Frugal Friday on Saturday - Housekeeping and the Grocery Bill

On MSE, someone mentioned that they were struggling to get their food bill down  and wondered how others managed to stick to such a low budget for two adults. I was thinking about this when I was soaking kidney beans yesterday, so I thought I’d elaborate a little on how we do it.  Our full housekeeping budget is:-

£120 - MSE Grocery Challenge/general groceries/Farm shop & supermarket shopping

£ 40 - Meat Fund (spent irregularly at the butcher’s and Costco 

£ 40 - Bulk Fund (used for Costco spends, WingYip and booze)

£ 20 - Christmas (for the goose (£107 last year), tree, chocolates, etc)

£ 10 - Garden Fund

——-

£230

====

That’s £60 up from when I started my blog in 2007.  (I think groceries were £100, Meat and Bulk were £30 each, Christmas £10 and we didn’t have a garden fund, back then.)

We eat really well:  plenty of home-made curries, stir-fries, stews, risotto, pasta, the odd roast, some vegetarian dishes.  For a stew, I’ll use about 300g of meat, plus onions, garlic, carrots, maybe peppers, and a (pre-cooked, dried) pulse or broad beans from the freezer.   I don’t do a lot of “meat and two veg” because, frankly, I find that boring.  

Most meals give 4 portions.  For portion control, I dish up the next day’s lunches as the same time as our dinner ( prevents my DH eating a second portion). 

A big secret is planning.  I don’t mean meal-planning, which I do rather badly. (I tend to stand in front of the fridge/freezer after dinner and think “what have we got in?  What needs to be used up?  What haven’t we eaten lately?”, when considering what we’ll eat for dinner the next day.). It’s about thinking ahead and cooking for more than one meal at a time - those kidney beans that I mentioned?  That was for three meals; two 400g portions are now in the freezer.   I’ll do the same with chickpeas, mung beans, black-eyed beans - dried the dried pulses we have in stock.  Since most of my recipes start “fry onion with garlic, add mushrooms”, I’ll cook up double quantities and freeze the second portion as “Base”, for those days when I’m time poor.

It’s also about thinking of the meal possibilities when you purchase meat.  A roast chicken is dinner one night (the legs), Chinese the next (one breast), then risotto (the other meat) on the third night, plus stock.  A 1kg package of cooking bacon from L!dl costs £1.39, will be split into 4 and  one portion can make any of the following:  Cuban Black Bean Stew, Breakfast Pie, Tuna Lasagne, regular Lasagne, “Bacon & Egg McMuff!ns”, Coq au Vin, etc.

Some of it is about buying in bulk, so I’d suggest you put £5-£10 a month aside for buying good storage containers.  (I use Lock-n-Lock; they aren’t cheap but are critter-proof and water-tight.).   Once you have those, save the cash for a large pressure cooker, in which to cook your pulses.

I only have one type of flour in stock - the bread flour sold as “chapatti” or “Atta” flour, which comes in 10kg bags and costs between £3 and £4 a bag.   It gets used for everything that needs flour: bread cakes (add 1tsp baking powder per cup to make “self-raising”); pastry; pancakes;  Toad in the Hole, etc.  A 2kg bag of kidney beans costs around £3.50, which equates to about 15p a can (NB each 400g can gives 250g cooked beans).   That bag of beans will last us at least 4-6 months. 

HTH

- Pam

Making the best use of what you have

It occurs to me regularly that one of the leading principles of frugality is making the best use of what you already have, rather than constantly chasing the “next big thing”.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking IT gadgets, houses, cars or clothes; if your jeans are perfectly serviceable, why waste the money replacing them?  Don’t waste money on unnecessary spending.

I think about this principle a lot, usually when I’m pottering around the kitchen or getting dressed in the morning for work.  I’m still wearing suits purchased  over decade ago.  Admittedly, fashion has been kind over the last two decades - no massive shoulder pads or exaggerated silhouettes - but, beyond stretch jeans, I’ve been ignoring fashion for years. My clothing purchases are driven by a) when something wears out, b) my size - I am fatter than I was in 2008 - and c) the capsule wardrobe concept, where I try to ensure everything goes with everything-else, for maximum wearability.

On the house front, our fridge-freezer died in August 2018 and the replacement annoys me because, while having the same exterior dimensions, the freezer section is smaller and less flexible than the old one.  It is thicker walled and better insulated, but the shelf positions are fixed, with no alternate slots, and there are fewer shelves in the door.  It holds about 20% less than the old freezer as a result.  In order to freeze the goose we purchased at Christmas, I had to remove one shelf and stand the goose up vertically, carefully packing everything else around it.

The goose is an excellent example of making the best use of what you have. We were away at Christmas but when we finally cook it, we’ll harvest 1-2kg of cooking fat, 2-ish litres of goose stock and enough meat for 4 meals.  Nothing is wasted.

- Pam

Money talks

I seem to be obsessed by money at the moment.  It's partially because I'm still finding my feet as a contractor - I'm still trying to work out how much money I need to leave in the company to pay the taxman and stay afloat if my contract with the Swedes ends.  Salary-wise, I'm paying myself £12k less than I was earning before BUT my take-home pay has only dropped £200/month. With a bit of rejigging and lower commuting costs, it's doable and leaves me with the same money-to-live-off each month.  (No, I don't understand it either.  While I used to contribute 9% to the corporate pension scheme, that was out of pretax income and doesn't explain the entire change.)

The other reason, I think, is that team I'm in at the moment are all contractors and they're obsessed by investing in shares and in property.   We had quite a discussion yesterday about the economics of rental properties.  I was surprised to discover that, in a group of accountants, I'm the only one who knew that mortgage interest will no longer be tax deductible on a privately owned rental property, thanks to George Osborne's misguided 2015 budget.  (He thought it'd force buy-to-let property owners out of the market, freeing housing stock for owner occupiers.  He is wrong.  The solution is to incorporate and own your rental properties through a company.  Interest will still be tax deductible and the company will pay 20% corporation tax instead of 40% income tax.  Those people who don't incorporate, will just put up the rents they charge, in order to compensate for the decrease in income.)

