Value for money

[Myusername19]

What do you refuse to pay for now that the prices have got so high? I refuse to pay for a family holiday abroad due to the cost seeming not worth it. I also wont pay the prices for a used car now so walk or bus everywhere. Wondering what else people have given up?

Eating out. Most of the local places near me have gone under and we are left with variations of chains. I’d rather spend more at the butcher and cook a really decent piece of steak cook it myself, properly. Same for roast dinners. It’s £27 in my local pub now (not a chain) so we’re over £100 before even a sniff of a drink. The meat is always good to be fair but the potatoes make me want to cry!

Im in n.i so the flights are about 800 for 5

There are return flights Belfast to Paris in August for around £80 each. Are there no ferries?
We are north west England, so similar travel times i should imagine. When my kids were younger we used to camp, in our own tent, it allowed for longer holidays. Now we use statics. If you go towards the end of August it tends to be cheaper as lots of europe return to school by then.
For our family, going abroad is something we won't miss out on.

If you click through, the flights aways end up much more expensive than that. Flying from Ireland is more expensive than britain

Well my last holiday last month was ( my share) to Corfu.. Leeds to Corfu going with Tui airline £70
Ret Jet 2..£78.
Two bed villa with pool was £328 so my share was £164.
Hire car was £142 my share £71.
So was £383 self catering.
Spent €140 on food and petrol.
All in £523 for a week.
Villa could accommodate 4 adults so would have been cheaper.. but only myself now sister.
We've just done same for Lanzarote for end of month ( 24th july) and thats even cheaper cos hire car is cheaper and flights.

Yes cheap for one person. We are a family of 5. Anything i look at is 5k plus. I used to go abroad 3 times a year before i had kids when i just had to pay for myself and not considet anything else. Also have to go in school holidays.

I take a flask of coffee and a couple of bottles of water with me when we go to watch DC play cricket all day. In the past I'd have bought 3 coffee and 2/3 bottles of water. Coffee up to £3 a cup and a bottle of water £2. I think of it as saving about £12 each week.

Cars and holidays are big things to go without .

Glad I did all my travelling when much younger, I don't go abroad now at all....I wouldn't, it's far too expensive.

I cut my own hair, have done so for quite a while. I use supermarket dyes for the times I want a bit of hair colour, I don't go to the hairdressers at all.

Batch cook and freeze, so much easier and cheaper. I don't eat out and don't do takeaways anyway.

Take my own flask instead of buying coffees, pack up a picnic instead of buying a sandwich lunch if I'm out for the day.

Happy with my second hand car which I've had for 5 years, it doesn't need an upgrade. I don't upgrade my mobile either.

Oh and I handwash the car....one bucket, one soft bristled brush with a long handle and one watering can for the rinse. I can't believe the queues for the local car wash which charges £10 a time, and folks seem to go every every week!

So many savings to be made....

Hair cut and colour - doesn’t look as good as before but perfectly fine and saves me over £90 a pop. Spending so much on hair seems mad to me, especially as I only have thin hair anyway.

Nails - again not worth it for me. I do my home with Essie gel couture and enjoy the pampering process.

Eating out - we still get a takeaway around once per week but a proper meal out is rare for us now. Not willing to pay roughly £100 unless it’s a special occasion.

Coffee at work - used to get a coffee every time I was in the office but now just take my own.

Still spend loads on travel and holidays though 😅 that’s what’s valuable to us though and no kids so can afford to go away a lot

Takeaways

It enables me to be sahm so we dont need two incomes. Lots of gaining compared to going without.

New clothes, Vinted pretty much most of the time now.

New plants from the garden centre. It has been hard work but this year we managed to fill the borders with flowers, herbs and vegetables raised from seeds.

Fresh herbs from the supermarket - the prices are insane. 52p for a few strands of mint? I think not. It’s basically a weed in most gardens!

