Monthly Archives: April 2013

Froog’s Financial Education!

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Hello Dear Reader,

Thank you to the young reader who came up to me to say hello today, it was lovely to meet you xxxx

Thank so much for the comments yesterday and I agree there should be financial education and a huge part of real life maths should focus on household budgets. I feel this needs to happen from primary school onwards. I can clearly remember playing ‘shops’ at school when my teacher was teaching me numeracy by making it real. We also had lots of maths called ‘problem solving’ (or maths set by people on hallucinogenic drugs)……it went like this. If it takes five men four hours to clip the hedge of the vicarage then how many pigs does it take to dance the Lambada down the high street if there’s a traffic jam! And they wonder what went wrong with British industry! For many of us, it’s not a problem with maths, the problem is self restraint! Let’s add that to the lesson plans!

Here’s my ten pence worth on Financial Education. I haven’t seen the draft curriculum yet so excuse me for not mentioning it any further. This is what I want to teach people about money, about finance, about budgets and about life. Here goes!

1. Develop your own culture of working hard! I want this to start as soon as children can undertake small tasks in the home. My parents made me pull my weight and I expected my children to do the same. Very young children can help clean the car, sweep the drive, rake up leaves, push a hoover around and wipe down surfaces. Being industrious isn’t something we are born with, we learn it. Be industrious in front of your children, model hard work and be the example. In turn, make them work hard at school, at home, in sport and hobbies and in life. Money doesn’t come to the idle so develop a work ethic and be proud of it.

2. Don’t give your children money without them earning it! Children need to learn to manage money and they won’t do that if they don’t have any. Children need pocket money but they must earn it. Give them reality. You don’t get minimum wage until you are sixteen so they should expect to earn way less than that as children. Jobs should be paid in pennies and they need to experience real hard work to attain anything at all. Spoil them and they’ll not thank you as adults. How many young people just want it all because they’ve always had it! Enough! Teach them at home by making them work for everything they have. p.s Do not over reward, especially for good behaviour or good school results…………….they are a given and to be expected all the time. Payments for bathing the dog or cleaning the windows are realistic.

3. Children can legally work a few hours a week from fourteen years old. Send them out to work. Send them off to the corner shop for a couple of hours to sort papers on a Sunday morning, send them out on a paper round, send them out to baby sit their big sister’s children. Encourage them to earn. Praise them for the industry and innovation and if they want to cut the neighbour’s entire lawn for £1, then encourage them to do so.

4. Introduce them to the world of finance and your budget from an early age. We kept a simple book keeping system of money in and money out. We had columns for spending and kept a close eye on what we spent. We did this weekly and the children saw us do it. Let them sit with you as you write cheques to pay bills and let them watch you deduct that from the amount you have in your bank account and talk to them frankly and openly about what is left. Discuss the budget you have for school shoes, school trips, savings for college and the money that’s left for Christmas and birthdays. Teach them the reality of life, warts and all. They have to know that life costs and you have to work for it so don’t shield them from it.

5. Show your children your bank statements, your online banking and teach them how it works. Explain to them what a monthly salary is and how the money is paid straight into the bank. Teach them about direct debits and how they spread the costs of running a house. Teach them the difference between standing orders and direct debits and how one or the other is the best way of budgeting across the year.

6. Show your children your pay slips, your bills and share the financial information with them. Teach them about the costs of running the home. They need to know why they should turn off the lights if the room is empty, why they should wear an extra jumper if it’s cold and why they should wait for something they want until they have saved up the money they have earned for it.

7. Stock take the food in the cupboards and share that job with them. Get them to help writing a shopping list and then take them shopping and get them to play bargain hunt. Can they find the best offers, can they work out the cost of food if it’s sold by the kilo or by each 100g and then times that by ten to compare it with a similar cut of meat, or vegetables and get them to work out which is cheaper. Sorry parents but you have to shoulder some of the responsibility of teaching your children life skills.

