Frugal refresher -day two: the easy stuff!

Thanks everyone for the comments yesterday. I know looking at your pee most of the day and carrying buckets of rain water around might seem a bit extreme but it's not always about money. We have to look after this world too, all of us have to do our bit. My blogs this week are for the benefit of people who may have recently started reading or haven't been following me for long. Between December 2009 and today, we have paid back almost £36K of personal unsecured debt and we took drastic steps to do it. Now, it all seems so easy but some of you who have to go on that journey may still be daunted by it. You will get there. If you're reading, it's would be lovely to know who you are and would be fantastic if you left a comment or became a follower.

Today is all about the easy stuff. Let me think about a once upon a time day for me in the distant past. I would go downstairs, open the door and get the milk in, pick up the paper off the door mat and go and eat cereal, with shop bought jam or marmalade and drink premium coffee. I would get to work and get a coffee out of the vending machine, may be buy a pastry or sandwich at lunch time. On the way home, I would pop into a central Sainsbury's or city centre Tesco metro and pick up something for supper. Sometimes I would already have something at home, but I'd 'fancy a change'. In the evenings, I might go to weight watchers or the gym and come home and use the Internet without caring what it cost me.

My first start is about the really easy frugal steps we can all take. There are so many but here are just a few that I used and still stick to.

1. Cancel all newspaper and magazine subscriptions. A paper a day and two magazines a week will cost you £624 a year. Now, we only read freegan mags and newspapers. Dearly Beloved commutes by train and will walk up and down the train when he gets on looking for mags and papers. We usually get one or the other every day.

2. If you buy lunch and a coffee a day at work, then you could be spending £840 a year on lunches and £600 a year on just one coffee a day. Take a packed lunch and a flask and save £1240 a year.

3. A cut and colour every other month used to cost me £70 and now I get Foster Mummy to cut it for me and I colour it. The colour I buy is £5 and I colour my hair once a month so I spend £60 a year on my hair. By 'doing it myself' I've saved £390 a year.

4. Make your own bread. Bread now costs £1.50 a loaf for 'cheapy harry' sliced white in some places and as cheap as 80p in others. I make bread for DB's lunches. I make bread for 17p a loaf and as DB gets through two loaves a week, I've saved £138.32 a year.

5. Stop eating out and don't buy take aways. We used to have a take away every Friday, either fish and chips or a 'Chinese'. We could easily spend £15 to £20 a week, especially if we had a bottle of wine every Friday. As we don't do this any more, we saved £1040.

I don't miss any of the above, I don't need them either and I now don't know how people fall for the 'you're worth it' marketing, which is actually saying 'just give us your money for stuff you don't need'. If you've added all of that up, in a year I managed to save, or should I say, stop spending!!! the sum of £3432.32 a year and if you know your tax codes, you will have worked out that it would have taken £5000 before tax just to spend that amount of money.

We still eat well, I still 'have my hair done, I still have 'artisan hand made bread' on my table, we still read newspapers and magazines, we still eat every day but now we do it at a fraction of the price.

Frugal refresher for five days!

Hello everyone,

No photos today I'm afraid. I've been catching up on all of your blogs tonight and came over all whimsical when I read Vintage Vixen's blog tonight. I remembering actually saying to the poor teacher who ran 'Careers' at school that when I grew up that I wanted to be Stevie Nicks. I was 15, a mouth on sticks and had an answer for everything! Poor old fart didn't even know what I was talking about. I think I said I wanted to be a nurse so I could laugh at lots of willies as well..........I think I had to stand outside his office for an hour after school. I was well known in the corridors of my comp!

We've just paid the first of our 'repayments' on our mortgage after having a interest only mortgage for a few years! Previously, we always had a repayment and then stupidly took out a stupidly large mortgage. I've had to gird my loins and dig deep in the frugal repertoire to do this but I will get this house paid for. I can pay up to 10% of the balance a year and I'm going to get 21.5K paid off in 12 months!!! It will nearly starve and freeze us but I'm going to do it!

I thought I would share some of my truly, deeply frugal ideas with people. Some of you reading this may have logged onto 'Frugal Queen' for the very first time today. Over the next seven days, I will be sharing five frugal facts about me every day. Here are today's.

