January 21st, 2010
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My personal Charity Skydiving Experience
I had just finished my first year at the University of Liverpool when I completed my first skydive. Being a student I didn’t have a lot of spare cash, so I looked into the prospect of Charity Skydiving through the Liverpool Student Skydiving club. Little did I know at the time that I was just months away from taking over the Liverpool Student Skydiving club, which I then spent the best part of 3 years running!
Charity Skydiving offered a method whereby I could essentially do my first skydive for free, whilst also raising money for a good cause. In this blog post I hope to explain to you the ins and outs of Charity Skydiving at a UK skydive centre
January 13th, 2010
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Whether its an overnight stay, a weekend away or perhaps something longer, accommodation makes up a big portion of the total cost of any trip. So why not remove that cost entirely and stay with family or friends?
I’m currently on the look out for cheap Aberdeen hotels for the family wedding mentioned in my previous post, but I’ve also just been offered a room in my cousins apartment which is near the venue. It’s actually turning into a minor dilemma though. On the one hand we’d be looking at saving £45 a night, but on the other hand we will lose some of the freedom we’d get by staying at a hotel. It’s this potential lack of freedom which is holding me back, and the fact that having a toddler makes me feel like I’d be a burden.
As a frugal father though I know I should take up my cousin on his offer. We’ve actually been quite good mates growing up and he stayed with me many times whilst I was a student in Liverpool. That was back when Ryanair offered Liverpool to Aberdeen flights for pennies, a route which has since been axed. Having said that he hasn’t seen me since I had a baby, so I think he’ll be in for a shock!
So far we’ve been discussing the possibility of staying with him via text message, but a phone call is in order to make sure he knows what’s he’ll be letting himself in for 
Hopefully it will all work out as the total saving would be around £100. I note he owns a fancy penthouse apartment complete with spiral staircase, something I’m sure our toddler would try climbing up within minutes of our arrival!
January 6th, 2010
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Here we are just days into the new year, and I’ve just been hit by my first unexpected expense. My cousin up in Aberdeen is getting married, and we’ve been invited to her Wedding ceremony and reception party
It is to take place in a Scottish Castle just outside of Aberdeen, and with my extended family flying in from all over the world for the occasion and promises of a lavish £100 a head meal I just couldn’t say no!
It’s an 8 hour drive to Aberdeen from Wales, so fuel alone will cost me around £100. It’s also slightly unfortunate that the scottish wedding is taking place over the easter bank holiday weekend. Whilst its an ideal time of year, it means hotels have bumped there prices up slightly and we’ll probably have to travel up on the Thursday to avoid the worst of the traffic. Total cost? I estimate it my wallet will be hit with a £300 bill for fuel, 3 nights accommodation, general expenses and a wedding gift.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, in fact its quite the opposite! I’m lucky to have such a big family, and you can’t put a price on the rare occasions where everyone gets together. I’ll just have to work even harder to earn more money to cover it.
January 4th, 2010
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Saving money, saving money & saving money!
It will come as no surprise that 2010 is going to be a Frugal year in the Frugal Father household. The bar has been set at a minimum of £500 to be saved each month, and I’ve already used my online banking to setup a regular £500 payment each month directly into my ISA. Aside from this we’re going to withdraw £60 at the beginning of each week to go towards food, fuel and general spends. Whatever is leftover at the end of each month will then go straight into the ISA.
I like ISA’s. The taxman can’t get his greedy mitts anywhere near my stash and the money feels locked in, perhaps because I know that anything I withdraw eats into the annual £3600 allowance and can’t be put back in. Regular savings accounts are easier to manage, but unless you are strict with yourself it means its easy to keep dipping in. Not good!
It is going to be an exciting year; I’ll need to start looking at ways to increase my own income, my partner has been working hard training to become a breastfeeding counsellor so I predict a return to work for her, and not to mention our baby (likley) becoming a truely terrible 2 year old in August! Fun fun fun!
January 4th, 2010
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Real Nappies
These aren’t messy and fiddly like they used to be. The latest reusable nappies are easy to wash, as quick to put on as a disposable, and they come in a variety of fashionable and even fully customizable designs. A study by the Women’s environmental network has shown that parents using reusable nappies will save around £500 compared to those using disposables. Not to mention that disposable account for 5% of all household waste, with a staggering 9 million disposable nappies being binned everyday. These end up in landfills where they will then take approximately 500 years to decompose. Go green!
Reusable Wipes
Don’t stop at the reusable nappies. Packs of disposable baby wipes aren’t cheap, and you really don’t need to be using fancy scented wipes soaked in cleaning solution on your babies skin. I went out and bought my reusable wipes, but you could be extra frugal by using scrap material such as old white bath towels or cotton t-shirts. As a dad I find the resuable wipes much easier to use too, so its a win-win for me.
Homemade baby food
Forget expensive jars of baby food. Whats in them anyway?! I wouldn’t eat them myself and so I certainly wouldn’t force them on my child. Every time I make up a meal I put a few small portions aside in plastic containers ready for the freezer, and these are great for quick meals for baby. You have to be a little bit crafty when meals contain alcohol or salt, but to get around this you can set a few portions aside prior to adding them, and then use baby stock cubes or herbs for flavour.
