Prepping on a Low Budget

[AlohaMolly]

The prepping boards have been extremely useful to me over the last year, but I feel a bit lost as to what to do next.

I’m in the tourism industry on furlough and also in one of the devolved nations. I’m on a low wage anyway, but feel I’ll be on furlough till the very end and then either made redundant or struggle for business until at least easter 2021. I want to continue my prepping but have to balance the cost of replenishing stocks/building supplies with continuing to save for what will probably be a hard winter.

Does anyone want to join me for a low budget, long term prepping thread?

I think the key is to buy little and often (every week if you can). Try to add an extra packet of rice or a tin of tomatoes to your basket each week. Try and start planning for Christmas too. I'm trying not to worry about extended family as a lot of us will be in the same boat, just my children. I do agree, we are going to be in for a hard winter, so being as organised as we can is key.

Yes please! I started prepping for this on a low income and am likely to return to that state before long, though prudence if not necessity. It's been an eye opener having a little more money and understanding why it was so hard to prep before when I was scraping by. You can't just think 'oh good, hand soap in a massive 5l container is back in stock, I'll get some' because that is that weeks food budget gone. It is hard, and I really sympathise.

I grew up poor, and have been poor most of my adult life, to some degree. The single thing that people do not understand about not having any money is how much mental energy it takes just to be a person in the world and stay alive. Your world shrinks and everything is harder if you can't just throw money at the problem. It takes real sensitivity and self awareness to realise that, when you are feeling defeated because you just can't face 'whipping up a cake from scratch' with the ingredients that you do in theory have in the house, it's not some kind of failing on your part. Having to think about that sort of thing - saving, being careful, watching every penny, worrying - it is massively tiring. It wrings you out. So be kind to yourself and don't judge yourself harshly if you feel that way.

Someone said on the other thread about allowing for treats. I'd agree with that, but give yourself treats that aren't just food related. Like a box set second hand from amazon /charity shop once they open or saved on Netflix that you've been really looking forward to, or a lovely soak in the bath, or a small budget each week to buy something tiny for yourself, even if it's just a fancy bar of chocolate or a little plant. These things stop you going mad. Trust me, I know. I also found the Jack Monroe blog really helpful, there are tons of free recipes on there and I have tried lots of them. She understands, which is nice.
Also, if you eat meat, cutting down will help your budget a lot.
Thanks for starting the thread, I hope lots of people post ideas which help

Try, if you can, to eke out the supplies you have and buy as much as possible on special offers - so if you can manage this week without rice but there is a BOGOF on pasta, get that instead and put the free one into your stocks.

As you are furloughed, can you take advantage of that time by going to a butcher and getting cheaper cuts of meat that need longer, slower cooking times? And batch cook some of those to feed the freezer?

Also, if you have any seeds, there is still plenty of time to get veg growing, even on a balcony or windowledge, that will help pad out your shopping.

Hello I would like to join. Looks as if my husbands job will be going. He is self employed so no furlough. I work part time but will pick up extra hours if any going.
I am wasting nothing and trying to be more inventive with leftovers.
Trying to buy yellow stickers. I find the local butcher is a lot more expensive than supermarkets. Find Aldi or Lidl best.
I have a small courtyard garden. I have sown lots of cut and come again lettuce peas in tubs, potatoes in old shopping bags. I had herbs already in tubs. Have got a few small tomato plants.
I try to pick up an extra tin of something when I shop.
I make lots of home made soup. I usually add lentils, yellow split peas, or broth mix to make it more filling.
I buy chicken thighs with bones and skin as they are so much cheaper. If I boil for 10 mins then roast I get a nice stock for soup. Other times I roast take all the meat off for meals and Chuck the bones and skin in to make stock.
Buy things like lambs liver for cheap meals.
I hope I can get lots more tips while I try to prep for the future.

Ooh hello everyone!!