After school club. The price has gone up so much and they introduced a policy that you can only cancel a date with a whole month’s notice which is mad. I am lucky I can make the pickups work by taking a late lunch break and wfh after that (ds happier too).

Trains. Very sad but trains are just ludicrous. Since we now have an electric car I feel better about driving long distances.

insurance with low excesses. I raise the excess really high. I’ve only once claimed on house insurance so it’s just there for the big disasters and I keep the excess in a savings account.

We used to eat out at local chains etc that’s much less now. We probably do breakfast out more than evenings. We have a street of indies very close by so try and support them.
I understand why things have gotten expensive but it doesn’t change that we have less disposable income.

Got into a takeaway habit once a week through covid. That’s now gone too .Only takeaway we really get is a chippy couple times a month,

We go abroad on holidays but do cheap city breaks rather than 7/14 day beach type holidays which are not my thing. This allows us to have short u.k. breaks too.

Brand new clothes are so expensive even in the cheap shops! So vinted is my first stop these days.

Eating out. It's far too expensive for what you get. I know their costs have gone up and blahblah but I won't pay those prices any more. I live in an EU country and used to enjoy going out for meals because I wrongly thought I couldn't cook some of the local specialities. I've learned to cook them now and they taste really good at a fraction of the cost.
Most of my friends now meet at our homes instead of going out. I play in a lot of musical groups. We used to go to a bar afterwards. No one does that any more. We sit around in the rehearsal room afterwards with deinks instead.

No Maccies anymore. I used to grab a Maccies sometimes for convenience but it's an absolute rip off now. Chicken Nuggets menu has gone up from 7 Euros to 12 Euros in the last 2 or 3 years. Nope. I bought a small coolbag and I make a packed tea if I'm going to be out in the evening and not able to eat at home.

No motorway service station food either. I'm driving for several hours later. Normally I'd stop somewhere for a meal but I've just finished packing the coolbag for the trip.

No new books, jigsaw puzzles, sheet music or clothes. I get everything second hand.

Most of my food is the half price stuff from the supermarket and for staples such as rice, pasta etc I drive to the neighbouring country (45 mins away) to stock up.and also buy a lot of things to freeze about once a month because the prices are about 30% cheaper. All toiletries come from that country too because they are half the price.

I've tightened up on everything I can but I think there's nowhere else I can make savings.

Regarding holidays - we used to go to France for two weeks most summers, alternating with three weeks trips to the US to see family.
The trips to France were about £2,500 - we'd find a nice, self-catering flat/cottage with a pool. The first time, we found one through Brittany Ferries. Not going on Sat or Sun meant that there were more ferry options and it was cheaper. Because we were self-catering we bought any kind of food we liked. We usually had one big, fancy meal, often at lunchtime b/c the DDs were smaller then, after scouting the best local restaurants.
I have friends who love to ski. They have normal jobs and 3 DCs so have to budget. They go skiing regularly and they usually drive.

Im in Northern ireland so no ferry option. Would have to be flights

All takeaways, I was down to McDonald's only but even that's expensive now. Although I did get a great deal at a Toby, Monday lunchtime with a 20% off voucher and a glass of tap water 😂 times alre hard.

OP even with the NI flights it's still cheaper for you to do eurocamp than pay for an AI in Turkey for five - literally half the price. Everything is more expensive now yes for sure though.

We don't eat out often but oddly enough find KFC the best value for money. We get a party bucket for £36, it lasts us 2 days as a family of 4, there's a LOT of chicken. We can't do that at our Indian or Chinese.

Salmon.

Eating out, COL increase has coincided with the teens appetite increasing and I refuse to pay £120-£140 to go to a chain restaurant for a pizza/pasta and ice cream, to need to cook a meal after. Also takeaways, aside from kebabs, everything is a rip off. Also boxes of ice cream for the freezer (magnums etc) in the summer, something had to go - I brought a ninja creami with some extra one off cash and make sorbets out of tinned fruit (probably not the cheapest sub but we did spend ALOT on ice cream!)