2019 Frugal Living Challenge

mummy2threeboys

cw18..Would love to see Meal plans we saved about £20 but using this method. I'm sure there was a very tight budget plan on one of the past frugal years?

Re threatening to leave companies for cost saving, Why does it always have to come to that? My Sk-eye Has increased £20 because I have a landline I do not use, They lied and said no-one Does Broadband only , Yes E-E does, so they took the phone line off for 18 months but It went back off again this month, So I will renew or swap.

Capricorn, If you have been diagnosed with Allergies by the Dr you may well get help with food on prescription. My son was very allergic to all Dairy as a baby (Couldn't even keep my milk down as of course I ate dairy..if only someone had said remove it from my diet, it may have helped!), Very underweight, thankfully he grew out of it by the time he was two, so now just intolerant rather than full on Allergic.

DawnW..Gardening..humm The last 3 years we have had bad crops, I am wondering if it is because whilst we use New (yet re-used ie composted back in) That is why? Odd though as we did have about 5 years of no stop lettuce, beans/peas toms and courgettes ..last few years shocking!

Choclover..That is the best way I find for the kiddies to learn, also we found it helped them to eat what they had grown, Plus soil and gardening is amazing for mood boosting!

Mooloo gosh you need to have words with you Ds, My brother did the same to my mum , i'm so sorry

Allie..Re Holidays do you know anyone who (A friend/relative) Who would like a house sitter? We did belong to a house sitting site but its £100 (Unless you find a discount somewhere) To sign up, takes ages to find anyone to agree as people like to take on those with reviews..and when you do get sits not everyone leaves a review, Plus the cost of travel, extra food and I feel a need to leave their house in perfect condition, when you have kids it kind of leaves you on edge!

3 nsd. Yesterday spent £40 on a year long art program for middle son , a saving of £77, because I signed up with a large group. (We have been Home educators for 7 years, and middle son is taking Art Awards and Art Gcse). I Also have £70 to pay for IGCSE exam soon. But that is all our educational spends this year, Other than a load of printer ink and paper..I even managed a free access to a site as I had done so many reviews :P

Anyway see you soon, sorry for the long chat!

skint_chick

CapricornLass wrote: »

Biggest problem areas for me
1) Food. My family is riddled with coeliacs, and in addition, one son is allergic to caisin in milk and nuts and I have nuts and coconut to worry about as well as gluten. Other son's girlfriend is allergic to eggs. For us, the problem is not so much downgrading to a cheaper option as to find any option. I bake and cook almost everything from scatch, but scourcing and buying suitable ingredients can be difficult, and expensive.

I follow a modified paleo diet to help with my autoimmune diseases, and for my carbs use sweet potato starch noodles from the Asian supermarket - they're about a pound a kg. I also use cassava flour (also from Asian supermarket) to make bread and pizza bases. I didn't think there was casein in coconut as it's not an actual nut? I make my own coconut milk from whole coconuts as the supermarket ones add a whole lots of stabilisers and rice starch and I prefer natural. I even make my own coconut yoghurt with my InstantPot - I live on a lot of cheaper meat cuts slow cooked with homegrown or cheap in season veggies. I usually have a reaction to gluten free specialist products because I can't eat nightshade vegetables like white potatoes either and that's usually what's in the bread and biscuits etc.

I've set my budget at £5,578 not including mortgage or council tax. There's 2 of us plus our rabbit Poppy.
Food £1,900
Gas and electricity £700
Petrol £400
Home insurance £120
Presents £120
Social life £120 (I don't drink alcohol)
Travel insurance £50
Clothes £250
Car insurance £300
Car tax £115
Haircuts £84
TV licence £149
Broadband, phone, and TV £325
Mobiles £456 - we both recently got new phones
Life and critical illness cover £489

I hope to be under on the food budget as I've been doing online surveys which gives me a £10 Tesco voucher every 2/3weeks. I meal plan, shop at the Asian supermarket and Lidl for staples and everything is made from scratch, we only eat out maybe 3 or 4 times a year. For holidays we usually go Eurocamp or equivalent in Europe out of school holidays, this year we're talking about either renting an apartment in Poland or Portugal depending on when we can get away. Budget is around £500 for us both for a week.

