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) Big News! Huge News!
Miss Frugal has a home of her own (well her and her boyfriend that is).
It’s a reasonably sized one bedroomed flat in the centre of town in a nice little converted building – she is literally one minute from the beach, bars, shops and the train station which is how she gets to work and uni which makes it perfect location wise for her and it’s an absolute bargain when it comes to the rent.
She asked me to look at the flats with her and we focused on size rather than the decor so we’re over the moon with the size and the layout of this one. It’s very beige and a bit dull inside with magnolia walls and a cheap carpet but we know we can really brighten it up with a couple of coats of white paint and some personality.
The landlord is fantastic and says they can do what they want to it while they’re in there as long as it’s in rentable condition when they leave so we’re going to give it a cheap but effective facelift with some white walls and take it from there. Aside from this though, we’re not going to be spending money on anything that she can’t take with her when she moves on.
She’s literally starting from scratch so I thought I’d share some of the ways we’ve saved ourselves some money so far…
We asked around for recommendations rather than relying on Rightmove and local estate agents and managed to get a viewing in a flat that was so new to the rental market that it hadn’t even had an inspection from the last tenants moving out. I spoke to a lady at the agency who manage all of the flats in this building and she mentioned it was coming up in the next week or so but it sounded so perfect that I asked if we could be the first to view it and told her we could be super flexible and fit in with her so she rang the next day and said we could view this one and another couple that she had at the same time.
The reason it was so perfect is that it’s in a nice converted building in the centre of town and is the largest of any we’ve seen by far whilst also being the cheapest. The same agency manages a couple of similar properties for this landlord and they said he intentionally keeps the rent lower than the average rent in our area as he wants to encourage his tenants to stay long term.
The building seems really well managed with the public areas looking really well kept and I feel happy that she’s in a safe building in a lovely apartment without her having to break the bank!
2) Do you have any clue how expensive moving boxes are? If you don’t I can tell you… 😂
Argos sell them for £55 for 15 boxes and Amazon sell them for £30 for 20 smaller boxes but they’re not on Prime so it’s not next day delivery and we didn’t have time to wait as it all went so quickly once the landlord offered them the flat they wanted. I knew that as soon as they go the keys, they’d want to move in so I wanted to help them pack up quickly so they were ready to go when the flat was theirs.
So… I went around every supermarket in town to ask for boxes and managed to get 10 medium-sized boxes free of charge for them in an hour or so.
We used a mix of those boxes, some big blue Ikea bags and what felt like 673 bags for life that we borrowed from everyone we knew.
3) The shop closest to me has just signed up to Too Good To Go so I thought I’d try one of their Magic bags. There’s more about Too Good To Go here but basically, it’s an app you can use where you can pay a few pounds to get a ‘Magic Bag’ of goodies going out of date that day.
This was last Thursday night’s £3.00 haul which was good value but not as good as most of the bags we’ve had in the past.
4) I got that Tik Tok water bottle that everyone is talking about – the one that costs 99p including postage and holds 2 litres of water. It took a couple of week’s to arrive but it really is as good as everyone says it is quality wise.
I’ve been filling mine with orange squash and taking it to work with me to drink through the day to make sure I’m not tempted to take a trip to the vending machine or the canteen for a drink. Problem is that I have a forty-mile journey home which is a long way when you’ve had that much liquid beforehand!
5) This one is an oldie but a goodie!
I ran out of my moisturiser this week so I cut open the tube and managed an extra 2 days out of what was left in the tube which isn’t bad at all!
Also, I think I’ve told you before but I really love the Boots Ingredients skin care range which is really cheap compared to some of the more expensive brands on the market but seems to have mostly the same ingredients as they do. This is the range I use…
The packaging for each product explains what it’s best for and what the benefits are which made it super easy for me to choose the right products for me in a minefield of products. It’s such a good price too – I think the most expensive I’ve seen in the range is £6 but I often get it on a 3 for 2 when I see it on offer which makes it even better value!
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.
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.
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