Prioritising Spending

Getting the Household Budget to Work in Your Favour

Weather comes to us free in every way, shape and form possible. Here in Scotland, we can get everything in the one day - rain, hail, sleet, snow, fog, wind and sunshine. We can't control the weather but we can prioritise our spending to weather any financial storms.

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Hanging fairy lights along the washing line

As long time readers will know, we saved and bought a bargain basement fixy-up house that really did need fixing up, so we set about prioritising the spending to start with the absolute basics - fixing the roof over our heads and replacing basics like water and electricity supplies. We've no gas, no mains sewage or drainage system or anything as high-tech as mobile phone signals here, so a land line is essential to maintain contact with the outside world and work from home via the Internet. But we all feel the need to spend on things other than the absolute essentials, so I bought solar fairly lights and have hung the first string of them outside the back door, wrapped around the washing line.  The tree has been looked out and that will be decorated this weekend.

We call this guerrilla tree decorating!

We planned on completing the renovation over 5 years, which should mean we finish next year, but last year we blew the budget on buying the land that is now another 5-year project to turn it into Frugaldom. So, the priorities change, no matter how well you try to plan things. Frugaldom should be up and running fully by 2020 and the house should have been completed by 2016. Except we lost 18 months on the house project by throwing everything we had saved for home and retirement into the Frugaldom Project. Now it is time to take stock and get back to organising the renovation if we are to have any hope of completing it within the next 12 months.

The bathroom and kitchen were both given major repair work - absolute basics like replacing burst pipes so we had running water and rewiring so we had electricity - but we never fitted a new bathroom suite nor did we fit a kitchen. Instead, we made do. I've made do without an actual cooker for some time now, preferring to delay this until such times as I can see a way of fitting in the one I really like. Meanwhile, I make the most of my microwave, slow cooker, steamer, a small twin hot plate and a mini oven that cost £5 secondhand in 2007. The top element of that blew quite some time ago, so... I finally decided on the best course of action, seeing as I have family coming to stay over the Christmas holidays and I'll be cooking a turkey: I bought a brand new worktop mini cooker!

A new cooker for the Frugaldom household

Amazon has their winter 4 for 3 in home and garden offer on at the moment, so I treated myself to a brand new mini cooker and a set of pots and pans to go with it - the cooker arrived yesterday afternoon and I'm expecting the pan set today. Item three I chose is a large rug for the now renovated living room that was temporarily carpeted in the cheapest of the cheap cord carpet last year.

What about item 4, my 'freebie?, you may wonder? Well, that's already arrived and is waiting to be taken to Frugaldom - 100 metres of weed control fabric through which I will plant the first of the new willow beds in 2016! All of the above, complete with free delivery and excluding the 1% cash back I'll receive from paying by credit card (it gets cleared in full every month) amounted to less than the cost of the cheapest available freestanding cooker I could find. Sometimes more is better and size doesn't matter as long as you know you can fit in the Christmas turkey!

Knitting an odd ball woolly blanket - warm, functional and frugal

Now for some more knitting - I'm on to the fifth ball of wool and this is certainly going to be a very randomly coloured and textured throw, but who said woolly blankets need to be uniform? They're for keeping us extra warm during cold weather, not wearing out as fashion accessories. Although... I could be tempted if anyone nearby wants to throw a blanket party!

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Winter solstice or any other festive occasion, they shouldn't be about how much it drains your money resources, it should be about how much you can afford to share what's readily available while still managing the reserves that will be needed in the future.

Frugal Living for Newcomers

By NYK in Frugaldom

• #Frugal Living
• #Recipes
• #Money Saving
• #Household Budgets
• #Food on a Budget
• #Money Challenges

A daily dose of frugal living to help our new members cope with the trials and tribulations of living on an ever tightening budget. Don't spend rainy day money unless it really is essential - stop, take stock and prioritise your spending now.

