2021 Frugal Living Challenge

Hughesfamily

Sincere condolences to those who have lost anyone. This disease is heart breaking. My BIL and I are currently emptying my stepdad's house so that it can be sold - he died in July with stage 4 cancer which was missed because all the testing was stopped due to covid. My house is already full to bursting so there is nothing in the house that I need to bring home so I am having the food out of the house - my BIL lives 220 miles away so he cannot get the frozen stuff home to use so we are making good use of it. My FIL stockpiled for Armageddon and whilst it may not be anything that we would choose, it's meals I won't have to buy / make and that's a bonus.  Anything we won't eat, we'll donate to the food bank. We have found custard powder from 2001 - it's very pale but I'm still tempted to try it! I love playing food roulette - only back fired on me once which was prawns and I won't make that mistake again! I have also taken his seed tin and contents, this year we are planning to get the veggie patch back up and use my chest freezer for storing any surplus to keep the food bills as low as possible.
Budget wise I have £60 left in the food pot but since we have had a couple of takeaways this month, I've actually spent it - just out of another pot. My monthly budget starts from 25th each month (payday) and I have reduced my food spends (me and a 10 year old child who eats as much as a full grown adult) for food from £180 down to £120 as we are using FIL's stuff up. 
I am currently steeping dried fruit in the weekend's used teabags to make a tea loaf for snacks this week. Using up the baking stuff rather than buy anything, and we have enough sweets left over from Christmas that I can open a sweet shop - using this as a learning opportunity though and am getting her to bag up daily portions - using weights, number of sweets and so on to make her use her maths skills! Plus it stops her asking how many can she have all the time.

MandM90

mumtoomany if you still have a load of goats cheese, what about a spanakopita type thing? I think goats cheese would work well instead of feta in that, frozen spinach is cheap and will help balance it out.
No real news here, haven't been spending any money really. No takeaways yet in Jan which is great as we were getting out of control. To keep motivation up I've been increasing the number of treats I buy at the supermarket and thrown in more fatty meals here and there, like homemade deep fried chips. Really pleased with how the budget is going.
I've been trying to wear my clothes more. DD changes everything daily as she's hormonal and can get stinky though she showers daily. I don't really need to so have been trying to wear my turtle necks 3 days in a row, with a vest underneath. Ditto with jeans, wearing them a bit longer. Less washing is frugal, but actually it's the effort that I'm trying to avoid as with a baby in cloth nappies I do a LOT of laundry!
My company are sending me out a screen, keyboard, laptop stand etc but we need another desk in the house (currently using the electric piano!). Suffering from a bit of analysis paralysis. Don't want to get something only to give it away when it doesn't go in new house, but until mortgage approved on new house I don't believe it's happening, and also until I'm there I'm not sure which room to work from (it's much bigger than our current set up with 5 reception rooms and 5 bedrooms) so side/style etc is a puzzle. Think maybe I should keep eye out for a lovely older dressing table/desk that I'll want to keep for years and can be used elsewhere in house if not long term solution. I think my fears are less frugal and more about waste. In normal times I'd try and nab something on freecycle and give away again, but not possible at the mo!

Shopaholic_no_more

Just subscribed to Frugal Jo on YT.
check her out she is amazing x 

marionmgcars

OLaney said:

Just subscribed to Frugal Jo on YT.
check her out she is amazing x 

sorry, what is YT ?

roblou27

So sorry for your loss wishes. 

Viking_mfw

marionmgcars said:

OLaney said:

Just subscribed to Frugal Jo on YT.
check her out she is amazing x 

sorry, what is YT ?

You Tube. 

marionmgcars

Viking_mfw said:

marionmgcars said:

OLaney said:

Just subscribed to Frugal Jo on YT.
check her out she is amazing x 

sorry, what is YT ?

You Tube. 

thank you x

zafiro1984

Sorry to read of your loss Wishus - take care
Frugaldom said:

If your budget is calculated over the year then the amounts for each day, week or month are just averages so it's not always spare cash, it's just that the bigger, less regular bills haven't come along yet. The golden rule in my frugal budget is never to spend what you think is extra, save it for when it is needed. Hopefully this makes sense.  

I couldn't agree more, mine is also yearly budget. Your comments above have just stopped me dreaming as I'm slightly ahead of the game at the moment 

Siebrie

couldsavemore, I don't know the age of your son, but if he is only young, you know he will grow, so you can already buy school gear ahead of time, when it's on sale/given away/secondhand. And then pass on his old school gear.

For the eating down of stocks, I eat it down at the moment, and will refill when I see the items for a good price, and then buy many items (hopefully until the next sale). This does mean that I don't buy or cook 'spaghetti', but rather 'pasta'. Some sauces may be better suited for certain types of pasta, but I decided not to care

willow_loulou

I do similar @Siebrie I had a time where food was limited, it was heat or eat. Since then I’ve had a good stock of essentials and I’ll put any old sauce with any old pasta lol. My recent pesto making was best on cold twisty. Yum. 

Nsd here, I’ve allocated every penny and organised what we have and what Asd@ will bring so I’ll not be buying anything else this month beyond maybe some electric or wood if we get a cold snap. We’ve oil rads on low so the house is not cold ( more for the animals if I’m honest lol) it’s much milder here thankfully. But we’ve wood to burn if needs be in the evenings because I don’t do cold 🥶