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) I found a pound on the floor when I walked down into our village high street on Sunday so I thought I’d use it to buy a scratch card. 😁
I won £10 so cashed it straight in and went to the charity shop where I bought myself a pair of trousers that I’ll wear loads (Next, brand new with the tags still on them) and a pair of Zara trousers for 99p from the sale rail that I know will sell well on Vinted.
The trousers I bought for me are a really nice fit so I’m really pleased with them and I’m pretty sure when I get around to listing the Zara trousers on Vinted that I’ll make back more than I paid for them. 😁
2) I made a batch of my homemade mini cheddars this week for snacks for my partner to take to work.
He works 12 hour shifts and it’s quite full on so I try and fill his packed lunch with snacks for through the day and I’d much rather they were homemade snacks and not shop bought as I like to know what’s in them.
I made a big batch and split it into four tubs so he had one for each of his shifts this week and I reckon that my batch costs around half of what their shop bought equivalents would cost with the added benefit that I know exactly what’s in them.
3) We have a couple of those glass style chopping boards which do an OK job but one of the ones we have is missing one of it’s little feet so it wobbles and the other one is looking a bit scratched so it’s time to replace them.
I looked online and it was going to be around £7 for a cheap glass style replacement when I got around it it but then last weekend, we were in a local kitchen store and saw that they were selling off cuts of quartz and granite as chopping boards for £20 but I didn’t like any of the patterns so carried on looking around at the kitchens which is what we were there for.
As we wandered around, there were samples of the work surfaces around the showroom and I spotted one that I loved that was a bit smaller than the other larger chopping boards they were selling.
I asked the salesman if he would consider selling us the sample as a chopping board and, after checking with his boss, he said that he would if we waited for ten minutes while they did something to the edges in their workshop. He was back within the ten minutes with our lovely new chopping board and he only charged us £10 with it being a bit smaller than the others (we’re talking less than an inch smaller) so we have an expensive, very heavy quartz chopping board for the bargain price of £10 just by asking the question.
4) I did a grown up thing in January and decided that this year, I was going to save money.
I’ve said before many, many times but the reason we save money where we can is so that we have more money to spend on the things we like to do in life – mainly travel.
But when I was planning what I wanted from 2026, one of the things I decided was that I was going to be sensible and focus on saving money, even if that means a little less going into the travel budget.
I set up Plum which is an app that you link to your bank account so it can analyse your bills and spending habits to understand where you can afford to spare money to move into savings. I used it years ago but stopped using it when I realised I was transferring the money back to my current account more often than not. 😁
Since January, I’ve had the app connected to my bank account and as well as the automated transfers, I also have a rule where it takes £1 on a sunny day, £2 on a day when I don’t spend any money at all, £3 on a Friday and £20 on payday.
I haven’t transferred any of it back to my bank account which is a BIG win and I’m super happy with how much I’ve saved so far. I feel like I might need to do a whole post about it because it’s really changed the way that I save.
I’m sharing now rather than back in January because I wanted to make sure that I stuck to it rather than giving up after a few weeks.
5) We’ve booked our holidays for this Summer and I can’t wait.
Before booking it, I googled the company name and the words ‘discount code’ and found out a 5% discount code which isn’t huge but when you’re talking about the amount that a holiday costs then it adds up and I’d always rather there was money in our pockets than anyone else’s.
There you go, hope you enjoyed seeing what I’ve been getting up to!
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