20 servings of home soup for around £2.00
December is one of the most expensive months of the year if, like many others, you leave Christmas shopping until the last minute and then discover you have overspent on the food budget throughout the year, leaving yourself potentially skint over the festive period. Worse still, you may find an increase in visitors, unexpected presents 'needing' to be bought and family or friends expecting to be fed and entertained during the holidays. My number one tip is MAKE SOUP!
Soup can be made from almost anything and costs just a couple of pounds to make sufficient for up to 20 servings. I store mine in recycled margarine cartons, which hold two portions, or in the plastic screw cap jars, which can hold 3 servings. The plastic screw cap tubs cost about 65p each and come filled with instant hot chocolate powder! Bonus! (Never bin anything that has reuse potential.)
EASY TO MAKE HAM AND LENTIL SOUP

• 1 pack cooking bacon (currently around 65p from supermarkets)
• 500g lentils
• 4 chopped carrots
• 2 chopped onions

Simmer the meat in water to make the stock- I do mine in the slow cooker for at least 3 hours and this also contributes to the overall heating of the kitchen - and then strain the meat and fat from the water. Separate the meat from the fat (if you are health conscious) and set it aside while making the soup. You can either add this later or use it in other meals, like ham and pasta bake, carbonara, pie or even eat it on sandwiches.
Add in the lentils and chopped vegetables then simmer until ready - add more water as required.
Once cooked, season to suit your own taste. You can add in the leftover bacon to turn the soup into a luxury, meaty broth that can be served as a meal on its own, probably followed by pudding, if you are anything like us here in Frugaldom, but when the budget is really stretched, I recommend using the bacon for something like pie-making so you get another meal out of it.
SUDDEN LOSS OF INCOME
Thankfully, this has not happened to me this month but it happens to people all the time - pay offs, lay offs, redundancies, illness, accidents and even, in tragic cases, sudden death. There are any number of reasons for a sudden change in circumstances and we cannot always be prepared for them. So how can we best cope?
First, no amount of panicking, shouting, tears or tantrums will instantly resolve the problem and despite being a very difficult fact to absorb, we have to remain level headed for the sake of our own sanity and those around us.
STOP - TAKE STOCK - PRIORITISE
Tough choices can mean tough love! I'm focussing on income here, so for the purposes of being prepared, frugal living means maintaining a basic supply of essential foodstuffs, like salt, flour, pulses, dried and tinned goods suitable for emergencies and budgeting to run the household on less than what you normally average. I'm not talking about extreme preparedness, only a basic common sense approach to avoiding empty cupboards when we most need them to be full and paying the bills without bankrupting ourselves, while still setting aside something for the future. THIS 'SOMETHING' DOES NOT NEED TO BE MONEY!

MAKE LISTS
I did a quick freezer inventory while the soup was cooking and listed every item this lifesaving ice box contains. In saying that, it is only lifesaving while there is electrical power, so I prefer not to cook any meats before freezing them just in case they defrost and need to be cooked before refreezing. Ready cooked meals are done on a surplus to immediate requirement basis, so a batch of Bolognese sauce or lasagne would be OK, along with the frozen stewed fruit that gets used up over the winter months after the growing season has ended. Soup is always available and gets replenished as soon as the last tub gets used. I have several recipes and posts about homemade soup, feel free to read those, save them or share them.
During my inventory, I discovered enough food to last us the remainder of the year, excluding Christmas dinner. I could manage a celebratory dinner on what's here but have family visiting who expect a bit of tradition, so we're preparing the meal between us.
List your overheads and prioritise your necessary spending - rent or mortgage, council tax, essential utilities all need to be paid. Review contracts, if you have any, to find out which can be cancelled. As a general rule, frugal living means saying no to all contracts, so things like mobile telephones, satellite television and subscriptions of any description are an absolute no-no! Many don't realise the damage these can do while there's money flowing in, it's only when the contractually agreed payments get missed and start accruing debt at an alarming rate that we suddenly realise the hidden dangers. No more contracts - get rid of them as soon as possible and learn to live without whatever luxury it is they were providing.

