Frugal/money saving tips

[Pinkbutton85]

AIBU to ask for your top money saving tips and tricks?!

I'm living in my overdraft at the mo. Family of 4. DH works full time. I'm a SAHM looking for part time work. A 4Yyo and 2 year old. 2 cats. One family car. One work car (included in job)

I'm asking for tips on anything! Food bill, bills, activities for the kids..

Thanks!

Lidl / Also cat food is cheap and decent quality.
Hand washing out instead of tumble dryer if you can.
Yellow stickers in supermarkets. Use your freezer if you see a bargain.
Street markets for fruit and veg if any near you.
Use Quidco or similar for cashback where you can

Get rid of any unnecessary expenses

2nd car, cats, mobile phone contracts, sky, alcohol, holidays, makeup, haircuts etc

Cut costs with as far as possible on the rest- cheaper food and supplies, wear a jumper instead of having heating on max, walk instead of drive or bus, find free activities, wash at lower temps

Meal plan meal plan meal plan

Packed lunches

Check all your direct debits

Switch phone/broadband/Mobiles/Insurances/ utilities

Visit moneysavingexpert.com and look at the old style and debt free wannabe boards.

Cook from scratch

Meal plan meal plan meal plan.

Write down all your incomings and outgoing on a daily basis. At the end of the month analyse it ie food, transport, utilities. The see which one you could make the biggest saving on.

Go through your direct debits and standing orders - are they all essential? Is there anything you are paying out for which you could cancel?

Get rid of the cats.

Irresponsible comments made by thoughtless people are the reason animals end up in rehoming centres until someone else is willing to take them, or not as the case may be.

I imagine that OPs cats are considered part of the family. My dog certainly is.

A pet is part of the family, no way would any of my pets go if I short of money.

Switch all utilities and insurances through one of the compare sites.
Heating at 18 ° then bath robes on.
Mobiles changed to sim only gif gaf deals
An empty oven is burning money. Any time it is on fill it. When making something for tea make a quiche for tomorrows lunch at the same time.
Full fridges scare me, empty freezers scare me. See all fresh foods as the perishables they are, have a meal plan set up of how to use them or freeze them.
The vegetables at the bottom of the fridge that you think need thrown out are just soup. Peel them, chop off any bad bits, throw them in the slow cooker with stock, season and blitz.
Buy meat as joints, gammon can stretch to so many meals, roast day one, left overs with egg and hash day two.
Left overs cubed in a quiche and carbonara for 3-4 meals. All for £4 at Aldi.
Base your meals around the Aldi super 6 and the Lidl weekend deals.
Bulk buy when super offers are on. My freezer is groaning under the weight of the 39p Christmas veg offers. I have mashed swede, mashed potatoes, diced carrots etc ready just to re heat during the week.
Ironing costs money and do we really need to iron everything? I stopped ironing bedding, towels, PJs, even some out door clothing like skinny jeans and vest tops. They un crease as you put them on.
Showers instead of baths are a money saver and time saver.
My posh looking hand wash is in fact Aldi basic bubble bath in lovely pump containers. 30p a litre.
A use it up challenge! From your kitchen cupboards to your make up and body lotions. Who can come up with the best recipe to use that out of date pasta sauce in the back of the cupboard? Have fun with it, if the kids are old enough you can do it as a come dine with me special. Only rule is they must use food that is in.
Be as zero waste as possible it really is money in the bin.

Yes, rehoming the cats will make all the difference OP, get rid of them and it will be the high life for you
we lived in a caravan for a while until we found a place that would allow us to keep faintlycat

Systematically go through the moneysavingexpert budgeting stuff. Sign up to their weekly email for ongoing tips.

Use up all the food, toiletries etc that you have in stock. Buy as much food as possible from Aldi, Lidl or on offer in future. If you're careful there's loads of stuff that you will never need to pay full price from a main supermarket for.

Think about how much the meals you eat cost to make and ditch any of the expensive ones for cheaper ones.

Train the cats to hunt for their own food. . Failing that, I've found that the Aldi foil tray food will actually be eaten by the fussy buggers.

Can you switch your overdraft to an interest free credit card, cancel the OD and make a point of paying it off during the interet free period.

Never eat at a chain restaurant or go to a theme park etc without looking for a voucher code. There's almost always a deal on offer.

Look out for annual passes for local attractions that you like to visit a lot. Sometimes they pay for themselves after 2 or 3 visits and after that it's a cheap day out.

Also see what is available locally. Our city has several large city parks with playgrounds, woods, lakes, wildlife that are totally free and a great way to spend an afternoon as long as it isn't raining.

Always take a picnic. Food and drinks out of the house can add up hugely. Use refillable drinks bottles filled with squash or water instead of buying drinks from convenience stores etc.

Buy cheap DVDs from the pound shop or Music Magpie instead of new ones from the supermarket or going to the cinema. You can make your own popcorn for pennies too.

Do you have a clear understanding of your income and outgoings? If not, this is the first thing to do, get complete clarity of your income and expenditure. After that look at obvious expenditure that can be minimised or cut out altogether.

Good luck OP, with 2 young children at home, these are by far the hardest days financially.

