2021 Frugal Living Challenge

Hughesfamily

Snow day - about 3-4 inches and so we are making the most of time at home. Bought some cooking bacon last week so have split that up into "nice" for sandwiches and the rest of it is fatty but perfect - have put it on a rack and I will pop it in the oven when I cook dinner later. The rendered fat becomes roast potato gold and the cooked bacon gets sprinkled on home made soups, put into salad or roasted veg. I have made a large slow cooker of pasta sauce - using soya mince meat, all the veg collected up in my freezer tub from when I have roasted meat on it (like onions, chunks of carrot etc), some roasted veg which I didn't fancy as it was and a couple of tins of out date tomatoes - will make a large 4 portion lasagne and 3-4 pasta sauce portions which I'll freeze in silicon cake moulds - it's easy to grab one then for pasta or homemade pizza etc.

I have made some draught excluders for the front door as the wind whistles through it, used two wrapping paper rolls and a tight leg to put on the bottom of the lounge door. Dinner tonight will be A!di pulled pork with roasted tinned potatoes (again found slightly out of date but perfectly useable) and carrots & broccoli - warming food on a cold day. 
I have changed the beds and put fleecy blankets on the bottom sheet of mine and little miss's bed - will keep us toasty and is instantly warming when we get in it. We have meal planned from what we have in - not going shopping until snow clears but we have plenty of food for up to a week and I'll get little miss to make chocolates cakes for snacks. We still have enough sweets and chocolate to last us till February!! 
I was lucky and got 4 x dairy free selection boxes at 75p each and in date till August - I have two little ones to buy for at Easter who cannot have milk so will decant the non Christmas shaped bars and melt them down and make rocky road bars for them and use up some of my crafty stash to make them look pretty. 
I get paid tomorrow so will have a whole new month of stretching pennies and topping up my savings pots.....

Shopaholic_no_more

Hi all, well we are self isolating here as hubs tested positive for COVID on Tuesday, he had recognisable symptoms on Monday but had felt generally rubbish on Sunday. 

@roblou27 hope hubs feels better soon x

Yesterday I had a bad day...
Mentally, I’m not in a good place at the moment....what with COVID and my ever ongoing debt issues...I know there are many many more people who are going through a lot worse and I feel so guilty about how I feel but I needed to get it written down in the hope it will help.
I don’t even know where to start really....I am trying so hard to get the debt off one main credit card but there is always something happens which puts us back and I can just never even get any money into an emergency fund quick enough as it is just gone straight away....and I just get so downhearted about it sometimes and yesterday was one of those days...
we have just had to get an engine rebuild done on my OH car which came in at the tune of £1,680 but was still cheaper than having to buy another car but an expense we could desperately have done without. However, we need the car to be able to go to work to pay off the debt which is now on his card....it’s just an ever vicious circle. I have £5,000 debt on 
my card which is coming in at 80 quid a month interest alone 😳. I tried to apply for a 0% credit card to shift some of it over and the only ones I got offered was about 6 months long with quite a high transfer fee so just not worth it. I am paying just over the minimum payment but this is leaving me with very little to live on. I guess what I am trying to say is something has to give but in the current situation it is just not possible. I am lucky that my job is still going through all this but it is fraught with anxiety as we have had Covid cases there too. 

I was driving to work the other day thinking I am going to have to put next weeks fuel on my cc as I don’t have any money left to pay for it.....so ironic that I am getting into more debt just to get to work. It is wrong on so many levels and I WILL do something about it just as soon as I am able. We have decided we are going to start selling stuff out the house to try to get them down a bit more....I watch Martin Lewis all the time and he keeps me motivated as do all the lovely people on here.
I’m so sorry for the rant but it is helping me to get to grips with it....maybe I should start a money journal or something like that. 

I hope everyone is ok and making this best of this truly awful situation we are in at the moment. 

Stay safe ❤️

Couldsavemore

On the frugal front..
mam is experimenting with vegan food, she made an excellent korma.
Lots of coconut yoghurt left so I got given porridge oats and gogi berries..
 so its freebie over night oats for a few days.
Nothing on olio near me. Lots of bread and cheese but we're vegan so I miss out on lots of things.

skint_chick

OLaney said:

I don’t even know where to start really....I am trying so hard to get the debt off one main credit card but there is always something happens which puts us back and I can just never even get any money into an emergency fund quick enough as it is just gone straight away....and I just get so downhearted about it sometimes and yesterday was one of those days...
we have just had to get an engine rebuild done on my OH car which came in at the tune of £1,680 but was still cheaper than having to buy another car but an expense we could desperately have done without. However, we need the car to be able to go to work to pay off the debt which is now on his card....it’s just an ever vicious circle. I have £5,000 debt on 
my card which is coming in at 80 quid a month interest alone 😳. I tried to apply for a 0% credit card to shift some of it over and the only ones I got offered was about 6 months long with quite a high transfer fee so just not worth it. I am paying just over the minimum payment but this is leaving me with very little to live on. I guess what I am trying to say is something has to give but in the current situation it is just not possible. I am lucky that my job is still going through all this but it is fraught with anxiety as we have had Covid cases there too. 

