Living on $12,000 a year

moanymoany

on a very b

azjh77 wrote: »

I'm ashamed to say that my budget is rubbish, we barely cope, and I tend to feed the kids LOTS of pasta! Once all my debts are paid off though I will start doing things properly. As it is we have about £45 per week for food - we have lots of pasta/noodles/beans on toast. We grow some veg, (and have had a good crop of raspberries this year)...but mostly. We go without a lot!

I think this is an interesting post. Most of our meals are traditional in that they have three elements:

protein
carbohydrates
vegetables

There are lots of sites e.g. heart foundation who give the proportions and the carb and vegetables should be the major portion of the meal. I make lots of egg meals - because we like them - most of our carbs are potatoes but we have pasta about twice a week. I'm not too keen on rice, but we like bulgar wheat which I mix with lots of veg.

My big problem is keeping up veg intake. I think one of the cheapest bought veg is tinned tomatoes, there are 2 portions in a 15p can. We have these a lot. I also use frozen mixed veg which are very economical. I find frozen veg very easy to use, economical and quick.

I have recently discovered the dried soya mince, just under a pound for 350gs? It is very good and almost unidentifiable when mixed 1 part meat mince to 2 parts soya. I make this into a basic bolognese type sauce which I use for all mince based dishes, lots of which are already on here. I've worked out that this is 25p a portion - about 3 ladles between 2.

The Linda Macartney book gives the grams of protein in 100gs of food. Beef is 6gs, chicken is 7gs, fish 6gs, and TVP which is soya mince or chunks is 17gs. So it gives you quite a bang for your buck!

I intend to try the chunks, but we do like mincy things. When I was a child we were a family of four. My gran did our cooking and she would buy half a pound of meat for the four of us. We had lots of potaotes and veg to fill up. We were very fit and healthy. It is tempting to eat more protein than we need because it's nice.

If in any doubt about what can be done on basics, have a read through Thriftlady's wartime ration thread.

Yategirl

moanymoany wrote: »

I've been to the library today and ordered 'Frugal for Dummies', but to get the Tightwad Gazette I would have had to pay £2.60 to get it from outside the area.....!

I looked for this book, but they don't have it in the area either.

My library keep telling me that they cannot get it from anywhere

thriftlady_2

Yategirl wrote: »

My library keep telling me that they cannot get it from anywhere

I've never seen any of these American frugal books in libraries. I'd be surprised if they did have them. Try a second hand copy from Amazon.

moanymoany

I've ordered 2 of the tightwad books for 1p each + p&p of £2.49. On the Hillbilly website there are web addresses for some US government healthy, thrifty recipe ebooks. They are for African-Americans, Spanish-Americans and traditional food. They are good and well worth downloading.
http://www.healthy.hillbillyhousewife.com/thriftym.pdf
http://www.healthy.hillbillyhousewife.com/food$pdf.pdf
http://www.healthy.hillbillyhousewife.com/sp_recip.pdf
http://www.healthy.hillbillyhousewife.com/aahhr.pdf
http://www.healthy.hillbillyhousewife.com/ktb_recipebk.pdf
http://www.healthy.hillbillyhousewife.com/new_dash.pdf
the last one is for hypertension control.

http://southernfood.about.com/ This is a site that has absolutely everything on it and this is what I found when looking for cornbread. In the search box put whatever your hobby or interest and I betcha it comes up!!

I have an unexpectedly free day as I was going to have lunch with my daughter and her OH in Brighton. It is my lovely daughter's birthday and guess what? There are no trains because of floods at Hawwards Heath.

Also, my little dog who sits on me when I'm on the PC is at the vets having teeth done - bad mummy and daddy have been soft on not making him eat crunchy food and cleaning his teeth - all changed now.

SO, I am going through all of these to make up some meal plans as I want to shave some cash off the food budget. I will go through all these and my vegie books I got earlier this week at a charity shop.

I have a question, where is a good place to buy wholemeal flour? In Tesco they only have the strong flour and I'm not sure about using it for baking.

Thanks all :T

ceridwen

hi Yategirl

Tell yr library to try again for the Thrifty Living for Dummies book - say in a few weeks time - there is at least 1 copy held by a library in the country (I know because my library bought it especially when I ordered it). You probably need to state you are willing to go for an out-of-county loan - if your library isnt so obliging as mine at buying the books I want if they arent already owned by the County I am in.

moanymoany

ceridwen wrote: »

hi Yategirl

Tell yr library to try again for the Thrifty Living for Dummies book - say in a few weeks time - there is at least 1 copy held by a library in the country (I know because my library bought it especially when I ordered it). You probably need to state you are willing to go for an out-of-county loan - if your library isnt so obliging as mine at buying the books I want if they arent already owned by the County I am in.

My library charges £2.60 for an out of county loan! It might be worth paying a little more and getting a 2nd hand copy if it's the same with you.

I ordered the Frugal Living for Dummies, I think it's the same book. I paid 40p, a bit of a difference. However the Dummies series are very popular and your county is likely to have one. West Sussex has only one copy and it is based in Bognor Regis - I bet it does some travelling!

Garnet_Gem

It's possible to live on very little money but there's a difference between HAVING to do this and doing it to let yourself do something else (pay off a mortgage early, savings, holiday, car etc). For those of you who have to do it, I think your're doing a great job living on less with no (or soon to be no) debt.

rosieben

Spammer in post 98 reported

Garnet_Gem

Spam in post 98????? That was posted by me! What's spammy about it? Please reply as I really don't understand why.

rosieben

Garnet_Gem wrote: »

Spam in post 98????? That was posted by me! What's spammy about it? Please reply as I really don't understand why.

the original post 98 was spam, some twerp offering loans of £2 million or something stupid. its been deleted; you must have been post 99 originally; sorry for the confusion!