How to cut corners when you already cut all of the corners?

[Moneysavvymam]

Me and DH have been eating into our savings recently. We have just moved so that comes with costs. Bought a few extra takeaways after being knackered from unpacking amd moving, bought a few new things we needed including furniture (all second hand though) so we initially thought that was part and parcel of the move. It costs money.

However now its been a while and the savings are still going down when they should be going back up.

We need to cut costs but we already do the following-
batch cook one pot meals mostly and freeze.
cycle or walk to cut travel costs (no car)
called Internet and got a better deal but they keep putting the price back up despite setting up an 18 month fixed price contract. eye roll.
-buy almost everything second hand
-we already shop at aldi and lidl
-we don't buy stuff for the sake of it anyway its all second hand
-stay in mostly, or local walks no days out for £££
-keep heating off and use electric blankets in winter and jumpers and extra socks

I don't know where else we can save. We were given a couple of hundred from family as a moving in present, it was supposed to go toward a new kitchen or flooring which is bare and unsafe but it just went on bills and now I'm too embarrassed to have people round because we are still living in a fixer upper when I budgeted and planned to have saved enough to have redecorated 80% of the place by now, but in reality I've put off buying a tin of paint because the money is just running away it seems.

oh and we just had a letter saying the gas and electricity is expected to rise in price. And I've noticed I'm spending more and more on food.
Is there anything I have forgotten? We are a family of 6 and I didn't even replace all of the uniform this year because I just couldn't afford it.
We still have about 2 months worth of expenses in savings but its dwindling.

I feel like we should be raking it in because we cut expenses to the bone but I'm struggling to think of where else we can cut. Any advice? I'm sure lots are in the same boat. Thank you for getting this far if you did, I know I'm a rambler when I worry.

"mint tea from the garden, not bought tea or coffee" You can get a pack of 160 teabags from Lidl for 99p, faffing around with mint is not going to make much of a difference to OP's finances.

@aLittleL1fe

Oh please you have to be joking

Tea won't, coffee does.

"It’s not free as others would be paying for it. Surely it would be better to ensure that parents covered the cost of any children they choose to have, after all it’s a choice people make for themselves. Better to encourage personal responsibility than put it back on others."
This has been the rhetoric for a while now and fertility rates are dropping, and dropping and dropping to well below replacement level. Turns out if you make it very expensive to have kids and treat them as an individual indulgence rather than absolutely necessary for the future of any country, you don't have enough people to pay for things in future!

@aLittleL1fe

Tea won't, coffee does.

Again, available for just over a pound. groceries.aldi.co.uk/en-GB/p-alcafe-3-house-blend-roast-ground-coffee-227g/4088600259765

Just thought of some other things we did when we were in your shoes. So as others have said, no paid streaming services, no phone contracts, no dishwasher, no takeaways, no alcohol, no fizzy drinks.
For the Takeaways I used to make Mc(name of child) meals. Cheap frozen fries and burgers served in a paper bag with the name on it, and the children made paper placemats. It was a huge success and repeated many times. We also had Chinese night (still do) cheap veggie stir fry and rice made special by eating it out of your smallest bowls with very cheap chopsticks. Veggie chilli is a treat if you get the DCs to help make it into wraps.
We also didn't give pocket money but had a star chart. If the DCS earned all the stars that week they could choose a piece of paper with a treat on it from a lucky dip bag. They were things like "Watch with Mother" where I would make popcorn and watch a dvd with them in the dark, like the cinema. "Art attack" could be anything messy and creative, "Master chef" for some home baking - hopefully you get my idea, and the slips were reused and reinvented depending on how much time I had. These were probably the best times with my kids and my DH joined in. "Going on a bear hunt" was hilarious fun - once we took them to a park that had a bear pit, and we took a winter picnic, all free. Another time we blindfolded them and recreated all the things that happened in the book to squeals of laughter!
As for the state of your house. Its clean hopefully, the DCs are loved, do not be embarrassed that it does not look like a show home. If anyone who gave you money asks what you spent it on tell them straight.
Enjoy your DCs whilst they are home with you and try not to fret about money. Certainly never compare yourselves to anyone else who seems to "have it all" for all you know they are miserable in their gleaming palace.... :)

This thread is thoroughly depressing. I ve been poor in my time. I grew up poor. No one should have to go through that. No child should go hungry. But also.... it shouldn’t be the case that child care is too expensive and so working becomes impossible. And it shouldn’t be the case that working people struggle this hard to make ends meet.

These are political failings. I’m very sad that England has succumbed to rampant rampant inequality. The people of England need to start making better political choices and start voting accordingly.

@BeardyButton I wonder how poor is poor? I am old enough to remember being tiny when we did not have central heating and the insides of the single glazed windows froze in my bedroom. I thought that was poor Then I went to Uni and met a lovely lady in a Northern city who had brought up 3 children in a back to back 2 bedroom house with an outside loo. My father in law came from a mining background - they never had toothpaste and all his clothes were hand me downs passed around the community.
Then I met a homeless guy when I was doing outreach volunteering and he opened my eyes.
We need to think about whether we need all the stuff we think is essential. We are way better off than many countries regarding benefits - and we have the wonderful NHS

"We are way better off than many countries regarding benefits - and we have the wonderful NHS" Well, that means nothing can ever improve then and everything's actually just fine so long as you have TOOTHPASTE.

