2019 Frugal Living Challenge

Savvy_sewing

I bought my groceries at Aldi on my way back from my holiday. £59.87
I am trying to work out the costs of my meals etc.
Petrol was £30 as I was on empty
Cinema treat for Dgd was £14.48 she bought the snacks with her Christmas money.
We had a chippy on Friday with my friend instead of the usual trip to the pub, so only Spent £7.50 instead of the usual £20 plus.

I get my milk delivered, yes it is dearer but I like to have the milk on the door step in the mornings, and am happy to pay a little more. So that is £10.85 a week but it includes smoothies and fruit juices too.

System

Afternoon everybody. Just catching up on a few things.
Last night I sat and cut up old Christmas cards to make gift tags for next year. Going to see if I can get hold of a pair of pinking shears to make them look nicer. Think MIL may have some.


Went through my PJ drawer and got rid of a few old ones, which I intend to cut up and make polishing cloths. Hoping to go through a load more stuff this week as I am going to be off work still recovering.


Have a nice evening everyone.

TryinToDoItRight

The ideas on this thread are great.
I am attempting to clear my debt. I managed to tackle a third of the debt last year..but continued to spend on the credit card.

As of mid December haven't used my credit card once...which is pretty big for me.

My big issues are over spending on food and clothes. Ive not bought any new clothes since mid December...a challenge with all the sales.

However food spend still needs attention...since 1st Jan I have already spent £40+ on takeaways. So..I need to do much better.

I've had 2 'no spend days' in a row now. Tonight ..after raiding the freezer..I found some veggie sausages and will be making hotdogs, chips and beans tonight.

Will be taking on board everyones ideas with interest and hopefully will help to contribute!

Whippet1

Biggest spending day so far for 2019. Petrol £27, bag of chips £2.50. Yet another waste of £5 for a scratchcard. That's a total wastage of £10 so far this year in the lottery.

Katie_j

My kids have decided they don't like the new frugal me and didn't bother to ask for extras in the shopping! Doing quite well with accounting for every spend.

SarahC74

Gosh, the thread is moving so fast I've only just caught up, but so many amazing ideas, thank you all so much.

We now have the budget spreadsheet completed, thank you Frugledom. It's higher than I would like at almost £13,000 a year, but, now we know and we can start reducing from here.

We've audited the freezers, meal planned for the week and shopped today. I just bought what we need for this week, although that includes a number of items that will last weeks/months (potatoes, flour etc.), and some for batch cooking (lentil Ragu eaten with 6 more portions cooling down). Going to make flapjacks for DH to take to work rather than buying bars, and they've said eating "small" (cheap!) crisps at work aren't filling, so no buying crisps either :-) So all in all, meals for the week and food to batch cook with for less than £20.

Proudest recent moment was making stock with a chicken carcass and amazing soup from it. Never done it before and feeling very clever �� We've also had four ns days of 6 so far so all good. Really feeling we can do this, even appreciating it will be a long journey.

Good luck all!

The_Lady_Sarah

Wow!
Lots of inspiration here....
I'm quite good at selling stuff but don't seem to make progress on my Overdrafts or Credit Cards so think I need to be more frugal!
So here goes.....

spudsmum

Hi all,

Not much going on here - 2 NSD on Friday and Saturday. Had a small spend today - fish and chips for lunch - however it was a cheaper alternative than Sunday lunch out and we got 3 small portions to share between the 5 of us and bulked it out with bread and butter!

Back to work tomorrow so that should make it easier to be frugal. Not needing any food shopping as still mainly living on Christmas leftovers, I've given husband his pocket money and I still have £51.30 left in my purse from this weeks budget to last until Friday.

Really not looking forward to going back to work at all after 2 weeks off but it will be nice to get back into my routine I guess.

RebeccaAnn

Wow, lots of you have quite small outgoings. I have been playing around with our spreadsheet for weeks and cannot get the outgoings under 20k. Our biggest issue is my commute. If we move we save on the car maintenance and fuel but then would be paying a lot more for a house

nannygladys

Hi everyone
Another nsd for me, but I have been out helping youngest clear her rented house out, so I have a car full of 'stuff' for the tip and CS as she works fulltime and I don't work!! (retired) Shes bought her first house - yay!!! so that's one of my jobs for tomorrow.

Lunch and dinner tonight was from stores, but not sure how much longer I can do this as I feel uncomfortable with my pantry stocks going down too much, at least the Christmas food has found good homes (dds) and Im not living off cake, biscuits etc!!

So tomorrow should be spend free as well and I will have to have another look in the freezer at some point as it doesn't seem to be getting any emptier.

Have a good day frugalling tomorrow
Nannyg