Five Frugal Things we did this week {22nd March 2025}....

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) I arranged to meet a friend for a catch up last week and because she was coming to me, she said to me to choose the place we met. I had a couple of choices for places to meet in our village but went for the cheeky pub on the high street which actually does unlimited refills on hot chocolate, tea and coffee for the grand old price of £1.19.

It’s a Weatherspoons pub which seems to be a bit of a meeting point in the village through the day as there was mums with babies having a cuppa, couples having lunch with a pint and friends who looked like they were catching up over anything from wine to hot drinks like we were.

We sat right near the drinks machines so we just had to walk about three steps to top our mugs up so didn’t even need to break the conversation which is a good job as we had lots to catch up on.

2) I’m pretty sure I mentioned that our shed blew out in the winds last month that caused havoc across the UK?

Well we had our eye on one in Costco but wanted to save to buy it rather than put it on a credit card so we didn’t buy it straight away. When we were in Costco last week, we noticed that it had been reduced in price by £150 which was around 10% of the cost of the shed so not insignificant.

We hadn’t saved the whole amount but we were half way there and only a little bit short of the amount we needed when you considered the saving. So we dipped into our emergency fund to take the rest of the money we needed and we now have a new shed which is currently half up in the garden.

Having an emergency fund meant that we could take advantage of a great deal and I know that we’ll have it topped up again in no time.

3) I told you last week about how impressed I was with Octopus energy and today I’m going to tell you about something else that’s impressed me – I joined Octoplus which is their loyalty scheme and so far, I’ve had an offer for one free movie a month until June from Rakuten which includes some great family movies for a movie night with the kids. I’ve also had some offers for 25% off various restaurants and pub chains in case we decide to go out for tea one night.

I am genuinely impressed with Octopus but I promise I won’t keep sharing this with you – if you want to split £100 with me and sign up for Octopus for your own energy – just use this link and we’ll get £50 each.

4) Did you see this week’s meal plan?

One of the meals we had was slow cooker minced beef and onions which is one of our favourite meals.

I’ll not detail the full recipe as that’s in the link above but I did want to share how much it costs as this is a really great family meal that we cook time and time again and it never gets old.

I don’t put onions in any more as my partner isn’t a fan of them but I do fill up with vegetables to bulk it out and the mince that I use is the lean 5% far mince which we enjoy but if you want to save some more money then you can buy cheaper mince. I have used Lidl’s pork and beef mince in the past too for this recipe as that’s around £4 for 750g.

Mince – £3.99 for 500g
A couple of handfuls of sliced frozen carrots – 20p
A couple of handfuls of frozen peas – 20p
2 OXO cubes – 30p
Asda gravy granles – 40p (ish)

I have started to use the Asda dumpling mix rather than suet and flour from a time perspective and also cost as suet has gone up in cost loads lately – I think it was around £3 last time I looked in Asda whereas the dumpling mix is 80p.

So including the dumplings, it’s just under £6 for a big meal.

I usually cook this when my partner is on a night shift because we eat it together before he goes to work and then he takes a further portion to work to eat as his packed lunch. I don’t eat the dumplings as they’re not great for diabetics so he gets to eat all of them so it’s a really filling meal for him.

Even after that, there’s usually still some leftover for my lunch the next day too so by the time the pan is empty, we’ve had four good meals out of it. And they’re not small portions as my partner’s a good 6ft 4in and likes his food.

That’s good value, isn’t it?

5) Have I mentioned before that I have a Starling bank account and one of the things I love about it is that I have the option to round up each transaction to the nearest pound and add the spare change into a savings account. I have mine set to round up to the nearest pound and double it before moving it into my Christmas savings account.

I’m at a reasonable amount now and we’re only a couple of months into the year so it’ll be a nice little amount by the time Christmas comes around.

So, there’s this week’s five frugal things – I hope you’ve all had a happy Frugal week!

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