5 Frugal Things Post 65 – Snow, New Car & Ice-cream

5 Frugal Things Post 65

Hope you are all okay in this freezing cold snowy week. I have had two friends now with frozen pipes with no water and the boys school has shut today, Friday as their heating has stopped working. The snow has slightly scuppered working this week with early pick ups for the boys from school but at least its warm! The snow didn’t stop our latest magazine project go ahead and had a fun photo shoot as a couple, hubby and I, this time with Woman Magazine! I will let you know when its out!

All sports and social plans cancelled this week

No fun for anyone to have everything cancelled but it does help out the budgets. I was due to be going into London on Tuesday which didn’t happen. And all football from Wed through to Sunday so far is cancelled. 5 lots of petrol journeys saved. And no standing by the side of a training pitch in -4 degree temperatures.

A trip to Cream Ice-cream Parlour

A new ice cream parlour has opened locally so we went to try it out. It has only been opened a few days and they were still experiencing teething troubles. Our order for 2 lots of ice cream and a waffle was forgotten in the chaos. They gave us the food for free to say sorry. That was a nice way to say sorry and means we will go back to give them another chance.

Exchanged S-max to Toyota hybrid plus bought a little car

I realise the purchase of a new car is not frugal. But we have invested in some environmentally friendly hybrid cars. We have finally given in and now have two cars, the stress of organising life with work and football was too much and putting a lot of pressure on our relationship. Two cars will make life so much more manageable. We are expecting our £200 per month petrol spend to reduce down to £100. This will help to balance out the monthly payments as we have paid for part of the cars with cash and part-exchange and have taken out a PCP car finance deal to pay for the rest, on 0% terms. I will be publishing some content soon explaining how the PCP finance deal works.

Car Insurance trauma

The purchase of a new car also means that I have spent hours getting insurance quotes and trying to find the best deal..oh the time and the trauma. The quotes started off at around £800 for the two cars..so far I have got the quotes down to £580. Turns out all those companies who offer multi-car discounts..doesnt mean you get a good price. All were more expensive that getting two separate quotes.

Repayment of credit card debt

I wrote an update post this week on my debt repayment story. Finally I can see a light at the end of the tunnel and we have paid off more than half of our original balance. Take a look at the post to see where we were at the beginning and where we are now and some of the methods used to save extra money or make extra money.

I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Fabulously Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.