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) Last weekend, I went to see Take That at the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough. I went with Miss Frugal (who wasn’t necessarily as excited as I was) and some friends and the plan was to get the train into Middlesbrough and then have a few drinks before heading over to the concert.
We’d read that parking was extremely limited around the area because of the number of people who would be attending and after some research, we realised that the last trains home would leave before the concert ended which left us with and getting someone to pick us up in the expected huge crowds would have been a nightmare for us and the person picking us up. 😉
So to save money and time after the concert, I googled free car parks in the area and found one that was free all weekend. Then I forced poor Mr Frugal up at the crack of dawn (8.30am ha ha) and we drove to Middlesbrough in two separate cars and parked our Mokka in the free car park near to the stadium. We reversed into the spot closest to the exit too so we could get straight out after the concert when we got back to the car.
We then drove home in the other car and later in the day, got the train back to Middlesbrough with our friends. Because I’d volunteered to drive, everyone bought me a drink so I saved money on pre-concert drinks (although there’s only so much diet coke I can drink) and after the concert we literally skipped all of the gridlocked traffic where people were queuing to get out of car parks and traffic wasn’t moving as cars were crawling about trying to find people who they were picking up.
Time like this, I’d much rather be the taxi than pay for it. 😉
2) My rotary drier died a death a little while ago and I’ve been managing with just my normal clothes airer – dragging it in and out of the house hasn’t been fun but I was humming and aahing about whether I should get a tumble drier.
We had one in the past and although I loved it, I just think that it’s a bit of a money suck when I can just as easily manage without one. I was tempted after reading a thread somewhere (I think in my Facebook group) about how people love their tumble drier and couldn’t do without theirs.
I read somewhere that if you were to use your tumble drier for 5 x 45-minute cycles per week then it adds around £120 to your annual electricity bill which isn’t a huge amount although it would make up £10 of your monthly electricity bill if you pay monthly.
(Also those figures are based on the info I used when I wrote my post about why I didn’t have a tumble drier back in 2013 so they’ll be way more than that now I would imagine)
But last Sunday, I decided that I’ve managed for this long since giving away my last tumble drier that I can keep drying my clothes without one for a bit longer. So we decided to go shopping for a new rotary drier for the garden – much easier said than done thanks to the fact that the ground spikes were sold out in all of the shops near us. Then we found this little rotary drier in our local B&M which is ideal as it doesn’t need to go into the ground so saved us money on the spike and means that I can fold it down and pop it in the greenhouse when we’re not using it. It’s really sturdy which I didn’t think it would be for £19.99 and with the little ground pegs you get, it’s not going to blow over as you might think.
If you’re interested, mine is an Addis 26m rotary drier from B&M – I can’t find anything similar on sites like Amazon to link to for you but I’m really impressed with ours so far – especially considering it cost less than half the price of what a standard one would cost us when you factor in the cost of the spike we’d need for the garden.
3) Every Summer we have a bit of a family tradition of heading to a Sealife Centre somewhere in the UK. It’s been something we’ve done every year since the kids needed to be pushed around in their buggies and for some reason, despite the fact that the kids are too old for anything that’s not a theme park, they still enjoy a wander around a Sealife Centre.
So when I found myself in the chocolate aisle in Tesco and discovered that not only were Wispa bites half price at just 90p, but they also had a voucher on the pack for buy one get one free entry to 20+ Merlin Attractions across the country, I naturally stocked up.
I always think attractions like this are super overpriced so buy one get one free makes them appeal to me more. 😉
4) Did you catch my baking tray makeover earlier this week?
I decided to try and make an old baking tray into a stylish and pretty magnetic memo board and I’m so pleased with the way it turned out. Check out my post here for the finished version.
5) Meal planning is going really well at the moment! I’ve been trying to focus more on my planning on a Sunday to help me and I’m finding that a bit of extra time is really helping me.
This was our meal plan for this week (I did share it on Monday with some info on each one and how I make it Slimming World friendly) but to give you an update – we’ve stuck to every night so far and on Wednesday, I had enough bolognaise leftover to make a quick lasagne (with a jar of white sauce – don’t judge ;-)) so we’ve replaced tonight’s dinner with that and homemade garlic bread.
I moved the midweek roast that I had down for tonight to Sunday which means we’ve saved on the chicken dinner ingredients as they have mostly not been bought yet. I would have picked them up over the weekend but now I don’t need to.
I keep meaning to do some batch cooking but I just haven’t had a chance lately but I may possibly have a quieter than expected weekend so I’ll have a go if that’s the case as I do love having my own freezer ready meals ready to go.
Come over and join our fab Facebook group – Spend Less, Live Better!
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.
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter, BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram.
