As much as I enjoy watching the X Factor (I know you all do secretly), I tend to find that it can take up most of our Saturday night because by the time we've watched it, it's bedtime for the kids and usually too late for us to watch a film or anything as Mr Frugal is usually up early for work on Sunday.So this year, we're not going to watch X Factor or Strictly (or if we do we're going to Sky Plus it and watch it through the week together) and we're not even going to have a Saturday night movie night with popcorn like we usually do when X Factor isn't on.  We're going to do something … [Read more...]

I know I've written a few times about pay day loan companies before but they make me so mad that I'm going to write about them again. To be honest, I'd write about them once a week or more if I thought it would stop people from taking them out!The thing that I hate about these companies is that they prey on people who are often too desperate for money to consider the consequences of taking out a loan like this and the very nature of the way the loans work means that it's all too easy for debt to spiral out of control very quickly.Not only do am I subjected to the advertising on TV … [Read more...]

One of my proudest moments as a parent so far was when Master Frugal spent some of his own money on some food for a homeless man who we saw in London when we were there for the weekend earlier in the year.  I was so proud that he thought more of someone else's welfare than he did of his own enjoyment (he had big plans for that money in Hamleys).He bought a cup of tea and some muffins for the man and gave him them himself (watched closely by me) and I almost cried at the time as the man was so grateful and thanked him genuinely.Ever since then I've been meaning to find our local food … [Read more...]

Last night Miss Frugal came downstairs about 10 'o' clock in floods of tears.  She told us that she'd woken up after having a nightmare and whenever she closed her eyes to try and get back to sleep, she could see dead people and people dying!It turns out that a school trip to Eden Camp this week has affected her quite a lot to the point where she can't stop thinking about some of the tragedies they learned about.If you don't know Eden Camp, it's a museum made up of huts.  Each one telling a story about a different aspect of World War 2 and when I searched for the link to include, the … [Read more...]

<div align="center"><a href="https://www.frugalfamily.co.uk/" title="The Diary of a Frugal Family"><img src="https://www.frugalfamily.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/instagram-image-badge1.png" alt="The Diary of a Frugal Family" style="border:none;" /></a></div> I know I'm always saying this but I take a lot of photos, many of which I post to Instagram each week.There's often a photo I post that either has more of a story behind it that I can tell on Instagram or that I want to share on here but it doesn't really warrant a whole post of it's own if you know … [Read more...]

Now that we're two weeks in to the new school year, we're starting to get all the leaflets and hype about all of the various out of school activities that our children should be doing.We've had leaflets sent home from school, leaflets through the door and even some recommendations in the weekly school newsletter and honestly, there's so much choice that you could easily be doing something after school every day and at weekends and still not fit them all in!My two have tried out lots of out of school clubs and activities since they started school but if I'm honest, they've given most of … [Read more...]