Five Frugal Things I’m going to do in 2017…

This week’s five frugal things post is a little bit different because I wanted to share with you five frugal things that I’m going to be doing in 2017.

1) I’m going to be doing my own affordable weekly savings challenge again next year because as much as I love all of the ones you see floating around the internet at this time of year, they’re just un-manageable for us and I think by about week 10 we’d be struggling.  My version means that you don’t save as much over the year but at least it’s easy to stick to so you won’t end up giving up part way through the year.  Do you fancy joining me?

I wrote about my affordable weekly savings challenge if you want to find out more about it and get the free printable challenge sheet.

2) Over the last six months or so, our food budget has increased by a fair bit more than I’d like it to.  I know a lot of that is because I was ill and not always able to cook what I wanted to cook so I’m not going to beat myself up about it but I am going to try and reduce it back to what it was before over the first few months.  This means meal planning EVERY week and trying my hardest to stick to it.  I also want to make things a bit easier for myself in the kitchen by saving some time so more batch cooking and using the slow cooker is definitely going to be in order.

3) I went back to work this week after 4 months off so I imagine the rest of January is going to pass in a bit of a blur with lots of catching up and settling back into a routine but I have a plan for my first week off of the year which will be February I think.  I’m going to do a full audit (sounds posh but it’s not) of all of our bills to see where we can save.  I’m going to review our insurance, utilities, phone, cars, mortgage – basically anything we pay is going under the microscope.

4) I am going to do better with taking my lunch to work because when I forget, I either starve or pay £4 for dinner as there is literally only one place to buy from where I am.  I go through phases where I do this brilliantly but then equally I have weeks where I just don’t.  I need to be consistent and also cleverer (is that a word) so that the lunches I plan to take are so easy to prepare that I have no excuse not to do it.

5) I want to try and use cash more this year so I think I’m going to go back to using budgeting envelopes for things like food shopping and our ‘fun money’.  Using my card to spend makes it harder to keep track of and easier to go over my budget.  I’ll share more about budgeting envelopes in the next week or so if you’re interested.

What thrifty or frugal things are you planning on doing in 2017?

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