8. Teach your children how to prepare food and to help you cook it. Teach them how to peel potatoes, grate carrots, mash spuds, steam vegetables, make pastry and how to roast a chicken. Again, it’s your responsibility to teach them life skills and feeding yourself on a budget is one of the most important life skills.

9. Teach your children to go without something and say no when appropriate. They can’t have everything as a child or as an adult and it will hold them in good stead when they know there are things you can go without.

10. The two most important of the times tables to learn when a child to cope as an adult with money are to be able to times a number by four or divide it by four and times a number by twelve and divide it by twelve. They will get paid twelve payments a year and those payments have to last four weeks. They will have to make twelve regular payments towards their mortgage, any credit agreements such as a car loan or their monthly direct debit towards utility bills. When they are paid every month, they will need to spread that money out for four weeks and buy food and fuel for the car each week. They will be multiplying or dividing by four or twelve for the rest of their lives. Teach them their multiplication tables and find any game you can to make sure they are drilled with basic numeracy as these skills are the essence of budgeting and being financially savvy.

11. Teach your children about credit, about APR and about interest. Teach them how to multiply the charges and how to work out that every month a credit charge is added to the balance and it can grow faster than you can pay it back, if you only pay back the minimum payment. Teach them about debt management and how to successfully borrow money and then how to pay it back. If you have a credit card then set a good example and use it judiciously and wisely for major purchases and then teach them how you set the amount of money each week until that ONE!!!! item that you had to have was paid for.

12. Teach your children life skills such as growing vegetables, to paint walls, how to change the oil in the car, how to clean the windows, how to take up their trouser hems or mend basic items of clothing. Teach them how to cut old towels and turn them into dusters. Teach them how to line curtains, how to use ebay and how to recycle. Teach them how to sell items at a car boot sale or place a freead in the paper. Teach them how to re-use items and make them last. Set a good example so they don’t expect just to throw things away and just buy new.

13. As your children get older and become teenagers, you are going to have to grow really really really big balls! You will need to say no more often, get on and clean the car/tidy your room/walk the dog and no you can’t have £5 just because it’s Saturday. You need to hold fast now more than ever. They will say they hate you, they will say you are the only parent who doesn’t let them have money and they will say that no one makes their kids do any work at home but you. It will get ugly and you will have to stick to your values as they are the ones that drive your family and not the ones your teenagers see on Hollyoaks or X Factor. The rules remain the same, money must be earned………..not for homework or good behaviour, as I said, that’s a given but for work around the house.

14. As they approach home leaving or going to college age, start to give them nothing. I know, what a mean spirited miser you must think I am but it’s for a purpose. They need to get ready for leaving and cleaving. They are adults now and have to support themselves. If they want to go navel gazing in Tibet for a ‘gap year’ then they can flippin’ well pay for it! If they want a new car, a holiday, a new outfit, to get married or bigger tits for a modelling career then they can pay for it (You think I’m joking but parents have paid for this!). More and more parents are remortgaging their souls for their children to take a degree in getting pissed in the pubs of university towns and ending up with a degree in bikini waxing and no job at the end of it. Enough! They leave and they cleave and pay their own way.

15. Let your adult offspring borrow money from the student loans company (and not the bank of mum and dad) to go to university. They won’t pay it back until they earn more than £21K and it is deducted at source and what is not paid after thirty years is written off. It took me ten years to pay my student loans back but my career could not have happened without me borrowing the money in the first place. If they want a further education, let them pay for it. Student digs should be grimy and cold and they don’t need Sky TV or a Nintendo Wii…………….because they are adults and need to get on with life for themselves.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned schools at all…………….funny that? I believe that parents are responsible for raising their children, teaching them how to function in the world and firmly that parents should teach their children how to work hard, be responsible citizens and how to manage their money. Financial education will be on the curriculum from 2014 onwards but parents should still teach their children the life skills for them to not only survive but thrive.

As Clarkson would say, and on that bombshell I’ll wish you good night! xxx

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxx


Everyone will have to budget from now on!

Budgeting

Hello Dear Reader,

BBC News - Universal Credit

I’ll start this by saying that I spent just under a year on benefits and whilst I did, I spent the entire time trying to get off benefits as it wasn’t what I wanted. I’ll add to this that I was grateful that the benefit system existed and that I had a safety net that paid my rent, gave me enough money to feed my small family and meant I could just about survive until I went back to work. I paid tax before and I paid tax afterwards and haven’t been unemployed since. The benefits system changes from today onwards as ‘Universal Credit’ is rolled out with the intention that work should pay. The previous system of benefits made a mockery of going out to work when some folk were better off claiming from the government. There will be mistakes and no system is going to be perfect but people are going to have to change and they will have to learn to budget. The new system of benefits means people will have all their benefit in one payment and they will have to pay their bills, their rent and make sure they make what they have last for the month.

This is therefore a bit of a controversial post as I think it’s good to treat people like adults and give them responsibility. (I’ve taken all of my information from the BBC website and I hope what I have found out is accurate.) Housing benefit has always been paid straight to the claimant but could be paid directly to the Landlord, council or housing association if the tenant so desired. This will change and the one payment will be made to the household and paid straight into their account and they will have to be adults and make sure they pay their rent. I can’t see a problem with this, if they don’t pay, they will lose their home but adults know that!

Currently, some folk on low wages and let’s remember the biggest amount of claimants actually work but earn very little, will get their wages one week, their tax credits another week and their child benefit on an entirely different week. Effectively they get a dribble of money throughout the month. In the future, they will get everything they are paid on one day per month just like the rest of us who go out to work. Again, I think it is good to give adults with responsibility and expect them to use it wisely. Here’s the problem…….some of these folk have never had to budget and have no idea how to.

Here’s my quid’s worth of how I did this whilst I was on benefits and how I still run my house on a tight budget now. It was the dark ages and no one was paid direct into bank accounts and everything was run on cash but this is what I did.

1. Signed on weekly! On time!
2. Got paid fortnightly, in cash with a book in the post office.
3. Got a housing benefits cheque that I also had to take to my bank and pay in.
4. I would immediately write a post dated cheque and walk it the three and a half miles to my landlord and I would knock on his door and pay him immediately.
5. Not touch bank account until my cheque had cleared and I knew he was paid. To do this, I would have to walk back to the bank, with push chair and check the bill had been paid.
6. When I received my handout once a fortnight, I would buy credit on my electricity key meter, get change for the 50p pieces that went into my gas meter and I would go any buy a bag of coal. Put coal in pushchair and carry child home.
7.Go home, fill up my gas meter and put the key into the meter and then the lights would come back on and I could cook again! It wasn’t fun!
8. Put child back into push chair and walk into village and then wait for a bus that took us five miles to the nearest supermarket.
9. Buy my allotted amount of food, get back on bus, ask some one on the bus to watch the child whilst I unloaded shopping and pile it on the pavement. Grab child and push chair and just get off the bus before the bus left with us on it! Recline push chair, pile shopping bags on to it and balance child on top. Walk back from village, up hill with tired child being carried and encouraged to walk until we got back to the rented cottage.
10. Meal plan with a pencil and notepad for the next few weeks. Judiciously! that was all we had and it had to last. Meat and veg was tinned, milk was UHT and there were only eggs for the first week.
11. Have heating and lights on a strict time allocation so it would last until the next time we got some money.
12. Visit jumble sales and charity shops for clothing and household items.
13. Make all our fun from nothing, all books and toys from the library and early bed times so the gas and light would last.

It was hard and I was never so glad when I got a job in a care home. It was night work so my son could spend the night with a friend (I would be up poop creek with the current rules on childcare!) and I reciprocated by looking after the child of the single parent whilst she worked in the day. It worked for us. When our shifts swapped, then we would talk our boss into allowing us to work opposing shifts. She would meet me at eight in the morning and I would take the children home with me to look after them. I worked three nights a week and she would work three days. It’s amazing to think that for a few years that I survived on only four nights sleep a week. We can manage it when we are teens!

