what can you remember your parents doing to save money?

[HoraceCope]

we had to clean the bath with cold water
my dm would reuse foil

Am suitably chastised 😞

It might have been related to never having had treats, in a family that couldn’t afford them?

Your parents didn't buy chocolate biscuits to save money?
(In which case that does follow the thread 🤔)

My parents never bought biscuits or cakes either. We never had puddings.

My mum gave us rice pudding for a treat (3 of us shared 1 can) and made a small cake at Christmas/Birthdays. Soups and stews and anything with bread were the main meals. We never had fizzy drinks or fresh juice, just had bottles to fill with water. I was healthier then!

I guess mum couldn't afford them. Even now I only buy chocolate digestives if workmen are coming 😃.

in the summers (when I was at primary school) my mum used to use a watering can as my “shower”. Usually because the boiler broke and couldn’t afford to have it fixed. I thought it was great fun to be fair but looking back my poor mum!
Heating was a luxury- hot water bottle for bedtime in the winter, used to wake up to “dragon breath” because the house was cold.
Mums ever famous 4 day stew, used lentils instead of meat.
Halloween costumes made out of bin bags! (I looked pretty damn cool if I say so myself)!
Flapjacks instead of cereal bars- honey and oats basically!
Also remember taking my sandwich to school in the bread bag- cling film / sandwich bags too expensive!

Bottles of soft fizzy drinks only at Christmas, never at any other time. Quite exciting going to the corner shop to choose our Christmas bottle every year - some years we choose Tizer, sometimes it was American Cream Soda, sometimes it was Dandelion & Burdock. We can't have been the only ones because the corner shop always put out a huge display of bottles, in every imaginary flavour, in the week before Christmas, but at all other times, it was just a few random bottles in a corner, mostly just the basic lemonade or orange, but we never bought anything at all. Soft drinks at other times of year was orange cordial, milk or water.

my dm still saves bread bags

Well why wouldn't you? To the 'make do and mend' generation it's complete madness to buy a sandwich bag when you already have a perfectly good one.

As I said before, recycling and plastic reduction wasn't invented by today's younger adults. To anyone aged over about 50 it was second nature from their childhood and just what their parents did.

If your packed lunch or picnic wasn't in a bread bag, chances are it was in an ice cream tub.

Cake was home made and kept in the Quality Street tin. Which was bigger, but relatively far more expensive and a very much anticipated once a year treat. We used to get ours from our grandparents.

Now people buy dozens of the things because they cost hardly anything (they probably cost more than the £3/4 they cost now in the 1970/80s) and end up with a pile of slightly useless plastic tubs after eating a load of shit chocolate no-one actually really likes.

My parents are notoriously frugal. My dad used to boil the kettle once in the morning, put the water in a thermos and then use that for the day to make cups of tea and coffee.

if they had to go on a long train journey they’d bring their own metal mugs, tea bags and jam jar of milk and ask the trolley person to add boiling water to the mugs. They’re horrified at the thought of buying a takeaway coffee etc!

We never ate out apart from fish and chips as occasional treats. Never had ‘snacks’ . We ate fresh fruit . Meals were very repetitive and eggs featured a lot. I hate boiled eggs as a result now. We didnt have a washing machine until I was a teenager, and then It was a twin tub. Also had no fridge till then. We didn’t have a TV until I was 12 , it was rented on a weekly basis. A lot of people bought bigger items on hire purchase .

Leaving Lights on was a criminal offence and heating was only to be used in dire circumstances. I remember having chilblains from the cold. We couldn’t afford a holiday until my mother was left some money by a relative. That was when I was 12.

I used to make my Dad's sandwiches for when he went to work. It was an egg sandwich and a flask of tea. Nothing else, no snacks or anything. We had tupperware that were exactly the right size for one sandwich. Strangely it was Dad who taught me to darn and use a skipping rope 😂

I think we must have eaten a lot less, thinking of a man's packed meal for an 8 hour shift was literally a sandwich. Dinner was religiously on the table at 5.30pm. If you were happy the refrain was always 'have an apple!' and drinking anything but water was a forlorn hope.

Yes! I still use bread bags, use old plastic containers for freezing, old tins for storing cakes, etc. We also drink corporation pop (admittedly through a filter) and regard an apple as a snack. I take a packed lunch and a flask to work, we take a picnic basket on long holiday drives (and a flask), switch off the lights and have the heating (zoned) on/up where necessary and wear jumpers. There is also a fruit bowl rather than a cupboard full of crisps, cake and sweets. We tend to have cake on birthdays and at Christmas or if they really beg for a banana loaf. DH and I have shoes repaired if needed and oress the remnants of the last bar of soap into the newest. I use a lip brush to finish every scrap of a lipstick.

