It’s not often I go out for food or get takeaway, but when I do I try and vary the food I get. Indian, Chinese, and fish & chips have been taking all of the action over the last 6 months, so I thought it was about time I tried some Pizza.

The great thing about the big pizza chains such as Pizza Express is that they often have printable vouchers or voucher codes you can use, something you seldom find at your local curry house. As a great example, there is currently a Pizza Express voucher on offer which I found at moneysupermarket.com that get’s you a pizza for £1 with any main meal!

We indulged and ate too much as you might expect, but it was well worth it! The pizza was delicious, and I’d throughly recommend Pizza Express to anyone. Make sure you check online for Pizza Express voucher codes before you go though and you’ll save a packet.

However, if interest rates are your motivator then it may be worth looking at fixed rate bonds. This does put a padlock on your cash, but with accounts such as Nationwide offering 2.01% with a minimum deposit of £1 you don’t have to go all in. Split your savings between a fixed rate bond and a easy access saver and it’s happy days. You never know, this could be the start of a whole new beginning!

Buying in bulk isn’t always best. Frugal first timers and long term frugalistas alike would be forgiven for having a “bulk is best” mindset, but it is very important to study the labels.

All supermarkets have labels which state the price per weight. Unfortunately they don’t stick to a standard, so when comparing different size packets of the same product or like for like with other brands you’ll often find yourself staring at price per 100g and price per 1kg and trying to do a quick bit of mental arithmetic o workout which is cheapest. Ok, so it’s not so difficult in this example, but how about when there is a special offer such as 3 for 2? It rarely tells you what the price per weight is when you’re taking advantage of the offer, something I find irritating as I’m not great with maths, not least when I’m shopping with my toddler.

I often see examples where its cheaper to buy less of a product, and this is something I don’t quite understand. Perhaps the shop sells more of the reduced quantity item so gets a good stockist discount? Either way, pay caution and don’t always go bulk. Going bulk is usually the most sensible choice, but if it’s not cheapest and/or the product is perishable is it really worth it?

Transmission Lines of Electrical Power Station Built on Staten Island Marshland. Image from the U.S. National Archives on Flickr

If you take a look at a cross section of the six top energy providers in the UK, three have already withdrawn their best deals on the market and swapped them for tariffs that are 3.4 percent more expensive on average. That’s inflation busting, and I’d urge people to move quickly and lock in on the remaining deals before it’s too late. People save on average £259 a year on dual fuel deals compared to standard tariffs.

On price comparison websites the cheapest energy deals which are still available today are First Utility iSave v3 and EON’s save online v2. Check them out before they’re gone.

Personally I always buy seedlings to cut out the step of germinating seeds. They’re still a frugal option as they’re cheap enough, and the crop far outweighs the initial cost. You could grow seedlings in the home on a small scale, but I think I’ll this for a time when I’m lucky enough to have a greenhouse.

I’m far from an expert at gardening. In fact I first tried growing vegetables last year whilst I was living in a house with no garden. We just had a small concrete yard, but undeterred I managed to put together 2 raised beds filled mostly with soil from a nearby field and then topped up with compost. Despite the limited space and my limited knowledge, I managed a to grow 4 healthy broccoli plants , 4 baby sweet corn plants and 2 fruitful cherry tomato plants. I also grew basil, parsley, coriander & chives. I had also planted some lettuce but these were damaged by slugs and never recovered.

I’d say it was quite successful. The cherry tomatoes were delicious, the broccoli heads were impressively sized, and the baby sweet corn were a big hit with my baby. The main problems I had however were with pests. I guess 2 raised beds in the middle of a concrete yard make for an easy target for butterflies, moths & greenfly. Towards the end of the summer I’d given up trying to keep things under control and I let the caterpillars took over.

So, this year I’m living back with my parents to save money and I have a whole garden to play with. However, I’ve been quite reserved and kept the vegetables to a minimum so its easier for me to handle pests. I’m growing a single tomato plant in a pot, 3 sugar snap pea plants, rhubarb and new potatoes. I’ve also got the usual herbs on the go, and for a bit of fun I’m germinating some titan sunflower seeds in the conservatory.

