to work at least a couple of days a week and boost your incomes. Get into swap shops too. Invite friends round and swap things that you don’t want any more. You could get a whole new wardrobe for free. Think you can’t have a holiday this year? Why not join some house-swapping agencies like homeexchange.com and swap your home with people all over the world.

4. Recycle your mobile

There’s an estimated £1.6 billion-worth of mobile phones sitting unused in the UK’s kitchen draws so it’s time to cash in on your share of the profit. You can get cash for your old mobile phone through sites like Mopay.com and Envirofone.com, up to the value of £180. It’s a great way to do your little bit for the environment too as the phones are recycled once you’ve been paid for them. Even the oldest, most battered phones can be worth something because they can sell the parts.

5. Make your home pay

Go through each room in your house. Turn out drawers, cupboards and shelves. How can you make money or save money each room?

• For example, in the kitchen do you have old crockery you could sell, food you haven’t used for months that you could use up this month and ingredients to make cakes or sweets that you could sell at your local car boot?

• In the living room do you have DVDs you could sell, electronic goods you could rent on rental websites like RentNotBuy.co.uk or half-finished knitting projects you could finish in front of the TV and either wear or sell?

• In the bedroom, do you have a dinner suit or ball gown you could rent, toiletries you could sell online or swap with friends or ornaments and accessories you have never used that could be sold or dusted off and given as presents?

• Go through your home, inside and out, and make money from it!

6. Save money by being smug

Get into green living – it’s cheap, helps weight loss and you can feel smug doing it.

• Instead of forking out hefty sums for overpriced membership fees, try walking and cycling more and potentially save hundreds a year on petrol, rail and bus fares.

• Fit energy saving light bulbs around your house and potentially save up to £50 per bulb over its lifetime.

• Big bucks can be saved on energy bills by reducing your carbon footprint. Insulating your loft, for example, can lower your heating bill by up to £205 a year and at the same time - save around one tonne of carbon dioxide a year.

• You can find plenty more energy cost-cutting tips on the ‘Cheap green living’ pages of moneymagpie.com.

7. Get an income boost

Boosting your income will be key to your success in ditching your debt. There are plenty of ways you can earn some extra cash; many of which you can do from the comfort of your own home. Start by earning money from surfing the net with Myhomepagesfriends. Or maybe you’d rather finally get paid for ironing, making cakes and having parties? Check out the Making Money articles here for literally hundreds of ways of making some extra cash on the side.

8. Switch your providers

Trust us on this one, it doesn’t have to take more than half an hour to save £100’s on your gas and electricity bills. Take a look at the energy switching page to get you started. Pop a few details into the online calculator and in a few moments you’ll see how much you can save. It sounds like such a chore but actually takes minutes to complete. Once you’ve done that, move on to your various insurances. Get cheaper car insurance, cheaper home insurance (there are lots of deals on those right now) and definitely cheaper life insurance (again, there are deals around on that).

9. Switch to 0% credit cards or low lifetime balance

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If you’ve got debts, try to make sure you’re not paying too much interest on them. The best 0% balance transfer deal on offer right now is the Virgin card which offers 0% balance transfer for 15 months. Or you may be better off with a low lifetime balance transfer. Check out the credit card comparison to find the lowest transfer deal you can find.

10. Get a little help from your friends

Getting out of debt is like dieting. It really helps if you can get some support from friends – and even from strangers. Get yourself a ‘debt-buddy’ – a friend who’s also in debt and desperate to escape from it. Together you can make saving money fun. Also, get onto debt forums like the one on the Motley Fool or on Moneymagpie Also sign up to the free Moneymagpie get-out-of-debt emails.

Jasmine Birtles is from Moneymagpie.com - the website that gives you a richer life. Sign up to the newsletter for great money-making and money-saving ideas each week.