2022 Frugal Living Challenge

kiloranbay

@Sweetlittledaydreams I bought Home Insurance yesterday with £32 cashback via TopCashback and MoneySupermarket comparison tool. I am apparently a plus member so maybe got a higher cashback rate but it looks like the offer is still on! Also used a tip about buying 22 days in advance for a saving and and lowered my quote by 60p vs a starting date of tomorrow! 

Just picked up a rice cooker in its box via Freecycle as one Christmas gift sorted - discovered there is no rice paddle and some markings to the inside but looks nice and shiny otherwise and nice wrapping will make a big difference. I may be able to find a rice paddle to add in between now and Christmas! 

@london_1 absolutely love the detail about seeing your first teabag abroad. And I sympathise on the conversion - I have €15 in change I haven't been able to convert yet! 

This morning a fellow dog walker told me it used to take over half a day to go by coach from Macclesfield to Blackpool for his holidays. It's about a 90 minute journey these days. Maybe they were getting out to push every time there was a hill...?! 

Doveling

Kiloranbay - look up Barnaby in Macclesfield. St. Barnabus is the patron saint of silkworkers. The town mills used to shut for two weeks in June and virtually everyone went on the coaches to Blackpool!
In the spirit of this thread, it was a very frugal holiday 

Elisheba

i'm very much going back to how my grandmother did things, in most things really, but I'm thinking about holidays specifically at the moment.  She would take my brother and I away in the 80s and 90's to a cottage booked within driving distance.  All the food would be packed in the car.  She would use damp flannels in a plastic bag rather than bringing wet wipes. Its was always a packed picnic, never eating out in cafes or restaurants.  We never went out in the evenings, although she was never one for going out anyway.  Holiday evenings were board games and cards, TV and books. Very occasionally when we were out we would visit a cafe for a slice of cake - and that was probably the extent of our contribution to the local economy 

Cheery_Daff

Sounds very similar to our childhood holidays @Elisheba ! Always to the same caravan site, about an hour away, only once a year and never in the summer. Always picnics, wet flannels in bags, cards and puzzle books in the evening, and the odd ice cream  or doughnut 😁 we've not been on holiday for years now (except one night at the seaside recently) but still tend to do a cottage somewhere in the UK, and cook most of our meals, but there are usually a lot more cafes involved and the odd takeaway...

MazzieD

Finally got the boiler serviced this morning after being messed around and cancellations (not by me).  One of the great advantages of working at home is that I don't need to take time off, otherwise I would have already lost 2 days annual leave due to the overlap between morning and afternoon appointments.

Had a really bizarre phone call this morning out of the blue, got a lecture about the importance of getting the boiler serviced and could they send an engineer in the next 15 minutes.  It was already re-scheduled for tomorrow morning so I will wait and see if I get a call from the engineer!  

sunshineli

Elisheba said:

i'm very much going back to how my grandmother did things, in most things really, but I'm thinking about holidays specifically at the moment.  She would take my brother and I away in the 80s and 90's to a cottage booked within driving distance.  All the food would be packed in the car.  She would use damp flannels in a plastic bag rather than bringing wet wipes. Its was always a packed picnic, never eating out in cafes or restaurants.  We never went out in the evenings, although she was never one for going out anyway.  Holiday evenings were board games and cards, TV and books. Very occasionally when we were out we would visit a cafe for a slice of cake - and that was probably the extent of our contribution to the local economy 

I loved reading this. Didn’t life seem so much simpler back then. My favourite childhood memories are going away with my grandparents to the caravan, taking a picnic and a flask down to the beach. Occasionally going for fish and chips. 

I hope to do some more frugal inspired holidays like these too. 

annieb64

We always used to have self catering holidays. My parents would take a weeks veg from the garden. The box of veg would usually end up on the floor in front of the back seat and we children would rest our feet on it.

We'd always start out early to "beat the traffic" and after a couple of hours would stop for a picnic breakfast of cold sausages and bread rolls. 

Mum would always knit us new cardigans for the holiday.

Bluegreen143

Our kids have only been on self catering holidays here in Scotland - lots of paddling in lochs or in the sea, fishing (my 6.5yo son loves trying it despite having never caught a thing yet over three separate holidays 😆🤣), campfires, movie evenings etc. Fairly cheap - though when we went away this summer we did hire a boat for a morning and also paid for a couple of swimming and soft play outings as it was rainy some of the week 😅 but in general the kids just love being outdoors.

We will have the odd meal out when away though and I do try to treat us to easier, more convenient food than at home (lots of nice cold meats, cheese, olives etc to make up picky dinners) as it’s nice to get some time off cooking. 

sunshineli

A frugal win for me today-

I am looking to buy some warm clothes for autumn/winter, but I didn’t want to spend a fortune. However I would like some good quality clothes that will last.

 I don’t have time to go to the charity shops lately so I downloaded Vinted. I managed to get myself a lovely floral jumper from one of my favourite brands. It should’ve been £45 new but I got it for £7 including postage second hand!

It’s also nice to know I’m giving it a second home.

cw18

Holdays....