Get loads of water reducing gadgets from your water company - free.....we got a timer for the shower but they also have things to stick in your cistern to reduce flush etc.
Meal plan and plan to eat less meat. But veggies from the market if you have one close by. Aldi & Lidl for everything else.
Check all your contracts to get the cheapest deal possible.
If you have a magazine habit borrow from the library. Also the library now has a pretty good Audible substitute too!
Run and walk to keep fit and walk to save fuel and parking charges.
Go minimalist on cleaning and toiletry products.
Try and find a way to fix broken things (youtube) rather than immediately replace.
Kids of 4 and 2, don't need loads of money spent on them, they just want to play with their parents & friends.

We had a Toy library locally - you paid a small amount to join and got to borrow lots of different toys.

Have your kids adopted, they are a luxury.

I’d get rid of the cats as well

With a 4 and a 2 year old you really don't need to spend any/much money on activities. so cut this down to the minimum. I had no spare cash when mine were those ages and the likes of swimming/soft play were really pipe dreams, but you can always get out to the park (wrap up warmly in winter), jump in puddles/leaves, play on any play stuff available, play hide and seek etc.
Also keep a supply of really cheap craft bits at home. This is inexpensive and keeps young DC amused for hours.

Building a den with a sheet and chairs is totally free and can take up most of the day if the DC really get into it.

I'd also suggest looking long and hard at whether you really need a 2nd car.

Without seeing a full breakdown of the family's incomings and outgoings its impossible to say whether the cost of the cats is significant (unlikely).

The OP could just be spending a bit much and could have loads of scope to rein it in, so lets not get rid of the cats just yet shall we.

For all we know the DH could be spending hundreds of pounds a month on breakfast and lunch at work and the family's whole problem could be solved by him taking a packed lunch and staying out of coffee shops.

Never eat at a chain restaurant or go to a theme park etc without looking for a voucher code

We used Tesco clubcard vouchers to pay for a day out for DGD. It cost us £32.50 in Tesco vouchers, if we'd bought the tickets direct from the venue for all of us it would have cost £85.

What level of scrimping have you done? Just curious as that will help the advice. I’ve done the cutting food shop usual brands/bill etc, analysing direct debits and questioning do we really need something. Sadly though just gets to a point when your bills just are really high (nursery fees will literally take any spare cash we had for at least the next 6 months. And unless one of us gets a promotion or a new job I don’t know how to bridge the gap . If relevant after direct debits(as in mortgage/phones/internet/childcare) for everything else (food/oil/Petrol/clothes for dc etc) I’m looking at 100pw for family of four and I don’t know how to stretch that

Thank you for all the ideas!

I definitely won’t get rid of the cats. They’re rescue cats to begin with and wouldn’t send them back. They’re insured well and feeding them is cheap enough x

Why are some people so damned insensitive?
No doubt the cats are part of the family and much loved.
It's irresponsible owners that cause so many problems with animal shelters etc. OP seems not to be of that Ilk.
She's looking for budget exercises for the whole family, including the pets.
Dear Lord....unnecessary insensitive and useless comments 're the cats.

Good on you, @pinkbutton.

@Chanelprincess @NoCanoe

It's irresponsible to get rid of cats yet the OP is living in debt and glad of advice about not heating up too much water? The OP may have had a run of bad luck and it isn't for me to suggest that they're irresponsible but I think it's equally absurd to suggest they're anything other than a luxury.

@troodiedoo

"Have your kids adopted, they are a luxury."

Don't liken children to cats. Cats aren't furbabies. You aren't a mother to them. There's a symbiotic relationship where cats let themselves be stroked in return for tins of dead fish and animals.

If you live in a city, seek out the large independent supermarkets in areas with ethnic minorities. Fruit and veg, rice and spices and other staples are often incredibly cheap there. Was browsing in one yesterday and realised I pay at least double in Tesco for things like aubergines and courgettes, rice, chilli powder, onions ...

The have your children adopted post was a joke I assume.

Yes the OP is 'living in her overdraft' but there is no information about how big this OD is and I assume it never gets cleared because she is a SAHM and has no income apart from CB/poss CTC? She also doesn't say whether or not the family has other debts, savings, how much their income is, what their outgoings are, etc etc.

It is impossible to give suitable advice without more information. Other threads on here show that lots of people have no clue what is an essential spend and what is a luxury, or how to make the best of their money.

OP what you need to do is do a full budget for the entire year for all your family - look on moneysavingexpert - put your budget together and follow the advice about maximising income and minimising outgoings.

It will also show you if you have enough income for your outgoings and what to do if you don't. There's a big difference between being £50 short every month and having lots of discretionary spends, you just cut back a bit. But if you don't even have enough to cover the basics, that's a whole new ball game.

Getting some extra work is a good idea, especially if you can work at the evenings and/or weekends when your DH can look after the DCs -could make a huge difference.

OP was looking for advice as a whole. For the whole family, which included the cats.
Children as well as pets are a luxury in one sense. Doesn't mean you should bin them when trying to get budget managed.
If they suffering, then that's different. But that's not the case here.

There's loads of apps which give you discounts on products or points for uploading your receipts. Shopmium, receipt hog, check out smart are a few. You can then use companies such as quidco or my top cash back for points for online spending.
Check your car insurance, mobiles, Internet, gas and electric are on the lowest tariffs. If you switch by searching for money supermarket via top cash back you normally get £30 for just switching.
Companies such as bzzfeed will give you freebies for you to trial and report back on. You can end up getting some good stuff; toys, electronics etc.
If you have the time, things like doing surveys for cash can net you some money. I've tried it before, but you have to do hoards to make money and the level of spam texts, calls wasn't worth the hassle. Some people swear by it.