I was very kindly given an under the counter freezer for free back in September and, scared of a no deal brexit related price hike, I batch cooked and filled it with leftovers and veg that was on the turn etc. Come January and I was alerted to the coronavirus, I persuaded ~DP to give me a shelf unit in the shed, so managed to stock up over time. He thought I was crazy but come the lockdown and panic buying, we didn’t have to go to the shops for about three weeks.

What’s happening now though is that my food budget hasn’t changed but the prices and the way I shop has. I get my fruit and veg delivered from a local company @£25 a fortnight (great) and I can get 30 eggs for £5 from a farmer every three weeks, great too. A big expense is milk - I found a milkman that delivers so we get 4 pints 3x a week but they are 67p a pint so £8 a week on milk worth it for the short to medium term for peace of mind and not having to nip to the shop for a top up of that makes sense? I don’t have freezer space to buy milk and freeze it.

My biggest expense is treats. DP has a huge sweet tooth and even more so since lockdown. I swear sweets, biscuits and coke (again for DP) are going to bankrupt me.

I refuse to go to the supermarket more than once every ten days and today was shopping day. I spent £44 in farmfoods, £53 in Lidl and £25 in Tesco. I do keep a strict budget and I had £59 in mind for today, so obviously I smashed through that spectacularly, but I think I spent roughly £35 on things for ‘my pantry’ in the shed. I bought sugar in all three shops because it was on short supply for the last month and I was running low, for example.

DS is gluten intolerant, and I’m struggling to get GF flour and bread, so when I saw some today I bought two of each.

uptheclarets I’m definitely going to buy for Christmas ASAP. DS is 4 and just had a lockdown birthday. I generally start a list in January every year for everyone I buy for (it’s a short list for immediate family!) and write ideas and then buy as and when I see a good deal.

RhubarbTea we sound quite similar in that I, too, grew up poor. I was a teacher before I had DS, then after ML my DP got really quite ill and I ended up quitting to look after him and baby DS. Looking back, my mental health took a real beating and I burned through savings and ended up in debt. I’ve got a job now and started really taking care of my finances back in September and it’s been a lifesaver since March. I had no savings and was constantly overdrawn on my overdraft last year but now I’ve got just over a grand in savings and no overdraft. I’ve still got debt but am paying it off and saving at the same time and I’m so glad I did, else I wouldn’t have been able to survive the first month of lockdown before my furlough kicked in. It also means that I can spend a bit more one week and pay it back the next.

Biddypop and kitkat we’ve got a tiny backyard but DP has used lockdown to revamp it. We are hoping to grow a lot ourselves and I’ve got spring onions on the go and some mint in a pot, but I need an idiots guide to gardening

It's the price rises and inability to go to the usual shops that are getting so expensive for me. I used to get staples in Aldi, pound shop etc. The youngest bites through toothbrushes in no time, so used to buy 5 pack for a pound in poundland. They are a pound each in supermarkets, if available at all. Aldi was cheaper on many basics in comparison to where we can get deliveries from now.

On the plus side, the supply chains have already done some adapting. Local shops are doing delivering by website or phone and companies that normally supply catering are doing home delivery. I am hopeful this means that second wave will be less bumpy in terms of getting hold of food. Obviously not easier on price.

Yes Dennis, it’s the price hikes that will cause me problems long term too. Usually I do around £40 worth of overtime a week so I have wiggle room but obviously that’s not happening :/.

I had already increased my grocery budget at the end of last year, by €50 per month, as prices had started creeping up (and what we were eating, especially DD, had also changed). But it has been blown out of the water for the past 4 months - stocking up in Jan/Feb and then dealing with lockdown restrictions since. And the way we are eating differently when all at home (DD had 5 hot dinners and 3 hot suppers per week at school (suppers on evening study nights) so that in itself is a huge extra expense - the meals money while school is closed is going back onto the account for next year, not a refund).

