2020 Frugal Living Challenge

Scrimps

I would like to join please.  We've had some expensive an ill times so we have strayed from the frugal path a bit.  We no longer had debt but are trying to make sure we save a fixed amount at least per month and then save for extras too, the extras being things like a holiday.  Putting the savings money into premium bonds on pay day has really helped but we have spent all our food and fuel money half way through the month so I am really hoping to get it back on track from Feb pay day on the 25th.

We're going back to shopping at Aldi and making more frugal dinners for us two adults but we're really struggling with the kids.  Child 1 is a fussy 2 year old who seems to have some sensory aversions around food (nothing soft/squishy/wriggly) as well as refusing veg and child 2 is a 1 year old with expensive tastes - avacados and ellas kitchen pouches are the only things that reliably get eaten by him!  Child1 used to love home cooking, we could get all sorts of foods into him and he seemed to enjoy it, when his younger brother arrived it started getting refused. Child2 hasnt shown the same willingness for lentil bolognaise with hidden veg that his older brother did at the same age.
We get child 1 involved in cooking a fair bit, he has a little helper step and I give him some kind of job to do. He has been helping me sow seeds in the greenhouse these last few days too.  Im hoping to get a jump on spring and get a few early crops from the greenhouse before we fill it with the summer toms and peppers etc. I havent been able to get that nvolved in the garden the last few years as Ive either been pregnant and prepping the house for baby or ive had a brand new baby.  This year it will be toddlers keeping me on my toes but I hope to make it productive and help save on some money.  The ill health is showing that we could do with some extra vitamins too!

Other frugal things I have been doing - sewing things to fix them.  When something rips, especially if its some kind of pyjama wear I just sew it and hope for another year out of it.  The '1 more year' rule has kept my flip flops going into their 3rd '1 more year' since I first thought abut replacing them - theyre OK really, the tatty bit is mostly hidden by my feet when im wearing them.  I

Siebrie

You're doing really well, scrimps! I found it really hard focussing with small kids around, and their changing tastes! They both had fases where they loved olives, and now they abhor anything bitter. We have had a time where we just served all the ingredients for a sauce raw. Husband and I would eat pasta with the sauce, dds would eat pasta with the ingredients of the sauce: carrots, tomato slices, some fresh basil of the plant, etc. It was the simplest way for me.

BelleBaluu

Hi everyone. Just wanted to post an update to let you all know how I’m getting on. Thanks to this forum, I’m seeing a real difference in the cash I have left at the end of the week/month. 

In case it’s of interest to others, here’s the things that have helped me most:-
- ask myself is this a  need or a want before I buy anything
- taking extra time to meal plan, concentrating on not wasting food and eating to use up ingredients rather than throwing things out coz we fancied something else 
- making better use of my freezer
- I also downloaded the Wallet app and am using this to track spends on food and fuel, which is the areas I was most wasteful on before.
These changes have resulted in me being able to save more than I normally might have been able to, do feels like I’ve given myself a pay rise! 😋

cw18

I'm starting to get the hang of the discount shopping system I have access to through work....

Had to go for an x-ray after work today, which put me fairly close to a Sainsbugs - which is somewhere I rarely visit, but is the only place I can find an item I like to keep in my grocery cupboards that I've actually been out of stock of for a few months now!!   There were a couple of other bits I wanted that were actually as cheap from there as elsewhere, so I went into the system and purchased a £5 voucher for £4.75 as I figured I was going to spend around that (have to buy in full £ increments, but if I don't spend it all the balance remains available for 24 months after I last used it).   Found a few extra bits I decided to pick up (some in chilled food reductions, some reduce to clear items that will make good stocking fillers for the three youngest I buy for, a magazine for me which is a rare treat, and a very special - if a bit pricey! - bar of chocolate for my OH as part of his Valentine's pressie) so it ended up coming it at almost £13 - which simply meant that before I went to the till all I had to do was use my phone to visit the website and buy another £8 voucher for £7.60.     So that's a total of £12.35 out of my bank, a £12.68 shop brought home, and still 32p in credit for next time I nip in.    It's never going to save me a huge amount of money, but it's still pennies that will mount up

tboo

cw18 said:

and purchased a £5 voucher for £4.75

another £8 voucher for £7.60.    

Hi cw18

How's this work ^^^

Is it to do with Sainsbury's itself?

cw18

tboo said:

cw18 said:

and purchased a £5 voucher for £4.75

another £8 voucher for £7.60.    

Hi cw18

How's this work ^^^

Is it to do with Sainsbury's itself?

It's a scheme through my workplace.   We can lease new cars through salary sacrifice, get new bikes the same kind of way, and buy additional annual leave - all things I was told about in my first year of working for them.    But having been there just over 4 years I've only just discovered we also have access to discounted vouchers for a number of retailers and cashback on a number of websites (without having to pay membership fees for the best deals and have a minimum balance before you can withdraw your money like you often do with those open to everyone - though I will continue to compare what I get through work against my free Quidc0 and similar accounts if/when I'm looking to buy something from one of those places, and changing my ISP within the next month will be the first big test of this).

tboo

Thanks Cw18

pressed submit too early

I'm off to have a look on Unisons web site to see if anything catches my eye

willow_loulou

Just back from my Aldi shop, £31.03 - I’m very happy with that. My budget this month (until 2 March) is £100 
i popped into Home Bargains for carpet cleaner and wallpaper paste and got both for 79p each! I splashed out on a tin of San pelligrino at 49p 😍 I was very thirsty. My new medication seems to be having a dehydration effect. I would normally just have a drink of water but my bottle broke. I need to find an easy clean reusable bottle from somewhere. 

Herbyme

Scrimps, I don't know if this helps, but when mine were little their greatest treat was what we called 'snacky tea'. It basically consisted of cubes of/small ones of everything they'd eat, eg cubes of cheese, cherry tomatoes, sticks of cucumber/carrot/pepper, breadsticks especially mini ones, or small crackers, defrosted peas (take ages to eat!), big beans eg chick peas, butterbeans, grapes... you get the idea. Somehow it mostly seemed to get eaten without too much supervision and at least I didn't mind eating any leftovers, unlike eg fish fingers. Also somehow it was less stressful as I didn't have to keep pressuring them to eat, maybe they felt like they had more of a choice. Mine have also been very fussy but now will eat almost anything, even kale!!! (Well they are about 20 now! it might take a long time but they do get better!).
We used to do a thing called 'salami hats' as part of this 'feast' - take round slice of salami, cut a radius into it, overlap cut edges a bit, press together - salami 'hat' (well, pointy thing!). We still joke about them now 

Frugalistamama

Really pleased I only spent £25 on groceries this week and made a good dent in my freezer so I can start batch cooking. I just used 500g mince beef into bolognaise, added lots of veg and lentils and portioned it up into 4 meals so that's 16 portions! The mince was a yellow sticker item too! One portion will be left out for hubby while I'm away, 3 dinners made for the freezer. 😄
Feeling much more in control of my spending. Half term this week so it's going to be a challenge with the food and keeping the kiddos entertained! Think playdates are in order. Making a trip so will have to spend about £40 on petrol but will try to take food and drinks so I'm not forced to spend while on route.