This week’s Five Frugal Things post is all about some of the things I want to do in 2022!
Hey! 👐
Like many of you guys, 2021 did not go according to plan for me.
I had big plans for the year but I let myself put them off until there was less uncertainty in the world thinking that life would return to some kind of normality way before now. And now we’re here and I’m writing my 2022 intentions post and I’m no further forward than I was at this time last year in some areas that I thought I would have made progress on.
I’m not going to let things stop me this year because let’s face it, life isn’t going to get back to normal for a long time and even then it’s going to be an entirely different kind of normal if you ask me. I’m not saying this to be negative – the opposite in fact because after a year of just plodding on, I’m excited about 2022 and determined that I’m going to make the changes I want to make in my life.
I’m not going to share everything here though – there’s plenty of time for all that so today is all about some of the smaller things that I plan to do. 😂
1) I’m going to continue to save money by setting my banking app to round up all purchases to the nearest pound, doubling it, and then adding it to my savings account. That will sit there until next Christmas when hopefully there should be more than enough to pay for Christmas but if not, it’ll be a good amount towards it.
2) I stopped my regular mortgage overpayment a while ago so I could redirect that money into a share purchase scheme at work which I’ve taken out over three years. It was such a good deal as the shares were at the lowest point in years when the share option price was set so I wanted to put as much in as I could so I canceled my mortgage overpayment and added that amount to the amount I could afford to pay into the share scheme.
I feel like now I’ve gotten used to being without that money each month then I can set up a smaller overpayment into my mortgage to pay that down a little bit until I get to the end of the Sharesave scheme when I plan to move the money straight to my mortgage anyway. My shares are worth almost two and a half times what the share option price is for me now so it was a good decision on the face of it – let’s just hope they continue to go up for the next year and a half when my plan ends. If not, the worst-case scenario is that I’m just allowed to withdraw the money I’ve paid so far so I can’t lose but I can absolutely win!
3) This year, I’ve really enjoyed buying clothes which sounds like a sentence that should never be included in any kind of five frugal things post, doesn’t it? It’s because I’ve lost a little bit of weight not much and not nearly enough for me to be happy with myself but enough that clothes fit a little better and I have more confidence in choosing different styles.
But I don’t want to spend a fortune on new clothes and I don’t want to have a ridiculous amount of clothes so I made a rule earlier on in the year that every time I bought something, I would either pop something I haven’t worn in a while on Vinted or donate it to charity (I don’t drop them off at the charity shop item by item, I usually pop them in a box in my spare room and drop them off when I have enough) – kind of like a one in, one out policy which means I don’t get to a point where my wardrobe won’t close and I think more about any purchase because I know it means something else has to go.
The things that I’ve sold on Vinted have helped me pay for new clothes bought off there and to date, despite getting loads of clothes off there, I’ve never had to pay more than a few pounds here and there because I’ve always used my credit balance.
As well as buying from Vinted, I also started shopping more in charity shops as we have some brilliant ones in the town near me where there is some quite high end (well… high end of the high street) brands there with lots of things that are brand new with tags so I’ve had some brilliant bargains as you might have seen from some of my monthly pre-loved bargains posts.
And sometimes I buy something from the charity shop specifically to sell on Vinted to make some extra pennies to go towards my clothing spending and a couple of times, I’ve sold something I bought for less than £5 for more
So, next year, I plan to be clothing neutral. 😂
I’m going to take what I’ve been doing this year and up my game by setting up a pot within my bank account (Starling bank is fab for this) and will transfer any Vinted profits into there and that’s the amount I can spend on clothes. That way, I can buy guilt-free knowing I’m using money from selling clothes to buy clothes and nothing is going to waste.
4) I’m going to list the renewal dates of every insurance policy I have and pop it in my calendar to make sure that nothing auto-renews without me shopping around for a better price – using comparison websites and getting cashback wherever I can to get the price down. I KNOW this is something I should always do and I am OK at it but I must admit that sometimes life gets in the way and there’s been a couple of times this year that I’ve just shrugged my shoulders and gone with the renewal price. Nothing going to get by me in 2022! 😂
5) I can’t write any kind of New Year’s Resolutions post without mentioning meal planning because it’s always up there at the top of my list of things that I want to do every year. I am going to get better at batch cooking and set time aside once a month rather than just doing it randomly when I feel like it.
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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