Ongoing Journey to being a Frugalista..

jwil

Those are great posts Brizzle, you are doing so well :T

brizzlegirl

Thanks lovelies! I do love these threads. So much support....

Everything meal planned but have taken advantage of the fishmongers free scraps to make stock and now we are having fish chowder this evening. Can’t wait!! All from stores apart from some prawns and some parsley.. :T

Work diary has imploded but an excellent byproduct has been no more travel for me this week. Happy days. I can sit on conference calls at home and don’t have to commute... as I have said so many times... standing on a rail platform or in a car or waiting for a bus is SUPER overrated!! :rotfl: The other issue is that when I work away I can’t always carry enough food and hot drinks to get me through the day... so yet more expense. I am like a snail with its house on its back as it is...


Am away with dear friends for an annual trip next weekend - mostly paid for, but not travel. So I am planning to go by coach. Is very cheap - much cheaper than train and of course I won’t have a car. In fact with an advance ticket I probably will spend less than even putting fuel in a car. Not sure but must be close.

brizzlegirl

Whoops. Hit send before I was ready. We don’t plan to have a car but have also said if the price is not right we will step back. It’s a big divestment and we need to get it right.

OH has picked up some more overtime which is extra pressure on the domestic front but fab from a money point of view.

Hope everyone has a good evening -

Brizzle x

beanielou

All good

brizzlegirl

Hi everyone

Yep life is good - despite a growing YNAB obsession on the part of my OH .... still could be worse I guess!!

We are officially car less and are waiting for the money to hit our account shortly. It’s a good move and quite a momentous thing to give up something that we took for granted for the first 20 years or so of being together. It will pay off my tax bill and the fee for starting my side hustle which is a training course. It will also have something spare for paying down the cards. We get unused tax and car insurance back too.

We did our first car club journey at the weekend - really straight forward and easy. If you’re in a city and don’t use a car much then do look into it. When you take into account depreciation and potential repair costs etc it may well be worth moving to a share scheme like a club.

OH is also getting FL money and we are being very frugal. No eating out. Very few treats and lots of TV watching and having friends over to ours. It is a definitely a calmer spend rate in our house at the moment.

Hope everyone has a good day

Brizzle x

brizzlegirl

Oh and yep going by coach for the weekend.... 1/3 price of a train fare and only a few minutes longer each way...

#makingbetterchoices

I like this

PS in case anyone is worried about OH, he will be away for work for a few weeks in a bit, so he will need to stop feverishly budgeting and shuffling and reshuffling... I will need to do it instead. But I will limit myself to once a day

lucielle

It sounds like you've both got this sussed! Excellent work.
L

beanielou

Wow. Just wow.
I am in awe xx

brizzlegirl

Hi all :hello:

Hope everyone is ok.

Life trundles on. Now after the car sale we have enough money for the tax bill and I have paid for my training course. Such a relief :j We have also paid off another chunk off a CC and that should be fully paid off in Jan - more screams and whoops Trying to live frugally but did buy an Xmas present for DD2 yesterday albeit with a JL discount.. and we were away over the weekend which was a small spend. Maybe £50 so for an experience weekend could have been much worse I guess... restraint on the alcohol front certainly was a positive factor!

I am also going to try and lose 4kg before Christmas. Am fed up with my weight creeping slowly up plus it heightens my diabetes risk. This together with a vegan daughter means I am going to try and eat more plants and drink more water and properly do the Louise Parker plan for 6 weeks. On Day 4....I’ll keep you posted! I think MSE and dietary/lifestyle changes go very well together so am planning to sort both at the same time

Have a good day all, hope everyone is doing well

X

PurpleFairy26

That sounds fabulous that you’ve been able to make those payments after giving up the car. A change for us has made us think about going down to 1 car but for now we are just going to swap one for a much smaller, cheaper one. That will save us considerable ££.

A recent change for me has meant I am now following a strict diet for medical reasons. It’s sort of plant based but with fish and eggs allowed. I’ve had my first experience of vegan yogurt this week and it was good in a recipe I made. We’ve had some lovely meals. I’d recommend looking at ‘Bowls of Goodness’ by Nina Olson. I got it from the library (insert halo! ) and there are some lovely recipes in there.