We are very far from poor.

Ain’t that the truth! Nothing wrong at all with saving bread bags - why wouldn’t you? I still do it and also keep ice cream tubs for packed lunches too, and I keep Chinese takeaway boxes for freezing/microwaving batch cooking etc.

We've a newly opened Range shop in town, went for the first time yesterday. Couldn’t believe the mountains of cheap plastic crap they were selling! It seems people have really bought into buying cheap crap because it’s cheap rather than genuine need.

There are still plenty of elderly people at our towns football club on match days who bring their own flask of tea/coffee to drink during the match rather than buy over-priced drinks from the refreshment kiosks. Some of them bring sandwiches for lunchtime matches.

Oh we do too :) Long walks and car journeys we pack coffee in a thermos. Big believer in that! I think I’d be too embarrassed to ask the trolley person on a train for just boiling water tho although I’m sure they wouldn’t care.

my dad’s boiling the kettle once and putting into a thermos was to save electricity. He’s always been extremely frugal, big fan of tiny bowls of leftovers in the fridge and never one to turn down a piece of mouldy cheese or an overripe banana that many of us would refuse to eat. Funny because my parents are pretty well off. Old habits perhaps.

No shortage of money when I was growing up or for DT’s when they were young .

Why buy huge multi pack bags of crisps and biscuit bars. These are a treat and enjoyed once a week not daily or multiple times a day.

No offering of junk food as soon as you’re out of school. Junk food wasn’t available at home and if you were hungry between meals, you could have an apple or banana.

Why buy low quality sandwiches at a service station on the motorway when you can bring much nicer food from home?

Maybe your parents were "pretty well off" because they didn't waste money and were careful with their spending and waste!

I give my daughter her packed lunch for school in a flask, I'm always surprised this isn't more of a thing. Do they still have a bit of a nerdy reputation?

I would have loved a flask of lunch as a kid instead of being sent with no lunch by parents who didn't even bother to look into dinner tickets.

@Parker231

Why buy low quality sandwiches at a service station on the motorway when you can bring much nicer food from home?

This! When I go to our village pie/cake/sandwich shop or convenience store, there are always "tradies" spending £10-£15 on what is basically crap, i.e. pies, pre-packed sandwiches, crisps, fizzy drinks, chocolate bars, etc. Just why? If they were more organised and less lazy, they'd be able to "pack" a packed lunch for less than a fiver that would be basically the same but far higher quality, fewer calories/fat, etc.

What gets me even more is that they don't even go for the cheaper "meal deals" - they make their own selections, often with just one item different meaning they lose out on the deal and even for the smallest combo (sandwich, drink, snack) end up paying £2 or £3 more for choosing the "wrong" drink or bag of crisps etc. They also don't seem to bother using store discount cards, i.e. to get their meal deal cheaper by 50p in the Co-op.They just don't care. If they're doing that every working day, it could be costing them £25-£50 per week more than they need to spend, and that's just the lunch.

They're probably also over-spending on takeaway coffees and other snacks for mid morning and mid afternoon breaks too!

When we go out for the day, whether for fun, or going to a client meeting, course, or whatever, we automatically take a "go bag" with water, crisps, chocolate bars, fruit, etc., and a flask of water with cup(s), small pot of coffee, small bottle of milk, etc., together with some home made sandwiches. If we don't have the means to make home made sandwiches, then we'll nip to the local shop for a £3.50 meal deal.

I can't remember the last time we bought a over-priced manky mass produced sandwich from a motorway service station or petrol station. The supermarket ones are bad enough, but at least they're cheap if you find yourself caught out. But for half the price of a supermarket one, you can make your own with fresh better quality ingredients!

We actually had a couple of older/retired blokes to replace our garden gate and some fencing. It was a day's job and they both brought their own drinks, snacks and lunches, with flasks, foil-wrapped home made sandwiches, etc. It's years since we've seen that. (They were far better workers too! - tidier, neater and turned up on time!).

I take my own coffee bags on the train and plane and ask for hot water. Not worried about the cost but don’t like their coffee.

The best type of days. Used to love unpacking a picnic on days out as a child, great memories ❤️

We rarely order a takeaway nowadays, but I’ve started doing this when we’ve ordered one - it started when I forgot to order the rice and had to use microwave pouches, but I usually always have rice in the cupboard so just boil my own all the time now.