Check out mobile phone contract; I'm always amazed by how much people spend a month on those!
Find another internet provider.
Rethink the foods you're eating. Going veggie (at least partially) will help or you can cut down on the volume of meat and pack out meals with lentils or chickpeas or just loads of veg, and avoid sauces in jars; make them using tinned toms or similar.
Cut down on any luxury foods e.g. cakes/crisps/sweets/alcohol and move away from branded foods. Most of the supermarket own brand foods are fine, the packaging is just less fancy.
Cancel any streaming services (Netflix, Prime etc). Stick with just Freeview.
Basically cut down anything non-essential and make use of the various budgeting tools that are available.

@allpucelleauxblanchesmains you miss my point - toothpaste is pretty basic and he did not have even that. I have worked and paid tax since leaving Uni apart from 18 months when the DCs were small. What do you want to improve? Tax payers giving more for other people to have childcare reductions? No! You really do have to live within your means until you get back to work. New paintwork etc is a luxury not a necessity. Incidentally, we still do not have streaming services, phone contracts or a dishwasher but are happy.

@myfaceismyown you are being hoodwinked. Boris is convincing you that imperial measurements will bring you back to the days of yore where everyone has personal responsibility and were happy in their poverty. And yes taxes should be used to support high quality childcare. It is the equitable thing to do. It is the right thing to do. And it goes a little distance towards preventing the sort of rampant inequality Brexit Britain is suffering and will suffer in the future. Your conception of personal responsibility is just a slogan used to allow government to abdicate political responsibility.

@myfaceismyown No, I'm not missing your point, which appears to be that because things were so much worse in the past they can't be all that bad now. There's plenty I want to improve, actually, including a totally screwed up property market, the fact fertility rates are dropping (good luck getting people to pay for your pension!), the fact the welfare system punishes disabled people, I could go on and on and on. And I didn't say anything about new paintwork, but there are people in this country who can't afford to feed their families property or to heat their homes. I hate how it's portrayed as some kind of frivolous luxury to - god forbid - have real teabags rather than growing your own herbs or something. But hey, at least we have our wonderful NHS (except it's increasingly difficult to access various treatments on it and they're having to cancel blood tests because they don't have tubes!) so anybody complaining about poverty now is an entitled whinger who doesn't realise they don't need luxuries like food.

I don't have anything different to say thanwhats been said already but if you already shop at Lidl, download the Lidl plus app. They send you discount offers on 4 different sets of items every week. I am very strict with myself to only ever use the coupons if it's things I normally buy anyway. But you can get 15-20 percent off some bits nearly every week.
Not huge but every little helps

I’ve found I’ve actually managed to save more by doing a Tesco click and collect food order rather than shopping in Aldi/ Lidl because then you don’t get tempted by their bargains that you might fancy buying.

*families properly.

And anyway: several members of my family in the past lived in slums and died of preventable illnesses. I think it's not unreasonable to want a bit more than that.

Another vote for CAP - Christians Against Poverty.
Also, Google Jack Monroe for cheap, nutritious recipes.

@allBeardyButton thank you for your response. I did not vote Tory, nor ever will. I certainly did not jump on the Brexit wagon. I am a realist and value the happiness of my family above all. I guess you want me to pay more taxes? Whoopee doo three cheers to you. What I would like is to stop all the ridiculous expenditure on the HS2 and use it for practical reasons - no one voted for that apart from some public school boy Hooray Henries and their mates who currently rule our country!!!

Extreme saving is generally about the mindset - you challenge all expenses to check whether you really need it, whether you need it right now, and if there is a free or cheaper viable alternative.

Ultimately OPs situation is genuinely temporary and so delaying some renovation and some luxuries until kids are older and mum is able to work makes sense.

@aLittleL1fe totally agree.

Work opposite hours to your dh if poss.

When we struggled
We
Sold our car.
We had students stay with us from local college. You can ear n several thousand this way with no tax implications.
We did not have a spare room ,we had to make the kids share.. it wasnt easy but the kids treated it as an.adventure.
I make quite a bit dog walking or sittimg in addition to my other jobs .
Sounds like your finaces need a good overhaul.
Are you getting child benefit as that can be.quite a lot?

Ps it wont help in short term but when I was off work with the dc as had 2 under 2 i got my chikdmimdimg qualificatation and was childminder so got paid when was looking after.my own and other dc

Grocery shopping list helps too. I have the same long shopping list of everything we need (with some stuff being a broad category - like 'meat'). I check what we ran out of before going to the supermarket, and tick all the items that are needed. That way nothing that is actually needed is forgotten but I'm also safely ignoring all the offers that aren't on my list. Meal planning is also very helpful.

As for decorating
Many community furniture and paint shops that are charity funded have amazimgly cheap paint and sometimes even farrow n ball
We did.our bedroom for £10 that way

As other people have said - you need a second income. Six people are expensive and changing your energy supplier or cooking vegetarian is frankly not going to address the problem.

Yes, prices are rising but wages are rising even faster. Get a Saturday morning job, or work two evenings a week or whatever. There is always cleaning, but depending on where you are there may be masses of work.