2021 Frugal Living Challenge

mumtoomany

Afternoon all. Busy day yesterday, seven lambs and a ewe taken to market. Hard work getting them into the trailer when it was barely light. Then back to work in the polytunnel, then watch grandchildren while making tea.

Today i spent two hours sorting the car insurance. First on the, even slower than usual, internet, then by phone. Renewal quote was over £170. Managed to get it down to less than £98 for the year. The saving made the two hours work/wait worthwhile.

Last nights tea, leftover chicken, (from the homegrown cockerel), a single sausage, (left from previous nights ta, had to cook 12 as frozen together, but only needed 11), two choritzo sausages, (left from making pizzas, again frozen together, note to self, must freeze things separately!). Tomato juice from tinned tomatoes, the remains of a jar of sweet pickle, a packet of oyster and spring onion sauce (80 for £1.99 from Clearance XL) chopped peppers and onions, most of two packs of pasta. All sprinkled with cheese. 

Right off to transplant some broccoli seedlings, while the weather holds, mumtoomany.

willow_loulou

I made Onion soup today. It was quite yummy and I fed my work volunteer too. Plus he had enough to take home for his dinner. It worked out pretty expensive as I had to buy stock and I used 1 too many onions. But it was a learning curve and still much cheaper than the equivalent in ready done tins. 

It’s shown me how simple some things I would shy away from making are actually pretty simple! It’s gone straight through me though so definitely less onion next time! 😂

I have £10 in my purse and £6 extra than my Direct Debits until next Friday. A deliberate act on my part as I’ve put all spare into my CC as im
moving over to using that over my debit card. I got £2 cash back from the last few things I bought and paid for immediately so I’m going to try and use it more. It’s making sure I pay it off of course. So all my non direct debit money will go into my savings account and I’ll have £20 out in cash. This should cover all bases. 

We’re eating from freezer anyway so hopefully I’ll not need to buy anything beyond bread and milk for a while.

On the solid fuel - radiator thing. I don’t have the back boiler but if I get a good burn going it will heat all of down stairs and a fair way to taking the chill from upstairs. I do this when I’m busy so not colder sat still. It certainly seems to make starting a day brighter 

threepenny_bit

Grateful that hubby worked on our TV/Internet plan and our alarm company fees and managed to keep current payments rather than the  increases they both wanted - no visible saving really as the amounts wont change but a lot in total when compared to the new plans. 

balabooberlies

Morning All

StirchleyGirl, thank you for post.  Sorry you have had to give up work but you sound organized and hope you don't mind me saying, upbeat.  Good wishes for all of your endeavours.

Spent some time yesterday researching back burners.  My desire to have one is not only to do with cost cutting but being as independent as I can be.  This is the beginning of a long journey.  I hope to stockpile skills in the coming years.  Am still not sold on the Solar Panels as a way of going as it seems to take forever to recoup your investment and also complicated.  The problem could be down to my lack of focus.  Or intelligence ! 

Yesterday, I relayed my plan of creating wood pile for Mum but she is convinced that wood pallets contain oil which is why they had a massive chimney fire across the road last year.  I am convinced that wood pallet wood is untreated.

Was meant to have massive yard sale today but rain is forecast.  So all good stuff to charity shops as Mum is desperate to clear house.  We have benefitted many times from them so 'quid pro quo' as they say.......

Sometime in the first quarter of this year I challenged myself to sell something online.  Still haven't done it as cannot upload photos.  My SIL has promised to teach me today so fingers crossed.

Have a lovely day

bala

x

[Deleted User]

Morning fellow frugal friends,

Does anyone here have an LPG gas tank supply? My mum is moving into a property with one, and I have no idea how much she should be paying for the gas, can you negotiate with the supplier, will she have to set up a direct debit etc.

Any and all input welcomed xx

mumtoomany

Hi ASB, we have a calor tank. Costs around £1000 a year, but it's a huge 250 year old house. The gas is for cooking and heating, hot water. We also have the front door left open at least once a day, by the men who also likes to open all the windows! The really helpful thing is that the tank has telemetry. When it falls below a certain level, Calor knows, ( i think by some sort of fairy magic) and send the man out to fill it up. Much easier than when we had bottles a few years ago. HTH, mumtoomany.

pelirocco

Frugalista said:

Having looked at the apple syrup recipe, I was thinking it could be made even more frugal by just using the equivalent weight of peel and cores left over from other apple "projects". At least it would make use of bits that would otherwise be thrown away (or fed to the animals). I would probably remove most of the pips first though.

You can make apple scrap vinegar from apple scraps
I've never made it  but have seen several youtubers making it

[Deleted User]

Thank you, @mumtoomany.

Do you pay a direct debit per month, or just make one off payments when you fill the tank up? x

mumtoomany

We tend to just pay when they send the bill. A couple of times a year, and a few times when they send the standing charge bill. This all gets split between us and DD1 and her OH. Much cheaper than bottles, and don't need to try to manoeuvre 47kg bottles around. Mumtoomany.

-taff

Bala,in the main, pallets are untreated. The blue ones are a separate thing, don't burn those. You can get pallets that are best treated both Euro and standard pallets (euro pallets are slightly smaller and nicer wood) and these will have a HT stamped on them somewhere.