2020 Frugal Living Challenge

PipneyJane

Happy New Year everyone

I’m feeling quite smug with myself. I did my tax return last night - 29 days before the deadline - and HMRC owe me £152. That will go to the Car Fund.

Hayleswildventure wrote: »

Hi again everyone ��

We spent NYE sorting our finance spreadSheet and setting our budgets.

We are ending 2019 with £1500. Really pleased we are ending in the black !

Monthly budgets after bills - DH will have £100 expendable in his current account, I’ll have £50 and in our joint account we’ll have £720. Joint account covers all fuel and food, as well as family activities.

I’m curious how everyone’s food bill is so cheap?? This is a major priority for us. We are a family of five - me and DH, DD1 (13), DD2 (4) and DS (4 months - breastfed so no expenditure there!). Our weekly supermarket shop can be £90, probably the least if ever is is £70. This does include other things like cat food, laundry powder, etc.

I am going to swap from Tesco to Aldi to save money. I meal plan every dinner and try and do a meal that will have leftovers for the freezer each week.

Any suggestions for a cheaper food shop??

Thanks x

You may find things easier if you segregate some of your grocery money into different pots. There’s two adults in our home and (currently) no pets. Our monthly “housekeeping” breaks down as follows:-

£120 General supermarket/farm shop spending (tracked in the Grocery Challenge)
£ 40 Meat Fund (saved up for quarterly visits to the butcher)
£ 40 Bulk Fund (spent on bulk purchases, eg flour, rice, wine)
£ 20 Christmas Fund (for the goose and the Christmas tree)
£ 10 Garden Fund (spent on seeds, tools, raised beds, chip bark)
———-
£230
====

We contribute half each to the various pots. The Grocery Challenge money and the Meat Fund are cash, while the rest are savings accounts. We do one large supermarket shop a month, plus fortnightly trips to the local farm shop (Despite my best veg-growing endeavours, most of our fresh veg comes from the Farm Shop at Osterley Park). There are weekly top-up shops for fresh yoghurts and milk, but these come to less than £10 each. Most of my toiletries are L!dl’s own brands.

What type of food do you like to eat? We eat plenty of meat and fish, and rarely have takeaways. We eat a lot of curries, Chinese and Italian dishes but not a lot of “meat and two veg” type meals, all cooked from scratch. We take leftovers for lunch and, since virtually every recipe feeds 4, I dish up our lunchboxes at the same time as our meals to ensure portion control.

If you want help cutting down your food bills, please join us in the monthly Grocery Challenge.

HTH

- Pip

LemonadeBudget

Yesterday was a NSD in that I took lunch to work, skipped the £3 meal deal I'd ended up purchasing daily in December through sheer tiredness (I knowww, I know).

However I do get very bored of solely eating cold lunches at work, so did invest in a Sistema soup mug for £4 today. Theory being if I can mix up a soup, a cup of dhal, a little portion of pasta to heat up now and then I'm more likely to stick to taking in lunches. Endless sandwiches would bore me to tears

lykkelig

Congrats on the HMRC refund Pip. The tax wo/man won't be rubbing their hands quite so enthusiasticly this year.

Today I beeswaxed my leather boots so as to care for my investment and started on some winter gardening jobs in the potager - pruning and removing spent perennials.

never_too_old

Afternoon all

Trying to declutter my food cupboards now so ive listed a number of items on Olio.Aim to focus mainly on emptying my freezer,food cupboards and toiletries. Im working towards being plastic free and more environmentally friendly this year.:D

Crafty_Lisa_Hampshire

It looks as if I have a lot of catching up to do on the messages so far. I will have a read back after this message. I have sorted my budget properly now using the spreadsheet. I started using it last year a few weeks in and I didn't do it properly but it helped me gauge where my spends were etc. This year I have put the figures in properly for the year so I will be interested to see if I have done it accurately. I am so confident with my spending now I have booked a caravan holiday for me, my sister and her boys when school finishes. This has been quite an expense but I have some savings already and I can save the rest over the next four months (especially as we get two months free of council tax). My sister is going to contribute as well but I thought as long as I have the money I can book it and then she can pay me back her bit. I am so excited that I am managing to go away again. That will be two years on the trot I have had a holiday booked after many years of no holiday. I can only put that down to joining this forum.


Thanks.

Frugallife

I’m in for 2020. Created new username to sort debt out, but not posted on there, as it’s a long story and I’m currently in soft play with DS1 and DS2. Around £55k of debt and grocery spends crazy. Just put all info on YOLT and it’s helping so far.

natnat13

Hayleswildventure wrote: »

Does anyone use Receipt Hog? Is it safe? X

Yes I used to use receipt hog, had a few amazon vouchers from them. It then stopped working for me though.

natnat13

I have had a positive couple of days.

I listed 20 items on ebay yesterday, which I find tedious but I have already sold and posted one item, only a few £ but it all helps. I have more to list so will do another batch on Sunday.

I went shopping today, got just what I needed and no extras. I'm cooking burgers tonight whereas we would normally have a Friday night takeout.

I also cleaned my car inside and out which is a job I hate and would normally pay someone to do but I cracked on and got it done.

I'm planning to have a quiet weekend before I go back to work on Monday. I'm going to make some soup to take and make overnight oats for breakfast as these are quick, cheap and healthy. I'm also going to utilise the slow cooker more, I used to use it a lot but haven't so much recently.

thrifty-hayley

Couple of little wins today. I've been home for xmas but travelling back to work on Sunday so needed to fill up and clean my car (muck and salt spray from driving up the motorway had it absolutely filthy) My grandad had a 10p off a litre voucher for sbury's so that saved me £2.50 off the tank and like natnat13 I decided to wash it myself. I quite enjoyed washing my car in the summer in shorts and a tshirt, not such a nice job in January :rotfl:

I've also got a rough meal plan and shopping list for the month and will be hitting Ald1 on my way home. I try to do one big shop a month and top up with milk/bread when needed. I live alone so pick a few meals to make a month and reheat or freeze the leftovers. It requires a bit of forward planning and meal prepping but I've found it can slash my grocery shopping bill to only £60-£80 a month depending on what household bits I need.

Also signed up to a few survey sites over xmas and have been working hard on those. They are a weird mix of tedious and addictive!

Congrats on the tax refund PipneyJane, result! :T

3secondmemory

:)Thinking of bookmarking this thread.

I had a disastrous year last year and haven’t quite bounced back. I’m starting 2020 £900 overdrawn!

Once I’ve paid my rent and overdraft I’ve £201 for all my bills and food.

The best thing I’ve done this year so far is to send off my application for a disabled bus pass. That will be a huge saving - i’m kicking myself for not getting round to have done it months ago.

I’m inspired to think I actually could get through the month.:)