One topic that hasn't come up yet, is how people are saving.  Not the amount they save*, but the mechanics.  We've talked about car loans and leasing, but not saving.  Well, not yet. At least, for this I have an answer...Oddly, in the last six months, I have been put on the spot twice about the same thing.  Both times by bank people who wanted to know why I have so many savings accounts.  The first time, I was moving my savings operations to a new bank after the UK operations of ING were finally absorbed into Barclays.  (I can't abide Barclay's Bank.  They treated me like dirt when I was a customer of their's when I first came to the UK.).  The second was when I was setting up my business bank account.

Each time, the answer is the same:  "I micro-budget".  The response is usually a puzzled expression, so I elaborate:  "Each account has a purpose and is used for saving for something specific, so if I want to know how much money I've got set aside for my football season ticket, I can just check the account balance".

Usually, that's enough of an explanation and it's as if a lightbulb has light up.  Suddenly, they get it and want to know more. "What sort of thing are you saving for?", they ask.   I tell them that I've got accounts for the car's services and insurance, holidays, Christmas presents, the garden fund, clothing, crafting, etc, etc.

It's like a formalised version of the Sanity Fund, without the wallet card.  Partially, you can blame Anita Bell - the Sanity Fund is all her idea - and partially you can blame a poster on the Motley Fool years ago, who mentioned that they could have up to 10 sub-accounts when you opened an account at ING, which lead to a wider discussion about how people could use their sub-accounts.   Most people used theirs for saving for annual or irregular recurring expenses (such as car maintenance bills), and called the whole ING thing thneir "Freedom Fund".  "I've got $xxx in my Freedom Fund" is not an uncommon statement on the Fool.  (ING used to facilitate this by showing you the total balance of all your accounts, when you logged in.)

Eventually, I discovered that ING had a UK operation and signed up as fast as the pixels would carry me.  They paid the Bank of England base rate of interest, which was better than the majority of instant access accounts at the time.  Sadly, ING was one of the banks caught in the middle of 2008's credit crunch and their international operations were sold off.  I don't remember who bought them in the States, but Barclays bought the British branch and, about 2 years ago, moved all the accounts to their own online platform, which requires a card and card reader and is a pain because you can't just spontaneously check your account balances while at work.  The final straw in my relationship with Barclays this time, was when they reduced the rate on their accounts to below 0.1%, which in no way compensates for the hassle of dealing with their online portal.

Bye-bye Barclays.  The new bank is paying above the Bank of England base rate of 0.25% on an instant access savings account.  They have an easy to access on-line portal.  Their website is logical and easy to navigate (unlike yours).  Sod off.

- Pam






* This being England, you don't discuss salaries or day rates.  We know virtually everything else - what someone paid for the house, the size of the mortgage, etc, -  but not that.  (For once, I can't get this information from the finance system.  The Swedes aren't time-sheet-costed!)

Frugal Friday - five frugal tips that I've used in the last year

Happy New Year!  Did you have a good one?

In an effort to get blogging more frequently,   I thought I'd kick off 2017 with an injection of frugality:-

1. The cheapest liquid soap on the market is Tesco's Everyday Value (own brand) Foam Bath at 50p/litre.  (It was 40p until recently.)  Chemically, it's the same as body wash or liquid soap and virtually the same as shampoo, but it doesn't smell as fancy.  Use it to refill liquid soap dispensers and as a body wash.  You can even use it as a shampoo, if desperate, but it may be a bit harsh on your hair.  One litre goes a long way.
2.  Love to read and have a smart phone, tablet or Kindle?  There are thousands of free or very cheap books on Amazon.  Join the Bookbub mailing list to receive a daily email of books in your favourite categories, all on sale for £1.99 or less.
3. My local library has a scheme where you can "borrow" audiobooks for free via an app.  You get access to each book for two weeks.  You do have to prove that you live in the borough first, though.
4. They have a similar scheme with an online magazine platform that looks similar to Zinio.  Unlike the audiobooks, I haven't tested it.  (I'm drowning in free Kindle books thanks to Bookbub.)
5. Travelling for work and staying for several days in hotels that provide decent toiletries but only taking carry-on luggage?  Want to save all the free bottles of shampoo/hair conditioner/body wash/lotion?  Get around the airport security rules limiting you to no more than 10 bottles of liquid of less than 100ml each by taking empty 100ml bottles with you and filling them up with the unused contents of the sample-sized bottles provided by the hotel

- Pam

What would I do if....

As you know, I'm working from home while waiting for my foot to heal.  Since I find myself sitting and staring at the inevitable "save" icon on the work laptop for what feels like forever, multiple times during the work day, my thoughts wander off to more interesting topics like knitting.  (It's better than thinking about food and recipes - that inevitably just makes me hungry.)  

One of the mental games I play runs, "What would I do if....", the knitting version of which is "How and what would I knit if I were broke?".  Now, in reality, I have a large stash and if I were broke, I could knit from it for about a decade and (possibly) with the exception of sock yarn, still have multiple-garments-worth of yarn left at the end of it.  I have more than enough yarn.  I am seriously contemplating selling some of it to make some space and because it is highly unlikely I will ever knit with it (the pink and the blue Sublime Angora Merino DK if you are interested).  So let's wind the clock back ten-or-so years, before the stash grew large and contemplate how and what I'd knit if I were broke and didn't have much of a stash.

(This version of the game started because ages ago, on a frugality discussion board somewhere - not TMF - someone remarked that she couldn't afford to knit with "real wool" only with acrylic.  Her next comment, which was aimed squarely at me, was that since I could "afford" wool, I obviously didn't need to be on a frugality discussion board.  I think I replied that it was precisely because of the tips and tricks I'd picked up that I could afford to knit with wool, that most of my yarn was purchased at a deep discount from the likes of Black Sheep Yarns and that I saved £5/month for my knitting.  Anyhow, I digress. Let's play the game...)

