Thrifty Thursday 14

Thrifty or Frugal ?

Being thrifty is spending your money wisely and being frugal is using what you buy wisely! I bought vegetables, chicken and herbs at Lidl on Sunday, that was thrifty. I made soup with them yesterday; that was frugal!

You can’t compare the price of everything of course so you have to get a general impression. My general impression is that Sainsbury’s is one of the most expensive supermarkets, but I checked! The organic free range chicken fillets at Sainsbury’s are £15.50 a kilo, but are they more expensive on something more basic? Their chicken drumsticks were £2.25 a kilo the same as Tesco and Lidl. Lidl did reduce them last weekend though to £1.99; which is why I bought 4 Kg! For fresh chicken drumsticks, Asda was most expensive at £3.89 or 2 packs for £7.00. That is a big difference in price. I have had 2 for £7.00 in the past from Asda but I had 4 packs on Sunday from Lidl for £7.96. That is a big saving. I tend to cook them in the oven wrapped in bacon. My pack of bacon from Lidl was good at £1.19. The pork loin steaks were a little more expensive compared to the last pack I bought but still reasonable at £3.29 for 4. I cooked on of those with apple sauce, made from apples from the garden; yummy!

The Summer sizzler ale in Lidl has a silly name but 8 X 500ml bottles for £8 isn’t a silly price! I usually pay £5 for 3 bottles and I have taste tested it, it passed!

In comparing prices, you can get confused. Sometimes chicken drumsticks are the most expensive and sometimes it’s chicken thighs or the whole leg! The cheapest chicken I found was frozen legs at Asda, just £1.39 a kilo. I ask myself if they trimmed the fat from them before they were frozen? I haven’t tested those because much of the frozen chicken is out of stock in my local Asda.

I had a lot more bargains in Lidl and found the fruit and vegetables are high quality and low prices. I had onions, white cabbage and bananas! I also had frozen vegetables because I like broccoli and that’s quick and easy. At 99p a kilo the price is fairly good too. The main disadvantage with Lidl is they don’t stock some things, like the crisps I like, but I got those on offer in multi-packs from Asda. I did get tomato puree for 33p for a large tube and that’s handy for stir fries and I add it to soups and stews.

If you compare the highest price for free range, organic chicken in Sainsbury’s at £15.50 to the drumsticks in Lidl at £1.99; you can save quite a lot by being thrifty and not too fussy. The same applies to many things and the money mounts up. If you can save on food, energy, insurance and just about everything else we spend money on it gives you a little left over at the end of the month to save. Yesterday’s blog was about Zopa, the peer to peer lending company. I am making better than 5% by lending with Zopa and that is compound interest. My £500 that I put in last year has earned me £60 interest and  also made £100 from introductions. It is far better to be earning interest than paying interest to a bank. If you are paying 4% to the bank on a mortgage and your house is not only providing you with a home but goes up in value; then that is a good deal. Many houses aren’t going up in value now, but eventually they should rise in value, but hopefully we won’t get another housing bubble. A lot of people are in debt and the total of unsecured debt in Britain is £9 billion; an astonishing figure. Those households that do have savings only have a few thousand saved and get pathetic interest from their banks. Most savers are lucky to get £60 in  a year in interest! People are finding it harder to manage their finances and debts can easily spiral out of control if you only pay the minimum payments on credit cards or get into arrears. If you are in debt, don’t ignore it take control and look at balance transfer deals and consolidating all you debts into one loan. If your credit rating is still good you can probably get a loan from Zopa and then set up a direct debit to pay it off. then go thrifty and frugal! Meanwhile you might like to read some of my other blogs, there are links on my Home page.

 

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