December 15th, 2009
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I’m always scouring eBay for bargains, often with the help of tools such as Local Bargain Finder. This is my best find yet though! After buying a trendy 32″ LCD TV around 2 years ago I’ve made do with having my old PC hooked up to it. This was great for downloading films and watching iPlayer, but try watching any HD content and it’d throw a wobbler.
So the search was on for a cheap HTPC (Home Theatre PC). All I was really looking for was a basic system with a HDMI output and NVidia PureVideo HD built in. The NVidia chipset allows hardware decoding of HD media files, meaning it can play full HD content without the need for a hardcore CPU. The result? After browsing ebay for around 2 weeks I finally saw what I was looking for, a Shuttle XPC Glamour Deluxe SN68PTG6. This is a barebones system which usually retails for around £170, and which I picked up for £28 marked as “Untested, possible CMOS problem”! When it arrived I opened it up and noticed immediately that the battery was loose on the Motherboard. I corrected it and then borrowed a CPU & RAM from my dads PC and bunged it in. The result? Nothing wrong with it!!
It was a barebones system so I have had to purchase a CPU and RAM on top, but the total cost is a cool £95 Not bad for a fully HD ready HTPC. I went with an energy efficient AMD 4850e processor, and some speedy Corsair XM2 RAM. This will let the PC run cool & quiet, whilst only sipping on the juice. A nice frugal PC I’m very happy, I’ve tested it with WALL-E in 720p and the Incredible Hulk in 1080p and the quality is out of this world! Completely smooth playback with no stuttering, and the dual core processors running at only 30%.
But wait, why am I spending all of this money? Isn’t it a luxury item? Well, I’ve seen complete PC’s like my old Pentium 4 going for £100 on eBay so I’m still coming out on top. Also, if I was to stick a BluRay drive into it which would cost around £60, I think I could sell the whole PC for around £300, and maybe up to £4-500 if I upgrade the RAM. Can’t argue with that!
December 6th, 2009
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The hinge on our Dyson washing machine broke last night. It’s the first problem we’ve had though, which is pretty good going for a machine we’ve owned for almost 7 years It looks like an easy fix so I’m going to attempt a bit of DIY. It’s only the exterior hinge on the washing machine, and as far as I can see its only held on by 2 screws. So, after a bit of shopping around I came across a site called espares. They were selling the hinge required for a very reasonable £13.49 plus P&P, the cheapest I could find.
You can also follow them on twitter, I suggest taking a peak as discount codes are occasionally ‘tweeted’. eSpares itself looks fantastic, they have spares for almost everything in the home including washing machines, cookers, hoovers & dishwashers. So don’t reach for the repairs section of the yellow pages or dash out and buy a whole new appliance just yet, buy a spare part and fit it yourself! The website features video installation guides for popular items, making it possible for even a novice like me to attempt repairs. Failing that though you could always hire in a handyman to fit it, it will be cheaper than the £85 standard Dyson call out fee.
December 1st, 2009
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That’s the message we’re sending out to our friends and family. We don’t need anything, and we certainly don’t want to buy presents for other people as we’re trying to save money!
With the exception of the £10 secret santa I got roped into in work, I’m not buying anyone anything this year. I guess that makes me a scrooge, so I’ll quote the famous line “Bah Humbug”. Those relatives that have forced presents upon us will be receiving a nice photography of me, my partner & our baby boy. It hasn’t cost us anything with my dad being a photographer, but its nicer than a bit of tat aswell I think.
I’ll finish by quoting Martin Lewis from MoneySavingExpert as I can’t put it into better words myself, “Perhaps the real gift is to release someone from the obligation of buying you a present”. Wonderul words Mr.Lewis, you’ve saved me a small fortune over the years!
Happy frugal christmas everyone
November 27th, 2009
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Over on the forums at HUKD, I came across an awesome deal whereby you take out a 12 month O2 Premium Broadband package, and effectively get paid £11.89 for doing so!
It works like this… O2 Premium Broadband (up to 20MB), usually costs £9.79/month for O2 customers. They are currently running an offer which gives you the first 3 months free, so it only costs £88.11 for the year. However, if you sign up to this deal via your quidco account you receive £100 cashback, meaning you are £11.89 better off!
There are no catches, and needless to say I’ve just signed up to this myself! There are no hidden fees or setup charges, and you get the O2 wireless box II and a copy of McAfee Internet Security thrown in aswell
If you haven’t used Quidco before then get on board! It’s free to use, although they will take a total of £5 a year away from any cashback you receive. Really wishing I’d signed up earlier as I do a lot of online shopping!
November 19th, 2009
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That’s a nice statement, but not one that I can say applies to me as I’ve never really won anything before! Last week in work was another story though, it started off with me winning £250 of high street vouchers for being the top performer in my dept., and then as if that wasn’t enough I won another £100 of high street vouchers 3 days later for taking part in a survey in work and having my name drawn out of a hat!
As we’re only just starting to save money, we decided to use the vouchers to treat ourselves to some new clothes and other bits and pieces we were in need of without having to put so much as a dent in our finances!
