I’m now in my second week of ‘The Big Budget Challenge’ hosted by the lovely Laura @ Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish. I did okay in Week I, but Week 2 has been even better 🙂
Here’s a run down of my top ‘money saves’ this week:
1. Avoid waste. No food thrown away this week!
See these sad-looking bananas….
I turned them into this:
It’s banana cinnamon ‘ice cream’. It’s so creamy that you would think it was proper ice cream! To make it, I simply cut the bananas into slices, froze them, then whizzed them in the blender on the ice setting until they were all chopped up. I then transferred them to a bowl, added a dash of nondairy milk, lashings of cinnamon and a tablespoon of ground linseed. I then pulsed them using a hand blender until they went white and creamy. The bananas were so ripe that I didn’t need to add any sweetener. Lil’ L loves this dessert and it makes a nice change from apples 😉
2. Shop around for cheapest deals. I finally got round to trying out www.mysupermarket.co.uk that a friend recommended way back in the summer. I was really impressed with it. It’s so simple to use. At a click of a button, it allows you to import your online shopping basket from your usual provider (mine’s Tesco). You can then easily edit the basket, deleting items you no longer need and adding new items.
Then, it does something really useful…
- It shows you how you can save money by swapping to cheaper items. If you agree with their ‘Swap & Save’ suggestions, you just click to swap. I saved £6.36 by swapping some items.
- It then compares the cost of your basket at four supermarkets. If your shop would be cheaper elsewhere, you just click to swap. I did a big grocery shop (83 items) and the total was £139 at Tesco. In Asda, the same shop would have cost me £155; Sainsbury’s £166; and Ocado (Waitrose) a wopping £177. I’ve always done my big grocery shops at Tesco, so it was great to discover that it is actually the cheapest supermarket for me. 🙂
It’s interesting because the cheapest supermarket very much depends on the types of groceries you buy. For my friend, Sainsbury’s came out £30 cheaper than Tesco! Lately, I’ve been disorganised with my grocery shopping and have ended up buying bits and pieces on a weekly basis from the Waitrose in Bath. By getting more organised and ordering a fortnightly Tesco home delivery, I should save a small fortune! 🙂
3. Make use of home grown foods. We’re eating tons of apples and there’s still hundreds left! After watching Monty Don’s episode on how to ‘over winter’ apples, I challenged M to make me a storage contraption using old scraps from the garage. He rose to the challenge and made a great storage system…..
… but it took him the whole of Sunday. He’s now banned me from watching Gardners’ World as he’s fed up with landing Monty Don’s ‘Jobs for the Weekend’. 😉
4. Go foraging! No foraging this week as I’m still working out what to do with all the nuts we found last week!
5. Make use of vouchers and deals. HUGE savings here! Last Friday, me and my good friend J went to London to meet up with our gorgeous friends N and H for lunch. I converted my Tesco vouchers into tokens for redspottedhankie.com and managed to get both our travel tickets for FREE! A total saving of £66! This meant we had more cash to spend on gorgeous eats and drinks 🙂
So, lots of savings this week. Good thing too because next week is going to be v. v. expensive 😉
