We’re back with our second episode of 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! 

1. Buy Refurbished Electrical Goods 

We live in a world of ever-changing technology and when whatever gadget you rely on breaks, it can be expensive. As mentioned before, Miss Way was recently in the market for a new laptop (due to pouring a cup of tea over her old one!) and an iPad for work.

Instead of giving in to FOMO about the latest models on the market she went about it in a frugal way and bought refurbished instead! 

When buying refurbished it is really important that you DO YOUR RESEARCH!! 

• Read reviews on the products you are considering 
• Read reviews on the companies you are buying from – Use Trustpilot or similar to check the reliability of the company you are using. (Mr Way is excellent at this!) 
• Check the warranty – this is particularly important on refurbished goods as you need to be confident that what you are buying is legitimate and if anything goes wrong you have a fall-back option. 

2. No Expensive Phone Contracts

We both used to pay for expensive monthly mobile phone contracts, with handset costs included in the price. This tends to be an incredibly expensive way of paying for your mobile!

After researching the most frugal way to go about this we settled on the following.

Buy a cheap handset that meets your needs outright. Make sure it’s unlocked so you can use it on any network. This usually works out much cheaper than paying for a phone through your monthly contract! This is essentially a loan paid back at a high interest rate!

Having previously had expensive handsets, we now realise that slightly out of date models can be significantly cheaper and almost as good! Both of our current phones cost less than £150. Try not to get caught up in the hype about the latest shiny model with XYZ features! They usually aren’t worth the huge price tag!

This also ties in nicely with the point above! Why not buy your phone refurbished for a double win?!

Now you have a handset, you need a sim card!

We found out there are some incredibly cheap sim only deals. As we have our broadband with Plusnet, we also get preferential phone deals. The deal we are both currently on is pay monthly so you aren’t tied into a contract!

We pay £7 per month and get unlimited calls and texts with 4GB of data. More than we ever need!

3. Ask for Things You NEED for Your Birthday/Christmas 

We don’t buy generally buy each other Christmas or Birthday presents unless it is for a big milestones e.g Mr Way’s 30^th is coming up soon! 

The reason for this is that we don’t feel the need to collect extra STUFF just for the sake of a date. Instead we prefer to spend time with friends or family on birthdays or go out for a nice day together. 

When we do get asked by others what we would like for these occasions we tend to request useful things we actually NEED or want for a practical and rational reason!!  

For example: Miss Way’s parents wanted to buy us an engagement present. Her Mum said she had something in mind but if there was something that we would particularly appreciate, she would get that instead.

We asked for glass tupperware! As you know from our previous Frugal Four, we are avid meal planners and cook in bulk each week. We had been concerned that the plastic pots we used were not serving us or the environment very effectively.

Therefore, receiving the present of 3 assorted sizes of glass tupperware* was absolutely fantastic! So much so that Miss Way cried with appreciation!!! Receiving something we had really needed on a practical level but hadn’t quite justified to ourselves on a monetary level was just brilliant!

*Affiliate links – we earn a small commission if you buy through any of the above affiliate links marked with a star.

4. Free Furniture – Up-cycle and Adapt! 

We were considering all the furniture in our house the other day and realised that most of it we had either: 

• Got for free – through gifts, freecycle/Facebook local pages 
• Bought second hand 
• Bought on a reduced deal 

When we moved into our house, we made use of inherited/free/left furniture in the following ways: 

1. A tall, thin bookcase came with the house but we were’t keen on it. We decided to up-cycle it with chalk paint. We laid the unit on it’s side and transformed it into a seat with handy storage baskets underneath!
2. Another set of shelves that came with the house we painted and now use in the attic as shoe storage.
3. We up-cycled two FREE bedside tables found on Facebook just by adding chalk paint. 
4. Inherited a bureau which we again up-cycled with chalk paint and revived it to use in our bedroom. 
5. We were also given a kitchen table and chairs, a widescreen TV, bookcases and an Ikea chair. We have made good use of them! They were all cast offs from relatives who no longer wanted them. They have all really served us well and we haven’t once begrudged that  any of these things weren’t new!
6. We also combined furniture from previous houses when we were living separately. We sold any excess items that didn’t fit in the house. 
7. The only thing we bought when moving in was a second hand leather sofa. It was high spec and almost new for £200! 

Frugal Four

Frugal Four is a rolling series. We’ll write about different frugal tips and tricks as we think of them! You can see all posts here.

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!