2021 Frugal Living Challenge

StrawberrySuze

Evening all and hello to everyone who has come out of lurkdom 😊

Expensive day for me today, had to buy a load of meat for the dogs, £55 later.... they eat better than I do, had to shoehorn it all into the freezer!

Had a great Olio collection today; couple of large bags of rice and a load of tins, most of which were things like stewed steak and chilli, all in date. I do sometimes wonder why people give some of the things away 🤔  I thought maybe they had turned vegetarian but there was also some tinned carrots! I am always really grateful that they do though 🙂

I too congratulate Frugal Jo, she is such a lovely person, I also really like Emmy- she is under Frugal Money Saver on You Toob, she is a lovely, genuine person too and talks a lot of sense.

Pay day today so will be juggling tomorrow 😂

the_cross_rabbit

Motivational March challenge has made me think more about the future. I currently have very little pension contributions as I gave my job up to look after my daughter 15 year ago( full time career). I think it currently stands at a £1000 per year plus I’ll get state pensions. So I need to look into either setting up a private pension 🤣 or look to become more frugal and save literally pennies for later life. 

CRx

Bluegreen143

Husband’s payday today - he has transferred me £1k (max he’s allowed in one day) with £750 to follow tomorrow (keeping his own spending money in his account). Been YNABing this morning and this along with child benefit should pay most of our monthly bills except childcare (not due till 1st Apr), money into sinking funds for annual bills, holiday, gifts, subscriptions and our monthly spending on food/household/fun. 

This means my salary on the 15th, which will be about £1,400, will cover childcare, some savings (help to save accounts, car fund) and then our current goals: emergency fund, conservatory savings and we are going to do one “small” goal at a time so currently it’s saving up for a new bed for my 5yo DS.

Got our weekly Tesco shop delivered last night so want to spend some time prepping food, making soup etc but I’ve got two sicky children this morning so we’ll see!

CRANKY40

I was up until 11:30 last night building an ottoman. I've been watching free sites but nothing suitable came up so I bit the bullet and bought one. I got rid of the spare bed because nobody ever slept in it, it took up too much room and had just become a dumping ground but all the extra bedding (and a whole load of other stuff) was stored in the drawers underneath it. In the interests of a clean and tidy spare room, I wanted the bedding put away. I now have an ottoman for storage and there are just some black bags of my son's things to sort through. I'm going to check the bedding before I put it away to make sure that I only keep what we need and will use. On top of the desk in the same room is what looks like every dvd in the house plus a pile of other things to go through and sell if possible. 

All of my wool and sewing equipment has been put away properly and my poor electrc piano which has moved location several times is set up in the spare room too and there's still so much space. I have no plans to fill that space - it looks so much better.  I went through February with the intention of buying the ottoman if there was enough spare cash and thanks to be being careful there was. I also paid almost £200 extra off my debts. Thanks for the motivation and the encouragement everyone. 

FrankieM

Grocery shopping done..I've given myself a budget of £100 per month but now only have £65 left, so I need to get some veggie meal ideas as I think cutting down on meat will make the budget stretch.

If anyone has any simple and cheap meals they wouldn't mind sharing, I'd be very appreciative!

CRANKY40

FrankieM said:

Grocery shopping done..I've given myself a budget of £100 per month but now only have £65 left, so I need to get some veggie meal ideas as I think cutting down on meat will make the budget stretch.

If anyone has any simple and cheap meals they wouldn't mind sharing, I'd be very appreciative!

Have a read of the grocery challenge thread. There's a recipe index near the start each month that may be helpful.

willow_loulou

@FrankieM look at the bootstrap cook website, I have 2 of her books and adore good food for bad days. She’s recently done a £20 a week shopping challenge on Twitter. 

I think the key is a good herb and fillers stock. So if I make soup or stew I always do dumplings which are very filling. I get ready to mix pack for between 40 and 50p a pack as the suet turns my stomach lol. But 1 pack gives 6 substantial dumplings.  

Also make large Yorkshire puddings as a bowl for your dinner, these are ridiculously cheap to make and really bulk a meal out.  Frozen peas go in everything for me.. 

Onebrokelady

willow_loulou said:

@FrankieM look at the bootstrap cook website, I have 2 of her books and adore good food for bad days. She’s recently done a £20 a week shopping challenge on Twitter. 