So you've got a lot on with the Covid diagnosis, but it's also given you a minute to pause and take stock of where you are. If you're feeling brave enough you could do a full SOA on the debt free wannabe board here - they usually have suggestions on where you can cut back. Here's a link to a statement of affairs calculator - at the end of it you can click a button to format it for MSE boards.
https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php
As an alternative to a credit card balance transfer you could also look at loans - if you know you're not suddenly going to have lots of spare cash to pay the £5k in less than a year then interest rates on personal loans tend to be a lot lower than credit cards, even if your credit rating isn't perfect. A lot of loans allow overpayments so you can set the term longer to give you a bit of breathing space and any extra money you have can be paid as an overpayment. This should give you a chance to put some money aside into your emergency fund, save some interest, and also start chipping away at the debt. 
If you're feeling OK it would be a good week to gather up things you'd like to sell and have a look online to find the best option to get the most money for them - webuybooks/ziffit/facebook/ebay etc. I keep a box for anything I want to sell and then take a couple of things at a time, listing them all at once is too much to deal with!

welshspendthrift

Got some Olio food today, lady giving away peaches and potatoes and by the time I was collecting there was another bag of potatoes, lemons, apples and pears and onions. Will be baking with peaches and lemons, sugar free recipes tomorrow. I’m really not eating many carbs but going to find a way of cooking potatoes so I can freeze them for the occasions we do eat potatoes. Will have some roast potatoes today as a Sunday roast chicken is on the menu for today. Onions will get used, think the kind lady must be averse to using anything after use by date. I regifted for a birthday present this month so saved £20! It was a nice gift but better used to save money, probably would have sat in the cupboard for a year or two! Hope everyone having a nice weekend 

zafiro1984

Hughesfamily said:

 Bought some cooking bacon last week so have split that up into "nice" for sandwiches and the rest of it is fatty but perfect - have put it on a rack and I will pop it in the oven when I cook dinner later. The rendered fat becomes roast potato gold and the cooked bacon gets sprinkled on home made soups, put into salad or roasted veg. 

What a good idea - thanks

Shopaholic_no_more

@skint_chick thanks for your advice....btw I don’t have covid...I was replying to @roblou27...it was their comment. Sorry for the confusion!

I will definitely look in to this and yes I am going round the house as we speak to see what I can sell. Also, done some research into selling clothes on Vinted as opposed to eBay as apparently eBay and PP have upped their charges 🤷‍♀️ and Vinted is free? Also, going to go to Aldi/Lidl late on in the day, about 9pm, as this is when they sell stuff off really cheap....
it is happening as I am totally at the end of my tether with all this hanging over me now. 

In the past I have buried my head which is ridiculous isn’t it?!

Blackcats

OLaney, I feel your pain - it's so hard to get that foothold to start to clamber out of debt,  credit card interest is outrageous - could you ask for a break from interest for a few months?  Or a payment break, maybe just paying a token amount.    Perhaps your lender will be sympathetic in the COVID situation.  I know the debt is still there but it gives you some breathing space.  

If you have things to sell, could you use that money to start an emergency fund? Cars have an uncanny knack of going wrong when you can least afford it and as you say it's needed for work so it's an essential cost.  

There are so many people here who are much wiser than me who will help and support you.  

fiwen30

Snow day today, last day of the week before the grocery delivery tomorrow, and 5 days before pay day, so everything is a little lean on the ground. Made a big pot of ‘everything curry’ last night, which comprised of frozen packets of cooked chicken, odds and sods of veggies, a couple of sprouted potatoes, chicken stock, and a bunch of spices. Partner attempted rice in the slow cooker to go with it last night, and ended up making a mountain of what resembled and tasted like rice pudding instead - it was like the Magic Porridge Pot, the amount of rice produced from 1 average sized cup was just astonishing!

Was too cold and slippy to take our rehabbing wobbly dog out for his prescription walk, so I made him a snuffle mat for some gentle indoor entertainment and mental stimulation instead. Used leftover fleece from the same blanket which became his house coat - that blanket has been of more use in this past week than it has in the 4 years I’ve owned it! It’s just made of fleece, with some scissors, there’s tons of YouTube videos if you want to make similar.

We do our budget every 4 weeks, when partner gets paid, and so I was looking over the numbers today ahead of pay day on Friday. It’s been a tight month; outside of bills, food shopping, & regular pet expenses (food, meds), the largest outlay this month has been on the dog, to get him equipment and treatments for his rehab, and so it was good to do something for him for free. It’s a good thing he’s cute!

Hughesfamily

Olaney, your post really resonated with me - ten years ago my OH decided that he didn't want to be a dad and husband and bu&&ered off leaving a pile of debt behind him for me to sort. First of all, there might be people in similar or worse situations, but you are in the middle of it now and it's hard. It's OK to admit that you're struggling. With Covid, money worries and lockdown stress - mental health is taking a bashing and it's no wonder you feel a bit overwhelmed. As skint_chick said, start with a budget - write every penny that comes in and goes out, is there anything on there that you can cancel, reschedule or do without for a bit? Can you shuffle credit round to a better rate? Have you spoken to the your lenders and explained that you are struggling - a lot of lenders are more sympathetic at this time about reducing payments or holding interest. Stepchange helped me enormously, they set up a debt management plan (20K worth of debt in my case) which meant that I had one payment a month and it eased the stress day to day. I know that Christians against poverty offer the same - even if you don't go down a finance plan route with them - they are amazing to talk to and offer you real solutions to your problems.  There is no judgement, just help. I really hope that you can get something sorted - living with the shadow of debt and covid is exhausting. x