Please help me get BACK TO THE BASICS of os moneysaving

luxor4t

Thank you for the inspiration, Jackie: tuna, sweetcorn and pasta for dinner tonight it is!


All in the cupboard and a quick dish to make so I can do some more dozing under the umbrella in the garden . We have half a bag of YS salad and some coleslaw to finish too .....

tori.k

JackieO wrote: »

Brilliant mila :T it gives you such a buzz doesn't it when you can produce something that not only looks good, but is tasty and inexpensive as well.

If, when I am at the supermarket (not that often far more interesting things to do ) I always have a look and see what is selling apparently well, and think Hmm I could make that for half the price and I usually do .

Im glad in not the only one that does this, I regularly check the ready meals, it gives great inspiration for meal planning or ideas for sides dishes or they days you just don't know what you fancy

Upsidedown_Bear

Great threads here for ideas
Sneaky ways to save the pennies
Lots more sneaky ways to save the pennies

Ilona

This is turning into a great thread, Jackie, we are sisters. I am often asked for money saving tips, but what I do is common sense to me, I have been living within my means for a long time. Isn't it normal to calculate the cost of every meal? Isn't it normal to dilute liquids with water to get more out of the bottle? Isn't it normal to check fridges and cupboards before going shopping? Get into the mindset of doing these things automatically and you will hardly notice you are doing them.

Every time you open your purse, stop and think. Do you need it, or do you just want it? Do you need a contract on a mobile phone? My PAYG costs £5 a month, I only use it for texts and the odd emergency call. I don't need to be permanently connected to the internet. Do you need to go to the hairdressers every month? Why not leave it two months? I don't go at all, I cut my own hair. Do you need to have takeaways? I never have takeaways because I don't know what's in the food, and it is too expensive. I would rather eat my own healthy food that I prepare at home.

I don't feel deprived one bit with my frugal and simple lifestyle, indeed, giving up lots of unnecessary spending is quite liberating. It means I can miss out whole aisles at the supermarket. I don't have to trawl round clothes shops, something from a charity shop will be fine. I don't bother with makeup, no need to buy that. A good wash with soap and water and slap on some moisturizer is fine with me.

No fancy toiletries, cheap shampoo does the job just as well as a posh smelly one. Value and Basics and Savers are just as good as the expensive brand names.

Shopping is a game I want to win.

Ilona

lessonlearned

Loving this thread.......

I was born in 1951 so can just remember the tail end of rationing.

Even when rationing finished times were hard and my parents had to be very inventive. Dad was a great diyer, repairing all our shoes etc, growing vegetables. Mum couldnt sew but could knit and was a good cook. My aunts were great sewers so I was lucky I learned skills and crafts from all of them.

Skills which have come in handy all my life. I can turn my hand to most practical tasks and being of a somewhat artistic bent and quite creative I have been "making and doing" - clothes, soft furnishings , furniture restoration, gardening etc - for as long as I can remember.

I can cook up a storm and like Jackie I keep a good store of spices and herbs to turn the most mundane and basic of ingredients into a gourmet feast.

I often look in shops and see something I fancy and then go home and copy it for a fraction of the price. Designer label clothes, fancy furniture, exotic ready meals can all be replicated easily enough at home if you have the basic skills and a bit of time.

When I was young we had to learn from books (preferably free from the library) nowadays we have the Internet and YouTube tutorials.

You can learn anything........

Iona - I make many of my own beauty products, bath and body oils, lotions and potions, soaps etc. It's dead easy, cheap as chips and more importantly uses only pure natural ingredients. No nasty chemicals, no SLSs .......all you need is some basic carrier oils, a few essential aromatherapy oils and kitchen cupboard ingredients.

Your skin is the biggest organ of your body and as such we need to take care what we put on it. Some of the chemicals, SLSs, petroleum based derivatives etc can cause long term damage, thinning the skin and causing problems in later life. (I've seen this with my elderly father).

In some cases, with the use of modern nanotechnology used in some of the new wonder creams, some of the ingredients can actually pass through the epidermis and leach into the bloodstream.

Many of these ingredients are carcinogenic........especially those used in hair dyes.