Haven't bought any food since 21st December, for Xmas we just got a small turkey crown and some sausages and bacon and a couple of bottles of beer for OH and a bottle of Schloer for me that we wouldn't usually. I'm off to Switzerland in just over a week to visit my new nephew, so will just be getting veggies this week to add to all the freezer food that OH will be using up while I'm away.

cw18

mummy2threeboys wrote: »

cw18..Would love to see Meal plans we saved about £20 but using this method. I'm sure there was a very tight budget plan on one of the past frugal years?

Unfortunately mine won't be low budget. I have a horrifically high grocery budget of £35 a week just for me that I struggle to stick to - and that's just for food with absolutely no alcohol, take-aways or eating out (not even a butty from a supermarket for lunch). I'm lactose intolerant which gets worse when I do a lot of exercise, and I plan to do lots more of that next year. I also have to watch fat intake (trying to control my cholesterol by diet so I can continue to tell my GP where to stick the statins), and they consider me to be at high risk of type 2 diabetes (making high levels of refined sugar yet another thing to watch out for when I food shop) Add to that the fact I burn over 1000 calories a day at work (without my additional exercise), and it means I also have to have large portions with lots of protein even while trying to lose weight - I'm basically eating for 2 all the time !!!!!!

cuddlymarm

Hi Cheryl
Don’t forget that your good health is more important than a low food spend. If you get ill in the long run it will cost you more so you must spend what is necessary for you.
OH and I are doing SW at the moment and although it’s not a madly expensive diet we could eat cheaper. But it’s worth the extra to lose the weight to get and keep good health. We have started to eat less meat though. We are lucky that we can afford what’s necessary, I know lots of people on here cannot and have to balance their food budget against other costs. We all have to try our best to do what’s best for us and ours.
Cuddles

lantanna

cw18 wrote: »

Unfortunately mine won't be low budget. I have a horrifically high grocery budget of £35 a week just for me that I struggle to stick to - and that's just for food with absolutely no alcohol, take-aways or eating out (not even a butty from a supermarket for lunch). I'm lactose intolerant which gets worse when I do a lot of exercise, and I plan to do lots more of that next year. I also have to watch fat intake (trying to control my cholesterol by diet so I can continue to tell my GP where to stick the statins), and they consider me to be at high risk of type 2 diabetes (making high levels of refined sugar yet another thing to watch out for when I food shop) Add to that the fact I burn over 1000 calories a day at work (without my additional exercise), and it means I also have to have large portions with lots of protein even while trying to lose weight - I'm basically eating for 2 all the time !!!!!!

Why the large portions? What job to you do?

cw18

lantanna wrote: »

Why the large portions? What job to you do?

I'm a postie. I've averaged 7 miles of walking per working day this year, but because of carrying the post (and pushing heavy trolleys) and all the stretching and turning it gives a much higher calorie burn than just walking would do (I use a heart rate monitor so know where I'm at with it). Work plus exercise this year has earned me an average of 1130 calories a day - every day, not just working days.

My exercise plans for 2019 are to complete 3521 miles of walking, running, cycling and swimming (I'm on 2840 for this year). My base targets are 621.4 miles (1000km) of running, 380 miles of recreational/commute walking, 500 miles of cycling and 26 miles of swimming. By the time I add in the walking I expect to do at work (as a minimum) I reckon I still have another 380 miles to find by going over and above those targets. Cycling to work an average of twice a week instead of once would give me another 600 miles, assuming it was always to my official office and I wasn't being loaned out as often happens !!!

gien

I'd like to join in and be more active this year - I often read last year's thread but just wasn't;t very good at posting. Have just completed our annual summary for our accounts and then my DH and I will be having a look at how to budget for next year, where we can cut back etc over the next couple of days. It's been a difficult year for us in many ways - one child setting up alone with his first job, another still in uni being big costs for us. My DH's work has been intermittent so that lead to uncertainty and we had a couple of really big unexpected expenses (boiler...car....) which knocked us off kilter a bit. I'm now crossing my fingers that everything will go well for the next few months and we can get back on track. Luckily I start in a new job in mid january which is better paid and more interesting so I'm excited for that.

