I have embarked on a journey to become a super frugal mummy!
I'm not going to lie our household has been terrible for saving money and wasting money! Just last week we threw away a mountain of food, literally enough to feed a small village!
"This has to stop!" I thought to myself!
Especially when we ended up over £200 into our overdraft this month! Where does all the money go, a question I'm forever asking myself!
Well I have decided to stop wondering and actually see where its going by starting a spend diary!
If you know me then you will probably know I'm an all or nothing kinda girl! so naturally I've delved right into researching how to be a frugal master! My way of thinking has completely changed now I know how much I could be saving by just just changing a few simple things!
I want to share a few tips with you that have helped me start my wonderful journey of saving my pennies! Obviously the further I get down the road of becoming completely frugal I will share a lot more with you, but for now here's my,
Top Tips to becoming frugal!
- Keep a spend diary and write down absolutely everything you spend in the month
- If like me you tend get a build up of food in the cupboards and freezer, then use what you have first before going out and buying more food! Its amazing how many meals you can get out of just using what you already have!
- Sounds like common sense but remember to turn of and unplug anything electrical you have that you aren't using, it saves pennies on your electrical bill but remember pennies make pounds!
- Instead of sticking your heating on when it gets a little chilly on a night, just put more layers on, fill up a hot water bottle or cuddle up on the couch with your fave blanket and maybe even use someone Else's body heat lol my husband is always boiling ! although to be honest id rather put that extra layer of clothes on haha joke!
- Once our cleaning cupboard is totally bare and we have used up the 6 bottles of window cleaner we have in there and endless amounts of furniture polish ect, I'm planning on making all my own products. White vinegar is brilliant for cleaning glass, use newspaper sheets to clean windows. Coconut oil is brilliant for all sorts of things from polishing wood to removing crayon marks off walls ......and those of you with kids will understand that's a brilliant quality to have well done coconut oil! lol
- Look out for vouchers- recently I went into Tesco and picked up 4 of their free magazines because they always have money off vouchers inside, I felt like i had just shoplifted on the way out trying to hide the fact that I picked 4 up lol but there's nothing wrong with it they are FREE FREE FREE!
- I found a hierarchy picture on pinterest that helped me a lot when asking myself "Do I really need to buy that?" on there its called 'The Buyerarchy' it looks something like this :
BUY
MAKE
THRIFT
SWAP
BORROW
USE WHAT YOU HAVE
This has helped me a lot when normally Id rush out and buy something, now I stop and think of this first!
- Meal Plan: I must admit I'm still trying to get used to this one mainly because my husband works a three shift pattern and its hard to plan meals because of it and also I have a fussy 18 month old who seems to not like mammy's cooking! but that aside you can save a lot of money on your food bill by meal planning and also cut out food waste! which I'm terrible for!
Well there's my top tips up to now on how to become a money saving, penny pinching, frugal fairy lol I will share more with you as I come across them , but I want to leave you with this link to an amazing blog that has helped me very much when changing to my new frugal lifestyle go check it out and tell me what you think!
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