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What it's worth being frugal about?

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  • VfM4meplse
    VfM4meplse Posts: 34,269
    Combo Breaker First Post I've been Money Tipped!
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    GreyQueen wrote: »
    :) I enjoy a few quiet days with family over Christmas. We're a low-key and laconic group of people and don't like razzmatazz.

    I think the trouble with Christmas is that commercial interests have stretched it into a 3 month festival, and there's so much pressure to have a lot of fuss, expense, socialising etc. If you keep it simple and just say to yourself it's a couple of big dinners and time with family, it's best.
    So true. Reminds me, I'll be attending Carol services (which I love, and are of course free!) but this year make an effort to engage with all services from Advent onwards. (I'm not a Christian, but an interested bystander).
    One nice tradition we've evolved over the years is breakfast on Christmas Day. We have fresh baked bread rolls, make a very big cafetiere of good coffee and tradition is to open a couple of jars of homemade preserves one of which has to be bramble jelly and to smell the scent of summer as the lid comes off.
    For me it's a giant latte and a good hunk of panettone / stollen. Okay, I am buying into this Chrimbo thing again :D
    Value-for-money-for-me-puhleeze!

    "No man is worth, crawling on the earth"- adapted from Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio

    Hope is not a strategy :D...A child is for life, not just 18 years....Don't get me started on the NHS, because you won't win...I love chaz-ing!
  • Hiya all may I de lurk?

    In our family it is always brioche for Christmas breakfast. My Mum used to love them and spent every Christmas with us. I was taught how to make them at school and she always was on at me to make them when I lived at home. The dough is put to rise Christmas eve for a long slow rise. The kids used to help shape the rolls with a little top knot and then open their stockings while it did a second rise and bake and then they were demolished!! Usually with HM preserves of strawberry jam! Like you say Mrs L another reminder of the previous summer and a promise of one to come.

    Even though I now go to either of my son's for Christmas - we still have to have brioche! :)
    Aim for Sept 17: 20/30 days to be NSDs :cool: NSDs July 23/31 (aim 22) :j
    NSDs 2015:185/330 (allowing for hols etc)
    LBM: started Jan 2012 - still learning!
    Life gives us only lessons and gifts - learn the lesson and it becomes a gift.' from the Bohdavista :j
  • VfM4meplse
    VfM4meplse Posts: 34,269
    Combo Breaker First Post I've been Money Tipped!
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    edited 24 October 2015 at 6:50AM
    Well I seem to have been well and truly dragged into the Chrimbo spirit! Bought 4 rolls of YS ready roll chilled pastry yesterday, straight in the freezer ready to make mince pies with the 10p jars of mincemeat I bought in January :)
    In our family it is always brioche for Christmas breakfast. My Mum used to love them and spent every Christmas with us. I was taught how to make them at school and she always was on at me to make them when I lived at home. The dough is put to rise Christmas eve for a long slow rise. The kids used to help shape the rolls with a little top knot and then open their stockings while it did a second rise and bake and then they were demolished!!
    Sounds delicious, please share your recipe with us?
    Value-for-money-for-me-puhleeze!

    "No man is worth, crawling on the earth"- adapted from Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio

    Hope is not a strategy :D...A child is for life, not just 18 years....Don't get me started on the NHS, because you won't win...I love chaz-ing!
  • Hiya All

    Am having a 'get the recipes out day tomorrow - so will find it then and post in the eve for the brioche.

    My son is coming home to do some plastering and gate replacing for me next week and am aiming to be frugal by baking a load of stuff and leaving it for him to munch - he has always eaten enough for a small army but is still beautifully slim!! :p So annoying!! Bless him! :j

    I very deliberately broke the cycle of family obesity with my boys by getting them to view treats as things like cherries and melon and salmon and king prawns or venison NOT chocolate and cakes which were always around and everyday and so boring. They regard walking everywhere as the norm and gardening and growing their own food as something routine - they even had tomato/pepper/runner bean plants at uni! :)

    So am making pork terrine - roasting a ham - brioche - chorizo roll (like a tear and share bread) and peanut flapjack! This is all plus meals!!! oh well it should keep me busy for the next few days! :rotfl:
    Nite all
    Aim for Sept 17: 20/30 days to be NSDs :cool: NSDs July 23/31 (aim 22) :j
    NSDs 2015:185/330 (allowing for hols etc)
    LBM: started Jan 2012 - still learning!
    Life gives us only lessons and gifts - learn the lesson and it becomes a gift.' from the Bohdavista :j
  • Towser
    Towser Posts: 1,303 Forumite
    Shopping


    Can anybody add to my list of bargain Habits/places, (I'm economising-stretching my money, not stopping spending)?;

    It's my new hobby.
    Go for all the discount variety stores amongst others I call bargain shops.

    home bargains
    b&m bargains
    poundstretcher
    gumtree
    preloved
    Bargain foods
    Markets
    TKmaxx
    Ikea
    Amazon,
    Aldi
    Lidl Is it my imagination but Lidl is cheaper than Aldi?
    Ebay
    Charity Shops
    Freecycle
    Matalan
    George at ASDA
    Tesco Clothes
    H&M
    Library
    Car Auctions
    Camping
    Carboots
    Wilkinson
    Iceland
    mysupermarket.com
    gocompare
    I was using mysupermarket.com to work out cheapest trolley.