CHEAP, HOME-BASED HOBBIES
This is my knitting project that I started yesterday. It will eventually become a multi-coloured, multi-textured, warm, woolly blanket made from all the odd balls of wool that others often discard at the ends of their own projects. Both the blue and brown mottled wool are from unravelled home knits made by others. I am not a knitter but these plain (or garter) stitch strips are a dawdle to knit, even for the most inexperienced of us. This and the fact that there are fewer squares to sew together at the end of it make it a much less arduous and almost therapeutic task. Relax and unwind your yarn this winter.
ENTERTAINING KIDS
My own kids are now grown, one has kids of her own, so my kids are grand kids. Children of all ages demand to be entertained, amused, fed, bathed, clothed and pampered - so do some adults, come to think of it! Money does none of these things - people do! A child can have just as much, if not more, fun playing outside with those responsible for their welfare and, contrary to belief, getting dirty isn't a life-threatening situation. As long as you have the time to spend with children doing simple, cost-free activities, children will be happy. If it's cold indoors because you can't afford heating on all day, wrap them up warm, get them out into the fresh air and then wrap them in home-knitted blankets until the house warms up a bit.
Many of us still don't have double glazing, insulation or central heating and nor can many afford to burn electricity in the absence of gas. Coal costs a small fortune and log drying can be next to impossible during the prolonged wet weather we endure here, but making the smallest room in your home acceptably warm shouldn't be impossible, even if it means converting your living room into a bed-sit come dining come games room. It makes family time seem fun all the time. If you're a telly addict, get headphones rather than bark orders to shut up at everyone else in the room who has no interest in what's on at the time. Sorted!
Published by NYK Media (AKA Frugaldom) as part of the Frugal Living blog

Zero Waste Week at Frugaldom

Sunset at frugaldom wild camp

Waste not, want not… let’s all do our bit to reduce what ends up in the landfill and make the most of every penny we spend.

This week, we have been wild camping, repurposing an old log burner, picking home grown produce, knitting string dish cloths and taking cuttings from the herbs in the garden.

Read the first instalment of our Zero Waste Week here

Fun, Funky, Frugal Knitted Wrist Warmers

Easy to Make Winter Woolies

This afternoon, we went a trip out to the nearby loch, primarily for a bit of fresh air and exercise, secondly to take a couple of photographs of the frozen landscape. I thought I'd wrapped up warmly enough - jacket, hat, scarf, gloves as top layer, leg-warmers over wooly tights and thick socks as under layer and several other layers in between, but I was wrong!

Juggling a camera and wooly gloves while balancing on a bike isn't easy, especially in sub-zero temperatures, I can tell you!

The trouble I had is that my sleeves kept riding up my arms and leaving a chilly gap between the bottom of them and the top of my gloves. What I needed, and as soon as possible, I might add, was some sort of glove extensions that could bridge the gap. I returned home and, while thawing out with a mug of hot chocolate, I planned my next mission - wrist warmers!

My recent bounty of crafting, knitting and sewing goodies came in really handy this evening, that's for sure! A quick scour through the 'stockroom' and I had soon selected a little pair of bamboo knitting needles and the remains of a ball of fairly chunky, vivid pink wool.

Without a pattern and being very rusty at the old knitting game, I tentatively cast on 30 stitches and began knitting - just straightforward, simple, plain stitches, nothing fancy. It was all done at a painstakingly slow speed, so it took me about 90 minutes to complete my first square before casting that off and starting over again. The second square was completed  a tiny bit quicker, but still took me over an hour.

Once I had completed both of the squares, I folded each in half and hand stitched along the edge with wool to create 'tubes'.  Now you simply turn these inside out to hide the stitching and there you have it - your very own, handmade wrist warmers! These simple wooly tubes fit snuggly around wrists, bridging the gap between gloves and sleeves! One small problem remained, however - a way of keeping the wrist warmers in place - cue the crochet hook!

I cast on a line of about ten stitches in a fetching shade of purple wool and did a double row to produce a little wooly 'strap'. Two of these were made and then one stitched onto each of the wrist warmers, across the thumb part, to help keep them in place while wearing them.

I'm extremely pleased with my latest creations and hope to make good use of them while making the most of any winter sunshine. As you can see by the photographs, I couldn't wait to try them on - or could that be a reflection of how cold it is here? :)

In total, it took me just over three hours to complete my project! If I'd to price these for selling while counting the time at National minimum wage, we'd be looking at over £20 per pair, so these are like the ultimate in luxury designer wear for this frugaler! I can't thank the donors of the wools, knitting needles and crochet hook enough for the help these have all been in producing my new winter woolies this evening.

I can highly recommend these and will probably make several more pairs to ensure some colour co-ordination in my winter wardrobe. I may even do some as gifts for Christmas.

Frugaldom. :)