Welcome to the first in the series we’re going to call the Frugal Four! We wanted a way to share the frugal tips and tricks we’ve picked up over the years. The aim is to provide a brief summary of a few little hacks we’ve enjoyed using in the hope it inspires you to save some money yourselves!  

Without further ado, here goes! 

1. Travel 

The first of this frugal four is a big one – travel arrangements! We don’t mean international travel, but those longer journeys within your own country. This tip is inspired by a recent booking Miss Way made to visit family. 

If you’ve followed us for a while, you’ll know that we’re always looking for alternate travel arrangements. Mr Way walks to work every day and Miss Way has started commuting by bike as much as possible.  

We try to avoid using the car when we can. This is easy for local travel, but for longer journeys you need some other options! 

The first thing we thought of for Miss Way’s trip was a train journey. The trouble is, trains are horrendously expensive in the UK. You can get lucky with cheap advanced tickets sometimes, but this requires forward planning which isn’t always possible. By the time Miss Way had finalised her plans, the train tickets would have cost £116 for the 200 mile journey! 

Instead, we looked at coach travel. There are a couple of big companies who provide cheap coach travel up and down the country. The downside is the length of journey, as it is obviously slower than a train or car. At a total return price of £24, that was a trade-off we were happy to make!! 

The frugality didn’t stop there. We do a small amount of shopping at Tesco each week and used some of our Clubcard points to save more money on the journey! We converted £3 of points into £9 of credit, making the saving even bigger. 

If you’re planning a long journey in the future, have a think about the other travel options. Most people drive by default but it isn’t always the best way! Coach travel in particular is a great alternative if you have the extra time.  

2. Meal Planning

We plan our meals a week at a time. When the plan is finished, we simply transfer all of the ingredients onto a shopping list.  

This process saves us having to think what we want to eat each night. It also saves us money, because doing a big shop each week saves us topping up at more expensive, local shops! So many people we know buy their meals on the way home each night and end up spending significantly more than if they planned ahead. 

A reason we often hear against our approach is that people would get bored of the same meals 2 or 3 nights in a row. Trust me; this is not an issue as we eat incredibly nice food!! 

3. Library 

Libraries are an incredibly under-appreciated resource. As with most FI types, we’re always eager to learn more through non-fiction reading. We also love a good story book!  

For a while we would buy second hand books at a fraction of the new price. We soon realised we could get most of the titles we wanted for free at our local library! 

You can even borrow audiobooks via mobile phone apps to listen to at your leisure. This is a great service which we have used numerous times! 

Lots of UK libraries have been closed or had their funding significantly cut in recent years. We hope that by using our local service, we can encourage the decision makers that it is an important community resource.  

4. Cashback Sites 

One of our favourite ways to save when we have to make a purchase is through cashback sites. These sites basically use income from affiliate links to give you a proportion of your spend back. Our favourite site is Quidco and between us, we’ve earnt over £1,500 in cashback so far!! 

We always check out the latest Quidco offers whenever we buy something online, particularly insurance etc. You can sometimes get a bonus rate which saves a huge amount on your purchase. We have also used sign-up bonuses for gambling sites to make a profit, but only do this if you can be strict in only spending the minimum deposit! 

If you’re interested in Quidco and sign up via this link, we can each get a bonus of £10!

Frugal Four

We’re planning to make this a rolling series. We’ll write about different frugal tips and tricks as we think of them!

If you have any feedback, or if you’ve used any of the frugal methods we mentioned above, give us a shout in the comments!