2022 Frugal Living Challenge

[Deleted User]

What a fantastic thread!

I hope you don’t mind me joining in so late. I am a single mum with two young children. We live a very frugal and happy life and I take great comfort in finding so many like minded people on here, as the majority in real life don’t ‘get it’. 

I’m still catching up but loved someone’s suggestion of splitting spending money on holiday into a separate envelope for each day - will definitely be using that on our summer staycation!

Bluegreen143

Welcome @Deleted_User and everyone else who is new 🙂

I’ve not been posting much but have been reading and it’s so inspiring to read how everyone’s doing.

I reread “Your Money or Your Life” (I also reread it last Jan so may become an annual thing!) and it’s given me the kick up the bum to be stricter about our spending. I’ve also read the Frugalwoods book recently too. We don’t *need* to be so strict anymore now we are a two income family but we’ll never reach our goals unless we cut out waste and stop frittering on things that aren’t important to us.

Frugal win today is making a delicious chocolate-iced pistachio cake for DH’s birthday - it’s always been homemade cakes all the way in this house. Doubles as an educational activity as the children help too 😆 And we were considering going out for brunch but instead I made a fry up which will have saved a few £££.

Blackcats

Blue green - the cake looks lovely.  Could you post the recipe please?

Loving reading along and I'm getting lots of inspiration and motivation.

thank you everyone 

Bluegreen143

@Blackcats no problem! I posted it on my diary earlier anyway 🙂

200g butter
200g sugar
1tsp vanilla
4 eggs
100g pistachio, blitzed up (not totally to powder)
150g SR flour, sifted
Large pinch salt 
1tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 170C fan, grease 2x 20cm cake tins. Cream butter & sugar, beat in vanilla and eggs, then the dry ingredients. Bake for around 20 mins.

Re the icing, it was chocolate buttercream - you need an electric mixer for this one to get it super light.

80g butter
300g icing sugar
40g cocoa
40ml milk

Beat all the ingredients except milk on slow speed then once the milk is in, beat on medium-fast speed for at least 5 minutes (this makes it very light).

willow_loulou

Getting a little wind tired now, my poor dog is refusing to go out until he can’t hold it anymore! He’s funny, they’re both pad trained but he’s just confused by the constant wind. 

Great olio haul today of 3 perfect bunches of bananas. Why they were deemed unfit for sale is beyond me. I also got olive bread to crouton and I popped to Tesco for a small loaf, carrots and 2 pies. That added to our veg box is all we will need this week. So good to be having a weeks shop for under £10! 

I might however pop to the refill store for a few ingredients if I need extra for whatever recipes I decide on. As of now I have plenty of options but I’d like tb be adventurous lol. 

Poppy_Golightly

Treasurequeen said:

Yes power came back on in the evening yesterday was all out for 8.5 hours. We had emergency lights in flats but they failed after 2 hours. The stairwells were dark only the exit signs stayed on. Someone got stick on lights and placed them around but was still dark. What was worrying was that the main front doors were open and anyone could have walked in.

That is totally and utterly unsatisfactory - go to the papers. I did that once where I lived and eventually all our concerns were addressed and I now have a contact there who will print any more failures of duty of care should they happen again.

Effician

willow_loulou said:

Getting a little wind tired now,

We're making the most of it at the mo. sun's out & 60' of washing blowing nicely on the line.

Primrose

Effician said:

willow_loulou said:

Getting a little wind tired now,

We're making the most of it at the mo. sun's out & 60' of washing blowing nicely on the line.

I hope your washing is firmly pegged.!!  In the great hurricane of the 80's we weren,t pre warned of its strength and I lost the lot .  Too embarrassed to go around the area enquiring after my underwear!

Primrose

Effician said:

willow_loulou said:

Getting a little wind tired now,

We're making the most of it at the mo. sun's out & 60' of washing blowing nicely on the line.

I hope your washing is firmly pegged.!!  In the great hurricane of the 80's we weren,t pre warned of its strength and I lost the lot .  Too embarrassed to go around the area enquiring after my underwear!

RainbowHippie

Well, i'm still about a month behind on posts but loving reading of everyone's frugal successes and plans. Hugs to all those who've been or are poorly, and everyone with car-related nightmares, seems to be a lot of it about at the moment!

The free furniture collecting has been going well here, i am constantly amazed and humbled by the amount, variety and quality of items given away for free simply because people want it out of the way. So far i've collected two barely-used mattresses (each slept on once or twice apparently, having been in spare rooms), a bed frame for one of them, a small sideboard, a coffee table, a couple of lamps, a new-looking rug, a few duvet cover sets, a small table and 2 chairs set, and some plates, mugs and glasses. All were free, and everyone was really happy either not to have to dispose of it themselves or for the items to have another life. Fortunately my parents have happy for me to store things in their garage for a few weeks (tbh i think they've been getting a bit impatient with our itinerant lifestyle and are eager for the grandchildren they anticipate once we 'settle down' so are happy to help as much as they can! ) and i think we now have more than we need to comfortably move in. I had to drive back over to our old home town last week for a mdecial appointment so i was able to drop a car-load off there, and my Dad kindly helped me adjust my roof bars so i can borrow their huge roof box when it's time to empty our little storage unit. We've just been given a completion date of 28th of Feb so really not long to wait.

@cw18 thanks for the idea about NT membership for lake district parking, i'll definitely give that a look!

Back to catching up with a few more posts! Have a nice evening all xx