Hello frugalists, and welcome to my Friday round up. I thought I would give you an update on how my frugal February is going so far. If you missed last week’s post, my aim is to have a no spend month except for essentials, although I am allowing myself to spend in order to make money. It actually fulfils any urge I have to shop for pointless stuff for myself! But more of that later.
Here’s what I have been up to this week and my frugal February update.
I won an award!
This isn’t about frugality, but I won an award! The UK Money Bloggers People’s Choice Blog award. I am chuffed to bits, especially as I have been shortlisted in quite a few categories over the years but never won anything.
It also means a lot as it was voted for by my readers, so if any of you lovely people took the time to vote for me, thank you so much.
Also not frugal, my daughters bought me these stunning flowers to say congratulations. I thought Mr S had ignored our ‘get a token silly present’ plan for Valentine’s Day and gone mad.
They are stunning flowers – I have such lovely daughters.
Valentine’s on the cheap
We rarely, if ever, go out for a meal at Valentines. I don’t want to spend a lot of money to sit in a crowded restaurant at the moment anyway as I am seeing my elderly parents so often.
We always mark it, though, usually by buying a steak and a bottle of fizz. A lot of the supermarkets have excellent deals on. At both Asda and the Coop, you could get a starter, a main course, two sides, a dessert and a bottle of Prosecco for £15! That’s a great deal! So, this is what we have gone for.
This feels like a treat, as there is minimal cooking involved, plus you can claim a Sky Movie pass for the evening too. As a three course restaurant meal and a trip to see a film would probably set us back at least £100, I think £15 is a bargain. It has come out of our usual shopping budget though, so we will need to be uber frugal with our groceries for the rest of the month.
Of course, we could be even more frugal and ignore it altogether, but everyone needs the occasional treat.
The new-to-us sofa arrived
My no spend February is going well so far, apart from my purchase of a second hand sofa in the charity shop for £60 plus £20 delivery. I mentioned this last week as an almost immediate no spend fail.
However, as we planned to buy a second hand sofa to replace our very old and tatty two seater – which the dog had had a little chew on – I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity when I spotted it.
The sofa arrived on Monday and I am extremely pleased with it. It is so comfortable! I hadn’t realised when I purchased it that it is made by G Plan. They are a quality manufacturer, and I was aware of that, but I had no idea how expensive G Plan sofas are new. I looked up the prices and a three seater costs in the region of £1500! I could do a lot with that sort of money; in fact, I could probably redecorate the entire house!
I think this is actually a good and sensible bit of frugality, which will hopefully last us for years.
Buying to sell
If you watch my YouTube channel, you will know that I have been making a lot of purchases for my eBay business. My no spend February couldn’t include this aspect of my life as I was almost out of stock!
One of my aims for the month is to list as much as possible on eBay and increase my income, so I have made a couple of trips out to look around the charity shops. I confused myself by thinking there was a jumble sale on last Saturday, but when I double checked as I was leaving I discovered it is actually on this weekend. As I was all geared up, I decided to go to Braintree instead, a town about half an hour from us.
This isn’t the first time I have been and they have some excellent – and cheap – independent shops. I managed to get a good haul and have been listing stuff all week. Sales have already picked up, so hopefully my February income will be better than January’s was.
When I do my next frugal February update I probably won’t have spent much more, though. I will save most of my spending on stock once the boot sales restart.
An offally cheap dinner
If you are vegetarian, look away now…
I have recently gone back to a super frugal meal that my mum used to cook when I was a child: liver and bacon casserole. It is cheap, full of nutrition and tasty too.
Some people are squeamish about eating offal, but if you eat meat I think it is worth trying. We have had it twice over recent weeks and enjoyed it both times. I have found I prefer pig’s liver to lamb’s liver as it isn’t as strong tasting.
And it’s cheap as chips! I bought a pack of liver in Asda for £1.28 and cooking bacon for just 75p. It easily feeds four. This is the recipe I used if you fancy giving it a go.
I hope you enjoyed my frugal February update and also that you have had a good week. If you are doing a no spend month, how is yours going?
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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