Monthly budgeting is what we all have to do. We get paid on the last day of the month and most of us are looking at an almost empty bank account on the day before pay day. Now I’m a worker, this is what I do.

1. Get one payment into my bank account each month.
2. Decide in advance by the means of simple arithmetic where that money has to go.
3. Pay my mortgage, pension, savings on the day I get paid.
4. Pay all of my utility bills on the day I get paid.
5. Move all savings into different accounts on the day I get paid.
6. Leave myself enough money to pay for food and fuel in my account and nothing else.
7. Pay all direct debits on the day I get paid.
8. Save up for everything I need, go without the things I can’t afford and budget for things I want but can afford.

The new benefits system is going to be controversial and I hope it works. No one should be better off on benefits than working and those of us who go out to work should be better off than those who don’t work. I’m also a liberal and believe that people should have freedom and make their own choices and their own lives and they won’t do that if they are shackled to the state. If you are out of work, then my heart goes out to you as I’ve been there and it’s dreadful. If you have ideas to share about budgeting then please share them here. If the BBC has misinformed me, then I apologise. If you have a blog of your own, then could I ask you to devoting some typing time to writing about budgeting as there will be folk who need help and want some advice.

Over to you dear reader, what do you think?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxx






How to cook well on a budget.

frugal food

Hello Dear Reader,

Today was the Frugal Dinner party workshop. The meal cost £2.91 per person to make.

Potato Dauphinoise.

5 peeled and finely sliced potatoes - 17p
200ml of double cream - 56p
half a bulb of garlic = crushed = 15p
Total cost - 88p - 22p per portion.

Beef Bourginonne.

350g Braising steak - £1.85
125g of smoked bacon - 63p
Mushrooms - 45p
1 large red onion - 33p
French beans (to serve on the side) 69p
1 large mug of red wine - 50p
Quarter of bunch of celery - 20p
2 Beef stock cubes -3p - 500ml of boiling water.
4 Large carrots - peeled and cubed - 28
5 Bay leaves, rosemary, thyme and parsley - all in the house any way, bay leaves in the hedge!
Total - £4.96 - £1.24per portion.

Heat the oven to 180/200
Cut the beef into large cubes - Fry in a searing hot pan, brown on all sides - add to casserole dish.
Cut bacon into cubes and fry until browned - add to casserole dish.
Fry onions and halved mushrooms in a tiny bit of butter - add to casserole dish.
Add celery and carrots,
Add wine and stock.
Season with pepper (no need for salt because of the bacon)
Cook for two hours.

Goat’s Cheese and Red onion marmalade tartlets - serve with rocket drizzled with a little oil and balsamic.

Pastry
225g of plain flour - 7p
60g butter - 24p
50g lard - 8p
half teaspoon of salt.
Pastry - 39p - 10p per tartlet.

Add flour and salt to food processor.
Add cubed cold butter and lard
Pulse until bread crumbs
Dibble water in until it forms one lump - pastry - chill in the fridge.

Red onion marmalade
3 red onions - 99p
3 tablespoons of soft brown sugar/1.5 tbs wine vinegar/1.5 tbs balsamic vinegar/2 tbs oil - 35p.

Goat’s Cheese - £1.39

Total cost of tartlets - £3.12 + 1 bag of rocket 69p = £381 - 95p per person.

1. Slice onions.
2. Gently fry in 2 tbs of oil until soft.
3. Add sugar and vinegars - cook until onions are really soft and sauce is reduced and sticky - allow to cool

To make the tartlets.
1. Roll out the pastry.
2. Blind bake using greaseproof paper and baking beans.
3. Leave to cool.
4. Put a quarter of the onion marmalade in each tart.

Tarte Citron

Pastry - see above (with the addition of 1 tbs of icing sugar to the flour) - 42p
Make as above - blind bake in a flan dish using greaseproof paper and baking beans for 20 minutes or cooked) - you can fill this straight away. Turn oven down to 180.