How and what would I knit if I were broke?  

For a start, I'd knit whatever yarn I had in the house, until it ran out. I'd dig it all out, pile it on the bed and work out what I could do with it.  Even when I only shopped for the next garment to be knitted and not for the stash, there were always balls and ends of balls of yarn left over after whatever was knitted was finished.  There would probably be enough for at least a couple of hats, some fingerless mitts and a pair or two of my use-em-up socks.  Any short lengths could be crocheted into granny squares - it's about time I learned to do one.  (No, even though I've been crocheting all my life, I've never made one.)

In the meantime, while I was busy knitting up the odds and ends, I'd try to save for the next garment.  Surely I could squeeze £2 a week out of the budget?    Three 100g balls of 4-ply sock yarn is approximately 1200 metres, which  is more than enough to make a vintage sweater like the Jan Sweater, which is at least a month's knitting (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-jan-sweater).  There are plenty of free patterns out there, which you can find via Ravelry.  Since I'm using 4-ply, I'd start by searching the library for patterns listed on Trove (the National Library of Australia online archive of vintage knitting patterns). Www.knitty.com is another place I'd look.

Then onto the yarn.  King Cole Zig Zag is reasonable to knit, consists of 75% wool:25% nylon, would give you 420m a ball and is currently on sale via Amazon for £4.79 plus £2.49 p&p, so £16.86 for yarn for an entire sweater.  You may even be able to get a short sleeved sweater out of two balls.  http://tinyurl.com/jgxb7n7  The hardest part will be trying to find a source that sells plain colours.

Alternatively, if I'd saved up just a little more, I could get three balls of West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4-ply, 75% wool:25% nylon, quality British grown and spun yarn, direct from the spinners for £7.20 a ball plus £2.60 p&p, a total of  £24.20.  That is a premium product with 30% BFL for less than £25, including p&p.  http://tinyurl.com/ozzvaof. I know which one I'd prefer.  

Problem solved, yes?

- Pam

My Favourite Toy

There's something I have been meaning to rave about it on the Blog for ages.   Do you remember back in the 1980's/1990's, when you'd read science fiction books and the hero/heroine would reach for their "communicator" or "link" to look up something on the computer?  Or to make a video call/read a document/watch TV?  Or to record something?  I remember wistfully thinking "I wish I had one of those!".  Well, four years ago, I got one - I purchased my first iPhone - and, as far as I am concerned, my iPhone is the Best. Toy. Ever!   I use it for everything.

Really, I do. I currently have a 64GB iPhone 5, bought a year ago, and there's less than 10GB free.  As well as making calls or sending text messages via my phone network, I access my bank from it; quickly surf the internet to find out or confirm something; read my latest book via Kindle at lunchtime; chat to Our Man in the Middle East via WhatsApp;  chat to my sister in Australia for free on Viber.  It's my primary camera and stores most of my music.  I've written blogs on it (although the Blogger App is a bit clumsy).  I talk to friends and family on Facebook; visit Ravelry for knitting inspiration; download and listen to podcasts, as well as audio books while I drive.  Every morning, you'll find me doing my daily French lesson on Duolingo (which is free).   There are exercise programs I attempt follow (look out for the free 7-Minute Workout and RunKeeper).  For calorie counting, I use My Fitness Pal.   I use the BBC apps all the time, including iPlayer and iPlayer radio.

So much of what I use on the iPhone is free.  As well as podcasts, most of the 100+ Kindle books I have were free via BookBub (or discounted to 99p).  All the BBC content is free.  As is Duolingo and the Learn French videos on youtube.

The only thing that detracts from my iPhone is the network.  A year ago,  when I upgraded to the iPhone 5, I switched to Vodafone and I'm not impressed. Can't get a consistent signal anywhere.  Can't get a signal at all for large tranches of the day in my office - never had a problem with my old network - and even in the centre of London I've had problems.   I am counting the days until I can break the contract.

Excuse me.  I'm off to play with my Toy.

- Pam

Frugal Friday - use up what you have

For the trip to Miami, I bought with me 100g  yarn for a pair of Monkey socks - started just before we left London - and sufficient aran weight yarn to make a Five Hour Baby Sweater for a colleague's baby shower.  The sock were finished last weekend, while the sweater was completed this time yesterday afternoon. Disaster!  I ran out of scheduled knitting!

My initial plan when we visited Michaels earlier this week was to buy some Lionbrand Sockease.  While I know it's not the poshest yarn in the world, I listened to all 100+ episodes of their podcast, Yarncraft, and wanted to give them some custom as a thank you.  Anyway, Michaels didn't have any Sockease; they didn't have any sock yarn whatsoever and precious little fingering weight (4-ply).  This meant that my other plan - to knit a second pair of socks from souvenir sock yarn has been totally stymied.  (There is little chance I'll get to either of the other two major craft stores, Jo-Ann's or Hobby Lobby before we fly home tomorrow.)

So there I was, yesterday afternoon wondering what on earth I could knit now.  I had leftover Toft Alpaca sock yarn, 75g of baby blue acrylic, a set of 2.5mm DPNs and a 7mm circular needle.  Using the acrylic didn't appeal  - I need to save it for future baby sweaters - which left the sock yarn.  I dismissed starting another pair of socks; without weighing it, I know there just isn't enough yarn for a full pair and I don't have access to any other suitable yarn to make a pair of half-n-half socks.  That left me with fingerless mitts/wristers. The only worry being, will I have enough yarn?  

Last night, I started to work out a pattern, knitting as I go.  Following a session with scales this morning, I now know that I have 38g of yarn to play with.  Ravelry tells me that I have 174.8 metres left of the sock yarn.  The scales tell me that the 24.5 rounds I've knitted so far weigh 6g, so 1g = 4 rounds.  That means I can knit 76 rounds per wrister, a reasonable length, and still have a metre or two left over for repairs.  

