Tips on being more frugal!?

[imamearcat]

We have a decent income but a lot of outgoing to match. We have never saved money - we always spend everything or over spend and then end up having to pay off debt. We have invested on our homes which has paid off so we do have equity and some money in the bank - but we haven't 'saved' a penny of it!

Anyway, planning to put 2 kids through private school, I have a horse that I would like to keep and want to go on holiday etc. I'm all of a sudden very aware of how slack we are with money!

Has anyone got any ideas on how we can reduce overall outgoings to try and 'save the pennies'?

So far I'm thinking:

• eat out less, maybe once or twice a month
• free days out with the kids, e.g. walk / picnic instead of theme park
• packed lunch for work
• not buy the kids random junk
• next car more modest and HP rather than PCP
• camping instead of hotel holidays

Any ideas?

If you live near to somewhere like Alton Towers, do they do annual passes?

If you thought you would go there more than a few times a year, it could work out cost effective, especially if you always took your own food and drink, and looked out for deals on passes, which are probably on Black Friday or after Christmas, so you might have missed out for now.

My DC are young adults but we were terrible for days out and treats. We had the merlin annual pass for years and did different days out every weekend. My DH was particularly bad for treating the DC to toys, games consoles, anything they wanted really. I think he used to think that’s he’s worked hard all week so cram in as much as he could into the weekend. We didn’t send our DC to private schools but did and still do spend a ridiculous amount on holidays.

Don't spend money on days out?! £45 on a few hours in the pool- goodness. Commit to a no spend month and keep tabs on your money so you see how much extra you have.

Parks. Beach. Woods. Invest in thermos flasks and pack lunches. You do not need to spend £50+ on weekend days. If we go out we pay parking only if we have to!

I would agree Moneysaving expert has got some great ideas. If you do eat out always look for vouchers and go to places where you can save money.

I would also ensure you shop around for things like home insurance and car insurance every year. You can make some huge savings doing this. Also you can shop around for better broadband deals - we saved £40 per month just by phoning some companies and negotiating on this (same with mobile phone contracts) - it all adds up!

Also planning is key - meal planning (and food shopping) and planning days out or activities for the kids.

You can also may be able to save on monthly gas/electric bills by switching to another provider. www.uswitch.com/ is pretty good to look at comparisons based on your current usage. I switched to Octopus energy about 2 years ago and have saved loads (I was with SSE previously) but I know it is different for each person depending on your usage.

If anyone on here is looking to switch and finds out that Octopus Energy is a good option for you, please feel free to also use my referral link below and you will get £50 credit on your account when you switch (I will also get £50 credit too). Every little helps!

share.octopus.energy/glad-wind-705

I hope this helps!

Agree with the others that money saving expert can give you lots of tips.

Is your livery as cheap as it can go? You could move yard, do diy livery rather than full, put the horse on grass livery during the summer if stabled in winter etc. All worth considering. As is part loan (perhaps a couple of days a week) - but only to nice people, draw up a contract, stipulate your horse to stay at present yard.

Stop spending for a month and write down the things you didn’t buy. Eg didnt buy that nice jumper in xxx shop, didn’t buy new phone, didn’t buy a takeaway coffee daily just once a week as a treat etc. Tot it up at the end of the month and see how much you saved. And if you really did want the items as much as you thought you did at the time!

Charity shops are great for many things. It can be addictive though as the prices are so good. My recent favourite is a brand new red herring leather jacket for £8.

I’m a recent Monzo user and a massive convert. I’d been struggling to come out of my overdraft for over a year and have already managed to pay it off after really evaluating my spending at the end of 2019 beginning of 2020. It’s been amazing.

I downloaded 12 months worth of bank transactions, categorised them and created a pivot table to see the totals. It was shocking.

I then signed up to Monzo and I give myself a £200 a month allowance for frivolous spends and budget within that using the app how much is allowed for entertainment, eating out, clothes etc.

My current account is now only used for household bills.

We’ve also started meal planning and eating a lot less meat. I’m finding that we are wasting less food and eating more wholesome meals. It’s been win-win all around for me!

Just to give an idea of how the in app budgeting looks

Lots of good advice already. Our golden rule is that we never take out credit for anything. Nothing at all.

Both of our cars are good, reliable cars. We bought both at around 4 years old from reputable places and both were pretty much like new. We ensured we saved to buy them so no credit required.

Same with house purchases- furniture etc. It's saved for. We buy good quality to ensure value for money.

Double and triple check things like utility bills and car insurance -people often pay over the odds.

You mention your husband likes to buy tech stuff -he needs to think, does he actually need it? If not, don't buy it. Our phones are not top of the range but are decent and do the job. We pay about £8 a month for them including minutes, texts and data.

If you have sky, see if you can get rid of it and watch freeview instead.

Definitely take lunch to work. The bakery near my work charges £2.60 for a tuna mayo muffin (no salad). I can make probably a full week's worth of sandwiches for that.

We don't tend to have takeaways because we live in the sticks so it's a pain getting one but sometimes we buy a supermarket one (tesco thai curry is a favourite - 2 trays for £5 and then I do my own rice. Leaves enough left for me to take to work the next day and much cheaper than a takeaway shop).

