2025 Frugal Living Challenge

Prudent

Merry Christmas everyone. Thank you for the new link @Frugaldom. @mumtoomany I hope you are all enjoying the new tree. I love things that are about creativity rather than buying power.

mama67

Merry Christmas everyone. 

Quiet one for us this year; just the 2 of us today. 

We have treated ourselves to an Oriental takeaway rather than a roast dinner. 

Yesterday we met DS1 & family for brunch. 

Tomorrow we head to DS2’s and daughter & family will also be there. 

Dave is not back at work until Tuesday 6 Jan having finished on Thursday 20 Dec; so getting a good few days off. 

We have some holiday trips planned for next year; so will be cutting back in other areas to help pay for these. 

We have closed the log business as at end if November as it’s no longer viable. (Too many competitors, increased costs and supplier moving further away).

Frugaldom

Good evening to all, I hope everyone is full of Christmas dinner and packed all the leftovers for using up this weekend, or further, if you are freezing the leftovers. We had dinner courtesy of DD and she brought DGD1 to visit while she's home from uni. I'm currently resting up before tackling trifle and can't see us getting to the cheese and biscuits. I've spent time muling over how best to proceed with next year's budget, mainly because I have an unusual, situational lifestyle with minimal income. I'll need to check what the national minimum wage is to compare that with mine, as I don't usually clear minimum wage.

Gem-gem

Prudent said:

Merry Christmas everyone. Thank you for the new link @Frugaldom. @mumtoomany I hope you are all enjoying the new tree. I love things that are about creativity rather than buying power.

I agree with you @Prudent. 

Happy Christmas everyone. Hope you have all had a good day. It was a fairly quiet one - with just three of us. That is how I like it. Tomorrow, I am going out for a walk with a friend, then we are off to my husband's friends for a small get together. I have my brother and his adult children over on Sunday. 

We have frozen out half the stuffings, we will enjoy them in the new year. We didn't get many bargains yesterday in the supermarket. DH was thinking of dashing down to the supermarket to see if they have reduced the turkey crowns to a. more reasonable price. 

Frugaldom

Good evening, I hope everyone has had a good day and didn't fall foul of too many Boxing Day sales. 😀 I've just tallied up my 2025 budget and had a look at a few numbers for 2026. My groceries category got a bit muddled as I hadn't separated the cost of toiletries, cleaning products or pet food, which were kept as individual categories in my previous budgets. Instead, they were all lumped together to give an overall amount of £1,200 for 2025 and I've done similar for 2026. I had a little bit left over but have now ordered a final delivery from Asda so I could stock up with sultanas, UHT milk, cat food and a 12kg bag of dog food, even although we don't have a dog. As well as our own cat, we feed the ferals, the resident fox family and the badger family. We also still have 3 pensioner ducks living out life in the back garden. All of the aforementioned means that my £1,200 ran to £1,218.38 for the year. I've tried my best to keep to my original £1 per person per day for all meals. This year has worked out at £1.67 per person per day but that's including pet food and some special Christmas and New Year treats. (eg. 1L bottle of whisky cream liqueur, Bucks Fizz and bottled shandy.) It also includes extra coffee, tea, sugar and milk for the hut, where we have visitors almost every week. I would never have been able to manage this without regular Olio and various gifts brought by friends. The freezer is full for the start of the new year.

2Scratters

@arietty re your car budget your plan is off to a good start. I put away £175 for my 15 year old car this includes a generous fuel allowance of £100 pcm and some for maintenance that maybe required. I ended up having 2 lots of pairs of tyres this year and repair on a wheel as I hit a divitt on the motorway at 70 mph and it buckled my wheel. I have a good buffer now. My fuel is usually about £60-£65 pcm I leave the unused in the pot.

@kimwp carrots will definitely do well stored in cold water, just need to change the water in it every 2-3 days or so and will last for weeks.

Hope everyone is having a frugal and enjoyable Christmas.

