Five Frugal Things We’ve Done 18/10/19

As much as I dread the arrival of the cold weather, the changing leaves are absolutely beautiful, aren’t they?

The last week has given us a few sunny days to enjoy the bright red and yellow trees, and it’s days like those that remind me of the perks of living in the northern hemisphere. Apart from those natural freebies, we’ve been doing a bit to save money at home:

Bulk buying reduced food

We stumbled across a bargain at the supermarket when we found several 1kg packs of chicken breasts reduced in price… and when I say several, I mean a shedload.

After we got them home we seasoned half of them up with a home-mixed curry powder, portioned them out into bags and put them into the freezer. Realising we’d be sick of curry in a week, we bought some different seasonings and did the rest later.

The funny thing is, we actually had a lot of fun chatting while we prepped the food, and it’s made us far more likely to get into the habit of making meals in this way, which is a very good thing.

Check out some more supermarket savings hacks here.

Doing an oil change at home

Ste usually does routine car maintenance like this himself, as it keeps our banger going for longer and costs less than getting a mechanic to do it for you.

Shoppix payout

I finally reached the threshold for a £10 payout with Shoppix, an app that pays you for taking pictures of your receipts.

I could have requested £5 earlier on, but I decided to wait for a bit and make it to the £10 threshold, or even see if I could hold out until £20.

Well, I didn’t bother waiting that long because I started using the app in July, and I wanted to have something to report for the blog after such a long wait. Next time I may let it build up.

Shopmium has been great for me as well these past few weeks, but that’s another post!

Making an (almost) instant turmeric latte mix

Turmeric lattes (or golden milk, or haldi doodh) were a big thing a while back, and of course it took me ages to catch on.

We gave it a try a few months ago and liked it, but mixing up the ingredients and stirring away over the cooker was a bit of a faff I ultimately couldn’t keep up with. I decided to pre-mix a big batch of turmeric, cinnamon and ginger powder with almond essence and a bit of honey to make a mix we could use quickly by just adding hot milk.

It worked amazingly, but I decided I would add more honey so as not to have to sweeten it any more after the fact… and ended up with clumps. It still works though, but next time I won’t do that.

Help To Save account

I’ve been spreading the word through my newsletter and in person about the government’s Help To Save account for people on low incomes – you can apply for one if you’re on Universal Credit or entitled to Working Tax Credit.

It’s definitely worth applying for if you’re eligible!

Over to you…

What have your frugal wins been this week?

Last fortnight

I’m linking up with Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.