    What I have done is go through all my receipts and statements to work out what the heck I have spent it all on. Then I prioritise the largest amount for cutting back and so on. Not cutting it out but how to do it cheaper eg butchers etc.
    Also, check out quidco.com, if you do buy online and the site is affiliated, use the quidco portal and you get money back.
    And I have a purse full of loyalty cards.

    That's all I can think of at the moment. I have tried to list every bargain place where you can find everything you might need in life, including a car! Every aspect of my money is made to go further. So will be watching this thread.

    Cutting back not cutting out.

    Any body else?
  • Towser
    Towser Posts: 1,303 Forumite
    Carpet Cleaning

    It depends if it is an all over clean you need or just a small area.

    If it's all over for dirt and smells I hire a machine the Rug Doctor is cheap at £22.99 per 24hrs. Google and find closest with store locator. Simples. I used to have a Vax as I have two boys, one big boy and a dog but it was far too complicated to use on a regular basis, Now I just hire for 24hrs when I have enough to clean.

    If you need a spot clean I just get on my hands and knees and scrub it with soapy water.
  • tuskel
    tuskel Posts: 21 Forumite
    GreyQueen wrote: »
    :)thriftwizard, my previous home was part of a very dilapidated Victorian house, which, my Dad always joked, looked like the Munsters lived there. Although it was on a main street, it never got trick or treated.

    People are going to have very individual experiences of the t or t phenomenon. Those who have delightful ones will think that anyone who hides from t & t-ers is a miserable s0d. Those who have pretty horrific experiences (and egg is a bu88er to get off windows and doors never mind cars) will feel entirely justified about wanting to avoid the confrontation.

    There's an unpleasant side to t or t-ing which involves harrassment and criminal damage and it isn't made any easier to bear because the perpetrators are kids.

    I live in a rough neighbourhood in the city centre. Most people don't answer their doors to people they're not expecting here, at any time.

    2ecb48626d6190b408ece9584c7e957f.pngI'm looking forward to buying heavily-reduced pumpkins shortly, to cook with the pulp and roast the seeds. Lots of good eating on a pumpkin. If you're carving them for Halloween, be sure not to waste all that tasty goodness.

    I wanted to use the leftover pumpkin for food this year, but didn't get round to it, sadly. How do you do it? I'd love to make pumpkin cake or sth... How do you start cooking it? (I've done seeds before, but the flesh? Roast in the oven, then puree?)

    Anyway, around here it seems there are quite a few people who do all the Halloween stuff, and even big kids are fairly polite (I got complimented on my pumpkin a few times; I carved Hogwarts crest into the big one, one boy asked where I bought it from. :D) My little girl is at the right age to totally enjoy it now, we made decorations the whole week, so we've got (still) ghosts and bats hanging from the ceiling and black-and-orange bunting is on the wall, plus a few coloured-in pictures. Oh yeah, and Happy Halloween poster she drew with OH! :D And we had a party on Friday in a friend's house and went out on Saturday (I was dressed up as prof McGonagall, of course ;))

    tuskel,
    sincerely
  • tuskel
    tuskel Posts: 21 Forumite
    Towser wrote: »
    Visit the family usually all at one persons house one day over the festive period. They claim to be atheist so why celebrate at all?
    Because Christmas is actually shoehorned onto a much older midwinter celebration. You even have the word for it "Yule", or "Jõulud", where I come from. Jesus Christ wasn't even born on 25th of December, but sometimes in March, or so some early Christian cults believed. Also,
    * Mithras (they did it on QI) http://jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianity.html
    * Shaman Claus (shamanic symbols in our Xmas celebrations) http://realitysandwich.com/238049/shaman-claus-the-shamanic-origins-of-christmas/

    tuskel,
    sincerely
  • It'll certainly be a frugal Christmas here too this year. I never go "great guns" on it - but this year it will be my first Christmas of full pension - after about 3 years of being on my work pension only (as I retired at 60th birthday as per plan). Its been quite a strain of spending that 3 years on such low income:( and my savings have taken one heck of a hammering subsidising that work pension:mad: (one recent month, for instance, saw me spending about £300 more than my income:eek: - which I know will have come from my savings - again).

    Its just struck me in my calculation of what income I will now have - with its various constituent parts a pensioner income is made up of - that I'll get the grand sum of £10 Christmas bonus credited into my account at some point in December.:rotfl:. The phrase "Don't spend it all at once" comes to mind here...:rotfl:. It'll cover a couple of boxes of Christmas cards.

    So - I'll wait till next Christmas before I propose to friends that we start up a tradition of taking ourselves out for a posh lunch somewhere. My finances should have recovered a bit from those 3 years worth by then.
  • Towser
    Towser Posts: 1,303 Forumite
    I love shopping but due to budgetary limits have had to restrict it to Aldi and Charity shops only. Damage limitation.

    Even for Christmas with a little Ebay and Groupon.
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