Thrifty Thursday | Summer savings

This week my phone bill with TalkTalk was reduced to just under 18 pounds. They offered me the reduction if I agreed to renew my contract for another 18 months. It’s usually just over 25 pounds for broadband (40 Gb), line rental, calls 24/7 and international calls to countries around Europe, the USA and Australia. They advertise 60 pounds a year off, if I pay my line rental a year in advance too and so I’ll check that offer out on the website. Another saving of five pounds a month has got to be worth looking at.

The weather in Britain is continuing to be warm and summer has started well. The hover mowers and the barbecues have come out and apparently people are drinking more alcohol. I have had the odd beer! This can be an expensive habit to get into especially if you drink something like a decent wine. Try to make sure you have a few nights a week that are alcohol free or you’ll not only spend more money, but your waist line could get bigger too.

I went thrifty shopping at Aldi this week and picked up a few bargains like iceberg lettuce for salads and broccoli, both for 49p. I found some of my health problems were because of a vitamin deficiency and so I am making even more of an effort to get my vitamins. Healthy skin is important now with us all getting tanned and so make sure you have vitamin A in your diet. I’m cooking a vitamin rich soup as I write this with some carrots left over from my last lot of chicken stew and a few other oddments I found lurking in the fridge. Carrots are rich in vitamin A and we also need lots of vitamin C in summer too.  I had some more tins of sardines in tomato sauce from Aldi; they are good for salads. I also bought frozen sardines that are bigger than the tinned variety and impossible to eat because of bones and scales. I have no idea what to do with the rest of those; maybe make a fish stock…

We need to wear summer clothes now and so some of the summer clothes I bought cheaply in winter will come in useful. I bought tee shirts for about 4 pounds from Matalan and Asda. Asda has some on offer now, 2 for 6 pounds and so it’s worth checking those out.

The other things we buy at the supermarket like shower gel and liquid detergent are expensive. I tried Lacura shower gel for men from Aldi, I like that and Formil concentrated detergent from Lidl was good too. I don’t really get clothes dirty and I tend to use a stain remover for tea towels. Stains on my pale blue tee shirt didn’t come out completely, but they can’t be seen unless you look really closely.

If we keep saving on essentials, like food, we have more money left over for the little luxuries. I am trying to cut  down on petrol, because I’ve been using more. My car will do 7 or 8 miles on a litre of petrol on a Sunday when the roads are quiet, but that drops to just 5 miles per litre on weekdays. I also have to be careful with setting my new sat nav. Driving over those God awful humps and driving in a  lower gear sends fuel consumption up sharply. The average speed of traffic in this metropolitan area has increased from just 17 MPH to about 18 MPH in the last year. This, they say, is due to less cars on the roads. It could also be due to the fact most of the speed cameras aren’t working.

I hope to start a new blog on a Zillion Ideas soon about losing weight and sticking to a diet this summer. In the meantime there are lots of other amazing blogs over on a Zillion Ideas. Why not check them out?

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