2018 Frugal Living Challenge

An unplanned day today , because my dd has been ill . so its been all hands on deck to help her , I started the day by walking my 5 year old gd to school . so free exersize,,,,,,,wombled along the way but didn't find anything ,,,, picked her up after school and treated her to a Mc Donalds , I had a free coffee. so a small spend ,dd a lot better now after much needed sleep , Got a phone call from an overseas friend , to say she'd booked to come over to stay with us for 3 weeks 19th July . ( She comes every year ,,,has done for over 20 years so shes like family ) so my main frugal aim this year , is ,,,, £70 is our normal food budget for the week ( for 2 adults , but we get a lot of family strays drop in and get fed too ) but I end up paying for allsorts out of it , ( Meals out etc too ) but me and my friend take off for a couple of weeks travelling around when she comes , ( Cornwall and London for us this year ) . so my aim is to be as frugal as possible , and anything left out the £70 is going into a separate pot , and hopefuly ill have enough to pay for all the hotel costs this year and surprise her . I make my biggest money savings on food , I cook most things from scratch , batch cook a lot and can make a meal out of most things , Remember the meat I got from the dinner yesterday ,,,,,,its made umpteen meals already , cooked dinners / sandwiches/ and im batch cooking beef curry as I speak ( or type ) A friend told me she makes it with Mayflower Curry Mix , so I gave it a go Its only £1 a tub ( Like gravy granules) from B&M /. Homebargains . and its delicious , so nice that I decided to use more of the meat , and make another batch for the freezer , VERY easy recipe , just spray a pan add onions , courgettes, mushrooms , peppers , add the meat,,,,,,make up the curry mix and add that ,,,,,,and its done , It really is nice , and ill use it with rice , or on a jacket potatoe , or with chips etc , We wont have transport when away , and have to rely on public transport to get around , so any left over money will be put towards travel costs. My biggest expenditure ( For me ) believe it or not is postage stamps . My hobby is penpalling , I love to see a letter from a friend come though my letterbox , but postage is so high now , that its killing my hobby. So im always looking at ways to earn money to buy stamps . The postman helped me this morning , as he delivered 2 letters and neither stamp had been franked , so ill re use them //////yayy a freebie

Thrifty_Taylor wrote: »

Have you heard of the Royal Mail Survey?




Thankyou Thrifty Taylor , but im already a member of this , My 6 months has ended and all my stamps got used at Christmas , so a long time till I hopefully get added in again , around july/ august time, A shame I don't know anyone doing the survey and could maybe exchange with them for something they wanted , ( crafts etc ? )

I did see several colleagues listing the Christmas Card and stamps we get from RM every year on eBay. They were selling for less than the face value of the stamps so I didn't list mine, but it could be worth looking for those. I now have 2 years worth of stamps (50 a year) totally unused as I use about 6 stamps a year and already had loads in stock.

So today is look after Mum Day. Food shopping day, and also as it is my son’s birthday tomorrow we are going out for Lunch at one of the local pubs.

On the plus side I am happy that my shopping list is quite small.

I never knew about surveys until read some threads on the forums... £2.48 made in my lunch hour.. every little helps right