Lots more Sneaky Ways to save the pennies

skogar

Love the "leather boot fund" Pip. i hope you have other excitingly named "pots" too. Suspect there may be a "Wonderous wool fund". :-)

London_1

Saving the left over scraps of soap and turning them into another bar saves maybe only a little but even two or three bars remade saves you buying another one.
My DD has a big family and pops her spare scraps into an old jam jar and I remake them for her as well.

Recycling isn't a new thing my late Mum made us all aware back in the 1940s for the need to recycle and reuse as much as possible, as what with rationing and post-war shortages there just wasn't the availabilty of stuff. Its Zero waste for virtually everything in my house 

JackieO xx

Primrose

I think in some perverse ways the cost of living crisis may bring some benefits.  The population of most developed   countries have become extremely wasteful and extravagant in their habits as living standards have risen and forcing people to be less extravagant  in their use of everything can only be a good thing.

Like JackieO, I too was a WWar2 baby and grew up in an environment were nothing was wasted. Soap scraps were saved and reconstructed, old knitted jumpers were unravelled and re knitted,  newspapers were rolled tightly and turned into firefighters and bricks for coal fires, food  scraps were added to stock pots to make a tasty soup, shoes were re-soledwith stick on soles at home to make them last longer, thinning bedsheets were cut down middle and restitched "side to middle" to extend their lives, elderly towels were cut up to make face cloths.  And virtually all food was home cooked - no expensive take-ways   I could go on....

If nothing else people will be forced to discover how much less they can consume and still survive on, which may be a valuable lesson as far as the planet,s survival is concerned.  What it will do for the world,s economy though is another debatable issue.

Primrose

PipneyJane said:

Do you know the thriftiest thing I ever learned to do?  Quarantining my money.  I have a dozen or so different savings accounts, each for its own purpose.  Once it’s in its designated pot, the money is quarantined and can only be used for its designated purpose.

It all started with setting aside £10 a month in a “Leather Boot Fund” after I realised that I needed winter boots but never had the money for them and that the ones I wanted never came up in the sales.  I figured I wouldn’t miss £10 from my regular spending money.

- Pip

I used this system for many years after  got married in the 1960's when we had little money.  As soon as i was paid at the end of every month the money was divided up into the various accounts which were sacrosanct.   I didn,t have a credit cards in those days.

(For those interested in gender equality,  when I did apply for one a couple of years after our marriage,  I had to get my husband'a written permission before the bank would  issue me with one.  All the more ironic as I was actually earning a little more than him at the time!)

ladyholly

Primrose said:
Like JackieO, I too was a WWar2 baby and grew up in an environment were nothing was wasted. Soap scraps were saved and reconstructed, old knitted jumpers were unravelled and re knitted,  newspapers were rolled tightly and turned into firefighters and bricks for coal fires, food  scraps were added to stock pots to make a tasty soup, shoes were resolved with stick on soles at home to make them last longer, thinning bedsheets were cut down middle and restitched "side to middle" to extend their lives, elderly towels were cut up to make face cloths.  And virtually all food was home cooked - no expensive. Take-always  I could go on.

My mother always added the end of one bar of soap to the next which left a dark ring aroung the join. I must admit I dont do it as I hated that ring.

I am not sure that many people are ready to cut back (or even know how) as all that seems to be happening is they are demanding higher pay but dont realise that that will fuel inflation a it did a few years ago and now they are complaining that the triple lock is being restored to pensions next year without realising that pensions are not a wage they are an insurance pay out as we have all paid for them for many years through NI and the tax we pay.

I am not a war baby having been born in the early 50s but my Mother was a child of the depression and never wasted anything and always grew her own fruit and veg once Dad left the RAF (more difficult when you were likely to move at short notice  but even then I remember store cupboards of salted veg, pickles, jam etc)

I have noticed in the last year or two more people are picking the wild blackberries that grow locally.

KxMx

Unfortunately that's not true about state pensions, they aren't an insurance pay out or a money pot drawn from previous tax, but are paid for by current workers through NI contributions. 
As you paid for those previously in receipt of pensions while working and paying NI.

State pensions are earned yes but not funded in the way you say. 

ladyholly

KxMx said:

Unfortunately that's not true about state pensions, they aren't an insurance pay out or a money pot drawn from previous tax, but are paid for by current workers through NI contributions. 
As you paid for those previously in receipt of pensions while working and paying NI.

State pensions are earned yes but not funded in the way you say. 

As you say they are paid for by present working people but my point was although not explained well salaries and pensions are not the same thing and shouldnt be compared as like for like as some people including MPs appear to be doing.