A bit of thought, some mathematics and a touch of creativity means that I can continue to practice my hobby without spending a dime.  And I'm using up something that would normally get buried in stash for a few years.  One last brownie point - I've started my 2015 Knit from Stash challenge early!  Yay, me!!

(Here I am working on my new project, soaking up the sun and listening to a podcast in my favourite spot at TLA's house in Miami.)

Frugal Friday - Free language courses

With one eye firmly on my 2015 goals, I thought I'd share how I plan to achieve one of them: learning French.  My plan is to follow a three-pronged approach: podcasts (starting with Learn French By Podcast, available free on iTunes), the Earworm French books I bought on Audible a while ago (i had credits to use up) and (originally) the BBC's free "learn French" site which, although it says it has been archived, still appears to work (http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/).  However, I can't figure out how to make the videos work on my iPad - the BBC is insisting they need Java and Flash - so I took a look at YouTube, where I found dozens of free videos, from Learn French With Alexa to something presented by Eddie Izzard.  

The BBC site, I remembered from a campaign they ran a decade ago.  Their PDF's still download, so you can read those, and the links still work to the foreign language websites they reference. Besides the Beeb, what is surprising is how many free resources there are out there, entire series of learning materials that someone has kindly made available for free (although you may have to watch an advertisement from a sponsor).  Podcasts are an incredible free resource - many are produced by individuals as a hobby, for example, one of my friends learned Dutch from a podcast series started by a Dutchman trying to teach his girlfriend the language.  

I guess that is the point of my post tonight:  if you have the equipment/resources to access them, then before spending money on a course or a DIY book, check out the free materials on iTunes and YouTube.  You will be amazed at what you find.

How long does a lipstick last?

Those of you who have known me for a long time might remember that, a few years ago, I dated my toiletries to see how long they lasted.  Out of curiosity, I extended that to my cosmetics after I wondered how long it took to get a lipstick from this:

To this:

Take a closer look from the top:

Can't get much emptier, can you?

How long do you reckon?  This is the lipstick I use virtually every working day.  I apply it in the morning, cover it with Lipcoat sealant and forget about it.  I probably only reapply it one afternoon in three.  So...how long do you think?

A clue:

Yes, that's right, three and a half years!

- Pam

How many meals?

This morning, I skived off work*, scooped up the contents of the meat fund and went to the kosher butcher.  It had been six months since my last visit, I had £230 to play with and a freezer that looked half full.  In the end, I spent £199.35 and bought the following:-

2kg roasting chicken - 3 meals plus stock
3 x 350g packets of chicken livers - 3 meals
2kg rolled turkey leg roast - 3 meals
marinated Tuscan lamb roast - 1 meal
1lb marinated stir-fry beef - 2 meals
4lb minced (ground) beef - 8 meals
Shoulder of lamb - 2 meals
5lb cubed steak - 5 meals
9 chicken breast fillets - 9 meals
Lamb spare ribs in honey - 1 meal
2 packs beef sausages - 2 meals
700g turkey schnitzels - 2-3 meals
6 packets stock cubes

So that's 41 or 42 meals where each meal feeds a minimum of 4.   The only thing I didn't buy was steak.  (I forgot.)

Let me restate it:  that's four roast dinners plus leftovers; three pre-prepared Chinese meals (just add veg and rice); nine large chicken breasts (250g each) which will make nine stir-fries/ risotto/pasta dishes or curries; five assorted beef stews or curries; 8 meals of minced beef and other possibilities; three of chicken livers; plus a bag of "I don't feel like cooking what have we got to eat?".

It will take us through to December by my reckoning.  Sometimes my ability to stretch out food amazes even me.  Of course, we eat the odd vegetarian meal - less frequently than you'd think - and a reasonable amount of fish (maybe 2lb a month if you include tinned tuna and pilchards), but we don't go hungry by any stretch of the imagination.  Nor do we eat out a lot.

Hmmm..... Do you remember back in October when I was toying with doing a Wartime Experiment but wondered about whether we could survive the food rations?  Dealing with the meat ration was really what was putting me off trying the experiment.  Well, www.whatsthecost.com's  UK inflation calculator tells me that £200 today is the equivalent of £3/17/9 in 1941 money (£3, 17 shillings and 10 pence).  In 1941, the meat ration was 1s2d per week.  Therefore, I reckon I've just bought 15 weeks' worth of meat ration for two people.  Food for thought.

- Pam








* More to the point, since I have done at least 40 hours unpaid overtime since the start of May, which includes unwilling working 5 hours on Saturday and our timesheet week runs Saturday to Friday, I told my bosses that I was booking that time in my regular 40 hours and not working today.  (At my grade, I can't claim paid overtime.)

Frugal Friday - Procrastination Costs Money

If there is one lesson to learn from watching athletes at the Olympics, it's to get off your behind and do rather than sit there and think about things, then over think about things, or put off thinking about them all together.  I am sure that every single competitor and potential competitor has had moments when the last thing they wanted to do was to go and train.  Whether it was having to get out of bed early and go out into the pouring rain, or having to go home early from a party so that they could compete in an event, every athlete will have had a moment when they gritted their teeth and did what they had to do rather than what they wanted to do.

That's the thing that sets them aside from the rest of us. The rest of us go "it'll keep" and put fun before obligation, usually to our detriment.  Or we procrastinate, trying to avoid the inevitable, possibly putting things off until just before a deadline or even missing the deadline completely.  Sound familiar?  Are you remembering essays left unwritten until the night before they were due to be handed in?  (Who hasn't done that?  Seriously, don't lie?)

So what does this have to do with frugality?  Our current house-and-contents insurance policy expires later this month so, on Wednesday, DH and I went online to Comparethemeerkat to find a replacement (and score another meerkat toy).   Last year, I'd thought about using a comparison website, but procrastinated and let the renewal date slip past.  To be honest, I saw the insurance renewal notice envelope, thought "must deal with that" then put it in a drawer and forgot about it. I'd never even looked to see what the payments would be.  (We paid monthly.)  When the first direct debit came out, I went ouch(!) because the payments had gone up by over 22%. 

