Every week (ish) I share five frugal things that I’ve done during the previous 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.
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1) Last Sunday, we had a date day (or most of the day as my partner was on nights) and over breakfast we sat and talked about what we were going to do. Choices were (a) Farmers Market and a wander around a nearby town, (b) IKEA as I want some black frames for our holiday photos, (c) Car Boot sale or (d) watching the Stock Car Racing at our local track.
We realised that we’d spend money at any of our options and we’re really trying to be super good with money for the next couple of months as we have so much going on.
So… we decided to use our annual tickets for Beamish and have a wander around there instead.
We go to Beamish every few months with the kids so we have an annual family ticket (pay once, visit all year) but going on our own without then is a whole different kind of day. We had a lovely journey round to the main town there on the old fashioned tram, had a look around some of the areas that we don’t often go in as the kids get a bot bored with some bits, had a half of cider at the pub and then a slow wander back to the car.
We had a lovely few hours and all for the cost of two halves of cider.
Always making time to spend together is super important to us and we try to have a date at least once a week, even if we don’t label it a date as such, it’s regular time that we make to spend together. It would be super easy to just go out for a meal and spend some money but we don’t want to do that every week so we look for other things to do together.
2) This is an obvious one but when I cook a meal, I cook extra so there’s enough to pop in the freezer for another time of even just lunch the next day for us, This was this week’s minced beef which I know doesn’t look amazing as this is the cold, day after photo but I did a slow cooker minced beef and onions with lots of peas and carrots in it for tea on Saturday night and served it with mash and Yorkshire Puddings.
My partner had two servings, which was to be expected after a busy 12 hour shift that was so busy that he barely got to eat any of the food he took in for his packed lunch. I had a lovely bowl of it and then saved the rest of it for the next day.
The next day, I heated it up and it was actually enough for both of our teas so one pack of mince and some veg from the freezer did two meals comfortably.
I love that it’s slow cooker season again as there’ll be so many more meals that I can cook that will do double duty.
I also make a soup at the start of the week that I can batch up and eat throughout the week for lunches which saves time and money!
3) I’ve been going into the office once or twice a week again now but I did notice that my spending was creeping up on an office day so I’ve been making a real effort to take a packed lunch – overnight oats has been my staple for breakfast using whatever fruit we have in to top it.
This one cost me about £2 as I use a yoghurt that’s low in carbs and there’s half a pack of blueberries in there but it’s a lot cheaper than a breakfast at work and it suits me, as a diabetic, and keeps me hungry until lunchtime. I take medication on a morning and need to eat with it so this works for me.
4) I had a delivery this week of bags of clothes that I’d not brought with me when I moved in here.
I actually thought I’d picked most stuff up and thought that there was just a few little bits left that had been relegated to the garage but I asked Master Frugal about a pair of boots that I wanted and he said that the wardrobe in the spare room was still full of my things so I asked him to bag it up and pop it over. I wasn’t expecting quite as much though!
I went through it all and sorted it into three piles – charity shop, Vinted and keep. The keep pile was minimal as it’s stuff I’ve lived without for the past few years and for the most part, it was even things I’d forgotten that I even had. I’ve learned that things really aren’t important and don’t need or want as many clothes as I had before. Most were charity shop bargains so most went right back to the charity shop pile but some were nice clothes that I put on Vinted (a couple of things have sold already) to make a little extra cash.
Even being brutal going through the bags and getting rid of things, I still kept about 20 things which means I feel like I have a whole new wardrobe.
5) Instead of buying fireworks for our own display (never a fan of this myself) or paying a fortune for an organised display, we decided to have a look at a free display in a town nearby and it was amazing!
It wasn’t the most spectacular display I’ve ever seen but honestly, fireworks are fireworks and they were enough for us! It was a bit of a drive to where they were being held but we combined it with something else we needed to do there so it worked out really well.
Most of the displays near us were charging between £5 and £8 each for a ticket and I just don’t think it’s worth it – not when you can get it for free.
So, there’s this week’s five frugal things
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