The small things count #5frugalthings

This week’s five frugal things round up demonstrates once again how the small things count and really can add up. A conscious approach to our spending every day means that we rarely waste money (I won’t say never!), so have enough for things that are important to us. An example is our upcoming holiday to Wales. We have been adding to our holiday spending fund. Every penny counts!

Family gathering, Father’s Day

I am fortunate to still have both my parents. This week my lovely dad was 87. It was also Father’s Day last Sunday, of course. We could have gone to a restaurant and spent a load of money. Instead we went for a more relaxed approach and gathered at the home of my brother and sister in law. They made us a lovely afternoon tea and we raised a few glasses.

Since I have to be careful what I eat this suited me – M&S do a great gluten and lactose free range and they bought lots of bits to try.

Stuff for the freezer

We will be off on holiday soon leaving my daughter in charge. When she is at university she shops a lot at Iceland so I plan to stock up on some easy meals and ingredients for her whilst we are gone. The advantage of frozen over fresh if she is just feeding herself is that there is a lot less waste. She can eat more varied meals and just defrost what she needs.

I don’t want to  leave her burgers and chips though – she tries to eat healthily. I will go for things like their zesty bean quinoa, which is not a bad price at £1.69, some of their Mumbai street food range (which actually looks rather nice), pizzas, loads of frozen vegetables, smoothie mixes and things like sweet potato chips. I shouldn’t need to spend too much to set her up for the week.

Reading material

I used to love fiction and read loads when I was younger. Now I prefer non-fiction books. I think this is because I don’t have enough time to really get into a book and lose the plot (literally). Non-fiction books are easier to pick up and read for ten minutes.

I had an Amazon voucher for my birthday and decided to buy some books for my holiday. Obviously I tried to get them second hand!

Two were available but one I had to buy new. Now I have plenty to read on our holiday. I bought The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy, The Million Dollar Blog (if only – I can but dream) and Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work That Matters.

You can probably tell from these choices that my mind is on both money and work! Let’s hope they are as inspiring as they sound. There is lots going on at work. I can’t go into it but it’s an unsettling time.

eBay charges

I listed a couple of things on eBay this week. Now, you know that generally I enjoy selling on eBay and find it pretty easy. However, they have introduced some changes recently that really irk me. I even had a bit of a moan at them on Twitter about it.

Firstly, they have started defaulting your settings to auto relist. Auto relist is something they charge customers for. It therefore seems an under hand and sneaky way to take money from their customers. Fair enough if you want items to auto relist – it is handy and I have used it in the past.  However, if I want to keep my costs down I don’t. When I go to relist manually it turns the auto relist button back on so  you need to actually notice that it has reverted back to auto relist. If you don’t you will be charged!

The other thing that is annoying me is around allowing customers to make an offer.  For low price items I don’t always allow offers. Now eBay has decided to turn those on after a while whether I want them to or not. I think that if I wanted to accept offers that is how I would have set it up.

However, until eBay have some serious competition, which they don’t really, I expect they will do what they like.

Mercari

Another online vehicle to sell you unwanted stuff is Mercari. I listed about 10 items on their recently, but hadn’t had any interest. This week I finally sold something! As I say, I don’t think it is stiff enough competition for eBay just yet.

What I like about Mercari is that it is an app and very easy to use. What I don’t like is that it won’t let you list postage separately – it has to be included in the price. This is good for the buyer I guess, as they can see the total amount they will pay. However, if you are used to selling on eBay it is easy to forget the postage is in the cost and accept an offer that is too low. If I have a dress that costs, say, £6 and someone offers me £4, I mustn’t forget that just under £3 of that will actually be the postage cost. That would mean one whole pound profit on the deal – hardly worth the effort.

If you fancy giving it a go, you could use my recommend a friend code and get £2 to spend: XATXYQ.

So, these are my frugal things this week. The small things count and add up to something significant I believe. Any frugal achievements to report this week?

As ever, I am linking up with  Cass , Emma  and Becky in this week’s Five Frugal Things I have done this Week linky.

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