We’re halfway through a week away so this week’s five fabulously frugal things post is brought to you live from Butlins in a very wet Bognor Regis where I’m sat writing it whilst the kids are in their bedrooms chilling after a very busy day and Mr Frugal is sat playing some random shooty game on his phone!
1) We work hard for our holidays so I like to make sure that we enjoy them as much as we can and that means being able to afford to say yes to the kids more than I say no. Every night this week they’ve had money for the amusements (which I think is a waste of money but they love) and they’ve spent a fair amount of time on the 2p machines.
To pay for their 2p machine habit, I’ve been saving change up for the last couple of months so all I had to do was bag up the random change into 10 bags of about two pounds each and pop them in the case. Each night, I get one out, they change it all into 2ps and voila, there’s half an hours fun sorted. If I hadn’t saved the change then I’d be less likely to say yes when they asked for money for the amusements.
2) We often spend a fortune on drinks when we’re on holiday so this time we bought four of these cute refillable coke bottles which cost £3.99 initially but then refills for the rest of the week cost £1.75 a time which is pretty good value if you ask me. It means that a round of drinks costs just £7.00 for us all.
You might notice I said that we bought four of them – that’s because neither of us have had any alcohol – I’m on pretty strong painkillers and Mr Frugal is just being nice and not drinking as I can’t. That’s not an intentional money saving thing but it’s definitely good for the holiday budget.
3) Talking of drinks money saving, we brought a supply of Mr Frugal’s energy drinks so he had one a day without having to pay the pretty high prices on the resort. We bought it on offer when it was £3 for 4 cans (plus we got an extra 10% off that) so it worked out at about 75p for a large can as opposed to the priced here of about double that for a small can. I don’t approve of energy drinks but if he’s going to insist on drinking them then I want them to be as cheap as possible.
4) We’ve taken advantage of the free activities on offer around Butlins including joining in with some of the many organised sports activities which have proved once again that the men in the frugal family can not play any sport without turning into a competitive event. I was mortified when Mr Frugal dived for a ball in a ‘fun’ game of family rounders in an attempt to catch out a cute little five year old dressed as Spiderman!
As well as the free on-site activities we’ve saved money by using our English Heritage membership to visit properties in the local area rather than spending our money on expensive days out. We’re so close to Arundel Castle which looks amazing until you see the price of £51 entry for a family of four which is almost what I pay for a whole year of English Heritage!
5) Last weekend, before we set off I was planning a few things we were going to do and having a look online to see if I could see any offers for the places we wanted to visit. I checked Tesco to see how many points I had on my clubcard and I was surprised to see that I had £35 worth of vouchers which was more than I was expecting. I’d left it too late to redeem them for the days out vouchers as most of those come through the post but I was able to redeem them for food vouchers which are emailed to you. For the £35 I had, I redeemed them for £40 Pizza Express, £50 for Bella Italia and £40 for a national pub chain that I’ve totally forgotten the name of. That’s three lovely meals out paid for!
What frugal or thrifty things have you done this week?
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