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 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) I love when I can start one of these posts with a good bargain bunch of flowers!
Look at these guys! Reduced to 18p from £3.50 for four stems – I ended up buying three packs so I paid 54p in total for twelve stems which look like just the right amount in my vase.
I’ll be honest though, I wouldn’t have paid £3.50 for four stems!
2) OK, you may or may not have read my post about our long term money goals but basically, I’m trying to do something every month to help us enjoy our retirement more. Whether it’s paying something extra off our mortgage on top of the current overpayments or doing something else that’s going to benefit the elderly us. We don’t have stacks of money spare so it might sometimes be something really small but it’s something.
This week I signed up to this year’s Share Save scheme at work which is where the money is taken out of my wage each month and set aside to buy shares at the end of a specified period. The option price to buy the shares is a fair bit lower than market value today and at the end of the period, I can either get my money back if the shares aren’t doing so well or I can buy the shares at the option price and choose to keep or sell them.
I already do the Share Purchase which is a different scheme that isn’t such a safe bet because I’m basically buying shares each month with that one but for each one that I buy, it’s matched by my company so it’s like buy one, get one free. Obviously, if the share price dips significantly then the value of my investment goes down but I don’t have enough invested for it to be too bad!
3) Monday’s tea was supposed to be Teriyaki Beef Stir Fry but I remembered that we had a pack of new potatoes that needed using up so I cooked them with the stir fry beef and broccoli, added some peppercorn sauce and we had an AMAZING meal.
The potatoes were boiled first and then I popped them in the oven with some olive oil on them to crisp them up.
4) Mr Frugal decided at the last minute to take the kids to the cinema this week on his day off which is absolutely not a frugal activity considering the cost of cinema tickets these days. He messaged me at work before they went to let me know they’d decided to go and I remembered to send him this week’s Meerkat code so he at least got one of them in for free.
The only problem is – they decided to spend the money they saved on giant Tango Ice Blasts!
5) Did you see Monday’s packed lunch cake post?
This is a variation of the cake that I always used to make for the kids when they took packed lunches to school but I still make it now every now and again, usually during school holidays. It costs as little as 9p a square although I make it with free-range eggs which does put the cost up to 13p a square – well worth it if you ask me.
I’ll keep you posted.
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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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