Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during that 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.
Before I start though, as always I feel that I should say that being frugal to me is about getting the best value for our money – it’s not about doing without for us or about not having nice things. We all have different financial situations and we’re all frugal for different reasons. 😉
1) Every year for the last couple of years, a fair amount of my Christmas shopping has been done using vouchers that I’ve earned from Swagbucks. If you don’t already know, Swagbucks is a site where you earn points for doing things like surveys, entering competitions, shopping and signing up to free trials as well as getting points for referring your friends. This year I’d like to be able to pay for all of Christmas with vouchers so I’ve started trying to earn as many points as possible.
I started in the free offers section and signed up to a couple of the try for free offers (adding any dates that I need to go back and cancel them into my diary and using another email address as there’s often spam on the back of some of the offers) and I’ve done a couple of surveys and shared my refer a friend link in my Facebook group and I’m up to 5000 Swagbucks already which is great considering if I get to 6500 then that’s a £50 Amazon voucher.
2) I’ve got a bit relaxed with our budget lately and a few bad habits have crept back in so I’m really trying to get back on top of it. I used my budget planner (which you can download and use yourself if you want) and worked my way through all of our income and expenditure.
It’s clear that we don’t have as much money left at the end of the month as we should have so we’re clearly overspending in some areas and that’s something I need to get under control.
3) I bulk cooked this week’s Slimming World snacks last weekend and made, among other things, some mini egg omelettes for lunches and popped them in the freezer.
I used extra deep large muffin moulds so these are actually quite big and really filling. I’ve just been getting one out on a night before I go to bed and defrosting it in the fridge overnight and it’s been brilliant having a ready-made lunch with no effort needed although I’m a bit bored of it now so I need to learn to mix it up a bit better or I’ll get sick of them which would be a shame as they’re so cheap to make.
4) My car insurance was due for renewal and whilst, I’m more than happy to change providers for a good deal, I must admit that it’s much easier to stay with the same company. I know I have a good deal on a good policy thanks to years of shopping around but I still thought it was worth trying to save so I spent two minutes doing a quick price comparison. The cheapest price was about £30 lower than my renewal price and a quick five-minute phone call later had my existing company matching that price for my renewal so I saved the money without making the switch.
5) I am struggling to sleep at the moment so I made a nice batch of my homemade sleep spray which is, in my opinion, just as effective as the expensive sleep sprays that you can buy.
It makes me feel calmer and more relaxed which puts me in a better place for sleep and although it’s not a miracle cure for me, it’s a definite step in the right direction. I haven’t been able to get back into a sleep pattern since New York so anything that helps, even just a little bit is great!
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I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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