For health reasons, as well as for economic ones, I think it's much better to cook from scratch and to make your own lotions and potions, wherever possible.

suki1964

I too miss out whole aisles when I supermarket shop. I only need toiletries and cleaning every month or so, the only aisles I visit are the fish/meat, dairy/frozen, bread and baking on regular shops. Saves me a fortune as I'm not throwing stuff in the trolley willy nilly thinking "oh that's nice, oh I fancy that as a treat'

I meal plan around what's on special offer, a genuinely good price, or ys.
This weeks shop was £22 and will feed 3 adults for 6 days and 2 children for 3 days. The only extras I got this week were yoghurts for the kids and I will need to get some bread and milk tomorrow

Biscuits and cakes are home made or we don't have them.

I portion control carefully. Yesterday was fish pie (ys fish). Now I could have made a humongous pie that would have left us all stuffed just to use all the fish, but instead I made a normal size one, and a smaller one for the freezer. I do this every time I make a pie, lasagne or bolognaise. If there's enough to make even just one extra portion it gets made and frozen instead of pigging out. This means I always have 'free meals'. I even do this with sausages. A pack of 8, we only need 7. I used to either eat the extra ( which I didn't need) or give it to the dog. Now it's wrapped up and frozen. Come in handy if I've a bit of left over puff pasty,I can knock up a couple of sausage rolls, or there's always sausages if SIL isn't going to eat the curry I've made for everyone. Or once there's 7, it's another 'free meal' . I never throw anything out if I can help it. Even a left over slice of ham or bacon will be thrown into a quiche to feed 4

I've never had a tumble drier. Mum brought one with her when she moved in and it rusted away in the garage eventually. We have a clothes line in the garden and a pull across one in the car port as well as clothe horses inside This is NI. We get a lot of rain, but we also get a lot of wind so we manage to get stuff dry enough to finish indoors over night

We keep lights switched off, no need for a light when watching tv or online In the kitchen I swapped over to LEDs. The low energy ones still in use will get changed as they blow.

I only use the top oven unless I'm cooking enough to fill the big oven. I try to do any baking in one session. I also cook twice the amount of veg I need on a Sunday when I've help with peeling so during the week I've only got to nuke it. In fact I always try and double up when cooking anything so there's less energy used

Down grading on ranges will save quite a bit. I think the only branded products I buy now are persil, fairy,and head and shoulders, only because of allergies. Everything else is lidls own brand or supermarkets own or basics

[Deleted User]

Well said L/L. I was listening to a radio programme at lunchtime on Radio Four (I'm old enough to still think of it as the Home service ):):)

It was about a report that has come out today about the 'New Poor' who are apparently folk who are still working, but only just scraping by, i.e. not having the luxuries they think everyone should be enjoying in the 21st century.

A lady rang in and said that perhaps today's 'Millenials' folk born within 20 years of 2000 and are struggling to make ends meet should perhaps not keep thinking of the almost 'entitilement' to these luxuries,;)
but that they are being driven by the consumerist ideals of designer this and that, and the latest 'must have gadgets' I think a lot of what she said was true.

There certainly was no 'designer labels' in the 1940s-50s and the most exciting gadget I can first remember seeing as a little girl was my late Dad bringing home a ball point pen as I had never seen a pen that you didn't have to fill up with ink before

Several people rang in and said how times were hard for them and one lady seemed to think that because she was a graduate she should have been in a high flying job and the job she had was rather menial and earned her just under £300 per week,:eek: I wouldn't mind that myself ,menial or not.

So my question is do you think times are harder today with all the extra stuff that is available to people than it was say even 30 odd years ago ?

To me I feel that as a pensioner who has worked hard for most of my life, and saved and budgetted carefully I shouldn't feel bad because I can manage quite well on what I have coming in

Are expectations more today then they were perhaps back in the 1970-80s do you think.

I was 16 when I first went abroad to Europe on a 10 day coach trip which cost £35 guineas. I saw 5 countries and had a fantastic time .But I worked and saved and used to walk half way to work to save an extra few shilling a week It took me aroud 15 months to get what I wanted by saving for it. debt and credit were unavailable back then to a 16 year old earning £5.00 per week.

