People changed their holidaying habits this year, with almost 30 per cent stating that they took fewer holidays in general. Around 20 per cent indicated they saved for one long trip, while a further 20 per cent prefer shorter breaks and less long holidays.

Despite the recession, families understand the importance of taking their holidays. They are simply changing the way they take a break. Many holidaymakers get excited at the prospect of staying closer to home, preferring to explore the delights on their doorstep, which is great news for the local economy.

Firms believe that redesigning and packaging their businesses in a different way has been a critical survival strategy to tackle the recession.

However, just under 50 per cent of businesses have cut back on staff – including redundancies, wage and bonus cuts, recruitment freezes and unpaid leave – to save money. In addition, marketing seems to have taken a blow with 15 per cent reducing yearly spend. A massive 70 per cent have also cut back on staff incentives to stay with the company.

The study shows how determined some companies are to beat the recession come what may.  Taking positive steps to evolve their business strategies, combined with implementing cost-cutting measures, are pivotal to their survival and success.

However, two thirds of companies are not changing any aspect of their business offering and a third has no recession strategy in place, which we find quite surprising.

Typically business owners can save tens of thousands of pounds every year by relocating the contents of their commercial warehouse or office storage space to a self storage facility, reducing rental costs by up to 90 per cent.

ready steady store Manchester Central has dedicated two storage rooms to The Fed.  Please contact The FED on 0161 795 0024 if you would like to donate your unwanted furniture at ready steady store (must be of good quality, resellable and meet British Safety Standards). Once we have filled the store we will open the rooms as an extension of The Fed’s charity shop. An easy way to help a good cause!

This weekend, we also helped The Fed organise their annual sponsored toddle. Children from the local community were invited down to race in aid of The Fed. We ran our own guess how many stress balls in the box competition and an ipod shuffle is on it’s way to the lucky winner – congratulations Abby Greenhouse who was just one off the correct number of 80!

If you are looking for other ways to help The Fed, ready steady store will donate £50 to The Fed if you store at ready steady store in Manchester.

Stay tuned for details of our next event with The Fed!

Making simple changes can make all the difference. For instance, if you have a spare room in your house, why not let it out? Did you know that you could receive up to £4,250 a year tax-free by moving the contents out of a junk room to a self storage facility? By freeing up some extra space, you could become eligible for the government Rent a Room scheme.

Each month I will be giving you credit crunch busting tips to pull you through the economic downturn.