5 frugal things post 56 – The week before Christmas
So this is very likely my last post of the year and I love that its 5 frugal things post 56. I love writing these posts every week, it goes back to the root of why I started this blog to share where I have saved and made money every week, I am going to take a well earned rest from Mrs Mummypenny and have a nice few days off. Its now just three sleeps until the big man visits and the boys are beyond excited. School finished on Tuesday so we fully in the flow of Christmas slow down. So happy Christmas to everyone reading this, thank you for coming back time again to read my blog, money saving tips, money making tips and general ramblings.
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Trip to the cinema
A favourite past time of our is a trip to cinema so today we went to see Jumanji, a really great film that made everyone jump several times! I used my kidspass to save a chunk on the cinema ticket price.
We saved around £10 and got the tickets for £22. We also took treats from home rather than getting expensive cinema treats. You can sign up too using this link for just £1 to save yourself lots of money on things like eating out, cinema tickets, attraction entries.
2. Christmas Shopping from Aldi
Okay so the Christmas shop actually ended up costing quite a bit of money, £200 was the bill. I am going to blame the amount of meat I bought and champagne;-) Buying the same food from Waitrose or M&S as I have done in the past would cost a lot more money so I am happy to pay. I think I spent £70 alone on Christmas beef, turkey, gammon and seafood! The bits I did want to point out as being a huge bargain is the champagne at £10.99. Its really lovely, in fact all their booze is great. I wrote about our Christmas booze plans yesterday.
The Christmas veges were an incredible 19p for brussels, carrots, broccoli and parsnips. I think most other supermarkets have been priced at 29p. I got a great selection of party food, some fresh and some frozen. These mostly cost £2 to £3 each, again much cheaper than other supermarket party food deals.
3. Stocked up on baking ingredients.
I have made sure we have got plenty of flour, caster sugar, light brown sugar and syrup for gingerbread cookies. Everyone in the family loves them and its fun way to spend an hour with the boys if boredom hits. I also have the ingredients to make the best chocolate chip cookies in the world as well;-)
4. Dinner in town with friends
Tuesday night was Christmas dinner and drinks with my best friends from uni. We headed to No 1 Lombard street restaurant for dinner. We were most sensible with the food and went for the set menu which was £24 each I think. You always get a good deal with the set menu. We might have then spent a small fortune on prosecco, but the thought was there to save some cash with the food.
Unfortunately the amount of prosecco impacted my thought process on how long it takes to get from Bank to Finsbury Park and I missed my train. I ended up having to go to a different train station and getting a cab home, £15 extra that I wasn’t expecting to spend…whoops.
5. Chasing all those last invoices for the year
It has been a great week for receiving the last few invoices owed for this year. And most of them have come in this week before Christmas. This means that December has been a good month for money, again more money coming than I need. The extra earned will go towards to the cost of Christmas pressies and we can start January fresh with no Christmas debt to pay off. Now is a great time to get on top of the accounts, making sure that all income and expenses are recorded correctly. A dull job but very neccessary when running a company
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Fabulously Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky
