2026 Frugal Living Challenge

fionaandphil

You are not the only one wondering that @PipneyJane I often see people spending hundreds each week and wonder what they eat. I also agree that planning is the key and not everyone has time with busy jobs and family, but for me that's exactly why I plan.

I've just sorted out meal plan for this week, checked that we have everything required and that it's easy to get out of the freezer the night before. Butty box done for work tomorrow, tea in the slow cooker ready to go on in the morning and car checked.

DH announced on Thursday one of his headlights had gone and I thought it would require a garage visit. We checked the manual, visited local car parts shop, bought the bulb and it's now fitted. About £5.50 total cost. I am delighted, especially since DH is normally useless at this sort of thing.

Hope you all have a good and frugal week.

Frugaldom

@PipneyJane I'm stocking up on cooking bacon as it's still £1 in Asda. I used some yesterday to make a cheese & ham sauce for pasta and have the rest on for stock today. Extra meat from stock used to get made into pies but my work days are too long for getting right back to basics with the cooking and we STILL done have a proper cooker / oven for baking anything. My £1 per person per day began several years ago and I've simply adapted the diet to try to stay within budget. Olio helps enormously but no longer enough to fit into that budget. I'm now spending around £100 a month for 2 of us, including allowing for visitors. Spaghetti Bolognese, stir fry with noodles, curry and soup are about all we have and the Bolognese is now made with pork mince as beef has gone almost out of our price range. Equally bad, the frozen chicken breasts I usually buy have now shot up to £7/kilo. We can still get fresh eggs for £4 per tray of 30 so I'm going to have to start making more use of those.

weenancyinAmerica

My menu plan is usually;

Breakfast: oatmeal or egg

Lunch: soup and/or sandwich

Dinner: Jacket potato with toppings or pasta dish (often tuna, sometimes with meat balls)

It is hard when prices are rising so fast. I used to indulge in one pain du chocolate pack at Aldi's each month, but the price has gone up $2 in the past year. I can't afford it any more.

kimwp

May I ask (of anyone willing to answer) - how much do you think you would need each year to not be budget-conscious about what you buy at the supermarket and how you live your lives? Obviously, the sky is the limit in terms of what one can spend, but I mean so you don't have to choose the meat on offer; pork instead of beef or forgo a monthly indulgence? Instead, you head to the supermarket and buy without trying to identify the cheapest item or think about whether it is in budget.

middlewife

Interesting question and you will get a wide variety of opinions. We don't normally eat red meat ( health, wealth and eco reasons) but as I'm currently recovering from surgery have reintroduced it for a month, precooked 28 dinners and frozen them . I would say that by eating meat, fish and chicken our monthly food budget( which includes cleaning products, toiletries etc) has increased from £300 to around £600, oh and the odd real ale and 2 bottles of wine a month or so.... That's having a monthly online order from sains with all the heavy stuff, tins, jars, laundry and cleaning etc, then a weekly fresh top up at Lidl and Waitrose for posh stuff. Sometimes use 2g2g, not olio so much as I'm wheat intolerant

Nelliegrace

Mum would use about 4 oz of cooking bacon in a simple bacon and egg pie. Pies and pasties stretch a small amount of meat to feed a family.

@kimwp, My budget for meat, including bacon, and poultry for two pensioners for the week is £6, for the year £312. I could spend more, but we base our meals on WW2 ration quantities, we have for years, and we eat well. With that we get a small Sunday pot roast or a medium chicken, stews, and quite a lot of mince. I stock up the freezer when it is on offer, especially around Christmas and Easter, or reduced price. Beef and lamb are a treat, we have more pork, chicken, local venison, and turkey mince. I cook offal occasionally. We used to eat a lot of meat rabbits and home reared poultry. I buy plain meat and fish so I am not paying meat prices for sauces, pastry, and breadcrumbs. There is very little fish in a fish finger, very little meat in a ready meal.

We lost interest in wine, we share a small bottle of English cider or beer occasionally with Sunday dinner. We have homemade mead and sloe gin in the pantry.

Gem-gem

Good evening.
As YS meat is getting harder to come by we are stocking up when the supermarket are selling meat at half price or % off.
MSE done this weekend: Hair cut for DH (saving around £15); Home pedicures for DH and myself (saving around £70); Created a frame to tie blackberry bush to - free to use - using old bamboo canes from DM stash.
Defrosted the first of two freezers. Much more room and in time for the pre-Easter bargains.
Friend and I went to The Stitch Festival in London on Thursday, we took our own packed lunches and drinks. We also went home pre-rush hour to get the cheaper seats. I did travel in rush hour in the morning so that we could get there before it got too busy.

kimwp

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81933312#Comment_81933312

Thank you for sharing @middlewife it's incredible how that has doubled your shopping! I hope your recovery is going smoothly.

kimwp

Thank you @nelliegrace, your approach makes a lot of sense.

lurkeralongtime

going back a while, crochet socks for every day are a thing. Annie’s Attic have produced a great bookazines of crochet socks, “normal”, sideways, cabled etc. 4 ply sock yarn. Lots of the magazines have a sock pattern in. Last time I picked one up it cost £9.99. I put it back. Charity shop sells them for 10 pence. Best crochet book ever is”CrochetWorkshop” by Sylvia cosh and James Waters. A thick book which will inspire you and teach you to crochet anything, including socks. It was published in the 1970’s, or 80’s.And I still learn from it. Yarn for socks is not cheap, but can be found in charity shops.