I think the real key is to look honestly at what you spend and look for where you can cut back. There's probably a lot you can cut back and still have a decent standard of living.

Op you mentioned your DH is a contractor. Have you factored in IR35 implications? Looks like a 30% reduction in pay from April onwards

don't want to sell the horse and ride someone else's. I guess I could in the future if we get desperate.
Can someone else ride your horse & share the cost?

11+ instead of private school would save money

Extra work, better paid job, ask for a pay rise

Go through all your Direct Debits & Standing orders, get rid of all non essential bills

Council tax
Water bill
Gas & electric
Buildings & content insurance

The above are essential - make sure they are on best deals.

Now look at phones, change to best deals.
Do you really need a landline? You can get broadband without
Tv packages, Netflix maybe cheaper or fire stick really shop around more than £12 is extravagant 😂
Do you have a tv or watch catch up (apart from bbc) di you need a licence? You do if you watch live stuff

Cars, reduce engine size, reduce luxury’s and you’ll reduce cost. Get older new cars, many people spend more on their cars per month than they do putting food on the table, yet only actually use a car 10% of the day and 90% of the time the car is sat doing nothing. So you pay £360 a month out of £400 for the car to sit on a drive or in a work carpark....Do you need 2 cars sat doing nothing?

This is a somewhat random thread.

The OP is going to need at least £20k of post tax income yet gives no details of earnings or current spending. How can anyone make anything but the most generic suggestions?

Surely everyone knows that it's cheaper to make your own lunch, not buy stuff you don't need and buy the stuff you do need for cheaper cost

I can't see taking your own cup to Costa or not having a TV licence is going to help with years of private school fees

You need to be taking it a lot more seriously and tackling it as a job in itself.

I can't see taking your own cup to Costa or not having a TV licence is going to help with years of private school fees

It’s not a one or two budget idea that will bring great savings, it’s a combination of several items, so if you have an overhaul of your finances and swap & change your habits. Ditching a sky package & using Netflix could save you £924 over a year, then using your own travel mug and making coffee and lunch at home to take with you could save you £1048 even taking into account cost of own produce. Switch mobiles to sim only & not upgrading phone package could save you £324 is year in one phone, multiple by 2 phones & you’ve got a saving of £648 bring in a total of £2620

In isolation swapping or changing habits might not bring large savings, but when you group several changes it adds up

I agree @coconuttelegraph I am a bit worried that op is committing to private schools for very young children so looking at 2 lots of 15 years without much planning other than a vague: I will work a bit more.

Without wanting to judge I also sense a reasonably extravagant lifestyle - horses and cars etc. I don't imagine she is thinking about a 3 day chicken and not buying a stich to wear for 3 years.

Op I suggest a proper and honest budget like thd money saving expert one so you can see what you lifestyle costs and can get real about this niggling fear you have.

Good luck!

Do you have a nespresso or other machine at work? I used to buy a coffee on way in at £2.75 a pop. But my work has put a nespresso machine in our floor so now I just buy pods and it’s about 32p for a nice coffee (we get free milk at work). Saves a fortune and I now probs have 2 a day (work 4 days a week).

Surely everyone knows that it's cheaper to make your own lunch, not buy stuff you don't need and buy the stuff you do need for cheaper cost

Of course they do, but many people don't realise how it adds up. Even a few quid per person per day on lunch and coffee adds up to thousands of pounds a year (£5 x 5 x 2 x 48 working weeks per year = £2400 for two working adults and many people spend more than that).

I can't see taking your own cup to Costa or not having a TV licence is going to help with years of private school fees^

Add in paying for a top Sky package that you don't really need, never shopping around for utilities and insurance and that could be another few grand a year that's an easy save.

Not quite £20k, but a long way towards it and the difference in mobile phone costs between a half decent Android bought outright with a sim only contract and a top end every 2 years £40/50 pm, being on the best available mortgage deal etc etc haven't even been mentioned yet.

One thing to consider if you have children at private school, is whether you'll have to keep up a certain type of lifestyle.

So it might be that you're happy to meet your children's friends and their parents in the park with a picnic, but if they all want to go to "non free activity place" and then to a cafe for lunch afterwards, then you either have to find the money for those things or the DC miss out.

You also need to factor in school fees going up as your children get older- depending on your jobs, most likely they will go up higher than your wages.

You really need to write down a full list of all incomings and outgoings, factoring in coping with future fee increases. Like others have said, you need to be realistic about whether a number of small tweaks will save you enough money or whether you need to make big hard decisions (move house, take on 2nd job, move DC to state until 11 ...)

Come over and join us in the frugaleer threads

[[https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/3804596-Frugal-Friends-Finding-Financial-Freedom-In-February
is the latest one]]

Usually there is a long list of useful links on the first page or 2 to help with reducing spend. Most months someone has a You Need a Budget code.

Everyone is welcome - There are people from all ends of the economic spectrum. Don't worry that people know each other already you soon get in the swing of it.