Fast forward to this year.  This year, I opened the renewal notice and read the letter.  Another huge leap in insurance premiums.  The monthly payment was increasing by 30%.  We've never ever made a claim, not even when the kitchen roof was leaking.  A few minutes of our time - a few questions answered - and we've found a comparable policy for a much more reasonable price.  By acting, instead of procrastinating, our new insurance policy is £233.02 for the year instead of £1,100.74!  Yes, you saw that right.  The new policy cost 21% of the price of the renewal.

The moral of the story is:  be like an Olympian.  Don't procrastinate when renewal time comes around.  Don't assume that the insurance companies will act in your best interest and keep the price reasonable.  They've already got your business and consider you a captive audience to be milked.

- Pam

Five Frugal Things

We've had guests staying, who were a bit surprised by some of the things I do automatically - not taken aback or grossed out, but surprised in the "Oooohhhh! That's a good idea! I never thought of doing that!" sense. These aren't big, headline frugal activities; rather, they're the little, every day things that save a penny here or a penny there and only cost a few seconds of time.

Since the internet is full of these things anyway, I thought I'd create a new meme: Five Frugal Things.  Feel free to copy the idea in your own blog.

Five Frugal Things I do Automatically

1. Set Asides. When I'm serving up dinner, I'll dish up our lunch-boxes at the same time as I do our meals. That way, lunch is taken care of and I can ensure that there is sufficient food for lunch if someone wants seconds.
2. Batch soaking and cooking dried beans and chickpeas. I have a pressure cooker; it takes virtually no more time to cook 1kg of kidney beans than it takes to cook 200g. I'll then bag, tag and freeze the excess.
3. Decant shampoo, conditioner, body wash and body lotion into pump action soap dispensers, so that you get standardised quantities each time you wash. This extended the life of a bottle of shampoo by more than double.
4. Using the bread-maker to bake bread. It takes 5 minutes to weigh out all the ingredients and costs less than 25p for a loaf of wholemeal bread. When I set up the bread-maker before going to bed on Monday night, my guests were a little stunned at how quick, easy and cheap it is. The bread was ready when we got up in the morning.
5. Washing and re-using bread bags/freezer bags. It takes me less than 30 seconds to wash out a bread bag when I'm doing the dishes (turn inside out, give a quick swish through clean-ish washing up water - scrubbing any sticky bits - and position over the cutlery drainer to dry). Re-using a plastic bag only saves me a fraction of a penny a time but they all add up. For food safety's sake, I do not re-use bags that have held raw meat or fish, although I do put those into a previously recycled bag that's looking like it's seen better days (that way, I can bin the bag afterwards with a clean conscience).

 What about you? What are your Five Frugal Things?

- Pam

Frugal Friday: Freezer Tetris

One day, in the near future, I am probably going to lose at Freezer Tetris.

You don't know about Freezer Tetris?  You remember the early computer game, Tetris, don't you?  Where you had to fit shapes into a finite space, without leaving any gaps?  Well, Freezer Tetris is a real-life version of the game, where you have to fit more and more food into a freezer that is already full.  This was my freezer two weeks ago, at the tail end of Easter:

Hard to believe that I'd taken an 18lb turkey out of it to roast for Good Friday. I took that photo after I successfully managed to shoe-horn in 6 x 600ml containers of turkey stock, as well as over 2kg of cubed leftover turkey.   In the interim week after removing and defrosting said turkey, I also added 800g home-wilted spinach and 1.5kg cooked chickpeas.  

With the exception of a couple of lunch-boxes of leftovers (and four haggis plus a whole black pudding), the contents of the freezer  remained static until I decided we needed more kidney beans, so I soaked a 1kg of dried beans overnight, bagged them, then shoved them into the freezer.  Somehow. (Freezing causes ice to form in the re-hydrated cells, which damages the cell walls and shortens cooking time.)  How I got them into the freezer, I don't know.

Last night, I couldn't resist the big bag of frozen hash-browns at Costco, so the beans came out of the freezer and I cooked them this morning.  1kg of dried beans cooked became 2.35kg.

 Half an hour ago, I stood staring at the freezer wondering how I was going to fit that lot in.  Last night's hash browns had been difficult enough.

Hmmm.... If I take these out and rearrange that......

 Victory!

Pam 3 :  Freezer 0

 - Pam



PS:  There is a serious point I want to make here.  One of the things that keeps our food bill low is the way we utilise the freezer.  Leftovers get frozen.  Before we went on holiday, all our remaining fresh veg was chopped up and frozen.  I batch cooked dried pulses, portion them up and freeze anything that won't be eaten that day.  At Easter, we nabbed a bargain on fresh spinach - an 800g bag marked down to 75p from £3, so I wilted it, portioned it into 4 and froze it.  We don't go supermarket shopping for dinner, we go to re-stock our stores.  When I think about cooking a meal, I start by considering what is in my fridge, my freezer and my larder.

PPS:  I heard a great quote yesterday from either episode 5 or episode 6 of A History of the World in 100 Objects:  "If the larder is full, the mind has time to focus on other things".  The presenter was explaining why art appeared after early man became farmers.  Previously, all their time was taken up with hunting and gathering food, but once they started farming, they developed surpluses of food which they could store.  Suddenly, there was time to do other things: become craftsmen, worry about gods, etc.

The Use It Up Challenge

You may have noticed that one of my goals this year is to work my way through the small stockpile of "stuff" I have accumulated: a random collection of make-up, hotel shampoo bottles, cosmetic samples, herbs and spices, jars of jams and sauces, even clothes that don't get worn because they have committed the crime of needing to be ironed. It is an eclectic list. The only defining factor is that the item involved is something that is currently gathering dust but it is something that I use and therefore don't want to throw out, because if I did throw it out I will have to purchase a substitute. Does that make sense?

