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.
Hey! 👐
1) We’ve just got back from Legoland where we’ve had a lovely couple of days with the kids – thanks to our Tesco Clubcard vouchers that we’ve been saving for the last year.
Last year we spent out vouchers on an annual membership to the Deep in Hull where we visited every couple of months through the year and this year, we gave the kids the choice of doing the same thing with a membership to the Deep or a one-off trip to Legoland.
Guess what they picked?
We had an amazing time but one day is absolutely not enough to get around Legoland and it’ll be a while before we save up enough Tesco vouchers to go again. 😁
It’s an expensive day out without the vouchers if I’m honest – just short of £160 for a family of four for just one day is such a lot of money and without the Tesco vouchers that reduced the price of the day for us by about 75%, we definitely wouldn’t have been going as we had to factor in the cost of diesel and a hotel as we live in the North East.
We booked a Premier Inn which was a good half an hour away from Legoland itself as that was half the price of one closer to the park so we considered that to be a good saving too.
We took plenty of snacks and filled up on our Premier Inn breakfast (where the kids eat free) so food and drink wise, we didn’t spend too much at all and before we went, we used the Petrol Prices app to save 4p a litre on our fuel by not filling up where we live. We found a cheaper price about ten miles up the road (in the direction we were going) and although 4p a litre isn’t a lot, we have an Audi Q7 which is a seven seater with a tank the size of a double decker bus so it’s a good saving with the pounds being better in our pocket than anyone else’s.
(We have a big car as we are lucky enough to have four amazing kids between us and we want to be able to have days out with all of them together. And even when we don’t have the littlest ones, the big ones like to bring along their partners on days and nights out with us so we’re making the most of the time we have with them while they still want to do things with us.)
2) We travelled down to Windsor the day before we planned our Legoland day and we broke our journey with a visit to a National Trust property that I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called. We have a National Trust membership so when we needed a break, I just had a search for the nearest National Trust property and even though I can’t remember the name of it, I can tell you it was fab for kids and gave us all the chance to eat our picnic, stretch our legs and also gave the kids an opportunity to run around a playpark for 45 minutes!
We even found a little caterpillar trying to hitch a life onwards when we were leaving…
We often use our National Trust membership to break a journey or to find a new for the kids when we’re out and about – great value for £12 a month for a family membership.
3) We live about half an hour from Beamish so after a weekend at Legoland, we decided to have a free day out using our annual tickets for here so we headed off with a picnic packed using things we had in the fridge and had a lovely few hours wandering around. I’m pretty sure I could get a job as a tour guide here as we’ve been so many times with our tickets as we’ve had annual tickets for the last couple of years.
It’s a lovely place to visit and the annual tickets are super good value as they’re literally pay once for your ticket and visit again and again for the next twelve months with the same tickets.
We have a few places where we go to like this where you pay for a ticket once and can visit all year round – a local small museum with a playpark and outdoor area is another favourite. Our tickets for The Deep are similar but they’ve just ran out and we’re not going to renew them again this year as we’ve used all our Tesco vouchers on Legoland.
4) Remember the super cheap ex-display drawers that we bought from Ikea a little while ago?
They had a couple of scratches on the top that I’ve covered up this week with some sticky back plastic (Blue Peter, anyone?).
Sorry for the poor picture, I took it last night after I’d applied the film while the drawers were still in their temporary home in our dining room. They’re now upstairs in their new home and I love the interesting effect that apparently makes them the ‘perfect’ set of drawers if you’re five years old!
5) I’ve had a huge sort out of my clothes this week and have a couple of bin bags filled with clothes sorted to go to one of the charity shops in our village and a separate pile that I’ve listed on Vinted over the last couple of nights.
You know I’m a huge fan of Vinted and have made a little bit of money on there in the past selling clothes so wish me luck this time.
So, there’s this week’s five frugal things!
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