To ask for your tips on frugal living?

[SeeClearNow]

First time poster. Reading some posts earlier prompted me to start a thread for us to share our tips on frugality and budgeting. Most of us are feeling the pinch and I thought it would be helpful to hear all the different ways we can save some money that perhaps we hadn’t thought of.

Would love this to be a friendly, judgment free thread. Hit me with your top tips, no matter how big or small - I want to hear them all!

Not really a tip but have a second freezer or just a bigger one and live off the yellow stickers
you have to eat most things and not care about eclectic mixtures but saves us a fortune
I also batch cook a lot to save fuel
Ignore sell by or use by dates in favour of common sense - we have nearly zero food waste

i decided not to buy any new clothes this year . Vinted is AMAZING - set my limit to £10 and still find some brilliant things.

have also switched from Morrisons to Aldi and save 20-30% each shop

There is a money section here which has some great threads

Obviously not needed right now, and it does require spending money upfront, but heated throws got us through working from home last winter. Can't afford to have the heating on enough for us to be sat at desks all day.

I know cooking in bulk is hardly news, but I've started cooking dahl every weekend for a weeks worth of lunches. I add some variety by changing the sides (eg rice, mini naan, green veg) Keeps all week and it is incredibly cheap and reduces our food waste (there's only two of us so we used to waste bread etc) Having an inexpensive lunch option has allowed more flexibility in the budget for evening meals so I don't feel deprived!

We can see Sainsbury's from my house and we go for yellow stickers most days. Today I got 2 Pieminister pies for £3 instead of £8.
I agree this works better if you drop preconceptions of what food "goes" together and just buy what amounts to a meal-size portion of stuff.

TooGoodToGo app

After reading lots of threads about this last year we’ve done the following;

Installed a thermal door curtain over the front door to stop drafts.
The heating is only on for three hours a day in winter, 6-7am and 5-7pm
Turned all radiators down from 5 to 2 in all rooms and turned it off fully in the nursery. We have an eco oil radiator in the nursery that keeps the room at 20 degrees so my daughter is toasty and only costs pennies to run.
We have an electric blanket on our bed which comes on 20 minutes before we go to bed so the bed is toasty.
Meal planning and batch cooking is a weekly thing.
I stocked up on thermal socks, slippers and new dressing gowns in the winter sales and we have thick fleecy throw blankets in the lounge for on the sofas

Im sure there are other things I should be doing so I’ll keep checking for other ideas.

Olio app
Don't buy new clothes
Buy dry pulses & do them overnight in the slow cooker
Get a slow cooker!
Too Good To Go app
Reduce/ cut out meat
Frozen food
Tinned food
Washing up liquid, white vinegar and Fabulosa/ Zoflora for cleaning
Wash your Washing up sponges with the laundry so you can reuse

Reducing meat intake is a big one, lentils are so cheap and very nice if you cook them with the right herbs and spices.

Fewer journeys by car, walk more, turn things off at the wall when not in use (apparently TV on standby can cost £50 a year just sitting there with the red light on, who knew)

I second frozen food! It has a rep for being crap, I guess because it's cheaper? But certain things, fish and veg specifically, I've read/heard are actually better frozen as they are frozen at source so are more fresh than non-frozen?

Sorry if that's utter nonsense, the fish point came from a fishmonger so I hope I'm not talking shite 😂

Air fryer has been revolutionary - noticeable drop in electricity bill as hardly ever use the oven now, and it's amazing for frozen food.

Get into the habit of only watching the TV if you know there is something you want to watch, rather than turning it on then looking for something to watch if that makes sense?

Dressing gown over a duvet generates unbelievable amounts of heat, I swear it defies science. Learned that one as I struggle to sleep with the window closed, even in the middle of winter!

Tap water bottled and kept in the fridge is a million times better than filling a glass from the tap, and has stopped me buying other drinks in the shopping.

I'm absolutely not in the school that thinks people should have to do these things, I think it's a disgrace that people doing exactly the same work-wise as they were last year suddenly can't afford to put the heating on, but these are changes I've been able to make without feeling like I'm scrimping.

Hi, and thanks for all the good ideas; my offering is to save all the bits of veg that you chop off, like ends of carrots, beetroot leaves, broccoli/cauli stalks etc and add them to veg soup to make it go further. When you find a lot of yellow sticker veg buy it and make the soup. you can freeze the bits until you use them; add red lentils and it's really filling - freeze portions. Also check out the money saving expert; always make sure you are getting the best deals and switch to chase them (banks often give away £s to get you to switch to them, for example).

I buy the kids clothes in advance, so in the summer sales I stock up for next summer and in the winter sales for next winter. I do this for adults as well but not as much as we don’t need so much new winter or summer stuff every year.

Planning in advance for everything really helps. For example you could buy a paddling pool for next summer at the end of this summer for next to nothing. But if you wait until there’s a heat wave you’ll be paying way over the odds. Same with new school bags, but them just after new school term starts.
I will stock up on food when it’s on offer but really just store cupboard stuff as I know I’m not good at using stuff once I’ve frozen it. But if pasta or tinned tomatoes or mayonnaise etc. are on offer I buy lots and keep them. I make a big pan of pasta sauce most weeks, onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, garlic and use it for my lunches and at least one dinner. Pasta and sauce are the ultimate cheap dinner in my opinion.
We don’t heat bedrooms apart from just before bed and will only turn heating on if we are actually using a room

My son is using his bike for smaller journeys of up to about 4 miles. He takes a backpack when he cycles to shop, saving himself petrol.

