Low Spend 2025

[YourLimeCat]

Does anyone want to join me in a mutual support Low Spend year? I entered premature retirement this year at the age of 60 due to health issues and I will be living off a saved Civil Service pension for the next 7 years. Due to no rent or mortgage to pay its not too dire a situation but it would be good to have somewhere to share tips with fellow low spend attemptees.

We’ve been really good this month and have eaten mostly out of the fridge and freezer. We did a top up shop which cost £89 but that was basics like loo roll/bread/milk and some great bargains from the yellow sticker aisle. Now we’ve done the top up shop, we’re aiming to get to the 31st without spending anymore at the supermarket 🤞

We’re also not buying a single takeaway, or drinking alcohol this month, which will automatically save £150-200. As we normally spend around £800 on food, the less we spend, the more we can add to our holiday fund.

Well done!

My first week has been

1st - no spend
2nd - Major Household Bills
3rd - no spend
4th - £11 - parking, and coffee
5th and 6th - no spend

I can make a meal out of my fridge and store cupboard today but need to go shopping tomorrow.

We’ve got both cars insurances up for renewal
this month

any tips? Deals? 😭

I've been off work for a few days, so we've had a couple of days out. We got up early and just had coffee and a shared cake out one day (rather than go out mid morning having lunch). Yesterday we did go out for lunch, but left car on the drive and walked approx 40 mins there. We had a discount (hence the reason for going to particular pub) but when we got there they had 2 meals and 2 drinks for £25 so, although £25, we saved approx £11.

Have hardly spent any money on food since Christmas as we were well stocked up for us, mainly buying bread, milk, fruit, cereals.

Having sweet potato chilli tonight, total cost £3.6 - there's only two of us and I can tell from the ingredients it's going to be massive portions for us, so reckon I'll get six portions out of that. Luckily it uses up some carrots and a pepper. Sweet potatoes were on offer in a bag, so might do a chickpea, spinach and sweet potato curry at the weekend - again fairly cheap and will have some leftover for next day or freezing.

Car is in garage tomorrow. Think it's going to cost £270.

No spend day here. Hurrah! Am anticipating the same tommorow as well. Well unless you count dcs school dinners. He has decided that he would like school dinners and it's easier for me at the beginning half of the week as my working days are always manic.

No spend day here. That's two in a row.

Tomorrow won't be as the car is going into the garage.

I'm trying for 25 no spend days. Not counting the household bills, just money I spend. Up to 6 so far. It's a silly mental game, but helps me drive past the supermarket. If I stop....poof! £40 up in smoke!!!!

Am I able to join please? I definitely couldn't do a no spend month/year.
I have a never ending growing DS6 but I'm trying to get as much on Vinted (and selling his clothes, mine or DP)

We're trying to save for a house deposit which is so difficult when all the other costs are constantly rising!

@TimothyIsNotAnArmardillo thank you for the spreadsheet info! I'm looking out for a habits app at the moment to get me into the routine of more NSDs, and having somewhere to log them; I really enjoy the 'hook' of Duolingo, hoping to find something similar

@Elephant9 our car insurance (two cars) is up soon too I usually shop around as much as I can via the search engines then see if my current insurer will match it, just to keep things easy! Remember TopCashback have a search and compare facility and you get cashback if you go through them.

I almost had a NSD today and then the DC ate half a loaf in one go and I had to nip out for some more bread for breakfast tomorrow - bah! At least I could walk to little Tesco and only spend 75p on a loaf. @Lavenderosemary my supermarket trips inevitably come to more than anticipated too - I have a £20 Morrisons voucher to spend before the end of January, but we don't actually have a Morrisons near us, which is a right pain. I have to drive past Tesco, Asda, Aldi, Lidl and Sainsburys to get there and then it isn't even that cheap, but I suppose I'll go to use up my voucher...

The car went into the garage again today for the fourth time in two months due to tyre sensor problems. We've had to have three sensors replaced costing £272 each time, so DH said it was getting expensive and asked if we could avoid diagnostics being done this time and just get on and do the fourth sensor.

He went to collect car and garage said they'd done the work free as customer service as we'd been unlucky to have all four go closely together.

Good news about your car @Iliketulips (not the initial work of course - but the freebie!). Just checking, as all four sensors have gone - there definitely wasn't a manufacturer safety notice/ recall on the car? You can check here: car recalls; only asking as my car had a safety notice a couple of years ago!

Had to go to Tesco this evening for a few lactose free products (we have two lactose intolerant people in the family, and only Tesco and Sainsburys near us have LF stuff) - spent about £30. Bah. I did get plenty of reduced fruit & veg and some cleaning bits we needed, but still...!

