Last week was gearing up towards an expensive weekend. I’d been invited out for drinks on Friday, had 2 seperate birthday parties to attend and the motorbike exhausts badly needed repairing. Inspired by the What small things did you do TODAY to save money thread over at MMM forums. I decided to look at each part individually and calculate where small savings could be made to add up to a large overall saving.

 Friday

Several friends were heading out to town for some after-work drinks to ‘de-stress’ from the week. These things typically last well into the early hours of Saturday and seem to cost almost a day’s wages. I sometimes ponder if those who go out to drink every week to escape the mundane and miserable job they hate, ever stop to realise that their Friday night outings fuel the constant treadmill they try to de-stress from. Fortunately these were friends I had seen the weekend before when we’d invited them over for a homemade lunch, so instead I decided to spend the evening watching films at home with the girlfriend and enjoying a few cold ones from the fridge.

Normal Spending-  7 pints @  £2.80 each: £19.60

ERG’s Spending-  10 cans @ £6 the pack:  £6

Keeping the girlfriend happy: Priceless

 

Saturday

Birthday party #1 had arranged for a relatively cheap gathering in the park close to the town center for a BBQ and some games of rounders (English baseball). As it was all bring-your-own and we were going out for dinner later anyway, we decided to stick with sandwiches instead of burgers. The park had a dedicated carpark charged at £2 an hour.. a few roads away was plenty of free parking on the street. Finally, instead of buying cold bottled water from the shops, I took a few empty bottles in my nearby office building and filled them up from the ice-cold water fountain whilst checking on some work i’d left running over the weekend.

Normal Spending –  Burgers: £5, Buns: £1, Carpark 4 hours: £8, Bottled water: £2. Total: £16

ERG’s Spending – Sandwiches: £4

 

Party #2 was at a fancy restaurant later that evening. Normally I avoid this type of gathering and instead prefer to hang out with friends at home however it was my partner’s friend and she insisted on the restaurant. Although most didnt have a starter, everyone else did have at least 2 drinks and a desert with their meals. Deciding that I didnt want to pay £2 for 20p worth of coke, I stuck with water. The deserts were all frozen and could be purchased from a supermarket on the way home, so we skipped those as well.

Normal Spending – Main: £11.95, Drinks 2 @ £2: £4, Desert: £4.95. Total: £20.90

ERG’s Spending – Main: £11.95, Desert from the supermarket: £2. Total: £13.95

 Sunday

When I moved in with the girlfriend and moved out of the town centre, I looked into the commuting options to identify the cheapest/quickest option. The result was a nippy little 125 geared motorbike which will inevitably be the subject of another post in the future. Using this for the daily commute does however mean it’s exposed to all the glorious British weather and as a result can take a real beating despite being garaged at work and home. Over 2 years the paintwork on the exhausts had finally given away and rust begun to creep in.

I called up a couple of local garages to get quotes for respraying the dual exhausts with the average quote coming in at £60 each. Not bad for a normal spending type of guy.. but not good enough for ERG! A bit of research online and some youtube videos showed it a fairly simple but labour intensive task. The only tools required to be purchased were a wire brush for £2 and some Ultra Heat Spray at £8. The most difficult parts were removing the exhausts from the frame and brushing off the old layer of paint.

 

Normal Spending – Respray at garage: £120

ERG’s Spending – UHT Paint: £8, Wire Brush: £2, Exercise: Free. Total: £10

 

Combined Normal Spending: £176.50

Combined ERG’s Spending: £39.95

Total Saved: £136.55 ($232).

 

Not bad for a weekend’s worth of work, plus a couple of new skills picked up along the way. Try it yourself; Split your weekend spending into smaller chunks and work out how you can save on each of these chunks whilst still achieving the same result and increased level of satisfaction.

What small things have you done recently to save money that have combined to greater savings? Please get in touch and let me know!