Filling.
6 Free range eggs - 99p
6 lemons £1.38 - grate the zest and squeeze the lemon juice into a jug.
300 ml of double cream - 85p
175g of caster sugar - 35p.
Total cost of tarte - £3.99 - this serves 8! so 50p per portion (you could divide it by four but you would be sick!)

Beat eggs and sugar together
Add zest and lemon juice - whisk lightly
Add cream - whisk lightly
Pour mixture into a jug.
Place pastry case back in the oven, pull shelf out slightly and pour custard mix into the case. Gently push the shelf back and close the door.
Bake for 30 minutes until custard is set and feels springy in the centre.
This can be served warm or cold - sprinkle with icing sugar and serve with whipped double cream or ice cream.

This is a meal for a special occasion and we don’t normally eat like this. It was cooked by a Dear Reader whilst I supervised and was followed by a walk on the moors and a chat. A perfectly lovely day.

Over to you Dear Reader. I’m taking requests, with the exception of curry, what would you like me to cook? I can add video and actually show you a ‘how to’ and give costing and help you budget. Let me know and I’ll make it happen.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxx

Learn to be frugal

frugal workshops

Hello Dear Reader,

How much does as evening out cost? How much is a three course dinner? I personally have no idea. I searched around for a what I though might be ‘affordable’ restaurants. As a hint, hotels with restaurants seem to offer three course lunches for around £18.50 and three course dinners for around £35. Although that seems incredibly high to me, compared with restaurants, that was a fraction of the price.

Most of our evening or main meals cost on average £1 each for me to make. If I were to add a starter and dessert then that would rise to £1.50. If I have friends for lunch or supper and I want to cook something really delicious then I will raise that to £3 - £4 a head. I thought I would share some ideas of affordable home dining on a budget and how you can entertain your friends for very little.

A really easy one is Sunday lunch with all the trimmings. A two kilo boned and rolled shoulder of pork, slow roasted and then crisped to its crackling best can often be bought for around £3.99 a kilo and there will be plenty left for the rest of the week! Sunday lunch is great as it can all be prepared the day before. Potatoes and parsnips can be par-cooked, drained, covered and left in the fridge and then roasted the next day. Carrots can be peeled and finely sliced the evening before and left in a pan of water with a squirt of lemon juice. The pork can be ready to go, and covered in the fridge (raw meat on the bottom please). Desserts can be simple according to the time of year, such as sticky toffee pudding and custard in the winter or a cheesecake which can be made the day before. Fruit crumbles are economical and go a long way.

Relaxed Friday or Saturday night suppers. Lasagne, garlic bread and a big bowl of help yourself salad. Quick and easy dinners might include pan fried duck (look out for the frozen duck breasts in Aldi) Savoy cabbage with finely diced smoky bacon or any other steamed seasonal vegetables followed by a chocolate fondant(try using dark mint chocolate) or panna cotta with raspberry coulis (use raspberry jam, which you heat slightly and press through a sieve and use the sauce to smother the panna cotta). Home made Steak and Chips are a winner, that’s if you have a butcher where you can get sirloin steaks for £1.75 each - take a look in Aldi as they have Sirloin steaks for £2.25 each. Add in garlic mushrooms, homemade coleslaw and some skin on oven chips. Followed by a homemade Lemon Meringue? Or any simple dessert that you could make in advance the night before.

If you wanted to really push the boat out, I can imagine a three course supper costing £5 to make but that is a very long way from £35 which, from my research, was the cheapest three course supper that I could find.

Now here’s where I do requests. I’m happy to hold my next ‘Frugal Dinner Party’ workshop with a menu of your suggestion (with the exception of curry - I’d rather eat snails!!!). If there’s something you’d like to be able to cook on a budget then I’ll make it and put up an online tutorial with photos for guidance. I’m also going to be putting up new workshops and here’s your chance to suggest what you’d like to see. I’m going to be running some in August on weekdays and you can have your chance to suggest what you’d like to learn to do.

Over to you, let me know what workshops you would like offered.

I’ll be back tomorrow with all the photos of tomorrow’s Frugal Dinner Party workshop.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxx

In your pocket!