I think the key is a good herb and fillers stock. So if I make soup or stew I always do dumplings which are very filling. I get ready to mix pack for between 40 and 50p a pack as the suet turns my stomach lol. But 1 pack gives 6 substantial dumplings.  

Also make large Yorkshire puddings as a bowl for your dinner, these are ridiculously cheap to make and really bulk a meal out.  Frozen peas go in everything for me.. 

I used to do the large Yorkshire with a roast dinner inside but now I don't eat meat I haven't done it for years, I've just thought now though that I could fill it with roasted veg for a nice meal, I'm another who eats frozen peas,mainly because they are a surprisingly good source of protein 😊

Shopaholic_no_more

Thankyou @frugaldom for the idea of motivational March 😊
Here is mine...

I am going to keep selling my excess items I no longer need from around the house and any sales will keep going to pay off that credit card debt.
I am going to keep saving lots of random plastic pots and am going to get some seeds to start growing my own salad greens. I think I need to start small to gain confidence....I did have tomatoes growing last year but I’ve since learned I could have got so many more tomatoes on the plant had I “pruned” it properly 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️. My runners started off very slowly....and then went mad, weirdly....I had so many on there which was great but it was too far past the best weather and the wind blew them over and I lost alot 😩 which was very frustrating tbh. So I’ve learned from that. NB...I did pot them up at the right time but they took an absolute age to flower. Maybe someone can let me know why this was?? 
I need to get to grips more with how to use YNAB as I find the concept of it brilliant....it’s just trying to work out how it operates as it is not like doing a normal budget system I have found. I’m thinking their way of budgeting may work for me. I have just discovered a guy called Nick True who seems to make it more understandable than the YNAB tutorials tbh.
I am/have tried many different ways ....in the past cash has always been the best way but strangely I’m finding it quite restrictive this time around.
My hairdresser won’t accept it anymore as she doesn’t want to keep cash on site...which makes sense I suppose. The same goes for my local servicing garage.....
I do have an amusing story though regarding cash...I went in to the local garage forecourt shop to pay for my petrol the other day, in cash, and there was a young lad behind the till and I told him which pump I had used. Then he proceeded to stare out the window and wait for me to tap my card...he was clearly waiting for the beep but instead I was waving the cash in front of his face. He nearly jumped out of his skin 😂...and he looked at my 20 pound note like it was alien. Wow, I’ve not seen one of those in here for a while he said 😳....I’m not sure if it is amusing now or just a sad sign of the times....

Wraithlady

FrankieM said:

If anyone has any simple and cheap meals they wouldn't mind sharing, I'd be very appreciative!

It may well be worth going to the BBC Good Food website, they often do 'themed' articles such as 'cheap family dinners' or 'comforting one-pot meals' and there are a lot of good recipes - also try Delicious, Olive and Waitrose sites.
My go-to recipe for too much month and not enough money is Squash and chickpea curry:
1 tbsp oil
Garlic clove (crushed)
1-2 tbsp curry paste, or to taste (Thai yellow is specified on the original recipe, but whatever you have)
1 large or 2 small onions
1 tbsp mustard seeds (optional) or 1 tsp made mustard
1 tsp ground cardamom (optional)
About 1 kg of squash, peeled and chopped - i.e 1 fair-sized butternut squash
200-300 ml chicken stock
1 can coconut milk
1 tin chickpeas, drained & rinsed
1 tbsp lime juice
1/ Heat oil in a pan, add curry paste, onions, mustard or seeds and cardamom (if using) and fry gently for 2-3 minutes
2/ Add the squash, stir to coat with the paste then add the coconut milk and the stock - bring to a simmer
3/ Add the chickpeas and cook for about 10 minutes until the squash is tender, then taste and adjust the seasoning.
4/ Sprinkle with lime juice and serve with rice.

The original recipe called for pumpkin, but I have never used that - I usually use butternut squash, but have substituted swede and celeriac at different times and it works fine. I also sometimes add mushrooms if we've got some which need using up.
Use vegetable stock if you prefer.

This makes about 8 - 10 meals worth for approximately £5 ( less if you have curry paste etc in already)