HOW I SAVE MONEY ON THE COSTS OF WATER - Get a water meter. In my water region, South West Water charge £1400 a year for un-metered water per year. Since having a meter I've reduced the amount of water I consume every quarter. I now pay under £300 a year for my water.

Here are my five frugal money savers to cut my water bill by £1100 a year!

1. PERSONAL HYGIENE Stop having baths! I am a bath addict. I can't think of any thing more delicious than a bubbly bath. Now I only shower. Baths are for birthdays and special days. Get a timer in your bathroom (five minutes are all I allow myself). I can wash shoulder length hair in five minutes. I wet my hair, then turn the water off. I then soap it and rinse. I don't do what the bottle says and wash it twice!!! It's a con to sell more shampoo!!! Also, I don't condition! That again is just a con to sell you something you don't need!!!! It will condition itself after a few hours! I don't wash my hair, or myself in the shower every day! I shower every other day. I wash my hair every other shower! I keep it clean by clipping  it up and not touching it. Most of the grease on your hair is off your hands.

2. USING GREY WATER Place a bowl under every tap. Every time I wash my hands, or my face or my teeth, the water gets used to flush the toilet. In the kitchen, the water gets taken outside in the summer and poured onto the garden. Make sure some of the water goes down the plug or your drains will block! I also use a large plastic box, or you could use an old baby bath if you have one or get given on, to stand in whilst you are in the shower. I then pour that into watering cans and water the garden. I have run out of rain water from the butts so I really need this water for my veggies. We use homemade natural soap and not much shampoo and very few chemicals, and as I've eaten the veg, I may be proof that this is harmless.

3. THE LOO If it's yellow..........We don't flush pee. We only flush poo. Plus, any hand washing water gets poured down the loo. It's a sin to throw pure drinking water down the toilet so use second hand water. I placed a brick and a water hippo in each cistern, so I've reduced the huge flush in my old style loo by one third.



4. THE WASHING MACHINE - we replaced our top loader, after we'd sold it on eBay, with a triple AAA class front loader, which we chose, not only due to using very little energy but because it used the least water. We place a full size plastic bin next to it. I put the hose from the machine on the side of the bin, to pump the rinse water into the bin. If you use Eco soap powder, which I do sometimes, you can pump all of the water into a bin, or water butt and use it on  the garden. I've eaten all of the veg which has been watered by the washing machine waste water and I'm alive.

5. SAVE ALL THE RAIN YOU CAN - Buy as many water butts as you can afford. A good rainy day will fill them and each butt represents a saving of £10 for SWW customers. When it really really rains, I put pots, buckets, pans, in fact any thing that will catch the rain. I use an old bin too, if the butt is full, then I pour the water from the butt into the bin and let the next rain storm fill it up again. Use the rain to rinse the car when you wash it, even to wash the car and windows.

I'll be back tomorrow with five more frugal refreshers of how I reduce my living costs and I'm able to pay off debts at a huge rate and now over pay my mortgage at (fingers crossed) 10% a year.

Until tomorrow,

All my love,

Froogs xxxx

Increases mean decreases!

Let's have a look at everything that increasing in price. Food, almost 25% increase and each time I go back to the supermarket, I notice increases. Energy, has been predicted to rise by 20% And salaries? Well, they are the same. This all means, we will have to decrease the amount of food we buy even further and decrease the amount of heating, hot water and lighting we use altogether. This will mean more veg and lentil soup, more blankets on the bed and on our laps in the evening. Fewer uses of the washing machine and wear the clothes for longer. Less of everything and yet, pay the same! I think I'll cope.

 We'll all have to discount store shop and then, with a small list, stick to it and eat it slowly!

 Dearly Beloved will have to stock up on pasta to fill him up.

We'll all have to eat less.

Plus, some of us are facing pay cuts, redundancies, pension cuts and will have to be even more creative with even less. Downsizing will not be an option, it will be a necessity. What will you have to do with less of and what are you expecting to pay more for and not even get as much as you do now.

We'll all have to be creative together!

Until tomorrow,

Froogs xxxx