Five Frugal Things we did this week {13th September 2025}….

Every week 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!

1) We got a great Too Good to Go bag this week – in fact, we got two. 😁

There’s a shop near us that has a 4.6 out of 5 rating for the quality of their bags which is well deserved as we’ve had a few bags from there before and have never been disappointed. They don’t come up too often though so when we saw a couple on Sunday night, we bought them for £3.99 each knowing that the minimum value of each bag would be £12. 

I don’t have a photo as one of our neighbours caught me for a chat as we were going in the house and by the time I made it into the house, it was all put away neatly! 

I can tell you that between the two bags, we got four steaks, five garlic baguettes, eight pasta bakes, five packs of ham, four pots of gourmet yoghurt, two tubs of sour cream, two packs of bread buns, two packs of sausages, a sausage roll, two packs of angel delight and a smoothie. 

The steaks were priced at £6 each and we had them for tea on Wednesday with leftovers for lunch on Thursday.  If I add the value up of everything else in the bag it genuinely comes to more than £50 so that’s way more than the minimum value which should have been £24 across the two bags and ridiculously more than the £8 that we paid for the bags.

And I got a nice little message to say how much I’d saved in the last twelve months using Too Good to Go. It’s always a gamble but we’ve mostly been lucky and got our money’s worth and more from the bags we’ve bought. 

(If you’re not sure what Too Good to Go is then check out this post)

2) I’ve mentioned Airtime Rewards loads of times but it’s always worth a mention when it saves £10 on my mobile phone bill. 😁 

For those who don’t know, Airtime Rewards is a completely free app that you download onto your phone. You can then connect your bank cards which is as simple as just scanning your card or typing in the details – no faffing about with authorising via your bank’s app or anything like that.  Once you’ve connected at least one card, you’ll earn some money back from participating retailers when you spend with them using that card.  That money then accumulates and can be redeemed to reduce your phone bill.

All of the big mobile phone providers (and lots of smaller ones) are compatible with Airtime Rewards and it’s literally as simple as using your connected card with one of the retailers on there to earn money back. They partner with Visa and MasterCard to track purchases so it’s all done automatically – no clicking certain links or using any special tracking on your side.

I have my cards linked to the app and looking at where my cashback has come from in the last month, it’s from Morrisons, Boots, Asos and ebay. I didn’t do anything specific to get the cashback other than use my linked card for my purchases.  It’s easy money. 

If you do want to join, download the app and use my referral code (ECBBDBYY) and we’ll both get a reward if you spend £5 with any retailer who are part of Airtime Rewards within 7 days. 

3) It feels like Summer is over which is not entirely sad news to me! 

Cozy season is my season and I love pretty much everything about it – chunky jumpers are at the front of my wardrobe again, comfort food is back on the menu and the fluffy blankets are all out on the chairs in the living room ready for snuggles.

This weeks comfort food was made using two packs of reduced veggies from Asda and a pack of frozen Mayflower curry sauce. I made three portions of curry for £1.50 and it was delicious – I did add some leftover chicken to the third portion to change it up a bit but that was just because I had it in. 

I did actually mean to freeze some of it but after I roasted the vegetables, I decided that they’d probably not reheat well after being frozen so I just had the same thing two nights running and the lunch in between. Good job it was tasty. 😁

Being diabetic, quick and easy meals don’t happen very often so I don’t mind eating the same thing a couple of nights running to make an easy meal as boring as it might sound to others. I’m doing lots of research at the moment to try and find ideas for food that works for me and will freeze well. 

4) On the subject of food, I work from home three days a week and I over the Summer, I’ve been ridiculously bad at eating breakfast and lunch during a work from home work day. I have lots of calls through the day and I haven’t been making time to go and prepare food that I can eat so I’ve either not eaten or worse, eaten something I know isn’t good for me. 

I’ve promised myself I’m going to get better at this and that I am finally going to master Diabetes and learn to live with this.

One of the ways that I’m planning to do this is to prep some light lunches in advance which is something I started to do and worked really well until Summer chaos happened. I’m back on the lunch planning wagon again and this week, I’ve spent some time making some egg bites ready to freeze for mid morning snacks. 

I don’t use a specific recipe for my egg bites but generally use six eggs, a handful of cheese and whatever else I have in. I added some broccoli and cauliflower left over from tea the night before and along with some chopped up cherry tomatoes from our garden.

I had a day off on Wednesday and was at home most of the day so I made a few batches ready to go in the freezer for the next couple of weeks. 

5) I did a thing. 

Something I’ve been toying with for a while now but never thought I’d actually do it – I sold my camera. 

For such a big part of my life, my camera was a part of me and was either in my hand or within reach but over the last couple of years, my phone has been able to take pictures that are almost as good as the ones taken on my camera so I started to reach for it less. It was a regular feature on my Instagram account back in the day but it took me a lot of scrolling today to find a picture of it. 

 I dug it out last week with the intention of taking it on holiday with us next month but it didn’t give me the same feeling that I used to get when I held it. Sounds super corny I know but I loved my view of the world through that camera and the challenge of getting the photo just right.

These days, I try and enjoy the moment more than the photo and I get just as much enjoyment out of a quick snap with my phone as I used to get out of a photo taken with my camera. 

Which is the reason I decided to sell my camera, it wasn’t about the money but the money I got for it made the decision to part with it a little bit easier. 😁 

Hope you’ve had a successful money saving week too. See you next week.

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