The Diary of a Frugal Family | Page 3 of 421 | Living a Fabulously Frugal Family Life

How to pick out the perfect real Christmas tree….

29711Leave a Comment2018-12-01+10%3A00%3A29Cassandra December 1, 2018 By Cassandra
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It's that time of year again when the kids are pestering to put up the decorations and you have to decide whether you're going to get the artificial tree down from the loft or whether you're going to go for a real tree this year! Last year, we went for the second option and it didn't work out as well as we'd hoped...For years, the kids have been after us to get a real tree rather than use our big 7ft artificial one (which I love) and we finally gave in last year and headed out to the local farm to buy a real Christmas Tree for the first time. We're not real tree experts so after a … [Read more...]

Five Frugal Things we did this week {30 November 2018}….

296261 Comment2018-11-30+10%3A00%3A32Cassandra November 30, 2018 By Cassandra
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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.Before I start though, I do want to say that being frugal to me is about getting the best value for our money - it's not about doing without for us or about not having nice things. We all have different financial situations and we're all frugal for different reasons - we're frugal so we can afford to do nice things together.1) I shared my weekly meal plan over on Meal Planning … [Read more...]

Am I ready to Invest?

298131 CommentAm+I+ready+to+Invest%3F2018-11-29+20%3A36%3A15Cassandra November 29, 2018 By Cassandra
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What do you do when you’re debt free with an Emergency fund set aside and your budget is pretty much as healthy as it’s ever going to?My initial thoughts were to start throwing everything I have to my mortgage so that we can get that paid off as quickly as possible and to a certain degree, I do still want to do that.I like the idea that my mortgage will be paid off in full before I hit 50 and that we’ll then have the security of owning our home outright AND having the extra money each month.But I’ve been wondering lately if we’re doing the right thing – is it the right thing … [Read more...]

Why I DON’T Agree with ‘Presence not Presents’….

293417 Comments2018-11-28+10%3A00%3A55Cassandra November 28, 2018 By Cassandra
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I really hate the phrase 'Presence not Presents' and today, I'm going to tell you why along with sharing my thoughts on the current trend of present-shaming!There's a lot of present-shaming going on around social media at the moment with more judging taking place than you see on the X-Factor and Strictly combined and today, I wanted to tell you just what I think about the number of presents that you choose to buy your children and the amount you decide to spend on those presents.You know, just because 99% of people of social media have an opinion about it and I don't like to feel … [Read more...]

Find your ‘Why’ and use it to achieve your financial goals….

29772Leave a Comment2018-11-27+10%3A00%3A59Cassandra November 27, 2018 By Cassandra
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I know I say this often but it’s because I truly believe it! We all have different reasons to be frugal and whatever our reason, it’s absolutely valid. Your reason should be what motivates you and what keeps you going and today I’m going to share my new reason – my new ‘why’?For us, we’ve paid our debts now, we’ve pretty much got our budget down to the lowest I think it can go without sacrificing things that we don’t want to sacrifice and we’re overpaying our mortgage by a comfortable amount each month to allow us to repay our mortgage in 10 years rather than the 21 years left that we … [Read more...]

What to do when your flight is overbooked….

29766Leave a Comment2018-11-23+18%3A30%3A23Cassandra November 23, 2018 By Cassandra
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A couple of weeks ago, Miss Frugal and I went on a bit of a dream holiday to Los Angeles together and it was honestly an amazing experience that we enjoyed every single minute of. It felt a little bit surreal if I’m honest because every day we saw so many things that we’d seen on TV and read about in books!Despite the fact we had such a brilliant time, we were both more than ready to come home at the end of the trip though as we ‘d been so busy for the entire week we were there that we were pretty exhausted and all as awful as this sounds we were all ‘wowed’ out.We’re both quite good … [Read more...]