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! 👐
It’s been an AMAZING week this week for moneysaving!
1) The fixed rate on my mortgage ended a little while ago and I know this is a bad thing, a really bad thing but I let it move over to the standard variable rate. I would never ever advise anyone to do this but I had my reasons – I wasn’t sure if we would be selling the house in the near future and didn’t want to be tied into a deal which would incur early repayment charges if we decided to sell.
As it is, we’ve made the decision not to sell the house for the foreseeable future for various reasons so we’ve remortgaged and got a much better deal saving us around £100 a month.
Last year, we gave ourselves six months to think about what we wanted to do with the house. We decided on six months because at the 9 month mark of paying £100 extra a month, we’d be around what the early repayment charge would have been on the mortgage had we fixed.
So by giving ourselves that six months, we had time to consider what we wanted to do and still paid less in additional payments by not fixing than the early repayment charge would have been if we’d decided to sell.
I don’t even know if that makes sense but basically, we’ve now decided to keep the house, have remortgaged and saved £100 a month.
2) Sticking with the same theme…
I don’t live in our old family home anymore but still contribute to the bills so it’s in my best interests to make sure that the bills are as low as possible. 😁
Two weeks ago, I arranged for a Smart Meter to be fitted so that they could really see how much they were spending on energy and I’ve been enjoying having a sneaky look at how much they’re spending.
I promise I’m not keeping watch and telling them off for spending more but I love the awareness that a smart meter brought me here where I live so I wanted them to have that awareness too. I wanted Master Frugal especially to understand how energy bills work so I’ve made him download the app so he can see for himself and I think it’s working.
They actually spend very little and I’ve actually asked them if they need to have the heating on more than they do but they’re happy with what they’re spending and our repayments are currently £125 a month which I think is actually very good in comparison to what I’ve seen others are paying.
3) I am in a very lucky position that I have no debt other than my mortgage – this time last week, I couldn’t have said that. 😁
I actually had an old Simply Be account with a balance of about £200, costing around £27 a month. Because I have no other debt and that £27 was affordable, I just let it continue and made the payments each month rather than just pay the full balance.
But this week, I decided that I did want to be truly debt free so I made the payment for the full amount and now I can hand on heart say I am debt free. I used some money I’d been setting aside for holidays this year so paying this off was a more sensible use of the money.
4) Our family car is a very grown up Skoda Kodiaq but the car that I drive is actually a lot more fun than that – it’s a very cute classic Beetle.
She’s an old girl, at twenty two years old but I love her for lots of reasons, partly because of the way that we got her, partly because she’s fun and a bit cheeky and a little bit because she’s so old and still going strong for me.
We decided that we wanted to restore her back to her former glory and make sure that she’s around for a long time yet so my partner is doing any technical repairs as he’s pretty handy with cars and I’m working on the cosmetic side.
The majority of the bodywork is in great condition but her badges have absolutely seen better days and have lost all of their black lacquer. They need replacing but because they’ve stopped producing beetles, they’ve actually discontinued the bonnet badges which means that the ones that are coming up for sale are pretty high and I am finding it impossible to get them at a scrapyard despite trying since last Summer.
So, I’ve had a saved search in ebay for the last four months so I am notified as soon as badge is listed and this week, it pinged with one that’s in immaculate condition for around half of the price of the other ones I’ve seen so I went for it straight away.
I messaged the seller and asked if he had a back one for sale too and he said he was just about to list it. He told me that he’d sell it to me for the same price if I wanted it so I was over the moon to get the two badges for the same price as I would have paid for one thanks to my ebay saved search.
(Is it weird that I call her a her? 😁)
5) I’ve listed three things on Vinted this week and sold one.
I’m not setting the world on fire with my Vinted sales at the moment but I’m trying and anything I’ve sold is going straight into my holiday fund to try and build back up my savings after paying off my Simply Be account this week.
So, there’s this week’s five frugal things – I hope you’ve all had a happy Frugal week!
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter or BlogLovin and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉
Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later!
Talk to me...