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Hello Dear Reader,

A quick blogette tonight. I’ve been busily researching insurance quotes for our car and our house. I’ve been on a scenic trip around the comparison sites. Here are the links so you can try them:

http://www.comparethecomparisonsites.com/

http://www.confused.com/

http://www.gocompare.com

http://www.comparethemarket.com/

http://www.uswitch.com/

http://www.money.co.uk/

I found the best deals I could and then logged into my Quidco account to see if I could get any cash back from the best deals. I was able to secure £25 cash back from the home insurance and £40 from the car insurance. Insurers take about 6-8 months to give you the cash back and if you make a claim, you don’t get the cash back at all. (Car insurance including cashback £109.46 and Home insurance after cashback £124.46 - both for the entire year - you will get a better price if you pay in one lump sum)

Here are the links to the cash back sites:

http://www.topcashback.co.uk

http://www.quidco.com

By shopping around, I have managed to keep my car and home insurance at an almost similar price since 2010. It may seem trivial to claim £65 back but that will keep our car in fuel and get us both to work and back for two weeks. It is the business of business to get as much money out of you as possible and you need to make it your business to give them as little as possible. Over to you Dear Reader, who else makes sure they get the very best deals? Who price compares all their utilities and insurances? Who gets cashback on any essential purchases?

Finally, if you would like, can you vote for me at the Britmums blogging awards. I’m a finalist in the sections called Inspire and Commentary. Here is the link for you to vote . I’ll be back tomorrow saving more money.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Fix it and carry on

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Hello Dear Reader,

My lovely bag has a hole! I’ve had it since 2008 and I love it. I bought it in France and it reminds me a lovely holiday. It had to be mended.


I unpicked the entire seam and pinned it.


My sewing machine is always set up and ready to go so repair work gets done quickly.


It’s as good as new! My sewing machine coped really well with the oil cloth which makes me want to make a bag from scratch from oil cloth. My next sewing work shop I think and I can use this bag as the template to make a pattern!


Just to add, our scrap wood find of the day. DB had a scoot round the local industrial estate to pick up wood that they leave out to be collected (this is common practise or they pay to dispose of it). By the afternoon, DB had cut it down and chopped it into kindling. Oh the happy life of a Womble!

And a bit of news. I’m a Britmum blogger and my blog has been short listed in two of their Brilliance in Blogging Awards. I’m shortlisted in ‘Inspire’ - “For blogs with infectious enthusiasm that encourages everyone around them” and “Commentary” ” “Whatever their cause, these bloggers did more than their bit, and helped us get involved too”. If you would like to vote for me, HERE is the LINK to vote.
I’ve really appreciated your support and it makes writing worthwhile when I find out that so many of you read every day (over 11,000 yesterday).
Today has been a brilliant day. My bag is as good as new, we have more firewood and I’ve been nominated in two categories in the Brilliance in Blogging awards.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Save money by being an organised grocery shopper!

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Hello Dear Reader,

Each time I shop, I get crosser and crosser at the price increases. Fruit and vegetable price vary throughout the year and they currently seem high. I’m doing my very best to keep control over our food spending but it is becoming increasingly difficult. Here’s how I save.

1. I stock take and make sure I know what I have, what I need and what I don’t need.

2. I shop for the bargains with a budget and then create a menu plan from that. For example, our butchers is cheap because it is an abbatoir outlet store, what ever they have too much of gets sold in their own butchers shop. Beef seems cheaper than anything else at the moment. When I have worked out what I have and how many portions I have, then I start my menu planning.

3. I do not create a menu plan and then shop as I might not be able to find what I’d planned for at the price I wanted to pay.

4. I cook at home, so I don’t buy cakes, biscuits, quiches or any other ready made items. I can make any thing cheaper than the supermarket can sell it to me.

5. I use Value range products such as bleach, cream cleanser, window cleaner and washing up tablets. I also use value vegetables such as carrots, cauliflower or potatoes. They won’t win a beauty competition but they are great in soup. I also use Value flour, pasta, UHT skimmed milk or soya milk and ketchup and brown sauce, even the pickled onions are OK.