London_1

Primrose we are sisters from a different Mister I think

I married back in 1962 and had a gunmetal blue metal box which had sections in it and on the front you wrote Rent,Gas,Electric ,Food, Fares,Insurance  etc on the labels on the lid.I think I got it in Woolworths and as you say once the money was divied up into each part it was kept there .

What was left (often not a great deal ) was the money to either save it, or to use for fun .
Essential bills were paid first, then food heat etc, now and again we had 'Happy Cash' left which we used to go to the cinema. Certainly no credit cards back then as if you didn't have the money you didn't buy the goods. Probably why perhaps catalogues became popular.  We never bought anything we couldn't buy for cash and learned to save for things.
 TV was rented back then, we never had a phone, it was the telephone box if you needed to phone anyone,not that I did , as I didn't know many folk with a phone anyway  

Being hard up , as a young broke married couple we definitely were, every penny had to be counted and carefully spent. We would save up for a couple of train tickets to the coast for the day , a holiday was out of the question.

 I remember saving to buy a set of three stainless steel saucepans with copper bottoms at £6.9s.11d, I still have two of them, minus lids that I use today took me several months to save for them and I thought I was the bees knees when I managed to get them. But I never felt deprived as most of our friends were in the same boat .No charity shops back then, just jumble sales which you queued up for on a Saturday morning, or if you were lucky, you had second or third hand stuff from relatives who donated to you, as they were a bit better off.

But we survived, and learned how to cope on very little, so today's crisis may be worrying but for many of my generation it will just be a case of 'tighten the belt again ' whereas to many they will be frightened of what's happening, and worrying themselves silly. A bit of lateral thinking and common sense will make things a wee bit easier though .

JackieO xx

Primrose

JackieO  I've often read your posts and recognised a fellow traveller along the way!

How much easier life would have been in those post war days if charity shops had existed with the wealth of goods and wide selections they offer today.  In our later life we were able to afford  a very modest holiday home for ourselves and nearly all the equipment was purchased from the wide selection of charity shops which existed around the area.  It was such fun mooching around them looking for bargains and the whole place was equipped very cheaply.

I think it's a great shame that finance and home economics are not more widely taught in schools today.  We send so many kids to university without the slightest idea how to budget, and the only food many of them can cook is Pot Noodles!  And sadly so many young people max out their credit cards.   I'm sad to see the virtual demise of cash in our society.  No harm in putting purchases on credit cards if you pay them off in full every month but in the post war society when credit cards didn't exist I'm sure debt was more easily avoided.

I remember in our early married life, my husband was made redundant and money was tight.  I was friendly with our company canteen manager and often he would give me large joint bones which still had generous quantities of lamb, beef or ham on them.  Canteen soup came from a tin so those bones would only have gone in the rubbish bin.   For a little time & effort I got so many free soups, shepherds pies and other meals out of them. 

General_Grant

ladyholly said:

Primrose said:
Like JackieO, I too was a WWar2 baby and grew up in an environment were nothing was wasted. Soap scraps were saved and reconstructed, old knitted jumpers were unravelled and re knitted,  newspapers were rolled tightly and turned into firefighters and bricks for coal fires, food  scraps were added to stock pots to make a tasty soup, shoes were resolved with stick on soles at home to make them last longer, thinning bedsheets were cut down middle and restitched "side to middle" to extend their lives, elderly towels were cut up to make face cloths.  And virtually all food was home cooked - no expensive. Take-always  I could go on.

My mother always added the end of one bar of soap to the next which left a dark ring aroung the join. I must admit I dont do it as I hated that ring.

I am not sure that many people are ready to cut back (or even know how) as all that seems to be happening is they are demanding higher pay but dont realise that that will fuel inflation a it did a few years ago and now they are complaining that the triple lock is being restored to pensions next year without realising that pensions are not a wage they are an insurance pay out as we have all paid for them for many years through NI and the tax we pay.

I am not a war baby having been born in the early 50s but my Mother was a child of the depression and never wasted anything and always grew her own fruit and veg once Dad left the RAF (more difficult when you were likely to move at short notice  but even then I remember store cupboards of salted veg, pickles, jam etc)

I have noticed in the last year or two more people are picking the wild blackberries that grow locally.

I do this as it uses up the end of one bar without waiting for a number of  them and faffing about making a new bar.
I don't get a "dark ring" - if the soap isn't grimey and your hands aren't when you use it (or you rinse off the dark suds) there is nowhere for the darkness to come from.