If things get tougher?

tiptoes

I wish that I'd taught my DD 13 the value of money earlier on. DS 8 is quiet good but DD seems to think money grows on trees. Since I've become a single parent its been a total nightmare:eek: , even after talking she can not get her head around the fact we have to make adjustments in our life style. Things are only going to get worst as my contract ends in July and I have not found another job as of yet. So the six weeks holiday should be fun :rotfl:

I'm hoping that I may be able to talk her into going out on our bike for picnics (Should we have the weather). Girlie pampering sessions in the weathers not so good )save all the freebies I get:D .

Sarahsaver

Habits CAN be changed, do not give up! Kids may take 2 weeks to a month to change deeply ingrained habits. if you praise them for finding bargains, free activities, cooking, mending stuff, helping with chores these are all things that save money!
Older kids you could enlist their help with collecting stuff to sell through the classified ads, ebay or car boot sales, they could do a paper round, wash cars and so on...
just be upfont, this thing called pride stops many people saying 'i cannot afford it' but your kids will respect you more for being honest, and then one day when they are grown up and cannot afford something they will say so instead of whacking it on a credit card!
Turn their preconceptions from 'expensive is good' to 'saving money is good', it can be done;)
When buying things if you REALLY need it then think can I make it/grow it, then have your choices as firstly charity shop or car boot, then pound shop, finally only either discounted or 'smart price' goods or use vouchers.
My Dad would have called it being as tight as a Duck's @rse under water
BUT it can be addictive to behave this way, as well as beneficial!

Sarahsaver

i forgot freecycle!

soon2bjobless

My latest saving is...

Cat food - instead of paying £2 for 3 days worth (2 cats - Aldi pouches) they now get a can of Aldi cat food per day (34p) - they already eat Aldis dried food.

So thats a saving over a year of £357 per year

DdraigGoch

For those "girlie days in" which Tiptoes above was dreading from a cost point of view, there's always the "make your own" idea. If you can spend a little time viewing and getting ideas from the cruetly free/organic/free trade sites, then do some seaching for do it yourself recipes it would a] save pounds and pounds! b] give a new hobby c] be an interesting topic for learning all sorts of different school subjects - Geography [where does the geranium oil in this recipe come from?], Biology [what's a geranium and why isn't it a pelargonium?], History [how did geraniums come to this country], Maths [how much geranium oil do we need? how much does it cost? what proportion of the recipe/budget is it?] etc

Hope that helps
DG

ps making your own bath bombs/pills is a winner!

[Deleted User]

I haven`t used my pressure cooker for a while and have decided that I wasn`t using it because it is a bit messy compared to pans on the hob. The 40% rise in energy this winter was enough of a push for me to get it out and to get familiar again. I am cooking a stock now from a free range chicken carcass and I gave it 10 minutes on full steam but it took a while on the gas to get up to full steam. :rolleyes2 I have got my capricorn thinking cap on again and I am going to try pc on my portable induction hob. I haven`t got a magnet so can`t test the pc

I could feel the heat from the gas hob all around, even though the pan was much bigger. So quite a lot of heat was wasted :eek: . The induction hob puts all the energy straight into the food and is 90% efficient. It would be fantastic if the pc worked on it and I`ll try as soon as the pc cools down so I can open it. No I am not going to run cold water over it as that is pure waste and I`ll just have to be patient

[Deleted User]

Brilliant result!!! It worked and I made a lovely soup in 5 minutes in the pc on the little induction hob. Next time I will use my trusty meter and I will post the cost of electricity used. I have a tefal clipso and a portable stellar hob

This has got to be much cheaper than a slow cooker ie stew in 20 minutes compared to 6-8 hours in an sc plus browning in another pan. I`ll post the costings as soon as I do them and I can work out the cost for your slow cooker but not the browning, if you tell me the wattage and how long it stays on

All this takes me back to the 70s and even younger. I could cook a full stew for 9 in my mum`s prestige pressure cooker when I was 11, then in the 70s when I was the sahm with 3 children, we survived by using the same skills ie we lived on thick soups like pea with veg and a ham shank. My children still remember that soup as the best ever

zarazara

thats fantstic kittie

trying-very-trying

I joined scottish & southern energy's "better plan" scheme last week. I got a free meter monitor, and I was absolutely shocked to find that of my most frequent used daily appliances the heaviest single power usage is my computer. I though it would be the telly.

I've cut back in a lot of other ways, but I don't want to restrict my computer use.

[Deleted User]

It has been an eye opener for me too TVT. The laptop isn`t so bad but I have still to test my dh`s pc. I think I`ll pass the meter onto my dd when I am happy with the results here. I have been very pleasantly surprised with several of the results particularly the breadmaker and remoska and I think that`ll also be the case with the induction hob/pressure cooker combo. It has been made a lot easier by me being with EBICO and all the electricity units are the same price for me in s wales

Heres me, used to be a physics teacher, but it never really sank in re the actual cost in pence. I can work out costings easily enough but it isn`t a case of one wattage all the time, eg in the bm the wattage changes through the programme, so the meter is invaluable

Re an earlier post of mine about going down grades to cope with costs: The pressure cooker has to be the ultimate for speed and ability to cook meats and veg in one pan. The steamer is good too but only fish and/or veg and/or rice together. That must still be cheap (oh another meter test coming up) for a whole meal

I can`t see me using the oven again unless I get a real craving to wake up my sourdough starter to cook sourdough bread