Another part of the challenge is that I don't want to waste something just so I can tell myself it is "finished". By that, I mean lipstick has to be used right to the bottom of the tube and not just to the point where you can't paint it on your lips without using a lip-brush. Ditto lip gloss and make-up base that comes in a stick. I still need to get my money's worth.

Here are the make-up stockpiles and what I propose to do with them:-

Make-up base. 

I have ten in my stockpile, including two tubs of PanCake (bought because it doesn't melt off your face in humid weather), four Avon all-in-one bases for travel (bought in bulk to take advantage of an offer) and the last of my famous Boots score from 2004 (when I bought 6 bottles of base at 50p each, thinking they would last maybe 3 months each - instead they lasted 10).

What I've started with, though, are the dregs of a tube of PanStick. Like lipstick, probably the bottom third of any stick make-up is inaccessible, so I gouged it out of the tube and dumped it into a recently emptied Avon make-up compact. I now apply it in exactly the same manner, using the sponge that came from Avon.

Lipstick.

Most women probably have a stash of assorted lipsticks, at least one for every occasion. I know for a certainty that I have only bought one lipstick in the last 4 years and yet a quick count tells me that I have 34! However, that includes my stock of 9 Covergirl lipsticks in the Bistro Burgundy shade, the brand (and colour) that I wear almost daily but which is unavailable in this country.  I buy them whenever I go to Australia or North America.  I have two on the go at any given time: one on my dresser and one in my bag for top-ups. When the one on the dresser is completely used up, I rotate the handbag one to the dresser and pop a new lipstick in my handbag.

Although I wear lipstick every day to work, each one lasts for close to two years, partially because I use a lip brush to apply the bottom third, and partially because I've solved the problem of keeping lipstick "on" all day, so that you don't have to constantly reapply it.  (There is nothing worse than having your lipstick come off on your mug or glass.)  The secret:  apply lipstick to dry lips, blot on a tissue and then apply a coat of Lipcoat. It will then last the whole day, unless lunch is really greasy, although the colour may fade a bit as the day goes on.  If your Lipcoat peels, then you didn't blot it well enough.  You have to apply it to dry lipstick.

Blusher.

I'm still using a blusher that I purchased in...... wait for it...... 1986.  That's right 26 years ago.  If that's not an advert for the longevity of Clinque's products, I don't know what is. Admittedly, for the first 6 years, I worked in a job where you did not wear make-up (I never wore make-up to work when I nursed - it'd come off on the masks).  And twice it went into time-out when I used up other blushers, but neither of those lasted longer than a year.   I have been expecting it to run out for a long time and purchased a replacement some time ago.  However, a quick count reveals I have six other blushers stockpiled, which includes the replacement, a "travel" blusher, the emergency blusher from this post, and two Estee Lauder free-bees from a "gift" (one of those buy "2 items and get a free gift" things, in this case the set of bags that are my knitting bags.  I was surprised to discover they held make-up).

The big secret to making your blusher last a long time is to use a proper blusher brush.  I think it is because the brush covers a larger area of you face per application than the one that comes in the compact.

Mascara.

Apparently, I have seven, including three sample-sized ones and the one I'm using now.  This is another product I use to the very end.    I am aware that "experts" say to only use a mascara for three months because of potential contamination but I have never had an eye infection from this product.  If I feel any irritation after applying a mascara, it goes straight in the bin.  (I can't wear Rimmel mascara.  It has something in it that irritates my eyes.)  I do not share my mascara or my lipstick so consider that any bugs that might be growing in them have cousins still on me.

OK, that's my "dirty laundry".  What's yours?

- Pam

Cheap is not the only reason to buy

You will be relieved to know that my recent bout of yarn-lust didn't result in a purchase. Maybe, as Amy suggested, it was the time between receiving Lidl's email and actually visiting a branch (Lidl is a supermarket chain from Germany), that allowed it to wear off. Maybe it was because I'd spent several hours rummaging through the stash on Sunday, reacquainting myself with what I already have. Maybe it was because none of the patterns are screaming "Make me in this!", but when I popped into Lidl yesterday, I was underwhelmed by the look of the yarn and the colours on offer.

It was all quite "Meh" in the flesh. Ok, but nothing special. Even the sock yarn didn't appeal. Forget the bargain price. Cheap is no good unless you want to knit with it. And I don't.

This is one big reason I prefer to buy my yarn in person rather than via the internet - internet purchases often look far prettier on the monitor than in real life and colours are deceptive. (I do purchase yarn online, but it is usually something I've seen and touched first.)

Lesson reinforced.

Pam

Frugal Friday - Temptations and Balancing Acts

I am having one of those days, when I want something "just because" and part of me is rationalising hard to get it.  The thing is, it might turn out to be pretty ordinary when I finally get my hands on it.  But I won't know that until I handle it.  All I've seen are pictures and the colours are lovely...

Naturally, I'm talking about yarn.   I subscribe to the Lidl newsletter, which lands in my in-box on Mondays and Thursdays.  Every so often, they do knitting yarns and the odds are 70:30 in favour of their yarns being good instead of cheap, nasty acrylics.  Yesterday's edition announced that, as of Monday, they'll be stocking a cotton-wool-blend sock yarn (this one with a new name), some 100% DK cotton in assorted packs (meh), and a cotton-viscose blend DK which really caught my attention (this one, I think).  The colours I'm lusting after are the two at the back, the pretty pink and the aqua:

 (Photo from Lidl's website.)

They'll be sold in packs of 4 skeins for £4.99 a pack.  Two packs of either would be enough to make a Soleil from Knitty; three would make a Raina from the Twist Collective.  And here is where my argument with myself really starts:

On the one hand, the price is totally within my self-imposed £3/ball limit.

On the other hand, purchasing enough to make the Raina would absorb a quarter of my £60 yarn budget for the year and we're only one month in; buying both colours would have me spend £25 or even £30 on something I might not knit with for 2 or 3 years.  That's 40% or 50% of the budget.  Can I really go 11 more months on £30?  Money will be tight until DH gets a new job and I don't want to set myself up so that I'll break the budget later on.  Also, if I spend this much now, what will I do if something better comes along later?

