Five frugal things we’ve done this fortnight:
The last few weeks have been a testing time for saving money, with having to buy a new (to us) car and also having our oven go kaput. We thought it was bad enough when the toaster died a few weeks back…
Our house sale fell through but another might be on the horizon; we’re hopeful that by next week we’ll at least know where that ship is sailing to!
Made tools for work rather than buying
My husband’s a window cleaner, and he needed to replace the fibreglass pole he uses for the reach and wash system after his DIY repairs just wouldn’t cut it any more. After pricing one up on eBay, he came across a domestic version on sale in Aldi and realised that with a bit of tinkering, it could be adapted to fit the old pole – saving a fair bit of cash.
Cashed out my CheckoutSmart balance
At last, I built up over £20 in my CheckoutSmart balance, so I could request a payout without a pesky PayPal fee! I’ve not been using my cashback apps as often recently, but this has made me check for offers much more often.
Scrapped our car and bought a cheap banger… again!
Bangernomics is a pain sometimes. We made our last car stretch as far as we could, even getting an extra week out of it when we really should have accepted that it had met its end. Ultimately, we scrapped it for £30, and bought another for £350.
Our days of super-cheap bangers are drawing to an end, though, but until our house is sold and a new one is bought, we’re not putting any more of our money than absolutely necessary into a car.
Received a Quidco payout in the form of Zeek credit
Like several topics this week, I mentioned this in my last extra income report – we got a 15% bonus payout for getting our Quidco payment as Zeek credit! We still don’t know what we’re going to use it for though… hopefully something for our new house (hopefully it won’t take long to use it)!
Created some slow cooker meals with leftovers
One good thing about the oven going kaput is that it’s made me get clever with the slow cooker. Once we got it out and had one meal, it made me realise how much I’d been missing out by neglecting it, and the next day I used it to make an unbelievably easy dinner using up leftovers and offcuts of prepared vegetables from the night before.
Over to you…
Done anything frugal this week? I’d love to hear about it!
I’m linking up with Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Fabulously Frugal things I’ve done this week linky.
8 Comments
I am also keeping the super cheap old banger going for as long as I can. It cost us £500 a year ago and very little since. Plus it is a small one and so cheap to run!
This banger cost £350 but it’ll need some new wheel bearings soon. But I can’t believe that the tax is only £30, so that defrays some of the other costs!
Damn it cooker and car going kaput in the same week is tough. Our elderly Volkswagen bit the dust earlier this year, and we’ve yet to replace it. Will have to brace myself to drive again if we do get a second car!
If you can get by with one car then that’s great, we’ve done it for years but perhaps something less rust-buckety might be on the horizon after we move! I can get the trepidation around driving again after a long time too 🙂
I sometimes wish we had an old banger for a car! It would be easier to get it fixed, ours needs plugging in to get rid of error codes every time it goes wrong!
Ah yes, been there and done that! And it’s easier to say goodbye when it finally does pop its clogs 😀
I love cashing out all my apps and things at this time of year too. Thanks for linking up.
Ooh I didn’t know you got a bonus from top cashback if you cash ou in zeek credit – double savings there!