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skint_chick

cw18 wrote: »

My exercise plans for 2019 are to complete 3521 miles of walking, running, cycling and swimming (I'm on 2840 for this year). My base targets are 621.4 miles (1000km) of running, 380 miles of recreational/commute walking, 500 miles of cycling and 26 miles of swimming.

Wow! Love that you have exercise goals - I have always had a goal to get fitter but this seems like a better way of breaking it down. I rarely walk anywhere because I'm self employed so don't have one place of work and none of the places I work are near enough to home. I did a really challenging hike to the top of Europe's highest waterfall last summer and was so proud of myself, so this year I would like to take more long walks and be in nature more. I'll have to think abut realistic distance targets!

cw18

skint_chick wrote: »

Wow! Love that you have exercise goals - I have always had a goal to get fitter but this seems like a better way of breaking it down.

I've signed up to a challenge run by an American company (which comes with a multi-part medal that's cost rather more than I wanted to pay, but there's nothing like it here in the UK and I did sit and debate it for about 6 weeks before signing up). It's basically a 3521 mile coast-to-coast route you do virtually, and you see video footage of the stretches as you go, as well as earning stickers for reaching certain places and chunks of the medal at intervals. It doesn't have to be completed in 12 months (some people have been at it 2.5 years and are still working at it), but the alternative for a 'large' annual total is a walk/run the year (so 2019 miles) which is well below what I've done in 2018 making it far too easy and not a challenge at all.

All my distances are medal related.

I've signed up for 1000km of running (though I can claim the medal for walking or a mix if I don't make the running distance, and I have 50k, 100k, and 500k on the way up to keep me going), which is an increase from 450-ish miles in 2018 to 621.4 miles. I'm hoping to extend this to 1000 miles in 2020 :eek:

The 380 miles of recreation/commute walking is to top the running up to 1000 miles (another challenge, with a 500 mile one on the way up) - I've done over 500 miles this year, but I'm not sure which way it will go as I increase my running distance. If I start running to work on a once/twice a week basis the walking will increase (to get me home), but if I do most of my running from home it'll probably drop.

I've got my eyes on medals for 300 and 500 miles of cycling, but not signed up for either yet. There is a longer one, but I'll only sign up if I reckon I'm getting close and it's still available - both very unlikely.

The swimming was a more personal thing, but as of January a company is now offering medals for monthly swimming targets - the lowest being 2 miles (I should be able to force myself out for that as it's only one short session a week, and having a medal to earn makes it more likely I will push myself out to the pool) and the next being 5 miles (unlikely to reach that more than a couple of times in the year when I have a week off without going away). If I get their monthly medals all year I then get a (free) bonus one they engrave with the actual total distance I did



Medals (and live race entries - already signed up for 4 10k races in 2019) have become my biggest single non-essential spend, but I don't drink alcohol, smoke, buy takeaways, eat out or pay for holidays (as a general rule - we did have a couple of breaks in London this year for the Marathon and again for an NFL game I won tickets to) so I'm happy about paying for them as long as it's not putting me into debt. And using my pushbike more should reduce my car expenses (fuel and wear & tear) so that puts some money into my medals pot

Frugaldom

Welcome newbies! Can I take this opportunity to remind everyone that we have 11 years of challenges already listed on here with links to them all in post 1. If you have a question about anything, try using the search function on the forums and that way you should be able to bring up past results. There are also several links in post 1 that should be helpful to newcomers and possibly excellent reminders for our diehards who are sticking with their frugal living attempts. It's great reading about each and every success and we're always here for those who keep finding themselves back on the slippery slope of debt. Good luck to all for 2019.