I have stopped buying ice creams out and have one from freezer either before we go or when we come back.

Grow your own salad leaves and tomatoes. Easy to do in a grow bag in garden. Always fresh and just pick what you need. I sewed a few at 2 week intervals. If you have a garden buy a crown of rhubarb too as it looks after itself and you can pick loads for tasty crumbles or stew and freeze for winter.

I've cut out buying coffees out and take a little flask.

I cancelled my monthly magazine and now my neighbour passes me hers after she has read it, in return I give her salad leaves and at end of August cooking apples from tree in my garden.

Do some baking. It's so cheap to make a large cake, homemade pastry for a dozen jam tarts and cheese straws.

Don't tumble dry.

Keep freezer full even if just with bread as it uses far more electric if half empty. When you switch on oven always make sure it is full. Waste electricity to use oven half full. I cook a couple of chicken breasts then we have them with salad following day.

Fleeces for couch for Autumn/Winter and switch heating down.

Love my air frier too
Also I find Tesco cheaper than lidls or aldis if you shop from the value range plus whatever is on offer.

If you have modern smart tv it doesn't eat as much as the old ones.
Like modern 50 inch would have 0.5w on standby, that's like 0.01kwh. if it's on standby 20 hours a day that's 73kwh a year. Average price is 29p (i think) so it works out in that case like £20 a year.
In use they do 0.09kwh so for 4 hours a day it's about £40 a year.
So 4 hours a day and standby rest is about 16p a day?
Correct my math if it's wrong!

Actually it's less! Bad converter.
Standy is 0.5w so 0.0005 kwh so waaaay lesa

If you have an electric shower and wash your dishes in a dishwasher then you can pretty much stop turning on your hot water heating. We realised we only use it to wash hands after the loo and half the time you don’t even run the tap for long enough for the hot water to come through. So now we just don’t heat up the water! Just use the gas boiler for GCH which is on two hours a day, 7-8am and 6-7pm and the thermostat is set to 17 so if it’s warmer than that it won’t come on at all. You get used to it.

Everyone wears layers in this house in the winter, even the 1 year old, who also sleeps in a 3.5 tog bag when it’s cold. You can usually get them cheap in asda or there is a sale on at JoJos now where they are doing 3.5 tog bags for £14. All our bedrooms are max 15 degrees at night in winter. Again you just get used to it.

work out if it’s actually saving you money to WFH or if it will be more expensive in the colder months due to light/heat/using kettle etc. I used to jump at the chance to WFH but will now do the 15-20 min cycle to work every day so that I don’t have to foot the bill for being at home all day. Even if I had to pay some petrol it would probably still be cheaper to go into the office.

Lastly I think all these recipe boxes, Instagram accounts, celebrity cookbooks etc have made a lot of middle class people forget that you can just eat very basic food a lot of the time and it won’t kill you. Eg some people would say that a “snack” = lentil rice cakes with almond butter. But a snack also = an apple. Just eat less wanky food.

I walk down to our local market on a Friday. It's just a scruffy little row of stalls but there are a couple of older vendors selling veg from local farms. It's cheap and has great flavour, and I'm using ingredients that I probably wouldn't have bothered with a year ago.

The kids love okonomiyaki - potato and cabbage pancakes. We just have hash with an egg on top. So good!

Btw fresh cakes are great for freezing so you can buy bigger (cheaper than small per piece), portion and freeze

I am gradually making changes, so far I have started walking a lot more instead of driving which is easy as we have a lot of things within walking distance. I have also switched to own brands and have switched all washings to 30 degrees or less (wee bit of zoflora in for cloths to make sure they still clean enough) actually noticing that the kids clothes are staying in better condition with this with a lot less fading.

My plans going forward into winter are:

heated airer to replace tumble dryer
air fryer
fleece hoodies
heated throws
batch cooking

@JaceLancs I'm with you on that- I only shop at Waitrose and M&S and a bit of farm shop but am a total yellow sticker minx - we have a terrific full size freezer in our rented house and for 10 days of the month I only buy salad, veg, juice, bread, and milk and yoghurts and homous and use the freezer contents for meals.

@Paintsplat
whats your favourite recipe for dhal x

Sounds a bit obvious but stop buying 'stuff'. The amount of unnecessary crap in the shops - pineapple cocktail glasses, hot dog stands, decorative pish for the garden (who needs a gnome.....). Most of this rubbish is manufactured in China, bad for the environment - OK, Home Bargains et Al employ people in their stores to sell it, but it's so bad in so many ways.

I have all my magazines online through the library.
It means reading on my kindle/phone but is a great saving.

I find food wise it helps to have something considered a treat - I make up jellies and chill in small plastic bowls, 50p makes 4 puddings. Also what we call station cake, makes 20-24 large muffins:
2 eggs
250g sugar
250ml milk
125ml veg oil
Vanilla essence (if have)
400g self raising flour

Beat eggs, add sugar, add mixed milk, veg oil and vanilla if using. Sieve in flour and whatever you have, I use any or combinations of:
Choc chips
Marshmallows
Fudge
Blueberries
Apples, fold in, put ice cream scoop of mixture into muffin cases and bake 15-20 mins, gas 6, 200C. Can be baked whilst cooking other stuff to save having cooker on especially.

I have used less sugar, less milk (diluted with water) reduced flour and put a couple of spoons of cocoa. Frugality seems not so bad with treats.