Frugal, thrifty, make do, mend! Let this debt come to an end!

Elisheba

Hello, hello, hello,

Sorry again for the long absence. I'm doing well, @Slowdown, just haven't gotten around to posting in a while!

I am being particularly thrifty this afternoon, and have boiled a pot of water on the multi fuel stove and put it in a Stanley flask for hot drinks for the evening. Then I put a portion of pearl barley risotto I had in the fridge in the pot, and now it is heating up on the stove for my dinner.  May as well if I have the stove lit anyway - no point paying extra for electricity to do what the coal I have already paid for will do anyway.

I have been brooding a bit of late about how I don't see how I am ever going to get a deposit together for a house while I am still young enough to get a mortgage I can afford.  It's a problem. However, as I have reminded myself - while I am still paying off £200 a month on the old debts I can't even begin to start saving and so need to just focus on that for the moment.

Once that is gone there are some options - possibly a deposit free mortgage for a few years if I'm able to move to the area of Scotland I like, and I'd be closer to my family. Just not sure if I can swing it with work. I wouldn't be able to borrow enough where I am now in Wales on the deposit free mortgage option. And yes, deposit free is higher interest, but I'm currently paying £750pm in totally non recoverable rent, so anything is better value than that. 

So next year I need to really rein things in. This year I bought a lot of stuff for the house as I had just moved, and I probably took my eye off the ball a bit to much. Yes, I was budgeting and writing down all my spending but I spent a lot more than I needed on stuff, and my food budget was too high.

So next year it's definitely a case of writing down something if I want it and waiting 30 days to see if I still need it or can do without. And then have a think about whether it's something someone could get me for my birthday or Xmas. 

And with food it's going to be meal planning all the way, and seeing where else I can cut back. For example, I eat a lot of natural yogurt. I add it to my breakfast muesli, and I have it on its own with a dollop of honey for a pudding. I probably spend between £10-20 a month on it, and as a fermented food it is super healthy. But I know how to make my own yogurt. I have an Instant Pot and it is really easy - so why am I spending so much money on something I could make for at least half the price?

Same with pizza - I have a breadmaker, it's literally just weighing a few things and pressing a button, but I'm not organised, and I forget to make the dough and then I go out and buy one at £4 a pop, and I emd up really thirsty in the middle of the night because the supermarket pizzas are so full of salt.

Things that don't take much actual time, but just require a bit of organisation are the things I want to focus on. I know it would be cheaper if I went back to doing a monthly shop at Aldi!, but it is such hard work lugging all the heavy pet food into the car, and then out and into the house, and the whole trip takes so much time, that I still think that doing a T£sco order is worth it although it's more expensive.

So in the spirit of being more organised, the meal plan for next week is -
Monday - more pearl barley butternut squash risotto
Tues and Wed - hm made wholemeal bread, hm soup using whatever veg I have frozen in the fridge,
Thurs - baked potato with either chilli if I have time to make it, or I know I have a portion of a tomato and veg sauce in the fridge that might be nice.
Friday - I think it's an office day, so something easy. I found some nachos in the back of the cupboard from before my healthy eating, no UPF kick, so them with cheese, chilli and yogurt? Which means I need to make chilli on Thursday. 
Saturday - I think I'm out for dinner.

Breakfast/lunch will be my hm 13+ ingredient muesli (which I'm having with hot milk as a porridge at the moment).

I've been pretty good this month so far and haven't bought too much I don't need. I did discover I can watch all the seasons of Alaska: The Last Frontier on Discovery Plus, so I paid £39.99 for a year's membership. I used to watch it on Freeview when I had it, but I don't have an aerial at this house so that's not an option, and at least this way I can watch it when I want to, so the subscription works for me. And that's my winter viewing sorted as well 🤣🤣🤣. It is over dramatised, but I find it quite good for inspiration on how to live more simply as well. 

While I've been watching my Alaska programme I have been doing some mending, so that is getting things back in circulation. One of my old cardigans needed all new buttons which I order and they arrived yesterday. So when I finish on MSE I'll put Alaska on and get those buttons sewn on, and that'll be another cardi back in use.

