Single Money Saver living on my own

grumpyoldwoman41

Thanks a lot for al the posts, all advice very much appreciated....
Pink Winged - wawwwwwwwwwwwwwww, going to make some tea and look at those links, thanks so much for digging them out for me...

RAS

A couple of off the wall thoughts; not response required.

Regarding buses; does your transport executive support any sort of cheap day rover ticket. Often they only operate after 9.30am or later. The bus company may accept them but may not promote them if the cost is less than two single tickets? If so, use one to get to your sign-on session and you then have a whole days free travel, to any shops you want.

Are there any useful shops within walking distance of where you have to sign on? You might find a decent ethnic store for brown rice, a street market or a budget shop? And do not ignore the expensive shops; my best reduced goods come from Waitrose and Sainsburys ( I have to walk past both on the way home).

if you start going to interviews, check out their localities as well.

Do you have a local library? Some offer free computer access. Keep warm and reduce your comms costs.

grumpyoldwoman41

RAS thanks for that - pretty good idea to comnine signing on with the shopping as the Jobcenter is near Tesco and there are some smaller shops around too. When one is stressed, obvious things need to pointed out to them or they do not see it themselves...

There is also Primark, when one can not afford Primark - it is badddddddddddddddddddd LOL

Charrity shops went up with their prices so much

I do need computer and internet access from home, that is non negotiable. The speed in which vacancies in my field are advertised (and then gone) - have some jobsites on refresh all the time And need to be able to pick up/respond to emails in an instant....

ceridwen

Penelope_Penguin wrote: »

That's what I do too I cycle 8 miles to work, much of the time completely devoid of pedestrians. I cycle on the road through the residential parts, but return to the footpath/cycle path out of the towns.

I have it on good authority, that as long as you don;t cycle on the paths in busy areas, or make a nuisance of yourself, the plods will leave you to it

Hmm...well I'm in a busy area and if the plods think its okay to leave pavement cyclists to it here then they are putting themselves at risk too surely? (as in if a cyclist hit a pedestrian and said "The police said it was okay to cycle here" - then the police are at risk of getting in trouble - as well as the cyclist themselves - if they caused an accident to a pedestrian).

BTW - I have never spotted a sub-clause to the £30 fine applying for cyclists on pedestrian only pavements (ie the vast majority of our pavements) to the effect of "...but you'll get let off it in a very rural area...".:cool:

QUITE "happy" to have a go at the Police - as well as any antisocial cyclist - if said antisocial cyclist ever causes an accident to me....

valk_scot

Farway wrote: »

I am probably old enough to be your father you cheeky monkey

If you're old enough to be my father, you're probably too old to be riding a bike at all tbh.

valk_scot

Penelope_Penguin wrote: »

I have it on good authority, that as long as you don;t cycle on the paths in busy areas, or make a nuisance of yourself, the plods will leave you to it

Yes they will. Probably. But you're still not supposed to and you can be stopped and issued with a fixed penalty fine, or fined up to £500 if you have been causing a nuisance/injury/alarm to a pedestrian.

weezl74

JulieGeorgiana wrote: »

Even with Value Bread I am not sure how you can get this to 10p????

Where do you buy such cheap cheese?

home made bread is a penny a slice, and 20g of cheese grated would be the remaining 8p, (cheese is £4/kg at asda)

Mrs_Bones

I'm on my own and found it was false economy to try and cook for one, so now I just buy the normal sized packs or things that are on offer. If it's something like mince, I will just make a basic savoury mince mixture up and then freeze in portions, which can later be defrozed and turned into either cottage pie, lassagna etc at a later stage. Having a freezer is one of the best helps if you are on your own, most things can be frozen in portions. When shopping look for some of the more old fashioned types of meat, which are cheaper, they may have gone out of fashion but they still taste nice, it's just most people don't know how to cook them properly now, cheaper cuts often just need a slower cooking to make them tender and I know some don't like it, but offal can produce some lovely meals too. Always try to buy in season, and remember supermarkets are not always cheaper.

Do you have any garden to grow your own stuff, or a neighbour who does whom you can swap something with for fresh veg / salad stuff. I do that, got a garden full of fruit and often not well eough to harvest it now, but both family and neighbours take it and I get some and sometimes something back like jam or swap for other types of veg.

Have a good basic larder of flours, pasta's etc for cooking and which can bulk out meals, as can veg. Alot of leftovers can be turned into soup. Always meal plan and keep an up todate larder list so you only buy what you need and can plan your meals to make sure that left overs are use up in another way.

As for cleaning, apart from having some bleach you don't need an awful lot of fancy cleaners, you can do loads with vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, salt, a little lemon juice and oilve oil.

Hope that helps.

PasturesNew

I think the secret to freezer cooking is to only cook/freeze the building blocks. So, don't cook/freeze a shepherd's pie, but do cook/freeze mince portions and mash portions. Think about the shapes you're freezing and if you want a shepherd's pie then you can simply grab one portion of mince, one of mash, bung mash on top of mince and you've got a shepherd's pie.... on the other hand, another day you might fancy cheese/potato pie, so then you'd just grab a portion of mash and mix it with cheese. For chilli I'd freeze in small portions, then I could use one small portion to top a jacket spud and 2-3 small portions as a chilli/rice. Keep stuff flexible.

Penelope_Penguin

valk_scot wrote: »

Yes they will. Probably. But you're still not supposed to and you can be stopped and issued with a fixed penalty fine, or fined up to £500 if you have been causing a nuisance/injury/alarm to a pedestrian.

If you read back to what I wrote, you'll see that I'm extremely careful not to cause a nuisance to pedestrians - I cycle on the roads in residential areas and town, and dismount if I come across a pedestrian on the footpaths (this has happened twice in nearly 4 years of cycling to work ).

Given the states of the roads around here, I'm happy to take the risk of a fine I'll also contact my local paper and make a huge fuss about it too.

As this is now way off topic, these are my last words on the subject