All the small things - tell me what you have done to be MF today

PipPip

I haven't posted on this one before but my wife and I tend to live very cheaply always. She had a poor communist upbringing and I was from a very poor one parent family so being careful seems to be in our blood. I read about people having no spend days. I can honestly say for us these are frequent! Some examples of things we do without really thinking about it:
- packed lunches for me at work
- i never buy snacks or coffees. Free coffee machine coffee only and water, snacks are a banana and apple that I take to work
- we just never go to the shops at weekends. We hate shopping anyway but going to the free park with the kids means we spend nothing
- very few luxury purchases. We never buy DVDs or CDs or magazines. Both feel they are a waste of money
- my wife cuts my hair with clippers
- i buy high quality suits and shoes which last many years. I buy topbranded shoes but seconds, eg Church and Crockett and Jones seconds. My current work shoes are Crockett and Jones seconds which I paid £120 for on ebay (full price is £350) and i have been wearing them for 4 years now, on the second re-sole
- holidays are cheap and cheerful. Camping in France etc.
- my wife often walks half an hour to take our 4 year old to school. We have a double pushchair so our 2 year old can sit and our 4 year old can climb in when she is tired. My wife does have access to our car, a 5 year old 1.6 Ford Focus diesel which we bought when it was 2 years old as new cars are a rip off
- all pay rises and bonuses go into our mortgage offset account
- my wifechecks the price of everything in supermarkets, looking for deals and collects/uses all the vouchers. I find this a bit frustrating as I want get in and out quickly but I accept it
- my wife buys and sells second hand clothes and toys for the kids. All their clothes are second hand.
- we eat out about twice a year
- we cook a lot of stews in the slow cooker. Big batches that can be frozen as its cheap and efficient.
- we make our own jam

Now this next bit may shock you. We do all this, probably spending no more than £500 per month on food and bills. Now for the bit that may surprise: my basic salary is £90,000 per year and my bonus is typically cash of £30,000 and share options worth £30,000. So yes, we earn a lot but we still live as if we do not as we want to be financially free as soon as possible and to be honesg, we just don't care about image/keeping up with the Jones.

Good luck to everyone in their missions!

linz

Great post PipPip ! Some great things on your list.

I wish more were like your wife on the school run, the traffic on my walk to work is horrendous, not to mention polluting! Obvious health benifits for your wife and children aswell.

PipPip

To be honest we've always been like this and cringe at our friends with their flash new cars, luxury holidays, designer gear and guaranteed lifetime of paying banks lots of lovely interest. Some our friends just dont get us. Its been very refreshing to find this forum and discover that we are not freaks, well, not the only freaks:)

Edit. Some other things i thought of:
- no sky tv. Just freeview
- my wife does not wear make up or perfume. Thinks its expensive waste of money and she's stunning without it so why bother?
- i use a traditional double edged shaver. Its tricker than using a modern gillette cartridge razor but the blades cost 9p each if you buy in bulk on ebay compared to the rip ££s that gilette cartridges cost
- i buy wine off my employer as they own a vinyard and offer big staff discounts
- our watches are mechanical, no need for new batteries
- we never buy takeaways
- we never ever buy excess food. There is no waste in our house.
- we water down juice to drink at home.
- We make home made ice lollies for the kids
- we buy no soft drinks or bottled water

Told you we are freaks.

cha97michelle

What is normal anyway? Pippip some great thoughts there.

I think it amazing you earn that much and still find time to do the little things, where most people have no time so use short cuts that cost a lot.

We live better now on one wage than we ever did on two because my time is so much more valuable.

AuntieMabel

PipPip wrote: »

To be honest we've always been like this and cringe at our friends with their flash new cars, luxury holidays, designer gear and guaranteed lifetime of paying banks lots of lovely interest. Some our friends just dont get us. Its been very refreshing to find this forum and discover that we are not freaks, well, not the only freaks:)

.

Hi Pip,

I SO agree with you. My friends think DH and I are complete loonies cos we too earn a 'healthy' salary between us but still live fairly frugally. We could quite easily afford 2 cars but share one, I use public transport, I walk a mile each way with my boys to school (they've always done it so they're used to it), I cook from scratch, I LOVE vouchers/coupons etc, I'm delighted when I get a a bag of hand-me-down children's clothes, we don't have Sky.

What I hate is the consumer society we live in now where so many people are conditioned to covet the latest fad just because it's there. People don't even realise they're being successfully marketed to in the subtle ways they are being told what they 'need'. The underlying psychology in all of this advertising is roughly 'to be happy/successful/attractive/a good parent etc you need to buy X' whether you can afford it or not. Shops, banks, credit card companies, car manufacturers are only protecting the interests of one side of the bargain, and it certainly isn't the customer!

I do like 'nice' things, I have a lovely home, I have a wardrobe full of good clothes bought over the years, same with shoes, handbags and make-up, my boys are happy, they have what they need and certainly aren't deprived. But I don't need more which is the bit my friends often don't understand because I could afford more.