When I was a child we generally had one week a year staying with my paternal grand-parents (Gloucestershire for many years, and then Margate), a week on Brownie Pack Holiday (my Mother was Brown Owl and my Dad went as cook), and a week (possibly two separate weeks some years) in the Lake District.    The property in the Lake District is a cottage owned within the family, but a private second home rather than a holiday let.   My parents made a contribution towards the running costs and paid for any electric we used or phone calls they made.    My parents took us to a Pontins camp one year, as both my brother and I complained (for a number of years) we never got 'proper holidays' like our friends - but it was a total disaster!  Our schools didn't go back after Summer until a week after most in the country, so they booked for then because it was a lot cheaper.   But it also meant there were no kids activities and hardly any other children there to mix with!   I spent most afternoons at the tea dances with my parents - not quite what we'd had in mind....      Years earlier we did have a week in Denmark (an International Scout Camp as my Dad was the pack leader and my Mum went as cook - I was probably 5 or 6), and a week in Bournemouth in a hotel (that was probably the poshest holiday we ever had though I remember very little about it - I was 7, maybe 8).   I also had a week in Germany as part of a twinning thing arranged by my school - I was out there when the Falklands troubles started.    My brother went to France as part of the same scheme.

Once I started a family it was initially just up to the Lake District for one week a year paying the nominal contribution (plus electric and phone), as it was all my budget would allow.   After the third child (as there was now 2 salaries coming into the house due to me no longer being a single parent) we started going to the Lakes for one week and to a Haven camp for another.   One year we had an almost free Haven week (bingo win we just paid to upgrade for an extra bedroom ), so we also went to the Scottish border for a week in a cottage instead of the week in the Lakes, and the following year we had a similar break in Bude.   Another year we stretched the budget, and instead of Haven we went to Southern Brittany for 15 nights in a static caravan.   The one thing all but one of the holidays had in common was that they were self-catering (we went half-board one year with Haven, but it was more stressful trying to find something for everyone so we went back to self-catering).   We also went to Germany for a week before number 3 arrived, driving there and back to stay with a friend who was based there with the RAF (cost us travel plus a contribution towards food).    My daughter went on an activity holiday with school in what is now year 5 (we paid for that), and to France with them the following year (she had to pay the bulk from birthday and Christmas money, instead of having presents from everyone).   Older son went on an activity holiday one of the years, but didn't want to contribute to the second so didn't go.   I don't think younger son went at all - I don't recall him going in year 5, and we moved before he had chance for the second but said he wouldn't have gone anyway (he was very much a homebody like me).    Daughter also did a couple of Brownie pack holidays, and older son did at least one cub camp.  The one holiday we had that I never expected to get was a week in New York in Feb 2002.   BA had cheap flights (and I do mean cheap for that trip - £99 return), so the 5 of us and my parents went over.  We stayed in 2 rooms in an aparthotel to keep costs down, and travelled everywhere on the subway or by foot.   I got to ice-skate in Central Park, which was the first time I got to tick something off my bucket list



These days I go up to the Lakes for probably 5 or 6 weeks a year (plus a weekend if there's a problem at the property), mostly with my fella but I have been on my own.   I still pay for electric (and LPG as well now, as the place has had central heating installed), but don't need to pay phone calls as I have a mobile that will use the WiFi to enable me to use that (there's no mobile signal at all within the property, so we used to have to walk a half mile down the road to use them!).   I don't make a contribution to the other costs any more, as when we're up there we do work the owner can no longer do (gardening, decorating, clearing out gutters, washing windows since the window cleaner disappeared, general repairs, and an annual desludging of the pond every Oct/Nov).   We probably average 3 full days working on the place for every week we're up there, so we get free accommodation in return for acting as caretakers which suits us brilliantly       And I got to Torquay this last May thanks to my Mum.   My parents had a time-share there, and my Mum didn't feel ready to go on her own (they missed a few years due to illnesses and Covid, and then we lost my Dad last November).   Her week happened to co-incide with a week I was off work, so I went with her.   I drove her car there and back, paid for some of the groceries and one day out, and did all the cooking.   My Mum covered all the rest of the costs, so it was a relatively inexpensive holiday for me.   I'm very lucky that my work rota has me working 5 weeks of 6 days (just Sundays and bank holiday off), and then I get a full week off in lieu of the 2nd day for each week - and those are the weeks we use to head up there.  Annual leave normally gets used for weeks off at home catching up on housework (or sleep!).

There are many places in the UK I'd like to visit  - and many more in other countries.   I hope to manage at least some of them once I retire but that all depends on how my retirement finacnes stack up.   The two I want to do most (abroad) are New Zealand (when I was 8 my teacher based as many of our classes as possible about the history and culture as she spent the entrire summer holiday there every other year) and the Camino de Santiago (I'd planned to do that in 2014, but managed to break a wrist about 3 months before I was due to go so had to call it off).   In the UK I'd love to do Oxford and Cambridge, have more than a day in Glasgow and/or Edinburgh, and spend some time travelling around both parts of Ireland (I've done a long weekend in Dublin when we had an American come over and stay with us for a month).   I'd also love to do some of the long distance walks in this country.   In order to be able to do ANY of these trips the way I need to keep myself fit