On the first hand, I'd like to encourage Lidl to keep stocking yarn, and the only way to do that is to buy some.

On the second hand, I have two separate yarns in virtually the same shade as the pink (if the photo is true to life).  I don't need more.

On the first hand, I don't have anything like that aqua.  I could settle for just the one colour.  And while Soleil is nice, the Raina will be more flattering (especially if I modify the neck to a sweetheart one like this one in Ravelry).  Or I could do the Soleil - that'd mean only spending £10.

On the other hand, I have far too much yarn as it is.  I DON'T NEED MORE YARN.

God, I hope the stuff looks horrible in real life!  That'd save me from trying to square the circle.  Knowing I only have £xx to spend means that I want to get the best value possible and not squander it.  I have to balance the "I want it now" with the "but will I want that more, later?".   That is what budgeting is all about.  It's a way of ensuring that sufficient money accumulated now for goodies later. 

- Pam

Frugal Friday - the "M" word

M is for money. 

It seems that, every where I looked before Christmas, people were talking about budgets and budgeting.  The BBC ran a series of the Money Programme looking at people and money. Channel 4 ran a Christmas Special episode of Superscrimpers as well as The Ultimate Guide to Pennypinching.  We recorded most of the episodes and have caught up over the last week.

The BBC Money Programme series started with an episode about people paying hundreds/thousands of pounds to attend wealth seminars, in the blind hope that they'll discover some big "secret" that'll make them rich overnight without putting in some hard graft first.  The people profiled missed the big irony - that the real secret behind wealth seminars is in the income they generate for the organisers a.k.a. "wealth counsellors" and not in the information they're presenting to their audience.  (That is a rant for another day.)

What was more interesting to me were the second and third episodes:  the second episode was about couples and the conflicts money (or lack of it) causes;  the third profiled several families where their combined, after-tax  income was £40,000.  In each, the couples talked about their budgets and their attitudes to money.  The couples episode, in particular, included questions about whether they ever talked about money to each other, how they rated the other person's attitude to money, etc.

Some really stuck in the memory.  For example, I don't rate the longevity of the marriage of the legal secretary who despised her NHS-employed, research scientist husband's income for being too low at approximately £31k.    He has a PhD and is working on potentially life-saving research but science doesn't pay in this country (frankly, if he was married to me, I'd be really proud of him for the work that he does and not care about his salary).  Her opinion, though, was that he is failing as a husband because he would not keep her and her children in the manner to which she'd liked to be accustomed.  According to her, he was "tight" with money.  It was obvious that she compared him to the lawyers for whom she worked, who earn a lot more than he does and who probably have stay at home wives, kids at private school, etc. They only married because she got pregnant within 6 weeks of their first date and didn't have a "money conversation" until long afterwards.

(Incidentally, the obvious money-earner has never seemed to occur to her:  studying law and persuading her employers to back her. Or as DH put it, "Stop moaning about your husband's income and work out a way to earn some more yourself".)

One of the eye-opening points of the show, of all these shows really, is that many couples never talk about money.  Oh, they grumble about each other's spending and how much things cost, but they never really talk about money.  Or about what they want it to do for them.  That is what a real money conversation should be all about:  goals.  It's about determining what you want out of life and how you will get there. It's also about working out how you will pay for it.  For a couple, it's about give-and-take, determining what is jointly a priority and what they'll sacrifice to get there.  It shouldn't be about one person giving all, while another take-take-takes.  Both partners need to pull their weight.

Really, that is what budgeting should be all about.  Sitting down with your partner and determining what you want out of life, what it's going to cost, how long it will take to get there and how much you'll need to set aside from each pay-cheque in order to pay for it in the long run.  Then when the priorities are settled, you need to work out together how you're going to have a good quality of life from the money that remains.  The aim is to have a champagne life-style on a beer budget without going into debt to support it, while setting money aside to work towards your goals.

- Pam

The Game

I swear I didn't pop into the Barnardo's Charity Shop with buying a suit in mind.  I was looking for something - or rather, some things - but my list didn't specifically involve clothing for me.  Instead, it covered the "usual":  a double boiler for melting wax for candles (always top of the list but unlikely); an un-engraved pewter tankard to be polished up and engraved as one of the numerous 40th birthday presents (so far, I've found 2 in two years); a plain black fleece for DH for work;  yarn (maybe); and possibly some clothing for me if something catches my eye.  Oh, and to amuse myself, I was playing The Game.

The Game?  What game?  The "you only have £50 and you need to buy a full wardrobe" game.  The rules are simple:  you have £50 and the clothes you are currently wearing (including hand bag). You must buy sufficient clothing to get you through a working week and a weekend (including underwear and shoes), plus make-up, toiletries and a bag to carry it all in.  Since this is a game, you don't have to buy them in real life.

I think I first invented The Game, when I had to do something similar for real.  It was February 1999 and I was spending every weekend and most evenings with DH (DB as he was then).  Fridays, I'd normally schlep a bag of clothes in with me to work and then go directly to DH's. One particular Thursday, I stupidly drank wine after giving blood, nearly passed out, and ended up spending the night at DH's rather than drive the 20 miles home.  This Friday, I was dreading driving home to get my stuff - it'd take me 4 hours in the Friday evening traffic to get there and back. At about 4.30 in the afternoon, I cooked up a plan and decided I'd go shopping instead.  I didn't have a huge amount of money so I set the budget at £50.  After an hour's dash through the shops, I had a Head gym bag, a pair of jeans, three tee-shirts, some underwear, socks and a cardigan.   I'd already had to buy make-up that morning and I could use DH's toiletries, so they were off the list.   I was wearing a trouser suit, loafers, coat and had a handbag.   Thus was borne the basic elements of The Game.