Right, I had better get on and get silly dog and black cat fed. I'm sure I have more MSE news but it can wait until another day. Hope everyone has had a relaxing weekend.

fionaandphil

Good to hear from you Elisheba.

We have an easy pizza dough recipe that you make with natural yoghurt and usually make 2 batches and freeze one of them. It ensures that the yoghurt doesn't go off before we use it up. You have reminded me though that we have a yoghurt setting on our airfryer so I need to check out how to use that.

Looks like a cold week on the way so looking for lots of warm and easy foods to keep us toasty. I've made soup for tomorrow lunch and have a sausage casserole for tea.

dawnybabes

I always forget about the yogurt pizza - Know what I will be making this week 🤣🤣

Slowdown

Lovely to see you back Elisheba. 😊
Your new money saving ideas have inspired me to get on with bread making and I think I’ll look into seeing if can make my own yoghurt too. I’ll let you know how far I get with that! 

I had a cardi that ended up with a variety of buttons on it because they fell off one after the other and I replaced them with whatever I had 😂

I seem to waste a lot of money on food. I really need more creative menu planning with what I already have in the house rather than going out for yet more. 

Looking forward to more updates. 

KajiKita

With the pizza dough, could you make it as a batch and then freeze it in individual portions, so all you have to do is get it out on the morning of when you want a pizza, to defrost? 

I think you are doing remarkably well. House moving is ALWAYS horribly costly with lots of unexpected expenses or needs and a disruption to your routine that inevitably creates more costs as well, for a while until things settle into a new rhythm again. Have you seen Ladywithaplan’s thread - she’s aiming to buy in London, on her own, freehold, with a private garden - tough call! I suspect her earning capacity is greater in someways, but you might be encouraged by her approach or pick up ideas from her thread? 

And I am totally with you on the T0sco’s delivery - we can’t spare the time either, *and* we always get distracted by the siren temptations of things not on the list when we are actually in a supermarket! 😉 😂

KK

Elisheba

Good morning, frugal friends,

Oh my goodness, isn't it chilly! I'm still in bed with a coffee, but I had to be very brave to get up to feed the monkeys and make said coffee! I'm still at the stage where I love it though. Pretty snow (although not much settled here) and frosty days. Feels properly seasonal.

I have heard of yogurt pizza but never tried making it yet @fionaandphil. Must give it a go at some point. The yogurt setting on your Instant Pot just sets the sous vide to the right temperature for fermenting the yogurt, but if you don't have that setting you can do it manually but googling the right temperature. 

I do make 4 lots of pizza dough at once @KajiKita, and freeze 3 of them. I'm just completely out of the frozen batches at the moment. I don't think I have looked at @LadyWithAPlan diary, so I'll see if I can get a chance to check it out.  Thanks for the rec 😁.

So frugal things so far this week. Well, I've been going back to basics with hot water. The shower heats itself with electricity when I use it, but for any other hot water I need to put the boiler on for an hour or so, and I almost never bother unless I want a bath as it feels like a lot of oil to use.

I'm currently trying to space out showers to every second or third day as I can see from the smart meter they use a lot of electricity. Rather than putting the boiler on for a wash, when I was making coffee earlier I boiled a full kettle and put the rest of the boiling water into my biggest Stanley flask. Then when I get ready I'll have lovely hot water for a sink wash. Works out quite a bit cheaper than a shower, and less money on water as well.

Thinking about water, I'm sure it must be soon I'm due a reading on my water meter. They do them every 6 months I think, and I seem to recall the last one was June. I'm quite interested to see what it says, as I have tried to be fairly parsimonious with water since I got the meter. I would like to see if I have built up any credit in my account, and whether it would be worth reducing my monthly payments which are currently £35 a month.

I can get a little too enthusiastic about the old money saving though, as I found out yesterday the hard way. I had put the breadmaker on for a loaf to go with some soup I'd made for dinner, but when it was due to be ready I heard no beeping. Upon investigation it turned out I had turned the breadmaker off at the wall about an hour earlier 😳😳😳. Thankfully it looked like it just needed baking, so hopefully it is okay. I've not tried it yet, and had to have a baked potato for dinner as I didn't have time to wait for the bread to be ready before I had to go out. Live and learn 🤣.