I bought a tomato plant for about 40p, and transplanted that into a large pot with a 3 cane sticks shoved in to provide later support. Tomato plants are very easy to grow, and in my experience the most important things is to ensure daily watering, and provide plenty of support as the plant grows. The branches get very heavy once the tomatoes start growing, and the individual stems can actually snap off under the weight losing you many tomatoes. When the tomatoes really get going, daily watering then become essential. If you leave it a day or 2 without watering them, you’ll find the tomatoes then split as they swell up with water faster than their delicate skins can expand! Other than this it’s just a case of keeping greenfly at bay by squidging them between your fingers or by using a spray. You can also look at using a tomato feed to add nutrients to the soil, although this isn’t essential if you have good soil. Finally, you should read up on ‘pinching out’ the new shoots which grow where the main branches leave the stem. This prevents your plant from bushing out too much, and sends more nutrients to the developing fruit.

The pea plants will be very much a learning curve for me. Again these are in pots, but at the base of a trellis. They are amazing looking plants, with little curly threads at the end of the branches which reach out and grab onto objects remarkably well in attempt to grow upwards. I’m also led to believe that when they flower they look very pretty to.

The potatoes are a bit of an experiment as well. I know potatoes generally grow like wildfire, but it really was a spur of the moment decision to try growing them. I took an empty compost bag to my compost heap and started filling it, and then I noticed a whole new potato at the top of the heap which had started chitting (This is when the roots start growing out of it). So, I half filled the bag with compost and buried the new potato an inch under the surface. This is now sat at the edge of my garden and has been well watered. As the potato shoots appear and grow, I’ve been told I simply earth it up. In other words  just dump a load more compost on top till only the top few inches of the plant are still showing. This should spur on the development of more potatoes and results in a bumper crop. Growing all of this in a bag means that come crop time I simply slide a sharp knife around the bottom of the bag and dump all the soil onto the ground. This will save me digging around  to find them, and fingers crossed there will actually be some potatoes there!

I’ll provide an update as my plants develop, and I’ll let you know what delicious meals they are used in

With figures like these you can understand why I’ve been searching the net in a quest for ways to reduce the cost, i.e. to increase my mpg. I’ve come across some great ‘green driving’ tips, so I though I’d share them here. Before I start though, the best tip I read suggested that to save fuel you should simply imagine that you are riding a bicycle. Take cycling through a town for example, you wouldn’t accelerate up to every set of traffic lights and then slam on the brakes. With all that wasted energy you’d be knackered, and the same applies for your poor car.  This really brought it home for me, it’s all about being sensible.

The car from aerocivic.com. Isn't she a beauty? 100mpg!

Anyway, without further a do here are the best tips I have found for increasing your mpg. If you practice any of these hypermiling techniques then congratulations, you are a hypermiler.

• Drive sensibly. Flooring the accelerator, driving too fast and braking all waste fuel. You should avoid leaving last minute so you don’t feel rushed, listen to chilled out music, and be aware of whats happening up ahead so you can slow down by taking your foot off the accelerator rather than braking.
• Slow down. It may sound obvious, but cars are at their most efficient whilst travelling at 35-55mph. That’s awfully slow I know, but fuel economy can drop by as much as 25% between that sweet spot and 70mph. I used to regularly drive at 80mph+ on motorways so I dread to think what effect that had on my fuel consumption. I simply suggest sticking to the speed limit.
• Pick the best route. Whilst finding yourself stuck in traffic due to an accident is unavoidable, you can avoid driving at peak times and find out about any potential delays due to roadworks before you set off. Think about shortest distance rather than the quickest route, but avoid short routes which include lots of stops. If you do get caught in slow moving traffic, leave a large gap in front of you so you can avoid braking as much as possible. People will inevitably pull into your gap occasionally but its still worth doing.
• Coast. Modern engines now stop pumping fuel into the engine when coasting whilst in gear. I don’t know whether my car has this feature, so I plan to coast down hills in neutral. Dangerous? Probably. Coasting also works well when approaching traffic lights though, be sure to ease off the accelerator well in advance. If the lights are red as you approach you may be able to coast through just as they start turning green. Pulling away from a standstill uses much more fuel than starting off whilst rolling along at walking pace for example.
• Some assorted tips. Cruise Control. Got it? Use it! Is your trunk full of junk? Don’t carry excess wait if it can be avoided. Air Conditioning? Avoid using it, but bear in mind that tests have shown that having all your windows open can actually hit your mpg even harder.  Finally, find the cheapest petrol station in your area!