I also had to pay my fares and my 'keep' to my Mum out of my wages I was usually left with just over £2.00 a week and had to buy any clothes or shoes myself once I was at work.

No 'bank of Mum and Dad ' in my youth I know youngsters have a problem buying property, but no more than my OH and I did back in 1971.

We lived on fresh air sarnies and egg and chips for 18 months to buy our first 'money-pit 'of a house. Perhaps younger folk today do have greater expectations than my generation did,We couldn't afford the latest phones or electronic equipment back then

My granddaughter is now a qualified school teacher who still lives at home with her parents.She pays no keep, but has the very latest Apple watch which she can send emails on.These gadgets are great but then again she is not paying the electric bill for charging them up !
Or m I just being a bit of a cynical old biddy what do you all think ?
Is our consumer driven society causing folk to think that they are the 'New Poor'


JackieO

msb5262

Hi OP,
Loads of good ideas here!
As a way to get yourself back on the straight and narrow, I would suggest you keep a journal or day book - each night, make a quick note of your spending that day and also any small wins you have made e.g. made a double quantity of soup with reduced price veg, now frozen for another day, or 2 loads of washing hung out on the line, or got replacement colander in charity shop. These sound minor but they are still wins and you can encourage yourself to keep going by using this method!
HTH
MsB

mashedavocado

I really needed to read this thread. I'm going on maternity leave at the end of the year and things are going to be tight... and they're already quite tight!

But then some of it is definitely the mentality mentioned above; a lot of the stuff I think we need we probably don't. I'm 28 and my partner is 30 so we're true millennials we had a very nice disposable income before my daughter came along, and now we don't have so much, and it's only going to get less when #2 arrives...

I find it very hard to have willpower. I know all about budgeting. I worked for 4 years as a debt advisor so it's embarrassing that I can't apply the same principles to myself that I used to advise other people on! I find when I'm pregnant it's even harder not to cave to convenience - to get that takeaway after a long day and tough bedtime, that coffee after a particularly bad night's sleep.

I need to sort myself out. And my partner. Change is definitely needed!

lessonlearned

Definitely Jackie........people have higher expectations today -I think much of it led by advertising and global capitalism. I think wanting to copy the celebs is also a big part of it.

"It's no longer I think, therefore I am" - it's "I consume, therefore I exist".

And what is worse is that society has become extremely wasteful, consuming mindlessly, depleting precious resources and causing pollution. When I go to the recycling plant - to take garden rubbish because our council no longer collects it - I am often appalled at what people throw out - perfectly good furniture and mountains of clothing and textiles.

When we were younger yes we were happy with nowt because there was nowt......:rotfl: most ordinary people were in the same boat. We knew no different. Only the very rich consumed to any great degree.

Most people learned to be inventive, probably out of necessity rather than choice but old habits die hard don't they. I find the conspicuous consumption of modern life very distasteful.

£1k for a designer handbag......madness.

I was 13 when I fell in love with John Lennon, boys, clothes and pop music..... Not necessarily in that order.;) I was fashion mad and wanted all the trendy gear but had no money. As you say no bank of mum and dad to the rescue. I got a Saturday job and I was given a second hand sewing up machine for my 13th birthday and that was it, I was off..........

Within a matter of weeks I learned how to make all my clothes. I was a Mod - MAry Quant had nothing on me.:rotfl: What I couldn't do with 5 shillings worth of fabric.......good quality fabric was 2sh. 11d a yard from our local market. I could make a mini dress out of a yard and a half. I would buy a bit extra and make my 4 year old sister a dress with the leftovers.

Before the advent of tights we wore stockings......lol. Rather than throw them out when one leg was laddered I used to make "stocking soup" - I used to boil up my mums and mine odd good stockings that were different colours until they were all the same colour.

When tights first came out they were really expensive. If you laddered one leg of your tights you would cut them up and wear with the good leg of another pair. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.........

I have been hard up several times in my life but the skills learnt back then have often stood me in good stead.

I often cook some of those old cheap meals my mum used to cook, especially in the winter, good hearty "working class grub" .

As dad would say "that'll stick to yer ribs and put hairs on yer chest" .:rotfl: