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. 😉
I’ve put together a bumper list of all my Frugal Christmas posts if you’re interested – How to have a Frugal Christmas – The Ultimate Guide!
If all goes according to plan, I’ll be on a plane with Miss Frugal heading to New York at the time this post goes live. We’ve both saved hard for this trip and I can’t wait to see my favourite city at Christmas time. Not really a very frugal thing to start today’s post with but we’re going to do our best to do this as cheaply as possible and I’m hoping to do a daily blog post while I’m there just to show you what we’ve been doing. For now though, here’s what we’ve done so far this week to save money…
1) This one is kind of a shameless plug for my amazing poster maker which you can use to make a personalised family traditions poster to download and print out. It takes no time at all and is a really lovely gift – especially when you consider that it’s absolutely free and takes no technical ability at all.
I’ve made a couple this week for some of our family and friends and popped them in plain white frames that I bought from the pound shop and they look pretty good, although I get that I’m probably biased. 😉
2) I made some homemade snowman soup for a charity Christmas fair to raise money for a local charity this week. I bought some cellophane bags from Amazon (I bought these ones just because they were on Amazon Prime and I needed them quite quickly due to me only volunteering last minute) and some hot chocolate, chocolate buttons and mini marshmallows from Morrisons just because that’s where I was shopping. 😉
I made some extra with the leftover bags so I have one each for the kid’s Christmas Eve Boxes and a couple for some extra little homemade gifts. They’re pretty cheap to make and are just a brilliant little homemade gift for friends, families, teachers and neighbours.
Also, if you’re wondering, I’m told they were sold for £2 each and sold out by the end of the fair so they clearly went down well
3) I got creative with a charity shop gift. I think. The reason I said in the heading that ‘I think’ I got creative with a charity shop gift is that last year, I bought a brooch from a little stall at a Christmas Fayre. It was bought with the intention of giving it to go with a pretty scarf that I’d bought someone as a gift and for the £3 (ish) pound that it cost me, I thought it was a fab little extra.
But then I found a cute brooch in a charity shop which I bought for just £1 and I remember deliberating over which one to give and I’m almost positive that I went with the brooch I bought from the fayre rather than the charity shop which means that this little guy is my charity shop brooch.
It’s nothing flash and is quite lightweight so it definitely doesn’t look expensive but equally, I don’t think it looks cheap at all – especially not when I’ve mounted it on this luggage label style tag. I think it looks quite cute and I’ve managed to buy a scarf from Amazon that’s got little gold reindeers on it so the two gifts together make up a secret Santa present for one of the many secret Santas I appear to be taking part in this Christmas. 😉
4) As it’s just Me, Miss Frugal and her friend going to New York, I’ve written a meal plan for those left behind which should mean that everything is organised and they don’t spend a fortune on takeaways while I’m away – which they totally would if they didn’t have a plan. I’ve written before about how I meal plan for when I won’t be here so I won’t go into it too much but needless to say, it’s an essential part of travel planning for me. 😉
5) I’ve done some Christmas shopping this week and used Miss Frugal’s student discount which has got me up to 20% off some of the things that I’ve bought – including a pair of trainers that weren’t cheap so the saving was pretty big!
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As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing anything you’ve done that’s been thrifty or frugal from your week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video. Just add your link to the Frugal Friday linky at the bottom of this post.
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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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