Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during that week just to show you that the small things you do all add up to a great frugal lifestyle where you can learn to live a fabulously frugal life.
I have TOTALLY struggled with this post today for two reasons – the first reason is that I usually write this post on a Thursday night but we spent most of last night at the hospital with a bit of a scare over Master Frugal.
He had a fall at school and not long after started being sick and by the time we picked him up, he was looking grey and was pretty groggy and confused. Long story short, we rang 111 and were sent straight to the local hospital who spent about two minutes looking at him before sending us to the big A&E nearby.
There was a lot of poking and prodding along with a brain scan and the threat of admission for observation and by the time they let us bring him home, it was well after midnight.
He’s not doing great at all today as he’s still very lethargic and hasn’t managed to eat yet but we know it’s just a nasty concussion and nothing more sinister so we’re just keeping a close eye on him like the Dr advised. He’s not allowed to do sports and apparently he’s going to be moody, tired and find it difficult to concentrate for anything from a few days to a few months – nothing new there then.
The second reason I’ve struggled with being frugal this week is because of the whole back to school shopping thing. I did think I was organised and was actually feeling quite smug but our week away in the sun must have encouraged the kids to have little mini growth spurts as they both went to try on their uniforms and we needed pretty much everything.
We’ve had a big uniform drama which I’ll tell you more about tomorrow and pretty much every day this week I’ve had to buy something new and unexpected – lockers, textbooks, trips, additional uniform… I could go on!
But I did manage a few frugal things this week and I think I might possibly get to five, if I try really really hard!
1) Last weekend, I sat down and wrote my September goals to get myself motivated for money saving. I did write a whole post about my goals as I have a lot but I chose my top 5 to share on our Spend Less, Love Better Facebook group…
Having goals written down really does motivate me so this is just what I need.
So far, I overpaid my mortgage by £300 which is great and I’ve also reviewed our phone deals (see number 2).
2) Longtime readers will know that one thing I hate is being tied to a mobile phone contract. We always used to sign up to the long contracts to get the latest phones and we’d end up paying well over the odds over the period of the contract. We’re all on pay as you go now which is so much cheaper and we still have nice phones as we save for them and usually buy them second hand so we can trade in what we have.
This week we reviewed our pay monthly deals with EE and got such a good deal that we managed to add Miss Frugal to our family plan, swapping her over from Giff Gaff for about £2 more a month than we currently pay for mine and Mr Frugal’s phone which means we’ll save around £13 a month. As an added bonus we managed to get more data for us all in the new deal.
3) I cooked one of our favourite family meals but swapped all of the ingredients for the Morrisons value range and no-one noticed the difference!
It’s basically prawns in melted cream cheese (we always use Philadelphia) with some chilli and lime seasoning sprinkled through served with spaghetti.
I used 20p pack value spaghetti, a pack of prawns that cost £2 and some 50p cream cheese so the meal cost £2.70 in total for 3 of us.
Master Frugal had plain spaghetti with sweetcorn and broccoli stirred though and some tomato pasta sauce as he hates prawns and to be honest, I would have struggled to stretch the prawns to four people so all was good.
This really is one of our favourite meals so I’m pleased to have found a way to make it cheaper than usual.
4) I bought two little plants reduced in Tesco to 75p each and although I do love the plants inside them, my main reason for buying them was the fact that they were in the cutest little baby pink pots.
5) It’s been a bit nippy this week, especially when you consider that last week we were on holiday in 32 c sunshine! My hand did hover over the heating dial twice this week and each time, I stopped myself and put a jumper on instead.
I don’t normally feel chilly at this time of year but I think the super hot Summer we’ve had followed by our week’s holiday has made this cooler weather feel colder than it really is and I really don’t want to get into the habit of putting the heating on this early.
I promise, promise, promise that I’ll get back on track with this post next week. 😉
As usual, we’ve been having some really good discussions this week over in our Live Well, Spend Less Facebook group. We’d love to welcome you to our little community if you fancy popping in.
As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing your five frugal things from week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video. Just add your link to the linky at the bottom of this post.
You don’t have to share five things you’ve done, anything thrifty or frugal that you’ve been doing is perfect.
You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with the five frugal things linky by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.
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