Progress so far

My transition towards a more frugal life is going well and so far much easier than I thought it would be. Sky TV has now gone and we are enjoying a free trial of Netflix and using our Amazon Prime membership more than we did before. So far the withdrawal symptoms are manageable especially for me as I am a bit of a podcast addict which doesn't cost me a thing. However, the new and final series of Game of Thrones is yet to be aired and that may prove to be much more painful for the household!

I now cook most of my meals from scratch. I already cooked probably about 65% but now its up to about 90%. This means no more weekly take out meals which is a saving about £50 a week. Added to this I have been reading a lot about sugar and decided that as a family we really need to cut back on it, realistically this means buying no biscuits or other snacks as frankly if its in the cupboard we will eat it! Doesn't save us much money but our health will thank us. There will still be ice cream in the summer though.

I don't think I will ever manage to reach the dizzy heights of Mr Money Mustache's frugality and to be honest with you I am not sure I would want to but certainly this change of lifestyle has opened my eyes to how easily money slips through our fingers. Here are some other easy ways I am saving money:

- I love going to the cinema and theatre, I plan to still go but will now take my own snacks with me. This small change saves me between £5 - £20 a visit and doesn't really affect my enjoyment.
- The above change also applies to any outing or day trip. I took a packed lunch and snacks along to a recent visit to one of the Royal Parks with my family. I mentally added up the cost of lunch if I had bought lunch at the local cafe and it came up to a rather shocking £40.
- I used tesco clubcard points to pay for tickets for a recent theme park visit. I am a mindless collector of loyalty points so it was a lovely surprise when I checked to see what I could do with my points. I also finally got round to using my Boots points, I have a balance of £53!


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