So I am needing to do a lot of thinking around what we now eat, how I can now shop, lack of many items in shops so needing to rethink plans, the realities of needing meals at set times around chaotic work, and not getting anything like the exercise I was getting - even if that was only the very fast walk to and from train stations daily, it was significant!

I'm attempting a lot of veg in the garden, much more than usual, but DD is so so so bored that she's spending a lot of time kicking a football out there, and destroying a lot of the plants. Unintentionally, but it's soul destroying, and she just assumes that we can make it alright and get everything we used to, and I just can't. So some days, I have cried in despair at it. Then I drink more gin and start a different plan.

Sorry, I know that's not about low budget -

It’s so hard isn’t it? I was feeding three of us before Christmas for £25-£30 and it was pretty miserable and caused arguments with DP who wanted more treats. I increased my budget to £45 to incorporate this and was doing well after but I have spent £100 on at least 5 occasions since lockdown - a couple of times because I managed to get delivery slots from the bigger supermarkets which are more expensive than Lidl!

I find when I go shopping now, it’s the treats that are killing me. Then I got home yesterday, having spent 2 hours traipsing round three shops and DP eats a whole Jamaican ginger cake before I’ve even unloaded the shopping. Also soul destroying.

What does your meal plan look like? I can do evening meals pretty cheaply and try and have a 4 weekly plan going.

Biddypop I rigged up some netting over part of my veg in March or so because the starlings were ravaging my baby plants. I was going to take it down once they were big enough to withstand a bit of abuse, but it has been useful to keep balls etc from squashing stuff. So, while it is not lovely to look at, it will stay. It's bamboo sticks and old broom handles in the corners and along the edges of the plot. Old plastic cups on the top of the sticks. Three pieces of netting draped over, staked down with tent pegs, some small rocks and forked sticks. Some clothes pegs holding the three pieces of netting together where they overlap. A female blackbird got in once and had a major panic. Once she had been coaxed out, I increased the clothes pegs and rocks and we haven't had further ingress. I had one piece of netting already, the other two I bought off amazon (pea/bean netting £3-4 for the pair).

In similarly lovely vein I found an abandoned wheely bin in the woods last week, dragged it home (one wheel broken), cleaned it out and put it next to our water butt. When (if ever!) our water butt fills up again, I will siphon the water into the bin so the water butt can fill up again. The garden needs so much watering, and it pains me to use the mains water which is on the meter. DC were so embarrassed when I lugged the bin home...

Signing in! I am furloughed too and likely to lose my job. Applying for others but no one is responding.

We need a new water butt too. The old one got ruined by soccer balls!

The extra water butt/bin is brilliant!!

Welcome Magis my fellow furloughed!

I don't think that the home grown fruit and veg is necessarily cheaper once you factor in buying seeds, pots, compost etc. But it does come with a calming leisure activity included in the price and gives me small piece of mind on getting some fresh food if the blooming snails don't munch the lot first.

I do agree actually Dennis. especially considering if, like me, you don’t have a garden big enough to grow enough to negate having to buy any.

For us, we already had about 18l of soil from previous gardening aspirations so we have repurposed it all and are reconfiguring the yard to make best use of it. Any veg I plan on growing so far will be from off cuts - I’ve got a crop of 10 spring onions on the go from the ends collected over the last few weeks!

I’m pretty sure I’m going to concentrate on salad veg as I’m the only one who eats it so I often don’t buy it, but i really miss it and it makes a huge difference to the food I eat... but I know I have a good, pretty unshakeable source of root veg and our diet is such that it wouldn’t be too much of a hardship if we could only get hold of potatoes, carrots and swede/broccoli for a while.

@AlohaMolly I have one flower bed and an increasing number of containers. Bed is now 2/3 food. It feels sensible to have a wider availability of fresh veg this year and have berries for the kids.

It means the stash can be kept for when we really need it as I do think second wave is likely. Trying to make lists now of things we will need to have plenty of for winter. No point in buying too much now if it has a shelf life of just a few months.

