5 Frugal Things post 35
First an apology as I know my 5 frugal things posts are popular. I missed a week last week, but as a bonus that means you get two weeks’ worth of frugal things I have done!
The past two weeks have been extremely busy at the weekends, one of which was a hen do in Cornwall. The weeks times have been busy work wise but I haven’t had to get the train anywhere, a nice rare treat of not needing any additional childcare and plenty of time to focus on writing and planning for the future, including my fabulous new logo ( thank you Super Lucky Di Coke, competition queen of the UK). New website design to come soon (thank you Emma Drew, money making blogger queen of the UK for helping with this choice). Also some major life decisions have been made which feels good.
Hen Do
I’ll start with the hen do as it was SUCH a bargain time. The whole weekend cost £116. 3 days in West Cornwall including accommodation, food, drink, theatre, dinner out and petrol. It was a 330-mile drive to St. Just via Bristol and Exeter to collect two of the hens, money saving part 1, we shared the petrol. Total cost for 700 miles driven was £80. I paid £40 as I lived so far away and the other shared the petrol money. Another hen was drinking so did the evening driving meaning we saved on taxi costs as well.
The mobile homes and Tesco shopping and Minack theatre tickets were covered by the £60 each that we gave to the bride who booked everything. The only extra we paid was £16.50 to the Meadery each for dinner. It was such an amazing weekend which you can read more about here.
Aldi Bargains
I have found a new good time to hit Aldi and whizz around as fast as possible picking up bargains. 9pm on Thursday night is good. No people, no queues. It was great. And I found some brilliant bits. Their camping range is available right now. Get tents for £20 or blow up beds for £10 or my personal favourite that I use all the time a hammock for £39.99. It’s a permanent fixture in our garden and I film lots of YouTube videos from it!!
They have a nautical home range with the most beautiful home wear pieces, bedding, lights, candles. I picked up three Yankee candle mimic products. They smell the same and cost £1.99. I love my candles so I was really happy with this purchase.
Moving to a new house
We are moving to a new house and I am doing lots of investigations into cost effective ways of moving. I have been comparing the cost of estate agent fees of high street versus online. There is such a difference. We have friends who own an estate agents in our village that we would use to sell our house through but that would cost £4,500 if we paid 0.75% plus VAT.
I have also spoken to a company called eMoov who will sell the house for £700. They are online, they take the pictures and advertise on Right move etc. They also chase the sale though. Interestingly they valued our house at the same value as the high street agent. It would be our responsibility to be here and sell the house to buyers who looked around. It could be a big way of saving money. I wrote about the costs of moving house a while back on the blog
Going to a Festival
We are off to Standon calling at the end of July. Festivals can cost the earth but not for us! I wrote about my excitement here and learnings from last year. The benefits of this website mean we can save a huge amount of money. Firstly, the tickets are free of charge, saving us around £400 for weekend camping tickets. I do a fair bit of work for those tickets, blog posts plus the weekend at the festival will include lots of social media sharing, Facebook live, Instagram etc.
All of the camping gear and clothes has been supplied by Aldi for which I am most grateful for. The cost of the festival will be what we spend when there. Last year we managed to get through £250 but we ate what we wanted, went on all the rides, ate tons of ice-cream. I am sure we can considerably reduce this cost this year by being better prepared with the food and drink that we bring. I can’t wait.
Goldsmiths Ring Resizing and Clubcard vouchers
I finally got around to collecting my rings last week from Goldsmiths. I’ve got three rings, engagement, wedding and eternity and I had a few scary moments of losing them. Losing weight meant that my fingers reduced in size by three sizes! My wedding wing came from Goldsmiths, which I paid for back in 2007 using my Tesco Clubcard vouchers so I did the same ten years on and got them resized using my vouchers. It was £114 for two rings (the eternity ring was a big job as the diamonds would also need to be reset so I decided against that big cost) and I used £36 worth of vouchers x 3 of value to pay for the work. The work cost me £5 for both rings that now fit hurrah.
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