Is frugal the new normal?

[Deleted User]

Frugal is most definitely normal in our house and today I've used up one of the small mountain of butternut squashes that have grown on the allotment along with some frozen spinach, a tin of chick peas, a carrot and some spices I already had to make us a comfort food curry for supper for the next couple of days. Lovely feeling to use what I have to make something delicious and nutritious without having to lay out an extra penny!!! The frugality is in having found tinned chick peas earlier in the year at a much reduced price too!!! Frugal living is a life choice that has stood us in very good stead over the years.

lessonlearned

Lynplatinum wrote: »

Evening all

Many thanks for your interesting and different views on credit and its availability! As always different things work for different folks but a common thread seemed to be it was shocking how much one can build up! :eek:

The best kids party I ever did was one where the kids got to: each have a large cardboard box to make their own space survival capsule + their own 'alien toppings ' for pizza + to decorate their own biscuits to take home in their goody bag!! I was v skint at the time but even tho the 'kids' are now at least 28 years old when I bump into one of my son's friends its one of the parties that I ve thrown over the years that they mention and remember with fondness! :rotfl:

What is the current fashion in children's parties????
nite all

One ofThe best parties we did for kids was a home made one, the entertainment was a treasure hunt which my husband and my boys organised. Their mates loved it.

As they got older it was sleepovers, with midnight feasts,
videos and all night poker sessions.....

One year I bought them a roulette wheel and they all got dressed up and had a "casino night".

You really don't need to spend a fortune on fancy parties and goody bags etc.

AndI definitely second the cardboard boxes and dresssing up clothes. they still love fancy dress Andthe youngest is 29.

Another thIng I used to do was we'd have a themed night - usually a Friday.

So Id cook say Pasta or pizzas so we'd have Italian night with tiramasu for pudding and playing italian style music and then finsih with a DVD like the italian Job - well it was a male household - I was out numbered 3 to 1. We would dress up Italian style, and try out a few italian words.

We also had Indian nights which included belly dancing, chinese nights where I would buy some sparklers as "indoor fireworks"

When the boys were small Saturday night was "pick and mix" night - no cooking - french bread, cheese, pate, jams etc then either DVDs or cards or board games.

Happy days.....and all very frugal.

thriftwizard

More party ideas: one year we "borrowed" (with permission, and at no charge) the school field for a football tournament party for DS2, whose birthday is in September; we put up our big tent for the party food after the games, split them into four small teams & OH ref'd a number of 10-minutes-each-way games! Winning team got to attack a home-made piñata; if I remember correctly, they decided to share it with all the others. For DD2, end of July, we once did a night-walk along the riverbank with tea-light lanterns, ended with a lantern-lit picnic & daft sit-down games; those parents who hadn't come along picked up from the car park by the bridge afterwards. It worked because they were all exhausted from the walk up there beforehand!

For the twins one year, we did kite-making; I hired the playgroup hall, (half price to church regulars) to make these then went out into the playground to fly them. I had a couple of borrowed household fans on standby in case of bad weather, and two god-parents helped me as there were twice as many guests - just about the whole class, IIRC.

We also did make-your-own fans (DD1) and a camper-van party at the beach(DS1); back then, there weren't many cars on the market that you could fit 5 kids & 2 adults in, and camper vans were an inexpensive way of transporting (and entertaining!) a big family. Not so frugal now!

The parties I had nightmares over were the ones where we just stayed at home & tried to do "normal" things... and I have a feeling they weren't any more frugal than going out & doing interesting things.

ETA: worth mentioning, if you're considering anything sporty - OH is a qualified ref and an instructor of first-aid instructors, and happened to be free. I might have balked at a football tournament otherwise!

lessonlearned

Love the idea of the lantern walk and picnic. Yes we did sports themed ones too, the football tournaments and cricket matches went down well.

My OH coached the under 9s in our local leagues.

babyblooz

Well done on coming up with alternative parties to the usual 'we spent the most amount of money' parties that seem to be the done thing these days.

The best parties are those where everyone gets invited, for eg. the whole class (I've seen too many little kids absolutely gutted because they didn't get an invite to some expensive do) so far more generous to open it up to everyone and lay on home made food, some daft games where they can just be kids and have competitions for the funniest joke or the who can pull the silliest face!

We once had a junk food party where I filled the table with a few sweets and crisps, we had a few bottles of fizzy pop, some hot dogs and ketchup etc. and the kids got to decorate their own biscuits, top their own pizza and then had a dance off to the cheesiest sounds ever. They all brought a sleeping bag and slept over afterwards. They all said it was the best party they had ever been to lol!

