Frugal Friday

So into May and this is a long month and quite an expensive one, with a car MOT and service to save for. We also need to change broadband and phone deal, so plenty of incentive to look for savings !

This week I went to Lidl to do some of the month's food shopping and I now know that I need to start a price book again to make sure that the journey there or to Aldi is actually cheaper than shopping locally. As part of the trip I had to menu plan ahead for May to make sure that I only bought what was needed. We also ate leftovers and gift food for a few meals this week and that saved a bit of money too.

I went to a jumble sale and got a nice gift for the gift cupboard and a few items of clothing for when mine finally wear out, so that is a saving for the future. I also got 4 CDs, nice to have for listening to in the car. No more jumble sales for a while so that type of spending probably won't happen in May again.

We bought potatoes direct from the farm again as part of the food shopping for May and have been lucky with the new seeds for lettuce, strawberries, cucumbers and aubergines. The only ones which have yet to germinate are the peppers, so fingers crossed that they do something this week otherwise we'll have to re-plant.

A funny story was that I was told this week that I won a copy of the recipe book, "Home Economics", which I reviewed a few months ago. I did not know that I had won the competition so have already bought a copy using a voucher from Swagbucks ! The competition closing date was two months ago, so little wonder that I thought that I had won nothing and bought a copy ! Perhaps it will take a very long time to arrive as well ! When it does I'll pop it in the gift cupboard.

I got a free paper at the supermarket and a free Sunday paper using a voucher from MissShoestring. We also saved foil, washed out plastic bags, made meals ahead for busy nights and froze homemade bread for busy days as well. I sold another small box of books to Ziffit and got a free roll of sellotape from the Royal Mail survey.

All these frugal savings help to offset the rise in spending for things like council tax and MasterShoestring's emergency revision biscuit supply !