By following some of these tips I hope to make my trip as cheap as possible, and of course getting better mpg means less pollution. It’s all good.

So, what have I learnt from this experience? Never to accept a quote from a single garage! The garage I took it to for its MOT was recommended by a friend, and true to his word they were very fair and didn’t try and rip me off. If you can’t get a recommendation from anyone I suggest looking up your local council test centre. These are purely setup for MOT purposes and as they don’t do repairs it’s not in there interest to fail you unless absolutely neccesary. Unfortunately my closest one if a 30 minute drive away, and that’s more hassle than its worth in my opinion.

Anyway, I’m a very happy and frugal father this week!

To top it off last week we noticed a grinding noise coming from the front brakes. We dropped it off at a local garage, and within 30 minutes we’d received a quote back of £600 minimum to get it back on the road. It has a leaking radiator, worn out brake pads and discs, cracked rear tyres, perished brake hoses, and a jammed/broken compensator valve.

The MOT ran out on 18th Feb, literally a few days after we noticed the brake noise. It’s been sat on our drive ever since, and given the peeling paint and large dent we’re seriously considering selling our Peugeot 206 for spares or repair. A bit of a bummer as we’re trying so hard to save, but I think the best option is to cut our losses and buy another used car. A VW with a diesel engine perhaps.

I found the AA site quite useful when researching a spares or repair sale:
AA car sellers guide

I recently started looking for new job, or rather I uploaded my CV to monster.co.uk and the jobs found me! I had been slogging may way through poorly designed jobsites which make searching for a job quite difficult, until a friend told me about the monster.co.uk cv upload service. Anyway, here I am a week later and following my first interview I was offered a job! It’s exactly what I was looking for, and it will see my salary rising by as much as 36% in the first year. It’s a frugal father victory! (…is that tag line a bit cheesy? Maybe I should have gone with frugaltastic)

It wasn’t an easy decision as I currently live just 6 miles from the office, its a fun place to work, and as a colleague runs me back and to it only costs me £20/month to commute. The new job is a 45 minute train ride away, with a £1700 a year cost attached to it. This is covered by the intial £2k salary increase, but given that in 3-12 months I’m likely to see a £4-9K increase you’ll see why I decided to make the move

I handed in my notice last week, so in 4 weeks  time I’ll by tying up my lose ends and moving onto pastures new. Wish me luck!

First of all the Valetines Day Card. If you are like me and you think cards are a waste of money, that’s too bad. Girls love the bloody things. Fear not though, you can make one yourself from some card.
You don’t have to be a creative genius for this one, but do ensure you put a long message inside telling her why you love her so much and her heart will melt, thus ensuring she fails to notice it looks pants. Joking aside though, it won’t take much work to put something together yourself, you can google for neat ideas, and the fact you’ve gone through the trouble will earn you extra brownie points.

Secondly comes the flowers and chocolates. Let’s face it they’re not cheap, but you could try getting a dozen red roses from Aldi for £4.99. I think these ones are artificial, but they look nice enough on the picture. For real roses moneysupermarket.com has some ok vouchers. As for chocolates, aim for fancy looking ones from lidl or aldi. Good quality, low price.

Finally, you have the meal. My personal choice is staying in on Valentines day, cooking a nice meal and then treating her to a massage. A really frugal idea is to make something cheesy (excuse the pun) like a heart shaped pizza:

Alternatively, just go for her favourite dish. Either way its much cheaper than going out on Valentines, restaurants are packed and prices inflated.

If you must go out for a meal, try and go the day before of the day after Valentines day. You’ll save a packet. I’ll link to moneysupermarket.com again here as they’ve just launched a ‘Go Local’ campaign. Whack your postcode in, select restaurants, and it will list all deals and exclusive offers they’ve got in restaurants near your home: Go Local