That's a nice win @Iliketulips - I think I'll be picking our car up from the garage tomorrow and I'm dreading the bill.

I was all set for today to be a NSD but realised I needed to order the dog some supplements so that's £19-99 - however, it's money well spent as they prevent vet visits and treatment.

I'm also being mindful of not wasting food so tonight was a random mixture of stuff from the fridge and freezer ... anyone for roast gnocchi, tomatoes, sprouts, sage and butternut squash topped with whipped feta .... it actually tasted OK

Not a no spend day here, but was mot day, it passed - hurrah. And I needed bread and crisps for pack ups. But the change I made this week which has essentially saved me money was that I was in a habit of going to the shop on the way to work. Each day I would buy 2 bottles of Pepsi max and a chocolate bar. I work 3 days so about £12 per week for that. Instead I bought a multipack of cans, took one each day. Made sure I ate breakfast at home, and made sure I took a pack up for lunch. I reckon by doing that I have saved myself about £20 this week. Which is good as I had to pay out for a trip today for ds2 of £40.

Well done - if you did that for a year you'd save just over £1000!

Sorry I haven’t been able to read all the posts but I’d like to join please. I’ve been doing quite well since the new year, I spent £9 on Vinted to get my daughter some school pinafore dresses she needs in the next size up (nearly bought from Sainsbury’s which would have been £22 but I then thought I should check Vinted and found brand new ones for £6!) and I also spent £30 on Amazon on some books I’ve been wanting for a while and a reading light. This is to support my other resolution of reading more 😂 I’ve decided the library is pointless for me as I always always return books late despite my best efforts and so I end up spending more in library fines but have no actual books to show for it! So I’m just buying the handful of books I’d like to get this year. I will only buy a few and then the rest will be ones I already own, I’ll be lucky to reach my target of reading 25 books this year!

Today I have also cancelled two subscriptions saving £24 a month total and also booked a stall at a local mum/baby event to sell all of the DCs outgrown clothes. I’ve had some success with Vinted in the past but it takes a long time to photo and upload everything and I think I’d rather try and make £1-200 in one afternoon and then charity shop anything that doesn’t sell.

I also just added £104 worth of clothes to my shopping basket online and then closed the tab! Must resist!

Finally I also returned a load of stuff I’d bought before and just after Xmas, I got overexcited by sale prices but I don’t really need most of it so I returned the vast majority.

It’s a good habit to get into. We rarely buy any food or drink outside of the house. Our grocery shopping bill is high but it does include all meals, snacks and drinks for the 6 of us and even in an expensive shopping month of £750 that’s still circa £4 a day each and it never seems so bad when I put it like that!

@That70sHouse I highly recommend the BorrowBox app if you’re a library member. Reminders when the loan is about to expire, one click to renew, and no fines because the book just disappears from your device when the loan period is up.

That actually sounds delicious to me!

I'm doing this! Have spent v little on myself in January- a £7.00 bag on BHF shop and a dye pod for my jeans is it so far.

Big on packed lunches and also a nice big flask for cups of tea. Could easily save £10 a day, I am also now resisting the impulse buy of Amazon. Saving money is also great for the environment, we all need less STUFF.

It'd the credit cards for me too! I had 1 specifically for Amazon, why?! So that's gone and anything I want from there I pay by debit card. But it's switched something in my brain as I've only made one Amazon purchase since.
I've also stopped using my main credit card, if it's something small just put it on the debit card
I feel so much more in control.

For me it's been online shopping, Amazon, vinted and charity shops as my problem. Charity shop purchases are fine if it's perfect, otherwise it's wasting more money even if it's only a few pounds.

Since reigning it in, I have so much more time. No browsing, no deliveries, no collecting or returning. I've even started reading a book and thinking about what I want to achieve this year. It's given me headspace as well as a much better credit card balance. Really eye opening for me !

It is so easy to get credit cards @coolcahuna and then very, very easy to spend too much on them - I had £20K of debt a few years ago and really very little to show for it nowadays I think I could live much more frugally if I didn't have DC - a lot of my spending is on things like their activities, stuff for their activities, parking/ petrol getting them to the activities, etc. Beavers and Cubs are brilliant as the costs are very reasonable and they get to do a lot of different experiences, but DS1's football for example is £££ in comparison

I really want to plan out a big shop (after some meal planning) as I have offers from Ocado and Amazon now, plus my Morrisons voucher to use up - just lacking in the time to do it!

@EElizaBalfour I hear you! Oddly my sons footie is cheap but other stuff really adds up. Cost of eating out as a family as well!

Football is extremely expensive here too. My kids hobbies have very much been determined by the cost of them 😂