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, I do want to 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 – we’re frugal so we can afford to do nice things together.
1) I just had to call British Airways about my holiday last night but was reluctant to dial the 0844 number they have on their website knowing how busy they’d be on an evening. I did a quick Google search for a local rate British Airways number and managed to find a local rate number that would be included in the free minutes I get with my mobile each month. Good job too as I was on hold for 27 minutes in total!
2) Last weekend Miss Frugal completed her Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award which was a bit of an ordeal considering it consisted of around 15 miles of walking over two days carrying a backpack weighing over a stone on her back. The wind and rain over the weekend were horrendous too but they made it back, soaking wet and freezing cold but still smiling and honestly I couldn’t have been prouder – especially considering that a number of people dropped out due to the conditions and had to be brought home on the minibus.
We were issued with a very last minute kit list for her weekend (by last minute, I mean the Monday before they did it) which mostly included things we could borrow thankfully but for the things we couldn’t get hold of, we had to have a little trip to GoOutdoors where we managed to find everything else that was on the list. We were offered some sort of loyalty card at the till which cost £5 for a year which I initially did think would be no good for us as we’re not really GoOutdoors regulars. I asked the lady to compare the cost of our purchases with and without the card and it turned out that paying the £5 for the loyalty card reduced the cost of our shopping by a massive £27 so we ended up spending just over £30 rather than what would have been closer to £60.
Most of the cost was made up of a pair of walking boots and some waterproof trousers because the ones we’d been offered were way too big and we wanted her to be as comfortable as possible for such a long walk. £30 was much easier to stomach than almost £60. 😉
3) I picked up some bargain houseplants this week ready for a bit of a shelfie makeover that I’m planning for this weekend using some gorgeous plant pots I was sent earlier this week.
They’re house plants so I have no idea why they were reduced as there’s absolutely not a thing wrong with them so hopefully I’ll be able to keep these ones alive for a long time to come in my pretty little plant pots!
4) I mentioned a few weeks ago that we were trying hard to save money on water and we’re doing really well with that – I have a post coming in a couple of weeks on the things we’re doing as long as we can stick to everything we’ve started doing. 😉
It’s not just our water usage that we’re trying to cut back on though, we’re also trying to focus on right now is reducing our energy consumption too! This week we’re trying to drill into the kids a few things that we want them to be more conscious of – things like turning lights out when they leave a room, not leaving the taps running when they’re brushing their teeth, not throwing clothes in the wash just because they’ve been worn for an hour and even just not having Youtube or Netflix playing in the background when they’re doing other things.
Only time will tell if that saves us much money but it’s the right thing to do anyway so we’ll stick to it!
5) I’ve gone back to doing my food shopping online for a while which means that there’ll be less temptation to buy things that we don’t need. I’m finding lately that in my quest for a good deal, I’ve been buying things that aren’t on my list just because they’re on offer which is all well and good but I feel like my kitchen cupboards are about to explode. The same goes for yellow stickered bargains – I’m buying them because they’re a good deal but in reality, I don’t really need them as my freezers are all full.
This should save me money, help me to use up what’s in the house and hopefully save me some time.
As usual, we’ve been having some really good discussions this week over in our Live Well, Spend Less Facebook group. We’d love to welcome you to our little community if you fancy popping in.
As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing your five frugal things from your week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video. Just add your link to the linky at the bottom of this post.
You don’t have to share five things you’ve done, anything thrifty or frugal that you’ve been doing is perfect.
You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with the five frugal things linky by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.
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