Frugal Blog
Frugal living blog about all things thrifty: money saving, DIY, crafts, gardens, food, fitness, woodland, wildlife and making the good life affordable! It's about the freedom to enjoy a frugal lifestyle while pursuing a lifelong ambition... and sharing it with you all.
Tuesday, 28 December 2021
FRUGAL ROUND-UP OF 2021
Saturday, 2 January 2021
2021 Frugal Living Challenge
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021
2020 is a year that most people, the world over, will be glad to see the back of, mostly because of te Coronavirus pandemic. I won't even attempt to go into details as all the information you need about it can be found on most news pages. All that I will say is please stay safe - follow guidelines and local rules, and most importantly, use your common sense. Health and hygiene are intertwined. Plenty of fresh air is essential, a bit of exercise is ideal and both of these things are totally free... just open up your door and get yourself outdoors. Free, free, free... breath in that freedom.
2021 arrived at Frugaldom as a frosty morning bathed in sunshine. Working outdoors without a jacket at this time of year is becoming more common and up until last week, I was still able to do so in short sleeves. What I need to keep reminding myself, however, is that even the winter sun can burn.
Our frugal living challenge has begun again and this year has brought more changes. My plan is t chart these changes and, once again, tighten the purse strings to enable further savings for further investment into the Frugaldom project. You can check out Frugaldom on Facebook and Frugaldom on Twitter
My challenges for 2021:
- Live on £4,000 for the year
- Spend no more than £1 per person per day for all meals (there are 2 of us)
- Get a 'tiny house' built
- Extend the hay shed
- Have a hut (small cabin) built at Frugaldom
- Try and post at least 2 mini blogs each week
- Finish planting our native woodland
- Create a forest garden
- Increase the amount of fruit and veg we grow
- Zero food waste and recycle everything I can
Monday, 19 October 2020
Frugaldom Walkabout #1
There is no commentary on the videos as we enjoy the peace, tranquility and freedom to be at one with nature while working outdoors at Frugaldom. It's a place where we welcome members, sponsors and volunteers who love nature and who want to be a part of our project.
Frugaldom is not for profit. We operate as a self-funded, voluntary project supported by sponsorships, memberships, donations and visitor contributions. If you would like to support the work we do here, find out how at www.frugaldom.com
Sunday, 30 December 2018
Looking Back
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4 of the 5 rescued and rehomed ponies at Frugaldom |
Hello to all who read these frugal blogs! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas season and that you enjoy Hogmanay and the new year festivities.
I've just been updating the old forums, the ones that go back to 2010, as Ive found it impossible to retrieve the most recent ones that fell out of our reach when the software and operating platform changed. Not to be completely outdone, I succeeded in retrieving these old ones and have now redirected the domain www.frugalforums.co.uk towards them for our 2019 frugal living and working challenges. (Everyone is welcome to join us, it's free!)
Anyway, while unlocking previously archived sections of the forums and updating them as I went along, I stopped at the letter 'B' - it's alphabetical - and began reading about all our ideas and plans for the future. It's where I found this and saw just how far we had come over the past 8 years and showed that my longterm aims hadn't realy changed, apart from the fact that finding several like-minded others has, so far, proven to be impossible.
One excellent frugal business proposition would be for workers' co-operatives to raise the capital to purchase these unwanted properties to turn them into viable microholdings for those who are prepared to invest in their own futures. The cost of a brick, afterall, is still the cost of a brick. It shouldn't be too adversely affected by where that brick gets laid. Waste land, scrap land, disused sites, abandoned sites... the list goes on and on, yet the right to participate in any such project is curtailed, once again, by finances and the need for ludicrous amounts of cash. A group of like-minded individuals working for the benefit of all could surely earn a living by dividing the spoils, assuming they were able to amass the funds needed to initiate such a project in the first place?
My search continues for that first, elusive piece of land that could start the ball rolling. I don't have 50,000+ in the bank to buy a tiny building plot, nor do I intend borrowing it, but I'd be prepared to invest in a project where nobody squabbled about percentages and hours of work they contributed to the end result. All things being equal, (which they aren't) 1000 man hours equates to almost 6,000 even on minimum wage.
Frugaldom, as a complete microholding package, is a viable business proposition. We aren't setting out to become millionaires, we're setting out as frugal entrepreneurs in the hope of realising dreams. For me, money in the banks just won't pay in the long run, not with inflation running at more than twice the BoE base rate.