Frugal Things this week

This is MasterShoestring when we lived in the USA . Now he will be going back there in April,  in order to do work experience at USAShoestring's company. It might not seem very thrifty, but we paid for his air ticket and ESTA this week in order to get a discount price. Since he is under 16 at the time of the flight he does not pay tax on the flight so that brought the cost down further. I was in 2 minds about paying for the ticket or waiting until we had the money saved up. However, each day I waited the price went up so in the end we agreed to buy it rather than pay more later.

I did not have so much luck with reduced food this week so we ate up what we had from last week and only bought what we needed in the shops. This meant that the total cost for the week was £13.74. So far we have spent far less than last month, even with more people home so that shows that buying in bulk at the start of the month and then just topping up works well for us. I've got just over £50 left for the rest of the month and will have to pay for 2 more weeks of school lunches out of that as well.

It has been very cold here but we have just been putting the heating on until it reaches 18C and then switching it back off again.

I got 2 free items in the post which was nice. I'm trying not to pay for stocking fillers next year so a nice set of notecards and some sweet pea seeds will be going into the gift cupboard.

We used the slow cooker 4 days out of 5 for the evening meal and ate leftovers for lunch so that saved quite a bit on cooking as we have an electric hob and it costs quite a bit to run.

I batched errands together so that they could take place when I was already out to do something which needed the car. I have to take MasterShoestring to school and MrShoestring to the station so errands were done first thing in the morning or in the late afternoon. Anything else and I walked, for instance to a doctor's appointment.

I need a recording device for the next part of my course and thought I already had one. I went to the cupboard and although the box was there the device was not. I must have lent it to someone and now I cannot remember to whom ! Rather than buying another one I ordered a cable costing £3.19 and hope that this will enable me to use an old phone of USAShoestring's to do the job. Fingers crossed ! I also ordered more books from the library for the course rather than buying them !

Good luck with your spending goals next week !