It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

pelirocco

littlemoney said:

From what I saw yesterday there is no shortage of money and everyone can afford the increasing price of fuel. I have reached this conclusion after two 20 mile journerys along a dual carriageway. I travelled at a steady 50 mph to increase fuel economy and many cars and lorries came zooming past me doing 60 - 70 mph. No car or lorry stayed behind me for long.

No lorry was zooming past  you doing 60 - 70 miles per hour ,they are limited  by law to 56 mphb( in reality  the limiters not allow them to reach that )

General_Grant

otb666 said:

The only time I use my table salt is when i have tooth ache (brush teeth with salt and stops hurting)  My table salt container is 10 years old as too lazy to add it when cooking.

I bought a box of table salt even longer ago than that and have used very little - in my case to help melt ice before clearing a path from front door to roadside.

LadyHarriet

pelirocco said:

No lorry was zooming past  you doing 60 - 70 miles per hour ,they are limited  by law to 56 mphb( in reality  the limiters not allow them to reach that )

I drive a Mii Electric and using the ECO+ setting, I'm limited to 59mph. The last time I was on the A30 and wanted to ensure I had plenty of leeway in my battery, I selected ECO+. There were certainly lorries passing me in the outside lane - just sayin'...

in_my_wellies

pelirocco said:

littlemoney said:

From what I saw yesterday there is no shortage of money and everyone can afford the increasing price of fuel. I have reached this conclusion after two 20 mile journerys along a dual carriageway. I travelled at a steady 50 mph to increase fuel economy and many cars and lorries came zooming past me doing 60 - 70 mph. No car or lorry stayed behind me for long.

No lorry was zooming past  you doing 60 - 70 miles per hour ,they are limited  by law to 56 mphb( in reality  the limiters not allow them to reach that )

I drive along the M42/A42 every Thursday evening at 60 mph and several lorries pass me. 

Spendless

I've started today with a new resolve. I boiled the kettle to the brim, made myself and Mr S a coffee. filled a thermos with boiling water and will see how I get on with making hot drinks from that during the day and the boiling water left tipped into the washing up bowl so I didn't need to add as much hot water from the taps (no DW here, a decision I came to regret when we had our kitchen done a few years ago) 

I have cleared and cleaned another kitchen cupboard, discovered there was just an empty box of my porridge. Thought only I ate it so no idea how that has happened. I have some granola that no one will eat, so will google a recipe to make them into breakfast bars. Next is to clean and tidy the bathroom and downstairs loo. Once that is done I can put the toiletries that we've fetched back from daughter's digs neatly into place. This will also highlight exactly what we need in way of shampoo etc next time we shop. 

joedenise

I'm another who has decided to try using a flask for drinks during the day.  We had the coffee machine on so once we'd had a coffee I used the rest of the water to make a flaskful which I can drink this morning while DH is out.  I don't usually drink that much coffee but thought I'd try it as really don't like tea from a flask!

If it doesn't work then I'll be trying tea in the flask later in the week!

Slinky

Spendless, I've got 2 thermos flasks, one of which has been used a lot for coffee in the past so you can't get the smell out. OH has a flask on his desk and my flask with water only gets tipped into the kettle to reheat, minimum amount at a time, to make my tea. Can't stand stewed thermos tea. I also put a small amount of water into the kettle after boiling it to take the edge off with the rest of the heat from the boiled kettle.

ETA the reason for using flasks, for us, is we have economy 7 so I fill them at cheap rate.

This reminds me, I need to go and take the soup I made yesterday out of the fridge for lunch.

joedenise

@Slinky - I think I may pinch that idea as like you I don't like the stewed taste of tea from a flask so that may work better for me.  Thanks.

boultdj

I just put boiled water in my flask, that way OH can have his coffee and I can have a tea/ chocolate/ cup a soup.

LadOnTheHill

You're financially better off not boiling too much water in the first place.

Putting boiling water in a thermos won't necessarily save money, unfortunately. A kettle uses all of the energy it draws from the mains to heat the water, so if you put a litre of water in, it'll use a litre's worth of energy to boil it. If you put a cupful of water in, it'll use a cupful's worth. An easy-ish way to see how much energy you're using is to time how long it takes the kettle to boil the water - if it takes longer, it uses more electricity. For reference, a 2kw electric kettle uses 166w every five minutes it's running.

If you fill your mug from the tap and put just that into the kettle, you get exactly the amount of boiling water you need.  The only way to save money using a kettle is to not boil more than you need. If you have excess water and let it go cold, that's energy going to waste. Putting the excess into a thermos stops it going cold, but it only saves you wasting energy, it doesn't actually cost you less. You would save a bit of time having already hot water to reheat, but then you're paying money out twice for the same cup of hot water.

I put an energy monitor on my parent's kettle back when I lived with them, they used about a kW a day boiling it. They'd fill it up, boil it, use what they needed, then let the rest go cold. At today's prices, that's about £100. I nagged them to only boil what they needed, but when they saw the difference it was costing, they changed their habits.