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.
Hey! 👐
1) I went out last Saturday night for a few pre-Christmas drinks with one of my friends and both my dress and boots were bought secondhand and cost less than £10 for them both combined. My Boots were from Vinted and were selling for £5 but I made an offer of £4 which was accepted – postage will have been a couple of pounds on top but I can only see how much I paid for the boots rather than the postage when I go back into the app.
They’re actually still for sale on the M&S website for £39.50 and they’re in immaculate condition so I’m over the moon with my bargain boots!
My dress was £4 from a charity shop near me and still had the tags on it so another real bargain. It’s not something I would usually wear without tights as it’s quite short but seeing as the boots are knee-high I thought it was OK to go without. I had a secret smile when I was out and realised that I’d paid less for my outfit than one of my friends just paid for one cocktail!
2) OK, this one could be slightly controversial but I buy bottled water for Master Frugal – I love our tap water here but he really isn’t a fan and actually, he struggles with water overall but he bought himself a bottle of the sugar-free Volvic strawberry flavoured water to go with his lunch at college and loved it so I started buying it for him to encourage him to drink more.
It’s usually about a pound for a 2 litre bottle and it’s one of those things that I’m not altogether comfortable buying but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s a worthwhile purchase at the moment because it’s encouraging him to drink more. This weekend, I found it on offer at Morrisons – 2 for £1.50 – so I stocked up as it’s a 25% saving on something I buy weekly.
3) I love a real Christmas tree but I must admit that an artifical tree is my preferred option at Christmas and whilst I know that a real tree could be seen as a more sustainable option, I feel like if you already own an artifical tree then you should use it as much as you can in order to make it’s impact on the environment as minimal as it can be.
According to the Carbon Trust, a 6.5ft artificial tree is responsible for about 40kg of greenhouse gas emissions – which means you need to reuse it for about 10 Christmases to keep its environmental impact lower than buying a real tree every year, depending on the materials used in the fake tree. That means that an artifical tree that you bring out every year is better than a real tree from a sustainability point of view.
Also, I dug out a big bag of red and gold decorations from a couple of years ago for a friend who didn’t have any decorations at all and passed them on to her. There was easily enough to decorate her tree so she didn’t have to go out and spend a fortune on decorations but she did buy some lovely new oranaments for my tree as a thank you
4) I’ve done some overtime at work this week, knowing that it will be paid in January which is always the longest month of the year financially so by the time it gets to January payday, I know January me will be thanking December me for thinking ahead. 😂
5) I’m pretty much done with Vinted for 2021 as I sold my last party outfit this week and I’ve stopped listing on there until the week between Christmas and New Year when I’ll pop on the pile I have in the garage ready to pop on when I know I’ll have a bit of time.
The playsuit I sold this week was one that I bought specifically to list on Vinted for the party season as I saw it for 99p and knew it would sell for more than that if it caught someone’s eye. It’s super blingy and a proper Christmas party outfit so I was hoping it would sell this week otherwise I’d have it for another year I reckon.
I sold it for £4 so not a huge profit but even a small amount is better in my pocket – I’m thinking of setting myself some kind of Vinted challenge next year to see just how much I can make on there. Maybe a challenge to sell enough to buy a designer handbag. 😂
I do know that I could make more if I spent more time looking through the racks but so far, I’ve focussed on size 18 and above as I know that in the past I’ve struggled to find lovely clothes in larger sizes. I try and look for good brands that I know I would buy – ideally with the tags on them still as clothes that haven’t been worn always seem to sell quicker.
As always when I tell you about Vinted, here’s my post on how to sell on there in case you want to give it a go.
Come over and join our fab Facebook group – Spend Less, Live Better! We’ve hit 35,000 members in the group now so it’s a great place to be and I’ve got Miss Frugal in there helping me out now.
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.
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I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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