Are you ever embarassed by your money-saving ways? 11 November 2009 at 7:40PM edited 17 November 2009 at 7:32PM in Old Style MoneySaving 297 replies 58.7K views

cookiedough38

I am another that wouldn't be embarrassed taking food, however, if it was my friends I may be. Even my 4 year old will wrap up her left overs and bring it on with her!

I had a meat ploughman's the other day and left a little pack of butter, that came with me!

[Deleted User]

joshieg3011 wrote: »

We went into the town and there were loads of charity shops - I thought I had died and gone to heaven!


When I was on holiday earlier this year in Derbyshire, my friend and I were in a town, I think it was Buxton.It seemed to be one long street of charity shops. I had never seen so many in one small town.
We are both keen hunters of bargains .She does quilting and I knit,we both make things for a charity.We also love reading, so books are also what we scavenge for.We went into every one.I found a great Liverpool FC book for my 8 year old DGS which he was thrilled with.We go away somewhere for a week every year and the first thing we do when reaching a new town is hunt out the CS. We too are never bothered about having a 'doggy-bag' to take away unused food.We went to the U.S. a couple of years ago and its almost expected that you will take something away with you when you leave a restaraunt even if its only some of their gigantic waxed cartons of coffee or coke.We were touring the north-east corner of the U.S so were on the road quite a bit.Most of our picnic lunches were bits left over from breakfast in that mornings motel.,rolls,fruit,ect.Saved us a packet over the three weeks we were away. We also filled our flasks up with coffee before we left in the morning to get back on the road.She is a lot better off than I am finacially, but she travels quite a lot with her husband and is quite unabashed at using up food which would otherwise go to waste. I think the amount wasted in restruants is dreadfull I would have happily taken the cheese without a second thought. The Harvester chain will give you foil to wrap things in if you ask them.

luxor4t

London_Town wrote: »

I'm at the age now when I don't really care anymore what people think of me (the wonders of approaching 40!). However, it sometimes frustrates me when people mistake MSE living with meaness. That's a completely different thing.

Please tell this to MiL :rolleyes:

She still equates conspicuous consumption with wealth.

I think she'd prefer OH & I to be deeply in debt but buying top brands

ceridwen

My own mother comments unfavourably about some of my MSE ways as being things "that poor people do" or they're "too much hassle". She forgets how low my salary is and that being careful with money means I can manage to eat decent-quality food and keep a little money by me in reserve in case of emergency. On my salary I wouldnt be able to do so otherwise....

I guess the thing is too that my father has never been unemployed - or even worried about it. I, on the other hand, have been unemployed before now - so am well aware that it can happen to anyone (I thought I was immune from it until it did - but found I was wrong:mad:) and I know JUST how appallingly low benefit money is for a childless person:eek::eek: - hence I have had no option whatsoever BUT to be very very careful with the pennies sometimes. I think once one has had one or more spells of unemployment then I guess the fear it could happen again probably doesnt go until one is safely retired and no longer needing a job - and I am certainly well aware that the Dole is now so low that I would worry about the waste if I dropped a piece of toast on the floor and had to throw it away.

Nicoll

CCP wrote: »

I totally agree with you on this one - I would have taken the cheese, too, without the slightest bit of embarrassment.

My particular habit at work is turning off people's computer monitors on my way out of the office (I'm not sure if that's MSE or green, tbh ). One of my colleagues sheepishly admitted the other week that he had thought for months that his monitor was turning itself off - he hadn't realised I was doing it for him!

I always do this too..

23rdspiral

slowly slowly catchee monky...

mum taught me when young the beauty of charity shops (vintage, unique, charitable AND environmentally friendly, what more could you want!?!)

So now i'm teaching her careful consumerism, prudent purchases and the ability to return goods if they aren't right!! :T

And am slowly turning my friends this way too...:rolleyes:

taplady

I'm not embarrased at all! -this week I went out into the street and picked up a pine bedside cabinet with a 'free' sign on it from outside a neighbours house much to my DSs embarrassment:D I did it up and its by my bed now:money::T I get a thrill from my freebie bargains and use freecycle, poundland, charity shops, carboots etc. I would have taken the cheese too!:D
Living like this makes our money go much further and we're almost out of debt now, we're living within our means and next summer we'll be debt free:j

valk_scot

My mum used to tell me I'd catch ringworm from wearing jumble sale clothes. Thirty-five years of jumble sales later it still hasn't happened!

My kids get the ocassional flash of embarrassment out of my money saving, have to say. Like the time I found a vast shelf of incredible reductions at Boots and made them take one basket each, totted up £5 of bargains into each of three baskets and pay for them seperately so I could get a £5 skincare voucher with each basket! (There was still a ton of stuff left...) Or when they open their packed lunches and there's something from the Tesco Whoopsie shelf in it with a "Reduced to 2p" sticker on it, because I'm not rebagging a 2p doughnut and the sticker won't come off. They've got used to me pulling the car over at skips and raiding them for wood etc for the allotment though. They even made their dad do it once when they saw someone chuck a chimney pot into a skip because "Mum will WANT that!" (I did...)

Hubby doesn't care. He takes bags of whoopsied doughnuts and Danish pastries into the staff tearoom quite happily, and he said the £1 Thorntons Continental cake made him very popular with the departmental secretaries.

I did go out for lunch with a very smart friend a few weeks back. We had our lunch and a long natter then we went our seperate ways as she had errands to run, apparently. I was in an unfamiliar area of the city so decided to look round the charity shops before I went home and who did I bump into? After we had a good laugh about it she told me what charity shop she'd got her coat in and I told her about my cardigan. I do think more and more people are waking up to the fact that they can't just waste money, that they need to be a little more careful. I have this feeling that ten or twenty years from now we'll look back at the first few years of the millenium as the last ones where indiscriminate consumerism ran riot, before we all screwed the head a bit and decided money and buying things wasn't all that made you sucessful and happy. I hope so anyway!

Olliebeak

I've never been embarassed by my money-saving ways BUT my kids have when they were younger.

Have to say that they've now come around, though they don't take it as far as I do - well not yet anyway .

DS2 is beginning to get a reputation as a skinflint but I know he just wants the very best value for money for his hard-earned. He will search high and low for discounts on everything BUT I can't get him to register with Freecycle just yet - though he asks me to search/request on his behalf!

pink_numbers

fabforty wrote: »

I'm more embarrassed by the ways that I have wasted money over the years - the crap that I bought but didn't need/use, clothes that I never wore, premium range food which cost and arm and a leg, £4 per day on starbucks, etc. I'm ashamed to admit that once (but only once, thank goodness) I even did a did my weekly grocery shop in Marks and Spencer - it's along story.
Now I'm shameless.

I totally agree with this one too, my outgoings pre-MSE was nearly five times what I spend now - just think of how much money I could've saved!! :eek: I keep seeing these imaginary piles of cash I could've been rolling in now if I had woken up to the MSE ways earlier...