Frugal February - done!

Well here we are then - that's my planned Frugal month done and dusted! One final week's shopping: Morrisons again and my nifty little points app shows that I now have a £5 voucher waiting for me next time I go in, and am 1680 points towards my next. Shopping came to £21.88 which was spent on the credit card as usual, earning us a tiny amount of cashback in the process of course. This means that over the month we have spent a total of £74.13 on our routine food shopping - plus the meat box I purchased although we've barely touched that as yet. I *could* have cut it down lower than that, but chose not to compromise on the sorts of meals we're enjoying eating at the moment. I did keep a keen eye for special offers - hence the decision to purchase the meat box, and the couscous at the bargain price. I've meal-planned every week, and stuck to my lists, and as a result we've come in well below our monthly food budget. We have as always eaten good food, cooked from scratch, and have had no food-waste in the month either which I'm very pleased with! (We did have to throw away one yogurt from a multi-pack but that was because it had gone off in spite of only being on the final day of its best before).We've had no takeaways at all. (But we're planning fish and chips for tonight!)

Last weekend was, as I predicted, quite high-spend. I did moderate where I could though - choosing the more time consuming walk > Bus > Tube route into Central London rather than walking to the station and getting the train. I popped into Boots and bought a sandwich, crisps and a fruit & nut snack for the train journey so I had lunch to hand, using my advantage card points so that was cash neutral, and took a bottle of water from home which I refilled over the weekend as needed. I used the time on the train to go through the Credit Card bill for last month and do the money shuffling for that so that was time well used too. The accommodation in Derby had been chosen for convenience as it was just a mile and a half from the Festival venue so I walked there to drop my bag, and back to the venue, then my friend and I walked back there at the end of the night. Food at the festival is well priced and good quality as it's done by the students at the catering college - I had an extremely good pie and a pile of fantastic chips for £4.75 - bargain and just the sort of food that's needed at a beer festival! Saturday Tony and I had to travel across to Norwich so we chose to just grab breakfast at the Travelodge which I paid for. It was an all you can eat buffet thing and I like to think we both got our money's worth! Tony then covered the cost of the fuel for the journey. Saturday continued in much the same vein - with the spends all being beer and food - there are worse ways to spend a weekend!  All costs apart from the food were paid in cash - the food went on the CC and will be paid for from my "fun budget" - and that's the key of course, it's budgeted for! The rest of the spending just came from my regular spending money. On Sunday we started the day with a much needed breakfast (Wetherspooons - always a post beer-festival favourite!) paid for in cash, and then MrEH and I came home via one of our favourite RSPB reserves and naturally partook of the tea & cake in their cafe (Delicious caramel shortbreads!).

The rest of the week has been almost spend free - the weather has pretty much seen to that! I did finally get to the gym last night (£7) which was a good thing as I was pretty much suffering from cabin fever by then, and if all has gone to plan I will have gone swimming this morning - but need to check first if the pool will actually be open!

There has been spending this month - on accommodation for various trips away. I've explored Air BnB for the first time and realised that sometimes you can find somewhere on there where there is no availability on the other sites we use, and sometimes you can find somewhere that is a lot better value than the other booking sites too. We'll probably let the first of those bookings happen before we book through there again, but so far we're impressed. I've returned to using the PetrolPrices website for checking local best prices for diesel for the cars, and have topped mine up twice in Lincoln where prices are frequently a few pence lower than at home. MrEH has been making use of Morrisons where possible as they are frequently the cheapest for the areas he fuels up in AND we get "More"  Points each time of course.

 As I said at the start of the month it was never going to be the "to the bone" frugality of previous occasions, but I'd say that it certainly has served its purpose. It's made me think, and swap back to using cash far more and contactless far less. I've bought no clothes this month and have taken the time to come up with a far more structured list of the things I do still need. I've set up a new savings account to put money aside monthly for necessary clothing purchases and will add to that each month. It's made us use up things we have, and stop to think before routinely replacing items. It's re-focused us on stopping to think about whether a deal is REALLY a good deal, and worth using, or not. I've batch cooked, doubled up on quantities, made good use of the oven when I've switched it on and made sure every scrap of food we've bought has found a use. Spending has been considered rather than habitual or mindless. And the result is that we've ended the month with a very healthy surplus in the joint account, and I've finished up with a small but significant surplus in my personal account too. There's no question in my mind as to the value of a month every now and again when we just back the truck up a bit and reinforce the good habits. All in all - mission accomplished!

Robyn