Every now and again (used to be weekly ;-), maybe it will be again) I share five frugal things that I’ve done during the previous 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.
Hey! 👐
Long time no see!
I’ve really got out of the habit of taking pictures of what I get up to so you’ll have to forgive me as I try and write this post today as I’m pretty sure that I have no pictures of half of the things I’m going to be writing about. 😉
1) I’ve only gone and given up Pepsi Max!
I’ve tried to cut down lots of times but I never found a drink I liked as much to replace it so always ended up going back to it which wasn’t good when you consider how much a crate of Pepsi Max is and how quickly I could work my way through a crate of it! I genuinely used to drink 3-4 cans a day which is about £10 every 8 days so to be able to cut that out completely has saved around £35 a month.
I justified drinking that much as I don’t drink tea or coffee, rarely drink alcohol and don’t smoke. I also drink lots of tap water and would only start drinking Pepsi Max usually after I’d drank a fair amount of water so I thought that was OK.
A couple of month’s ago I discovered Lidl’s Lime and Elderflower sparkling water and loved it that much that I was able to forget that Pepsi Max existed (almost) and at 65p for a litre, it’s much more economical than buying Pepsi Max. Last night, I was at the garage after filling up my car and I was really thirsty so I grabbed a bottle of Pepsi Max without really thinking – I opened it up and I wasn’t even that keen on the taste of it anymore!
I won’t be buying it again which means it’s safe to say that I am no longer a Pepsi Max fiend. 😉
Also – the thing that really made me want to kick the Pespi Max habit was when I worked out it cost more to fund that for a year than it did for our week’s holiday in the Lake District! Madness, isn’t it?
2) I still check Too Good to Go daily and because we’re lucky that there are so many places in my area on the app, I often manage to reserve a bag for us. We’ve had some amazing bags in the past with so much food in them that we’ve had to share with the neighbours but more recently the bags we’ve been getting from the local Spar shop mainly have been much more manageable although I don’t have any photos to share with you.
This week, we bought a cake bag from a local pub for £1.99 which should have had the value of at least £5.99 worth of cake which after the week I’d had sounded pretty amazing! It came with two of the biggest slices of carrot cake and a lovely chocolate chip cookie which was amazing value.
I’ve used a photo from Trip Advisor to show you the size of the cakes in the cake cabinet at the place we got our cake bag from – apologies for the quality.
3) I went to the shop last week in my lunch break and instead of going in the car, I went on my bike!
I work from home most days and I can usually just walk to the shop at the end of the road but this time, I needed something specific that I know they don’t sell so I had to pop into the village to get what I needed. I won’t lie, I could have probably been there and back twice in the car by the time I found the bike lock, located a suitable back pack for my shopping and finally got the bike out of the summerhouse where it must have been the first one put away last weekend when we went to the cycle circuit for a ride as it was at the back and I had to manouvre three other bikes around to get mine out.
But still, I did it and I biked to the high street, bought what I needed and biked back in time for my next work call.
4) I sold a handbag on Vinted!
You know I’m a huge Vinted fan and have made a reasonable amount of money from it over the last couple of years but the last couple of things I’ve ordered have been a struggle to post as I’ve been so busy at the time. One I even had the order cancelled as I missed the posting deadline which I hate and was enough to stop me selling on there for a while.
I thought I’d give it a go again this last week though and a handbag I uploaded sold within a couple of days for £29 which, yes, is lower than I probably could have got if I’d sold it on a site like Vestiaire but honestly, it was just gathering dust on the shelf so it’s £29 that came in handy this week after literally two minutes work to upload it. 
I found a local shop who accept parcels without printed labels (they print them for you) and who are open pretty much all hours I’m awake as I’ve never seen them closed so I dropped it off there one morning before I started work and three days later it was delivered and the Vinted transferred the money to me.
I’ve got loads of posts about how to sell on Vinted if you want to have a quick read through – you’ll never make a fortune as people do want a bargain on there but it’s always been enough for me as a little side hustle.
And this reminds me of another thing I did this week to save money that’s Vinted related.
I found something online that I wanted to buy but before I did, I went on Vinted to see if anyone was selling one. I found the exact same thing I wanted for £10 less (which is a reasonable amount when it only cost £24.99 to start with) and it was in immaculate condition as it had only been used once. According to the description that is. 😉 It’s on it’s way to me right now so I’ll let you know if it was as big a bargain as I think it’s going to be in my next pre-loved bargains post.
5) It’s that time of year where I cash out on a couple of different sites, (Swagbucks, OhMyDosh) transferring my points into Amazon vouchers and moving over any cash amounts (mainly from TopCashback) into my bank account. I usually save them throughout the year and cash out around now ready to start my Christmas shopping.
I think I’ll do a different post on this over the next week to share what I do but in short, after a year where I’ve barely been online, I have £65 Amazon vouchers and £30 cash. The cash is lower than it would have been as I cashed out from TopCashback in the Summer too as we had lots of fun planned.
I’ll reshare the posts that I’ve shared on the blog previously about the main three sites I use as there’s still time to earn money with them before Christmas. OhMyDosh especially as they have lightning payouts that will pay out super quick – many of which are no spend.
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