Anyway, last Friday, I was wandering through the shops playing The Game.  I decided I could keep the clothes and shoes I was wearing (jeans, coat, cardigan, t-shirt, trainers, etc), together with my handbag and its contents (including lipstick, lip balm, sock knitting kit, and a comb).  Here's what I "spent":-

• £4.47 - Make-up:   powder, blusher and mascara (£1.49 each) from Tesco's All About Face range which I reviewed last year. (I decided the powder would stand in as a make-up base and that I could keep the lipstick in my handbag.)
• 85p cotton wool pads to apply the above makeup.
• £2.80 - Toiletries and skin care:  value shampoo (64p/litre), value hair conditioner (24p), value cream handwash (37p) which can double as body wash and facial cleanser, value toothbrush (10p), value toothpaste (17p),  value twin blade disposable razors for shaving my legs (30p for 10).  The cheapest moisturiser is actually quite a good one:  Nivea Soft Intensive Moisturising Creme (99p).
• £4.50 - Suitcase:  second hand from a charity shop.   Not the nicest case, but better than a plastic bag.
• £18.00 - two work suits (£9.50 and £8.50) - the ones I found in Bernardos.
• £6.50 - work shoes:  in Oxfam, I found a pair of black shoes suitable for work.
• £8 - 4 t-shirts from charity shops.
• £1.75 - tights/pantihose: value brand pack of 6.
• 62p - socks:  value brand pack of 3 black socks. (This is the price I paid last time - couldn't find them today.)
• £2.50 - panties:  value brand pack of 4. (Again, this is the price I paid last time - couldn't find them today.)

Grand total:  £49.99.   I've priced it up for you, to prove that it is possible.  You'll note that there is no nightwear.  I decided that I could always sleep in my dirty t-shirt from that day and use my coat as a dressing gown, if I was desperate.

So, anyway, this is the long way around  to explain how I purchased two almost-new Marks & Spencer suits in Barnardo's a week or so ago. 

- Pam

Frugal Friday: Sweating Your Assets

There was a thread on Ravelry recently about saving money for the down-payment on a house.  It got me thinking about how buying a house is more than just buying the roof over your head. There's a business concept called "sweating your assets", which is where you maximise the usage of your assets to get the most value out of them. The classic business example is where a manufacturing plant introduces a second or third shift in order to make as much product as possible without having to purchase another factory.

How this applies to owning a home is all about making the most of that house and the land it sits on while doing the things that cost nary a penny.   Our house is tiny by American/Australian standards, coming in at less than 900 square feet (that's less than 9 "squares" in Australian terminology).  Our back garden is approximately 70 feet long by 22 feet wide, including the patio and a concrete pad at the far end.  Thanks to the shared drive, our front garden is even narrower and about 15 feet deep.

Sweating our assets means maximising our living space and our storage space while still living within the footprint of our house, so that our home is a welcoming, happy and efficient place to be.  Consider the layout of your home, would the lounge work better if you moved the door six feet to the left?  Ours does.  And it makes the room look much bigger as a result.
 
It's about having a productive but pretty garden, growing vegetables and fruit trees alongside the flowering shrubs, a la Alys Fowler or Mother Chaos or The Cottage Smallholder, so that we can lower ourfood bill, do our bit for the environment, acquire a hobby and improve our quality of living all in one stroke. One thing I have to do this weekend is phone the garden designer whose services I won in a charity auction and book my alotted hour of her time.  Hopefully, she'll give me a managable plan for the wilderness we own.  (If I could borrow anyone for a week, it would be Alys Fowler.  I always loved her segments on Gardeners World, I love her writing (see these posts for the BBC) and I wish she was back on our TV screens.) 

And, finally, it's about using things that are free or that I've already paid for instead of forking out my hard earned cash for something new. It's asking myself: "Do I need a new dress/shoes/whatever?" when there are four perfectly good ones in the wardrobe that only need an iron to become presentable and usable again.  Oh, and using one of these to dry our wash efficiently in the garden instead of running the drier (we don't even own one).

- Pam

Frugal Friday (on Saturday): Think when you spend the money

Have you been following the news about the Christchurch Earthquake in New Zealand?  Have you donated? The Red Cross are running various donation sites - I used the British one to ensure they could claim tax relief on my donation and thus increase its value by 20%.

I was thinking about the earthquake on my drive home from Site yesterday, wondering what I could do from 15,000 miles away.  Australians tend to think of New Zealand as our little brother; they were part of the federation talks in the 1890's until New South Wales pissed them off.  You didn't need a passport to travel between the two countries until the 1970's, when the Australian government imposed that requirement.  And about a third of all Kiwis live in Australia.

Anyway, I was wondering what I could do.  As a knitter, my first instinct said "Knit something to donate", but I'm so far away that donating knitted goods is impractical.  So I settled on donating cash.

Then I saw this, on the back of a toilet door in the motorway services at South Mimms:

And it made my blood boil.  So much so, that I took a photo.

I have nothing against Red Nose Day, the biennial fundraising event run by Comic Relief.  I'm sure they're grateful for the free publicity.  However, what made me angry is the implication that they'll get the £1.50 or £4 if I buy those products from the services shop.  They'll be lucky if they get 10 or 20 pence.  How many people fall for this?  Sure, if you were going to buy an overly expensive box of Maltesers from the shop anyway, then buying the packet that ensures a donation to charity might be a nice gesture.  But were you going to buy two before you saw the promotion?  And at a price where you could get four or five packets from the supermarket?

Surely it's better to donate money directly to the charity involved and cut out the middle man?    In the case of the Maltesers, if I really wanted a snack, I could have bought something healthy from the Waitrose next door and donated my change to Red Nose Day and still given more than they'd receive from the promotion.

This happens at Christmas, too, with all of those "charity Christmas cards", when the charity named is lucky to get a couple of pennies from an expensive packet of cards.


We all have limited funds.  If you want to donate money to charity, give it to them directly.  That way, they'll get the most benefit.

- Pam