Most Important / Useful Skills to Have.

skivenov

Cooking, doing maths in your head when shopping, getting inside the head of whoever laid the supermarket out, being able to fix my own car.

grumpybear_3

Skivenov makes a good point - though I'd say not so much knowing how the mind of the supermarket planners works as how to play them at their own game!

The layouts, the offers, the pricing, the music the displays are all speicifically designed to confuse and disorientate you and make you spend money, and still forget to buy toilet roll!

Going in rested and fed at a quiet time, alone with a list of what you need an idea of what you want to pay, a calculator and an MP3 player to block out "Bargain FM" or the background noise really helps me concentrate on getting what I want, getting the best deal and getting out of there and doing something more exciting! Its an handy skill!

armchairexpert

Renovating furniture saves us a lot. DH is a carpentry whiz and has made us some beautiful pieces, but buying all the wood and dowel and stain and whatnot at retail is often almost as pricey as buying furniture from, say, 1KEA. So if I want a basic piece now, I'll go to a cheapy secondhand furniture place, or freecycle, and then do it up myself. Just got DD a beautiful new wardrobe, exactly the right size for a young girl, for $25 plus a tin of paint and some sandpaper.

GreenFairy

Baking, preserving, cooking almost everything we eat from scratch. Foraging (nearly sloe gin time!), gardening, DIY, basic car maintenance.
Knitting, handsewing, spinning, soapmaking.

...self-rescuing princess

BAGGY

I would put them under the heading of 'life skills'
Being able to recognise a bargain. Working out the price per 100g of food. Working out interest rates if you need to take a loan.
Budgeting. Do you need a cake at work orcan you make a batch for the week?
Basic butchery. Not culling animals but getting to know the cheaper cuts of meat and how to stretch them out.
Buying in season re fruit and veg. Growing your own 'expensive' stuff if space is limited.
Learn basic cooking methods, master types of pastry, cakes, sauces etc. Basic menus that can be adapted. IE mince 1000 ways. Learn the basics and you can adapt for chilli, spag bol, lasagne.
Utilising store cupboards and freezer space.
Foraging. I would love to go on a course to get the best out of this. Especially mushrooms.

Helen2k8

Daft as it sounds, learning to read and follow instructions. You can find tutorials and info on how to do virtually anything, IF you're happy to open things up and have a look (e.g. I've fitted laptop hard drives after making some notes). Expand that to being able to assemble flat pack furniture, understanding how things are put together, that comes in handy later if you need to fix something.

And as said already, basic cooking, basic maintenance of house and home.

Critical thinking - don't follow that internet tutorial if it tells you to "scrub the ipad in hot soapy water...."

Find your strengths - some people love learning about electrical circuits and can put together some fantastic things; my brain doesn't work like that, but I can do basic butchery/cooking/bodging.

valk_scot

Cooking/baking, sewing, basic DIY, basic car maintenence, gardening, how to budget.

Uniscots97

Ingenuity

- meant I can make something that cost me £5 look like £25
- means I know how to scavenge something to repair (even temporarily) something else e.g. post man discarded rubber bands to fix a broken shower rail riser
- getting freebies and adding them to stockings knowing the recipient will love what I've chosen (i.e. remember the send your name to mars?)

LameWolf

• Cooking - including the ability to rustle up something tasty from whatever's in the fridge/cupboards.:D
• Knitting/sewing skills - sadly lacking in my case; I used to knit a lot, but my poor paws don't care much for it now.:( Making something new out of an old knitted garment is good, as is mending rather than replacing.;)
• Basic DIY/household maintenance, including car maintenance. If you can manage it yourself, why pay a tradesman?:o
• Gardening - again, something I used to do a lot of, but I can't even contemplate it nowadays. I envy those who can dig a plot to plant potatoes these days.:(
• Finance, including mental arithmetic, for keeping tabs on what you're spending in the supermarket - keeping the household accounts straight keeps us out of the red! I have all the household accounts on Excel spreadsheets, and use the autosum feature so that I don't have to add everything up myself.;)

Angel_Jenny

All fascinating! They sound simple but I bet a lot of people don't know how to do them or just don't bother.

I am still knitting but the improvement is really slow! I can make dish cloths and basic scarves. Would love to learn to knit lacy scarves!

I hadn't thought of it but I really agree that your mindset is important. It makes the difference between seeing frugality as a challenge and finding simple pleasures or just thinking about all the things you can't do and how terrible it is.