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) You should know this by now but my favourite way to start a post is with a bunch of frugal flowers and this week is a good one – just look at these bad boys!
These are the bargain flowers I shared on my Instagram stories last weekend – reduced to £1 because one of the sunflowers had fallen off the stem so there were four flowers and not five.
2) I’m trying to do one thing every week which is a conscious attempt at doing something to help our future finances. You might have noticed over the past few weeks, I’ve done things like paying some extra off our mortgage (over and above our regular overpayment) and increase my pension contribution by 1%.
This week was payday week so I moved £100 to our savings account – nothing too dramatic but it’s there waiting to be invested as I plan to open a stock and shares ISA to save £100 a month into. It’s a long term investment and I’m really researching what options are available before I choose a company and an account to go with.
I didn’t want to hold off saving while I decide though so that £100 is set aside ready to go!
3) After a weekend of feeling very meh, I decided to make a super comforting fruit cobbler with some tinned fruit and milk, sugar and flour. It was exactly what I needed and it’s the most frugal pudding I know…
The recipe is over on Meal Planning Made Easy but it’s basically just 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of milk with some fruit. I used tinned peaches and mandarins but you can use whatever you fancy.
4) Since I wasn’t feeling fantastic last weekend, I decided to have a pyjama day on Sunday.
I spend the morning watching random youtube videos and delegating jobs to the kids and then the afternoon I spent setting up a little Etsy store selling personalised prints using my poster maker tool.
The store is here if you want to have a nosey but please DO NOT buy anything… 😉
You don’t need to buy anything from there as you lovely people can make your own version ABSOLUTELY FREE. I set the personalised poster maker up as a resource for my readers so they could make their own personalised posters to give to family and friends as thrifty gifts but then I realised that I might be able to make some money too – not from you guys though.
There are lots of similar companies on Etsy charging £10 plus for posters that are pretty much the same so back in 2016, I opened a store on there with the intention of selling them. I then never really bothered uploading anything to sell until last Sunday when I uploaded four versions of the personalised prints.
I know that there’s so much I can do with the poster maker and I think £6 is an OK price for people to pay so I’m hoping to make at least a few pounds from it on there.
Go make your own and see how cute they are…
5) I know I’m always telling you to shop about for deals but this week I have a good example to share with you where it pays to ask friends and family for help too.
I won an iPad at work at the end of last year which was fantastic as Master Frugal had a pretty old and super slow model and we’d been planning on getting him one for Christmas. He always takes good care of his things but last month he tripped and fell when he was carrying his iPad and somehow managed to crack the screen.
I’ve shopped around myself and had quotes for anything between £100 and £160 from local businesses but after a trip to Costco with Jen last Saturday morning, I asked her if she knew anyone who could do it and not only did she know someone, she knew someone who could do it much cheaper than I’d been quoted. The screen’s on order and it should hopefully be fixed in the next couple of days.
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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.
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 ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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