2 Scratters xx

Gem-gem

Good afternoon everyone, 
I have just been looking at how much I have spent this year. We are mortgage free. I have retired early and I am living off my savings.  Only income this year has been interest from savings, money from boot fairs plus a little bit of 'pocket money' from doing my Mum's ironing.

I have taken how much I had in savings on January 1st 2025 and calculated how much I have in savings now. My savings are down £11,757.30 for this year. My expenditure was more. I am happy with this as I had originally budgeted £12k a year. This amount is for everything - all bills, all food etc. 

Frugaldom

Good evening - I should probably have held off opening the new thread until closer to new year as it's getting quite busy over there already. Regardless, I am finishing my 2025 challenge here and will begin again next week in the new thread. The 2026 budget has been calculated at £7,500 for everything, including a guesstimate for council tax and my car, which I hope to sell in the new year.

I have just emptied out all my spare change savings tubs, which now exclude 1p, 2p and 5p coins as I give those to the grandchildren to put into the latest papier mache piggy bank we made during one of their summer visits. Total in my jars amounted to £98.20 but only £10 of that was in £2 coins. Is anyone here still doing the spare change / sealed pot or £2 coin saving challenges?

Final grocery order of the year delivery tonight but it's a little less than I'd posted earlier, owing to unavailable items. This means that I did stay within my £1,200 per year grocery budge, which included some pet food.

My head is filling up with new mini challenges. Last night, I went back and read the whole of my 2007 saving to buy a house thread (link in post 1) and was quite surprised by how many incidents and events within it that I had completely forgotten. I can't even bring it all up to date because the thread is now closed but there has been a lot happened even since the last update on that particular challenge.

Micro frugaleur business challenge that I started on 1st August has, today, broken even again after spending on the new fire extinguisher cabinets. I now have 7 months to generate enough to cover next year's insurances, licensing and service contracts - about £750. If anyone knows any wildlife watchers, campervanners or motorhomers interested in  pine martens, please send them our way. Our frugal feeding stations (made mostly from donated pallets) are visited by wild critters most nights.

mama67

Frugaldom said:

Good evening - I should probably have held off opening the new thread until closer to new year as it's getting quite busy over there already. Regardless, I am finishing my 2025 challenge here and will begin again next week in the new thread. The 2026 budget has been calculated at £7,500 for everything, including a guesstimate for council tax and my car, which I hope to sell in the new year.

I have just emptied out all my spare change savings tubs, which now exclude 1p, 2p and 5p coins as I give those to the grandchildren to put into the latest papier mache piggy bank we made during one of their summer visits. Total in my jars amounted to £98.20 but only £10 of that was in £2 coins. Is anyone here still doing the spare change / sealed pot or £2 coin saving challenges?

Final grocery order of the year delivery tonight but it's a little less than I'd posted earlier, owing to unavailable items. This means that I did stay within my £1,200 per year grocery budge, which included some pet food.

My head is filling up with new mini challenges. Last night, I went back and read the whole of my 2007 saving to buy a house thread (link in post 1) and was quite surprised by how many incidents and events within it that I had completely forgotten. I can't even bring it all up to date because the thread is now closed but there has been a lot happened even since the last update on that particular challenge.

Micro frugaleur business challenge that I started on 1st August has, today, broken even again after spending on the new fire extinguisher cabinets. I now have 7 months to generate enough to cover next year's insurances, licensing and service contracts - about £750. If anyone knows any wildlife watchers, campervanners or motorhomers interested in  pine martens, please send them our way. Our frugal feeding stations (made mostly from donated pallets) are visited by wild critters most nights.

We do the £2 coin saving in a Smart ie tube. 

When full it’s £160. 

We managed to fill 2 last year which we exchanged for spending money when we went on holiday. 

Prudent

I am happy to see some people still posting here. I am a bit later than usual with working out my end of year spends. I did that this afternoon and was pleased to discover that my monthly spend was only £10 more than last year. I didn't expect that with prices rising so much. My council tax alone increased by 13%. I will post on the 2026 thread when I have given some thought to next year's priorities.

Thank you to @Frugaldom for running the thread and to everyone who has contributed this year. I have enjoyed it and learned new tips and tricks.