More money saving tips

[Millymollymandy]

I thought I would list some things I've started doing over the last few years to economise. This is as well as the usual 'turn the lights off/don't leave things on standby/low energy light bulbs/shop at Lidl' etc etc.


If you cook on a bottle gas hob, buy an old fashioned kettle as it will be much cheaper than running an electric kettle. (I don't know difference between mains gas v. leccy in UK).

Buy tins of whole plum peeled tomatoes as they are much cheaper than tins of chopped toms - you can either chop them up yourself or just mush them up in the pan with a wooden spoon.

Start mixing cheapo coffee in with your fave Nescafe or whatever, start off with just a little and then mix more of the cheap in and you won't notice the difference.

Buy a blanket/throw (charity shop?) and wrap that around you when you sit around doing nothing getting chilly rather than turn the heating up. And/or snuggle up to a hot water bottle (filled from whistling kettle!).

If you can afford to buy a meat grinder, you can buy stewing steak and mince your own mince. Cut off any lumps of fat and gristle and the mince will be very lean and a lot, lot cheaper than buying it ready minced and much nicer too. (At least it is in France!!)

Freeze said mince in small quantities and use less meat for spag bol, chilli etc and more tomatoes, beans etc.

Use less meat and more veg in everything. One chicken breast between 2 is fine in stir fries, curries etc as long as you pad out with other cheaper foods.

If you have a bottled gas hob (or if mains gas is cheaper than leccy) cook casseroles on that rather than cooking in the oven.


Please add to the list as I can't think of anything more right now!

[Wombat]

If you're talking about mince, we can buy a soy equivalent without colours flavours etc very cheaply by the 25 kg bag! Maybe worth considering......

Nev

[Andy Hamilton]

funny one with soya beans from an environmental aspect- on the one hand eating less meat is good for reducing your carbon footprint. on the other hand there are sections of rain forest being cut down to grow soya. But yes it is much cheaper than meat. We sometimes used mixed beans - kidney, black eyed beans etc to make a kind of mince.

[Wombat]

I think the stuff we get is locally grown, but I suppose in Europe that is less likely

Nev

[Millymollymandy]

I can't get stuff like that here - France is the land of the carnivore!

[Shirley]

I really don't much like soya mince - is the stuff you buy guaranteed gm free Nev?? I've tried quorn... it's nice but it's expensive!

you can roast an aubergine whole in the oven and use the squishy cooked flesh to pad out minced beef - it makes it deliciously moist and even aubergine haters won't taste the aubergine.

tomatoes - I buy the whole ones too M3 - I rather like the big chunky bits in my curry!

Dried beans and pulses also pad out curries/stews/chillies etc. I bought a pile of cookery books at a school auction and one was a book on bean cookery and it's really good.

The obvious one is to buy and eat (or better still grow your own) what is in season - if tomatoes/beetroot/peppers etc etc are cheap and in season buy more than you can eat and then make soups/sauces/just freeze them etc out of them for later in the year.

I guess - what I'm trying to say.... is shop and cook like your grandparents/parents used to.

My dad used to take 'sarnies' to work as a packed lunch and these were generally wrapped in the bread wrapper - often brought home and used again several times. Far better than going out at lunchtime and paying a fortune for a plastic bread sandwich.

[nick]

like the idea about the coffee - I don't drink it myself but the moth lives off it.

I reuse teabags. experiment with different brands, some of the cheaper teabags aren't really because the are weaker or make a 'muddy' cuppa.

use powdered milk in cooking - I dilute a little bit more than recommended

depends what colour clothes I am washing, I use half the powder.

shop in bulk and hide what you don't need for the week away so the food isn't eaten twice as fast.

for cleaning, I use bi-carb soda. available here as a stock feed in a 20kg bag (a lot cheaper than the little boxes) mix with vinegar and you can clean the drain, oven, shower. by itself is a carpet deodoriser, fabric softener.

when making casseroles, add extra flour and water for more gravy. can be soaked up with bread or rice.

[wulf]

When I was at university and my budget was really tight I used to write down every bit of money I spent in a little book I carried round, down to the smallest items.

Keeping account had two benefits. Firstly, I could look back and see exactly where my money was going. Secondly, it made me think about where my money was going. I wasn't so inclined to splash out on a treat just because I had money in my pocket because I knew I'd have to go through the discipline of writing it down.

It sounds a little silly and maybe would only work for a certain kind of person but I found my little notebook an invaluable tool for self-accountability and managed to come through my higher education with a little money left over and no student loan (early 90's).

Wulf

[manxminx]

Wulf i do that now i have a little diary and put every penny i spend in it. It really works 1 cus i can see where i can cut down on my spending and 2 cus i feel so silly standing there writing in my little black book i tend to not bother

[ina]

I still do that, too - but I do it at home, and just note down what I spent on a bit of paper if I don't get a receipt in the shop.
Just worked out what I spent last month - about £110 on food and £20 on drink. That includes one meal out in a restaurant, and several cups of coffee on the hoof. Not too bad, I think, considering that most of my food is organic, and I only spent about £5 in supermarkets, the rest in small shops and markets (which I don't really think are more expensive, at least not for the stuff I buy).

Ina

[Kfish]

Cheers all,

Funnily enough, quite a few areas of the self-sufficient lifestyle lend themselves to a tight budget. My expenses-recording habit started after I read, "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robins, a fantastic book about the roles money plays in our lives. Finding out precisely where the dollars (euros, etc) go can be quite a revelation!

Beware of choosing an option simply because it's cheap. Many processed foods, manufactured goods etc. are cheaper because of shoddy workmanship or inferior materials. On the other hand, buying basic ingredients and doing the processing is a good way of saving labour costs and being able to afford better materials / ingredients.

[wulf]

Beware of choosing an option simply because it's cheap. Many processed foods, manufactured goods etc. are cheaper because of shoddy workmanship or inferior materials. On the other hand, buying basic ingredients and doing the processing is a good way of saving labour costs and being able to afford better materials / ingredients.

That's definitely true. For example, if you're tempted to buy a pack of chicken breasts, consider buying a whole chicken instead. For the same price, you can probably get a farm friendly or even an organically reared bird. Given a sharp knife, a bit of time and a willingness to do some butchery, you should be able to get at least as much meat off it + it's better quality + you've not contributed the rest of the carcass to the mechanical reclaimation merchants + you can boil the carcass down to get an unctuous chicken stock.

In other words, better all round!

Wulf

[Shirley]

Great point Wulf

We only ever buy whole chicken, and only ever organic and free range... we also have our own when we have surplus cockerels.

I hadn't thought of the mechanical recovery bit - totally valid point!! Yuck.

Butchering a chicken isn't really that difficult so long as you have a sharp knife... and as with all things - practice makes perfect.

[Millymollymandy]

I hadn't thought of the mechanical recovery bit - totally valid point!! Yuck.

Does that mean what I think it means - the muck that the kids were eating for lunch as shown on Jamie's School Dinners?

[ina]

That's the stuff that goes into those "nice" chicken nuggets and turkey dinosaurs... Plus loads of salt (to give it some flavour), and water (it's cheap, after all), and fillers of some sort. Even the catfood looks nicer. Actually, the organic catfood I sometimes buy as a treat (it IS expensive!) looks a lot better than most of those ready meals I've seen in my life. It really looks like bits of chicken.