Tips for frugal living

[itsallabitmuchx]

Life feels EXPENSIVE. Like, really bloody expensive, at the moment, despite my lifestyle being pretty basic.

I'm after some tips / tricks / advice of how you live as frugally (but also as fully) as possible.

A little about me - I earn 45K per year pre tax. I do not own my own home (I am renting currently). I pay for gym, contact lenses, car, road tax, council tax, Netflix, union membership, phone, car insurance etc, student loan etc. on a monthly basis. I spend approx. 250 on supermarket shops per month (split between me and housemate evenly). After this, and any other miscellaneous things / 'fun money' takes me to having approx. £200 left per month. Whilst I know this is more than many people, I am trying hard to think about ways I can be more frugal and to make more money in order to save more (In order to be able to buy a house!).

How do you live frugally / save money / make more money in this expensive climate?

Is your housemate sharing the Netflix and council tax?

Do you definitely need a car? I live in a city and didn’t have a car till after we had kids.

What is the miscellaneous/fun money spend going on? Is it worth it?

Making more money - what are your hours like? Would you be up for eg babysitting in the evenings?

Saving £200 per month is not to be sniffed at, that’s good. What are you putting it into? Have you checked out the best accounts, do you move any savings around to get bonus intro rates etc?

Sounds small but grocery shopping every 8 days instead of every week and forcing myself to actually cook with my store cupboard ingredients for the last day.

It helped me get more creative about what I cook, but also reduced any waste. Also helped me actually use some of the random things that I'd bought for one recipe, but never went back to.

Buy and sell clothes on vinted. If you want to buy, sell first for vinted credit and use that. Think of vinted as a giant clothing library and have the attitude that clothes are to be loved and let go unless really special.

Are you in a phone contract? I switched to sim and went from 35 to 4 per month

Buying the tiny little portions (tins, jars, packets) that supermarkets sell seems ridiculously pointless and costly. Try, wherever possible, to identify good sources for bulk buying non-perishable (or at least longer lasting) food and household stuff.

Yes to this! I do a food shop every 8-10 days now instead of weekly and it has genuinely reduced our food spend by £100 a month even with prices continuing to increase, and we have much less food waste AND are eating healthier by using up every last scrap of veg/meat/nuts/oats/etc rather than buying a new supply of snack foods. We ran out of peanut butter but weren't due a food shop for another 5 days, I found half a bag of hazelnuts in our baking cupboard and made hazelnut butter instead - bloody magic.

To OP - it is difficult to know what you can cut down on/do more frugally when you haven't been very specific about where your fun money is going!

Put the money you want to save into your savings account at the beginning of the month. That always helps me reign in my "fun" spending, because I can see when my balance is getting low!

Can you swap jobs or negotiate a rise? Tart up your CV and send it off to recruiters. Watch Selfmademillenial on YouTube and learn to negotiate if you work in the private sector. There are many online free courses, update your skills (ideally in work time). You should aim to earn more per hour rather than work more (I know this is hard bit not impossible).

Cars are super expensive - do you absolutely need it? Could you cycle for everyday travel instead?

Do you need Netflix? Might you get books from World of Books or even the library instead? Or take up a cheap/free hobby?

Do you need gym membership? Could you use the techniques from the gym and do home workouts instead with some cheap dumbbells? Could you combine that with running which is free?

What is your job? Do you have skills that you could offer for consultancy?

Choose a budget for groceries and stick to it, my husbands petrol is included in our grocery budget, use a list so not buying unnecessary things or seduced by deals.
Find out when your electricity is on a cheaper rate and use it, ours is between 12.30am and 7.30am, we wash/dry overnight using the delay function on our appliances, we get up early to shower, my husband is an early riser (before 6) and runs dishwasher when he gets up.
Whatever is left over on the grocery budget each week is put in a separate account used for things we don't need to buy every week e.g. toothpaste, laundry stuff, toilet roll. Home make what you can, my husband makes the best bread.
Shop around for SIM only deals i managed to change mine from £18pm to £8pm. Change subscriptions like Netflix to the cheapest option, includes ads but not the end of the world.

Where do you shop, OP? Switching supermarkets can make a huge difference.

The car will be eating up a lot of money, but you should have more disposable income since you're not only sharing food but presumably sharing the cost of council tax and other utility bills. Is your union membership necessary? Also - as a contact lens wearer myself - shop around for good deals. You shouldn't be paying more than £25 a month for them. I'm guessing you're on an expensive phone contract as well, paying for the phone itself and the tariff.

I agree with others that paying yourself first is a good idea:

https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/personal-finance/budgeting/pay-yourself-first-what-this-strategy-is-and-how-to-follow-it

How much do you spend on miscellaneous and fun money each month? When we were saving to buy our first house we didn’t spend money on some of the things you do. We didn’t have a gym membership or Netflix, we owned cheap cars rather than monthly car payments, and fun money was a very small amount each month.

If you already have Amazon Prime, you can making savings on items that you use regularly by using Subscribe & Save. I get toilet paper, dishwasher tablets, deodorant etc that way and it works really well.

One very ltitle tip I have started doing is to turn off the oven 10-ish minutes before the end of cooking time. (depending on what the time is meant to be) The ambient heat continues to cook the meal. Never had an issue so far with undercooked food.

Get rid of Car, gym membership and Netflix.

Which gym membership do you have? Pure gym do a cheap monthly option.

My little tip is when you need a treat - make it a cheap one. E.g. walk / bike ride/ brunch out rather than full evening meal / movie night with Netflix and some snacks rather than cinema / picnic in a beauty spot / a walk to library to pick up a book / walk with friends / coffee with friends rather than cocktails / browsing the charity shops / make your own sushi etc.

I've always gone cheap with car and phone.

For many people I know gym is non negotiable as it helps both their mental and physical health.

We need to know the amounts really OP. Would echo others though - save money aside on payday, do one thing a week above your job to earn (ebay, Vinted, a shift in a pub, tutoring?), look at things like gym and mobile contract to see if they can be cut back - and put any savings straight over to your savings account.

What's the long term plan? Are you saving for your own home?

Don't preheat either, unnecessary for modern ovens.

Your car insurance will be cheaper if paid annually so do that using your savings.

How much is your rent? Only having £200 to save out for of a £45k salary doesn't sound like much.

Ditch the netflix
shop around for car insurance, broadband and mobile deals every year or once your contract is up. I saved over £20 a month by changing broadband / tv supplier and now get Netflix included too.
aldi / Lidl for shopping
batch cook and freeze
eat vegetarian a couple of days a week
take lunch and snacks to work
i think sticking to a gym that’s convenient rather than just cheap means you’ll get more use out of it, I tried a pure gym because it’s half the price of where I go but it wasn’t convenient for a work, it was a drive from home and I never went, whereas the other one is a 10min walk and there’s a bus stop outside to/from work!

Oh I did not know that!

Ours takes under 5 minutes to get to temperature so if you do it when it says at the beginning of a recipe it can spend 20 minutes or more sitting empty but hot.

For things like pizza I turn it on, un wrap the pizza and put it in straight away as its just about there

OMG i know i am SO LATE to this thread, but i just wanted to say thank you! you just reminded me i can get a cheap sim :D THANK YOU!!!