Five frugal things for the weekend: Art on the cheap, bank switch bonus and coffee for nada

Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash

Hey friends! As you know, veganism is only for the wealthy and privileged. Of course, as a vegan, I am no exception. Oh wait, no, I'm a final year student living on student loans and whatever else I can scrape up with freelancing (hot tip: did you know in your final year you get dramatically reduced funding? In case you were afraid students would be able to afford such luxuries such as avocado toast, rent, and electricity, fear not. Student Finance ensures that any final year student will definitely not have enough money to cover even the basics of life in the capital.) So, for today's post, I'm joining lots of other bloggers with a celebration of Five Frugal Things I've been doing recently.

1. Art on a budget
There's a saying by Confuscius that if you have two coins, you should spend one on bread and one on flowers; the bread keeps you alive and the flowers give you a reason for living. My budget maybe tight, but I'm a sucker for a good exhibition. Time Out had a voucher for two tickets to the Barbican's exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art for roughly half price (they're still available here if you fancy going yourself!)

It's a really interesting exhibition looking at some of the greatest nightclubs of recent times, from the Weimar Republic to the 1970s Iran. There are some of the fixtures and fittings from the clubs themselves, including their wall art, tables and even their menus. Obviously, I was checking them out for vegan options! Good news for any vegans time travelling back to the Chat Noir in 19th century Paris: if you're down with the old herbivore trick of making a meal from sides, you'd be able to eat vegan even then!

One of the coolest things is their recreations of some of the clubs that you can walk around. This is Vienna's Cabaret Fledermaus -- isn't it beautiful?

2. £125 for a bank switch
Lloyds was recently offering a £125 bonus for anyone switching to a Club Lloyds account (the bonus is not available any more, sadly, otherwise I'd point you to it!) I've never switched bank accounts before because I'm lazy and I thought it would be a hassle, but with £125 as a carrot, I could be persuaded. Turns out it actually wasn't that hard -- it got turned around in a week, including the £125.

And, if £125 wasn't enough, there's six free cinema tickets. I love the cinema, but with tickets normally in the region of £12-20 in London it's not something I can afford to do often. Now, I can afford to do it at least three times this year (you didn't think I wasn't going to share with Mr Flicking the Vs did you?!)

If you're looking to switch accounts, MSE has a list of what's available.

3. Free coffee for a piece of my mind
I'm on Leon's email mailing list, and earlier this week they sent out an email offering a free coffee in exchange for sharing your opinions on their food and other things about the chain. As you can imagine, I said they need to have more vegan options (to be fair, Leon have some great vegan options, but everywhere needs to have more, right?!) and get rid of plastic in their packaging.

In return, I picked up an oat milk latte:

4. Vegan desserts at almost half price
I remember seeing on Twitter a list of things that, if you could find them in your house, indicated you'd reached adulthood. One of them I remember being the ramekins you got Gü puds in. Until recently, there were no vegan Güs, so we were destined to remain eternal children, with no chance to lay our vegan paws on those coveted grown up ramekins.

Happily, Gü recently launched three different vegan puddings: chocolate and vanilla cheesecake, rhubarb and strawberry cheesecake, and Spanish lemon cheesecake. What's better than vegan cheesecake? Cheap vegan cheesecake! Last time I popped into Co-op, they were £2 for two, compared to their normal price of £3.50. I bought two different lots, strawberry and chocolate. I'll report back on my findings!

5. Cashed out of some cashback apps
I managed to squeeze a few quid out of Quidco as well as Checkout Smart and ClickSnap. Sadly, I'm not going to get rich on cashback apps, but when you're a vegan as rich and privileged as me, every penny counts!

I'll be writing a round up of which cashback apps are worth your time shortly, so don't forget to check back for that. Unless you're a vegan, in which case, you probably don't need the cash, you rich herbivore, you.