They just think I'm a bit odd :rotfl:

wantabetterlife

Have been missing in action for a few days but have been so busy. anyway, things for me.........

• Used the groupon voucher to get my hair done and have saved £38 on the price i usually pay :j
• Just been to mr S and picked up loads of whoopsied salmon...i took it home and portioned it out into freezer bags. It worked out at 31p per salmon fillet
• Went to cheaper filling station for diesel
• Packed lunches made for OH and DD
• £7.50 received from quidco and £10 halifax rewards....so have made a £20 o/p to the mortgage

PipPip

With you all the way. Some of my friends have an idea of our earnings and I get a lot of stick for not having a flash car, for not being trendy, for only having the blackberry my company gives me for my job (and my wife refuses to even have a mobile so we have no mobile contracts!). Marketing is bloody clever but we are about as immune as its possible to be as my wife is, in fact, a marketing expert and I'm a naturally sceptical chartered accountant. That creates a good forcefield around us but still some things get through. I'm writing this on an iPad. We can't resist everything and like you we have a nice home, good furniture, decent TV, we drink good wine (bought at a discount) and eat high quality home cooked food. Our life luxurious compared to 99% of the world but less so than many of our wasteful friends. Whatever makes them happy. I get satisfaction from being frugal and hate waste. My wife too although she also gets satisfaction from resisting her fellow marketeers.

mirry

thanks for your post PipPip , you sound very sensible ,
infact we all do.

Last night whilst watching superscrimpers , the lady asked they young girl why she was so good at money saving ?
The girl said it was because she was bought up that way.

This got me thinking because I was bought up by my mother who was and still is a Shopperholic. Which makes me wonder why I am so different ?

On sunday a family member of mine came to me trying to sell her second hand shoes to me for £25 each cos they cost her £50 new.
I am being serious . So I told her "no thank you" , and that I get mine "NEW" from the car boot sale for £2 each :rotfl:. I dont think she believed me.

I think she came to me because they are finding things tough, and are having to downsize their house
as they are not meeting their mortgage payments.
Then she announced they were off to town to buy a canvas they like for their wall for £30 :eek:. (On our wall we have a canvas we got from the car boot sale for £2 and its stunning).

Anyway I will get back to the topic now ....

Yesturday I reduced the size of a top I have in my wardrobe
which was too big for me (as they showed how to do on superscrimpers recently) and it came out fantastic :j.

Got a quote from the AA for breakdown cover £61.40
so went through topcashback and ended up only paying £4.53 for RAC cover .

Done lots of baking by using stale bread for bread pudding
and brown bananas for banana cake.:D

sold some bits on amazon and have bids on ebay.
Going to check for surveys.
might go to tesco today for whoopsie bargains
(we try to do this at least once a week).

Have a good day everyone.

AuntieMabel

Personally, I think it's all about finding a balance that suits you and the way you are prepared to live. I have friends who are both professionals so they earn a decent combined salary, but they are just terrible with money. They are REAL gadget people and have to have the latest thing on day 1; they eat either ready meals (there's 2 children as well) or eat out; I know she has to look smart for work but she is literally never in the same oufit twice; the holidays are (IMO) to the ridiculous point of lavishness (last summer 4 week US road trip with £4000 credit card bill at the end). 'Fair enough', some may think - it's their money and they can spend it how they want. But the thing that never ceases to amaze me is that she can't understand why they're so short of cash, have huge credit card bills and have just added a load of future spending on to their mortgage (have extended the term by 10 years :eek:). She's one of the ones who thinks DH and I are potty BTW!

I'm not saying that we should all live like hermits, never going out and be dressed in rags, we all need to have fun things in our lives, whatever it is that we enjoy, but some people really are suckers for marketing and don't seem to enjoy life unless they're buying stuff :huh:

james01_2

I have been a reader of this site for some time now without really posting much but have learned a lot.

I'm an ex independent mortgage and insurance adviser who is on a mission for the next 24 months.

I am planning to pay off my mortgage by working like a mad man and saving on absolutely everything I pay for.

My trouble is I still like the good things in life like eating out etc but even that I'm now doing at a discount by using these new daily deal sites through http://www.comparethevoucher.com and have had some other really good deals from it like £13.50 for wife's hair cut.

So far this week we have done the following:

Saved £11.55 per month on house insurance
Got £200 cash back on Life assurance cover
Cancelled Sky TV and changed to BT vision saving £49.26 a month.
Sold our car and got a cheaper more efficient one which should save £100 a month on fuel plus the cash from sale.
Wife has taken on a second part time job earning an extra £700 a month.
I've taken on a freelance web design job to do in the evenings via the People per hour website earning an extra £1000 this week.

All in a great start but now I'm on a real mission to earn more and spend less so if anyone has any other ideas which I could use, please let me know.