If you grew up poor, what frugal habits have you kept now you're more comfortable?

[OhamIreally]

Mine is that I always buy in the sale. I bought dresses from Monsoon a couple of years ago and paid full price as they were for a wedding DD and I were going to. Saw them in the sale a short while later and returned them and bought them again in the sale (we hadn't yet worn them and the labels were still on) as I couldn't bear to "waste" the difference.
My luxury is that I (pre-Covid) eat out quite a bit but even then I make sure I use vouchers/gourmet society.

Daffodil it's a lot easier for many families to eat cheap, unhealthy food than healthy, nourishing food. FFS

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30045-8/fulltext

Always packed lunch, and never random coffees/ lunches out, if I'm by myself.
I take a flask of coffee and nuts/ cereal bar if I'm at a museum/ exhibition.
My husband likes to stop for coffee/ snacks randomly( unplanned) and it always sends me doing mental calculations.
We do eat out or go for coffee sometimes, it's just when it's unplanned that I feel uncomfortable.
I also make soup/curry/stir fry from leftovers, and meal plan.
I don't object to spending money on something nice, but don't like waste.

Always buying extra tins and dried food, just in case I suddenly lose my job and I can't afford to eat.

It has come in handy recently. I suppose that makes me a selfish hoarder, by mumsnet standards, but honestly, after being homeless and hungry for a while, not stocking up on a bit extra when times are good just seems utterly stupid. It's programmed into me.

I feel guilty spending money on myself. I dont know if this is particularly Irish but my parents bought a much bigger nicer house than they could afford and then every other thing was budget for 25 years! Everything, all our furniture, we never ate out, my mother didnt have nice clothes til i left home. They have money now that their mortgage paid.

I have a small shabby house on the rougher end of town but i can order a takeaway, or a lipstick. I feel rich compared to how i felt in my childhood.

The thing is I remember the really unpleasant aspects of being poor.

Not putting the heating (wall heaters) on for example and having to scrape ice off the windows and just it being so miserable as a child that I have gone the other way that saving a few pounds isn't worth being uncomfortable or cold in your home.

Only ever buy clothes in sales but buy the best quality I can afford
Buy the best quality of everything so that it will last , can be mended , can be passed on when I die ( furniture etc)
Look for online discount codes and offers
Buy items in bulk when it’s on offer eg I buy at least 6 bottles of Persil non bio at once
Buy yellow stickered items if I’ll use it
Use topcashback and Quidco
Use a reward credit card
Have a sim only deal for £7.50 month
Use ZIPZERO to pay for my daughters mobile
I started to do match betting and save all the money just in case ...
I know the price of absolutely everything
Never buy magazines or newspapers other than a subscription to gardeners world
I never buy a single tin of coke etc or a single packet of crisps . Always multipacks
Only eat out occasionally and only in excellent restaurants . I refuse to pay for food I can cook at home myself.
Buy a reliable second hand car and drive it for years and years
Always make my journeys in the car double up .eg when swimming lessons are finished I’ll do the weekly shop on the way home
I don’t shop unless I really have to
I bake a lot as it’s better quality and cheaper than the shops .
We keep chickens
We grow lots of fruit and veg

Reading the above makes it sound like I have a miserable existence and never spend any money which is untrue .
We have a super quality of life because we don’t waste money . I buy the best quality food available , we go on holiday but not every year.
because I don’t waste money my children have lots of opportunities which I never had. They ride , play tennis , learn an instrument, have swimming lessons , they have pets and lots and lots of books which aren’t all second hand .
They have everything they need and some of what they want .
Not having very much grown up has made me very wary of not having a safety net . I don’t trust the government to help me

@ParisInTheSpringtime I am also terrified of being poor again.
I do have the heating on a lot but absolutely love that feeling of being warm and don't take it for granted.
I have worked hard to keep my career going, throughout everything, because I can't bear looking over that precipice into poverty.

My house is always warm.

I hate picnics . When we go out for the day , I buy food .

I always have extra food in cupboards. It's rotated so it never goes off

DS has the "right" thing for every occasion. I hated when I was younger not having the same as everyone ekse. So I spend stupid amounts ensuring Ds dies

Sometimes being poorer as a child doesn't always make you frugal...
Agree
Me as a kid, food was scarce, new clothes a dream, 1 pair of shoes, electricity cut off as a kid every other month, cold winters, melting summer nights, no school excursions, barely a Christmas or birthday presents, even then in knockoffs

Now, we have food for weeks, im always online shopping for clothes, shoes, bags, heater or fire goes on if we cold, air con if we hot.
I do always shop sales and look for discounts just cos i love the thrill of the chase.
Some would say dd is spoiled, yep fair call, she has what i never did and more. By 10 has been more family holidays than i had in my whole childhood

I can entertain myself for little to no costs.

Interestingly, I refuse to worry about paying for the heating. We frequently had none when I was a kid and I still remember shivering the colds nights away and struggling to stay awake the next day in school. I always swore I'd be warm above everything else.

Electric blanket instead of heating.

I believe most of these are innate rather than a product of your childhood

I grew up very privileged. Money was never mentioned, we were spoilt, privately educated. It was a lovely childhood but absolutely no concept of being careful with money.

However, I have always been very careful. Always saves and researched and never wanted to make rash purchases. My brother though is the opposite. My sister in the middle.

I also do the flask/snacks thing. I’ll very often not have a drink or a cake or ice cream when everyone else is. Not because I don’t want one but it’s just hard wired into me that it’s a waste of money and you don’t need it, we’ve got ice creams at home (I don’t ever say that though!).

Also, if we go out for the day somewhere and there’s a gift shop at the end, DH will always stop and browse and let the kids buy something. That’s SO alien to me, my instinct is to march straight through it. I don’t though cause I want my kids to have those little treats. Programmes as well, if we go to the theatre I’ll never buy one.

Sometimes being poorer as a child doesn't always make you frugal...

Totally true. I grew up in a household with 4 dc, 2 parents and there was just enough of everything, but nothing was ever elaborate or more than enough. Holidays were house/caravan swaps with friends and relatives (we lived in London, we went short of offers), shoes were bought on credit, we had free dinners abd heavily discounted school trips, days out were free stuff (but, again, London....) and we very rarely went out. We’d go to Wendy’s (burgers) because they had a salad bar or Garfunkel’s (sort of grill/diner restaurant chain of the 80s) but we allowed starter or pudding or drink that wasn’t water. I wore NHS specs, abd it was a great day when I could get the round wire ones.

Of the four of us, DSis and DBro2 are massive spendthrifts and splash the cash. They both live in ££££ places and say they are skint when they’ve inky got £500 in their current accounts a week before payday. DBro 1 and I are burg extremely frugal,cook from scratch a lot, consider a holiday to be flashy if we’re sleeping in a building rather than a tent and are very “make do and mend”. Interesting that we both work in public service and the other 2 work in notoriously high value industries. Exactly the same upbringing.

for the day somewhere and there’s a gift shop at the end, DH will always stop and browse and let the kids buy something. That’s SO alien to me, my instinct is to march straight through it. I don’t though cause I want my kids to have those little treats. Programmes as well, if we go to the theatre I’ll never buy one.

This! The happy medium for the gift shop I have found is that I am happy to pay for a book or something intelligent about the place we have been.?When we are on holiday I always buy a postcard of where we’ve been and write a summary of where we went and what we did on the back and a fridge magnet. The dc are welcome to spend their pocket money on rubbers/teddies/felt pens/seaside rock etc.

Flamingo it's not about having a right to a refund - no shop is obligated to accept returns except for faulty products, but most shops operate a 28 day returns policy in order to keep customer good will and return business. People are more likely to buy if they know they can change their minds and get a refund.
It's totally normal to take stuff back and buy it cheaper in the sales if you can.

My mum grew up poor. As a result, she overspent as an adult, instilled an attitude that any spare money should be frivolously spent, had loads of debt. She feels very entitled and values things for the cost and the admiration of gets.
It has taken me many years to change my mindset, ran up debt, overspent and felt that I was a crap parent for not buying my kids everything they see. She reinforced this too by lending money to me and questioning my parenting.
Anyway, my kids are much more sensible with money, savers rather than spenders. I hope they have developed good money mindset that it took me so long to get.

Second hand things.
I'm more than happy to have second hand clothes and give my dcs second hand toys.

Forgot to say,
Always have a voucher/deal when eating out
Search for cheapest price on items
Learned how to fix things around the house
Buy second hand
Buy quality items that last
Always have extra food in the house ( this comes from when I had hard times financially)
Work overtime when I can
Get cashback on purchases

We weren’t really poor as kids but my parents were frugal. It’s had the opposite effect on me-for example. the heating goes on whenever I feel slightly cold, it was miserable feeling cold all through the winter, waking up to ice on the windows and being able to see your own breathe (old house). We also only had hot water for our baths so face and hand washing were done in cold water and when I was in my teens I had awful greasy hair and had to wash it in cold water every morning or boil a kettle.
^^^
Absolutely. Both myself and my sibling have thermo nuclear baths after years of horrid tepid ones in freezing bathrooms.😬 I have none of the competitive “heating on, heating off” that you see every autumn and spring. I will turn it on when cold and off when it’s warm enough.

I will only buy clothes that are in the sales but only because everything ends up in there now due to mass production .

Talking a packed lunch, some water and a flask!

Ha! I love all us poor kids recognise how miserable a cold house is.

The charities I‘ve signed up for are all ones I directly relate to; toilets, fresh water and childbirth.
Is there one for hot water or heating?

I buy in bulk at good prices, but I’m not tempted by a bargain for the sake of it.

I struggle to spend money on myself but I find it difficult not to buy what the dc need for any occasion.

I wouldn’t turn on the heating on my own account but I wouldn’t let my dc go cold.

I always plan ahead. I buy for Christmas from Sept onwards, I always have about two weeks shopping in the house. I plan for birthdays months in advance.

I’m aware that fortunes can change quickly and you can’t take for granted that your lifestyle and wealth will last. I know many people who can’t seem to conceive of change, and seem to think who they are now is who they’ll always be. I’m not afraid or fatalistic. I just can’t not know that life isn’t permanent.