I was at the coop yesterday and got 4 cartons of milk and have put 2 in the freezer. I'll see how long that lasts me. I really do go through a ridiculous amount of milk for one person.

I had a debate with my estate agents as they have put my rent up by 3.5%, and I think it should only be 3%. It is supposed to the RPI on 31st October or 3% minimum. As far as I can see RPI was under 3% for October, but they must have found a daily rate somewhere because the chap insists it was 3.5% on 31st October. He pointed me to the Office of National Statistics website, but I can't find a daily rate on there myself. I'm fed up of arguing though as he just keeps insisting, so I've changed my standing order to what they say the new amount should be. If any of you can find a daily rate of RPI, please point me in the right direction?

With the cold snap, I had to spend ages deicing my car windows when I had to go out last night. I must remember to look up Nancy Birtwhistle's revioe for de-icer this week, and to put a clean microfibre towel in the car for inside the windows.

I'll definitely have the heating on tonight (or the fire if I can be bothered lighting it), but I'm going to see how I get on with keeping it off during the day. Oodies and lap blankets and electric foot warmer have been doing the trick so far, but I draw the line if my hands get getting too cold to type easily! Thinking about it has made me feel er how very cold my old house was, and how I could have the heating on and still be sitting in a sleeping bag while inworked, with my electric hoodie and a hat on! Thankfully, my new house is much warmer in general.

Right, I think it is time for me to brave getting out of bed properly. I hope everyone is managing to stay warm and toasty.

Moorviews

I am the same, keeping cosy in bed but about to get going! I have the heated throw on. 
We are using the fire in the evenings now. It heats the water too as we are also trying to conserve the oil. It’s definitely going to be nice hot porridge for breakfast!

jokono

Elisheba said:

 If any of you can find a daily rate of RPI, please point me in the right direction?

According to this, the RPI data for Oct 24 was released today and it is 3.4%


https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices

astrocytic_kitten

I am so curious about this as I used to work with this data and though it's been a while I can't figure out where they got 3.5%! As jokono says, the official RPI figures for October were only released today and the overall year on year RPI for October is 3.4%.

I'm afraid I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole! There's different ways to slice RPI, assuming it's All items year on year (which would be the standard one and if they were using a different measure I'd expect that to be noted in the lease) it is 3.4%. 

Even if they were using a different measure, they were also only announced today (and the only one that's 3.5% is all items excluding food which would be a weird one to use).

I don't think RPI is one of the measures the ONS releases estimates of in advance. You do get databases that pull in historical inflation data and also forecast future data, so I guess it's possible he was using one of those and not realising it was a forecast figure. Though not many forecasters do RPI, it's a historical UK-only measure and CPI is the global standard. (RPI is normally higher than CPI, which is partly why it's still beloved in UK contracts as an inflation peg.) Also I don't know much about what information the average estate agent would have access to - my experience is in the types of industry that pay for expensive databases.

My best guess is he found an October 2024 figure that was a forecast on a random page and didn't want to admit it which is why you got vaguely pointed towards the ONS website. Or he quickly googled and got the August 3.5% figure and made a mistake. Or he didn't realise the results wouldn't be available until today and has come up with some totally random measure in a panic wondering why he can't find it.

If it was me I'd be asking them exactly what measure of RPI they're using to calculate it each year (maybe along with the series ID from the ONS website) so you can be sure you're both on the same page https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/czbh/mm23 

fionaandphil

Just FYI for any of you on oil that haven't topped up, it is at a very low price for this time of year, lower than it was in the summer.  My price today was 56ppl but they have said they're expecting it to increase.

Thanks @Elisheba for the note about the yoghurt, I will have a look at my instruction book at the weekend and see if its worth us doing it.

Enjoy this chilly day everyone, the sun is shining here so the temperature has just gone above freezing.