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.
1) Mr Frugal and the kids have season tickets for our local football club and every year they have an early bird deal on where you get it cheaper if you renew by the end of March which as you may know is waaaaay before this season even ends, never mind the next one starting. It’s such a saving that it’s as if we were getting one of the kids’ tickets free so we’ve made sure that we saved throughout the last year so we can afford to renew before the end of this month and this week, we were able to pay in full for the tickets so we secured them at the early bird reduced price.
The season tickets are something that we have that definitely aren’t frugal but we make sure that we save for them and that we get them for as little as possible by renewing in time for the early bird discount. That’s what being frugal is about to us – getting the best deal for the things we want in life.
2) Yesterday I sorted out a huge box of things ready for a car boot sale. I have everything from clothes to toys and from books to DVDs so hopefully, we’ll have a successful sale and make lots of money. I’m planning for this weekend but will only do it if the weather is nice so I won’t know for definite until Sunday morning. Fingers crossed for me though.
3) Remember me telling you that Miss Frugal and I had booked a trip to LA for our annual trip away together? Well, this week, I was just doing a little research on things to do while we were away when I noticed a discrepancy with the hotel address on the website we’d booked through. It didn’t seem like a major issue at first until I did some digging and found out that not only was it not on Sunset Boulevard as it said, it was also on a main road and was quite isolated. I was really upset at first but I looked up the CEO’s email address and emailed him to let him know about the incorrect information and how disappointed I was.
Our booking was non-refundable and non-transferable so, in view of the incorrect information, I kind of expected them to say that we could transfer to a different hotel with no charge which I was prepared for and had another budget alternative picked out ready. I absolutely wasn’t expecting what happened next…
The CEO emailed me back to apologise that same night and then the next day, I had a lovely email from a lady who couldn’t have been more apologetic. She thanked me for highlighting the error and offered to upgrade me to another hotel in central Beverly Hills which was around £800 more than the hotel we’d booked! We’re now staying in a 5 star in central Beverly Hills with a balcony which is way beyond anything I expected.
Not only that but the lovely lady sent me an email with her personal suggestions on what to do when we were there and in case you’re wondering (as Mr Frugal and two of my friends did) it’s not because they were aware that I was a blogger or anything like that as that wasn’t mentioned at all. It was just exceptional service which has pretty much guaranteed that I will stick to that company now for any long-haul holidays I book.
I was so happy that I cried when I read the initial email offering to upgrade us because we could never have afforded a hotel of that standard in the centre of Beverly Hills. I sent the lady a bunch of flowers to thank her because she really has made this trip into a once in a lifetime trip for us and we can’t wait.
The moral to that story is that you shouldn’t just accept something if it’s wrong and even if you don’t get the amazing outcome that we did, you could at least make someone else’s experience better. You don’t need to go in all guns blazing threatening this that and the other, just a quick email can do the job.
Also, it’s always lovely to compliment great service too so if you have a great experience, let someone know.
4) I’ve been after a new dining room table for ages as mine is looking a bit scruffy and in desperate need of a good sand and refinish. The problem is that my table is a lovely shabby chic farmhouse style table that goes great with my shabby chic chairs which I love as I can (and do) recover the seat pads for almost nothing whenever I feel like a change and all the tables that I’m looking at that fit with my budget are very modern tables that would need new chairs really. My solution was to just buy a cheap wipe-clean tablecloth from Asda with matching tablemats and it’s made a HUGE difference for under £10 in today.
I love it so much that I think I’m just going to gradually get myself a bit of a collection of tablecloths and place mats together over the next year or so – different ones for each season maybe?
5) Miss Frugal went skiing last week and I’m not missing her as much as I thought I would because she has been amazing at keeping in touch. We’ve messaged each other lots and she’s shared funny stories, photos and updates on what she’s up to with me which has been brilliant.
Her usual phone provider is Giff Gaff and they’re amazing for UK usage but not great at all if you’re using your phone outside of the UK so when we went to New York last year, we got a couple of Three sims and she uses hers as a holiday sim card when she goes away. We topped her phone up with £20 which gave her unlimited calls and texts from outside of the UK along with 12GB data which is massively less than it would have been had she stuck to using her Giff Gaff sim.
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 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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