Lynplatinum

He he he - seems we might be frugal but we know how to have a good time!!! Never gonna grow up entirely - that would be v boring!!
Thanks all for your party suggestions/memories!!!
Frugalin here today as got window cleaner to do front and back of house for £8 - I thought that was a bargain (mid Victorian terrace up and downstairs!) now, I know I could have done downstairs myself, but am time poor at the moment, he did an excellent job, and I could not have done upstairs due to the way the windows open!

Did wonder to myself tho - how they make a living doing that, once a month. He had a van to maintain and to load with water etc. It was £ 8 for about half an hour and he does several in the street but he has got to drive here etc. Assuming 10 per day = £80 per day = 80 x 5 = £320 per week (assume he cant work for the equivalent of 4 weeks a year due to weather and holidays so x 48 weeks in a year) =£15360 then the tax man has a go - tax free until £10,000 so with Nat Ins say 1/3 of £5360 = approx £13000 roughly but that makes HUGE assumptions about how many houses the guy does in a day and no allowance for van, materials and petrol. Still, on reflection its more than the state pension and folk manage on that!!! Anyone know folks whos jobs leave them similarly off? Or comments from any window cleaners or pensioners (those on Just the state pension)? Just wondering in this corner.
Nite all

Caterina

He probably does more than 10 a day, all bunched up in the same area and might not declare them all to the tax man if he gets cash. Or he might have other odd jobs and window cleans in his spare time, who knows? Also re N.I. if he is self employed he won't pay that he will pay around £12 per month stamps. Any expenses he will offset against tax so he might not pay very much tax on his nett takings.

Or maybe he is just a frugal free spirit who would rather have a low earning business but be his own boss than a better paid job working under someone who tells him what to do. I know the last has been my choice in the later part of my working life, after several years of well paid nightmare in a council office job!

tuskel

Well, whatever gets people into the frugal lifestyle when they are a bit more mindful and not wasteful, is good enough for me. Because honestly, the thing I hate more than anything is wasting perfectly good things, be it food or furniture or electricals etc. So yes, I am judgemental towards the people who do that. I want to scream: "Do you know how much energy, clean water and time went into making all those things and getting them to you??? And you just throw it away????" That gets up my nose and I do not care if you can afford it or not, I think the old saying "More money than sense" applies there.

tuskel,
sincerely

GreyQueen

tuskel wrote: »

Well, whatever gets people into the frugal lifestyle when they are a bit more mindful and not wasteful, is good enough for me. Because honestly, the thing I hate more than anything is wasting perfectly good things, be it food or furniture or electricals etc. So yes, I am judgemental towards the people who do that. I want to scream: "Do you know how much energy, clean water and time went into making all those things and getting them to you??? And you just throw it away????" That gets up my nose and I do not care if you can afford it or not, I think the old saying "More money than sense" applies there.

tuskel,
sincerely

:T Hear, hear!

Waste makes me feel physically ill. You should see the stuff which gets chucked in the tip, and this isn't one of those enlightened places where re-usable stuff is picked out and sold on to the public cheaply. You're not ever supposed to take something from the tip, although I asked for a willow ali baba basket in perfect nick a few weeks ago, and it now lives here. It would have been destroyed by the digger moving the contents of the timber bay. I know what the agency workers at the tip get paid - £7.50 an hour - because I know someone who worked there. However must it sit with those men, on such low pay, to see so much waste and be forbidden to womble?

If I see something great in a pile of rubbish, I'll have it out of there and clean it up for personal use, for friends or for charitable donation. Can't abide the mentality which wastes resources and then grumbles about being skint - these facts are not unconnected in most cases.

This evening, I have just offloaded my laundry into a rubber trug style linen basket (wombled several years back from a pile of fly-tipping) and racked the clothes (many of which are pre-owned) on the linen rack on the mat which I made from pulled out jumpers. I have washed up my motley collection of le parfait preserving jars (all sourced from chazzers over the years for pence) and am sterilising them in the oven prior to potting up homegrown beetroots as a preserve.

I think I live a lush life, but there's very little wasting going on around here.:rotfl:

ivyleaf

PasturesNew wrote: »

Tin of tuna (drained), cold mashed potato (50/50 by volume).
Maybe an egg to bind. Toss in anything you usually use, like salt/pepper or chopped parsley ....or not if you don't.
Shape them into patties.
Flour them. Egg dip them. Breadcrumb them. Repeat last two steps if the first go wasn't great.
Let them rest in the fridge if you've time ...
Toss into a frying pan and fry both sides on medium/hot heat .... or you can even bake them (hardly worth it if you only made 2!).
Eat.

They're nice just dipped in seasoned flour too without the egg and breadcrumbs, but you need to do it at the last minute before cooking them, or the flour just sort of disappears into the fishcake My daughter puts a bit of finely chopped onion in hers too.