Five Frugal Things we did this week {25th October 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) I thought I’d start this week by sharing one of my staple meals for this time of year – corned beef hash. 

I made a big batch of this overnight on Monday night in the slow cooker and it did a small tea for me on Tuesday, two nightshift meals on Tuesday and Wednesday, a tupperware bowl filled with enough for a meal for Master Frugal (who, at 20, is clearly no longer Master Frugal but anything else seems weird at this point) and two smaller but big enough portions in the freezer for some point in the future. 

I use tins of corned beef that I usually buy from our farm shop but if they don’t have any in then I go to Farm Foods or Heron for it so I never pay more than £2.50 for a can which in itself is huge when I think that corned beef used to be a cheap meat option but better than the £4 plus that I see it for in the big supermarkets. The ones I used this week were £2.

I use whatever potatoes we have in and this week, I bought a bag of five big baking potatoes from the farm shop for £2 and used three of those for this and the other two did jackets for tea one night. They were quite big though so if you’re using smaller potatoes then you might want to add more. 

The carrots and peas are both from the freezer and probably cost about 75p max for what I added in to this. I add quite a few carrots to this when I make this as I love carrots and it bulks it out quite a bit too as do the peas.

So altogether, no more than £7 for this huge batch including the OXO cubes and the gravy granules and it did six meals which I think is amazing value. 

It’s so easy to make aswell – literally cube the corned beef and peeled potatoes and pop in the slow cooker, add in the frozen carrots and sprinkle over two OXO cubes and then cover with water. I do add a fair amount of water as the gravy when it’s done is the best part and really stretches the meal further.

Cook overnight on low and around lunchtime the next day add in some peas. At tea time, thicken the gravy with some gravy granules and you have a big pot of amazing corned beef hash. 

It’s the best comfort food in the world!

2) This is one of those things that is such a small saving that you might roll your eyes and think why bother.

But it’s free money that takes seconds to earn so why I’d roll my eyes back at you and say why not bother. 😁

Every month with Octopus there is a spin the wheel game that you can play to win points that can be converted into money off your bill. I get one for gas and one for electricity and then another for each as we have a smart meter. 

I check my balance on there every month and while I’m on there, I spin the wheel which takes me about a minute for all four spins. I’ve never won big although never say never haha but I have won a few pounds off my bill every couple of months.

(Also, can you tell I couldn’t sleep one night so had YouTube playing while doing some life admin in bed)

3) I have a super cute little Chilly’s food flask which keeps food warm for about six hours – perfect for me taking lunch to work as I pretty much always get to eat within that time frame so my lunch is always still lovely and warm.  

We don’t have anything similar for my partner at the moment (although we have a fantastic drinks flask for his night shift hot chocolates) so when I saw a Thermos flask for sale in Tesco last weekend, I had a quick Google to check out the reviews and see if it did indeed keep food hot for 9 hours. 

The overwhelming consensus was that it did with a huge majority of 4 and 5 star ratings:

I decided to go for it and bought one with a plan to get organised with hot packed lunches for both of us because although, I feel like I’ve mastered packed lunches when a sandwich or salad will do the trick, I definitely need some help with packed lunches where we need something a bit warmer. That’s when the temptation is there for my partner to order a takeaway with his mates from work or when I might decide to pop to the canteen at work and get something a bit more.

I’ve written myself a list of foods that I think will work well in our flasks and I’m hoping to be a master at hot packed lunches this Winter and save us a bit of money.

4) I appear to have very expensive taste in paint. 

Or at least, I seem to be drawn to the fancy makes with the shades that have posh names like ‘breakfast room green’ and ‘dimity’ rather than ‘pea shoot’ and ‘pale cream’. 😁

So, I have the tester pots for the fancy stuff and asked the man at the paint mixing counter if he could mix the colours I like from the tester pots in the cheaper paint. His reply.. ‘Course I can, love’. 

5) This is your regular reminder to always check petrol prices in your area before you fill up. This week, our big car was running on fumes (thanks to me playing diesel roulette on my way home from work) so I had a quick search to see where the cheaper prices were in our area and there was a Tesco garage that was 6p cheaper per litre than the usual Asda garage that I would have gone to. 

I put 56 litres in so that makes a difference of about £3.60 which as with lots of money saving, it’s the small things that add up and if I could save that twice a month then it’s £7 a month and all those smaller savings per month, add up to more substantial savings in your pocket. 

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