Definitely do little but often. I've been taking one/two tins out of my multipack each time and I am getting quite a nice stock now. As for other items I try to add a few items each shop probably totalling no more than £3. It takes a few weeks but then you'll see some progress.

Well this week I spent £52. I did get coffee, tea, baked beans and tinned fruit for my store cupboard.
I agree about treats. My husband has a very sweet tooth so a lot gets spent on biscuits. I try to buy ones on offer or in Home Bargains.
I have tried not buying but it doesn’t work as he will pop into a shop and just buys whatever he fancies.

AlohaMolly can you get a prescription for your son for GF items?
My relative who usually buys for her son who has coeliac couldn’t get lots of items and got it on prescription which works out free as they are under 16.

I use value rice pudding(20p per tin) and custard (19p per sachet, 25p per tin) for a back up supply of calcium.

Own brand cup soups for emergency quick food.

Popcorn kernels at about a pound a bag with salt for snacks.

Couscous is dense space wise and cheapish.

Spices: world food bumper packs.
Asda or Morrisons 75 for 24 wheat biscuits
Raisins and sultanas for fruit as less g per portion.
Value tinned carrots and peas, addeded to value curry sauce or tin. Normally make my own though, but the tins are good for emergencies.

Stock up in Ramadan on tinned tomatoes and pulses, dried pulses and spices.

( our local Morrisons has offers every Ramadan)

I hadn’t thought about the prescription for GF stuff - he was tested for coeliac at around 14 months and it came back negative. The paediatrician we were under discharged us and said that intolerances weren’t a real thing, but wrote on the discharge notes that he probably had a sensitivity to gluten, so I’m not sure if he’d qualify? I’ll definitely check it out - I’m in Wales where prescriptions are free as well.

I’ve got a drawer full of potatoes on the turn that I’m going to make in to mash, portion and freeze today and I could do with something to use up a load of tomatoes - any suggestions? I’d do pasta sauce but that’s how I used the last lot up

I visited our local garden centre yesterday to grab seeds and plants now the garden is coming together and it was so nice to be back somewhere familiar that isn’t a supermarket! I’ve now got salad leaves, herbs, cucumber, courgette and bell peppers planted and two strawberry plants that apparently survived being dug up as dormant seeds from last year, dumped in a placid barrel and then lobbed into a new planter. Hardy things, aren’t they?

Other things I’ve discovered in this heat - I’m a size 16 and love dresses/skirts but we also do a lot of walking. I could do with light trousers/shorts as opposed to dresses because my thighs rub together I’ve got a maxi dress that I think would work as a jumpsuit - does anyone reckon I could adapt it easily? It would be hand sewing as no machine!

If you dont want to give up your dresses/skirts you can get little shorts type things that protect the inner thighs. No brand to recommend yet as I only read about these recently but google 'chub rub shorts' and you'll see quite a few.

I made my own chub rub shorts years ago. It was basically an old waist underskirt. Cut up the back and front and sewed together works a treat.
It was quite a full underskirt though😊

I've set aside old toys & clothes to sell online once lockdown is over. Any profits I make will go towards building up my winter stash cupboard.

I have had interest in my dd's dolls house, someone offered me £50 for it. It's collection only so it will have to wait until after lockdown. I'm having to think of new ways to supplement my food budget.

Good thread. I harvested my first strawberry and slightly slug nibbled radish yesterday. I only have a courtyard but have a lot growing out there including a cherry tree and 3 blueberry bushes in tubs. It is a lot of effort for small return but very soothing and enjoyable.

For the chub rub problem, I cut the legs off an old pair of thin leggings so they are now short like and wear them under dresses.

I don't know if they are common across the country but we have a big warehouse store place which sell bulk packs of slightly out of date foods. Massive bargains to be had if you do find a store like that and don't mind 6 to 20 of the same item.