6. I use Approved Food and check it occasionally to see if they have what I would use and need. I buy stir fry sauces for 10 for £1 when they would normally cost almost £1 each. I buy cook in sauces for meat and use them to slow cook and find they stretch the budget and give us quick and easy meals at the end of a working day.

7. Buy cheaper cuts of meat: pork knuckles, ham hocks, shin of beef, oxtail, shank, neck and breast of lamb. I’ll also buy chicken quarters when they are on offer so I get the leg and thigh and can get them really cheaply. I’ll often use a marinade that I got a job lot of from Approved Food to liven them up and then we’ll eat them with salad after cooking them in the mini oven.

8. I’ll haggle in the butchers and local shops. I certainly can’t do that in Morrisons. I’ll make them an offer by asking if I can get a better price for the kilo if I buy four kilos or more. I’ll ask the fruit and veg shop if they have any veg that are not the best that they want to sell cheaper, such as root vegetables to use in stew. I want to eat them and not look at them.

9. I cook our own meats and use and electric slicer so we have cold meats to have in our lunch boxes. I boil gammon joints and rare roast beef and we have it for lunch with salad. It’s much better value than the 190g packs of cold meats which are often filled with additives.

10 I bake all our bread, quiches, cakes and biscuits. I have no idea why they charge £3.50 for a pasty or £1.50 for a loaf of bread.

11. I use ‘layby supermarkets’. I’ll need to explain these to people who live in cities. In Cornwall and I’m sure it will be the same in other rural areas. Independent small time retailers sell sacks of spuds, trays of free range eggs and seasonal vegetables from roadside stalls, usually in laybys. Farmers and growers often have farm gate stalls and here, we just put the right money in the honesty box. There is no where as cheap as the layby supermarkets. Here in Liskeard, one such guy sets up his stall every day just on the edge of Liskeard. I buy spuds, cabbages, carrots and cauliflowers and eggs from him. No one is cheaper.

12. When I do a supermarket shop, I look at what I am buying per kilo. If something is being sold by the 100g, then I will simply multiply that number by ten to find the price. If I think I can get it cheaper, then I use my mobile phone to go on line and check. I keep Lidl and Aldi receipts in my bag so I can compare. I can’t do this in Morrisons as they block the signal!!!! I wonder why?? p.s I no longer use Morrisons!

13. I use ‘mysupermarket’ to check prices and offers in Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Asda. If they have something I want, that I can store then I will buy it. Most of the offers are bunkum, but if I find a genuine one and I’m going that way, then I’ll stop off.

14. Finally, I don’t have a routine shopping day or shop. I go where I have researched and that might be somewhere different each time I go. Aldi has opened in Liskeard and their basics such as bathroom tissue, vegetables and dairy products are currently cheaper than anywhere else. So, I go there. Next time I shop, I might find Lidl to be cheaper.

A note on coupons. I’ve never seen any in the UK, not for years anyway. I don’t get a newspaper or buy magazines. Who in the UK does get any and where are they from?

Over to you Dear Reader, I’ll let you add more to this list. No need to carry on from thirteen, just add some advice about saving money when grocery shopping. How do you keep your costs down?

Until tomorrow and looking forward to your responses,

Love Froogs xxx



Bulk Buying and Menu Planning

Budgeting



Hello Dear Reader,

Today is a stock take, plan and shop day. I went to the butchers and spent £68.49 and have portioned everything to feed us for two months. It may seem strange to some people but I loath shopping and like to ‘get it over and done with’ and good planning helps me to achieve that. Buying in bulk at my local butchers also means I get very good prices. Here is what I bought:

2 chickens = 6 meals, 2kg of minced beef, which I portioned into 400g bags = 7 meals, 1 small beef/brisket joint = 2 meals, 1 beef/sirloin joint = 3 meals, 8 sirloin steaks (£12 and £1.50 each) = 4 meals, 8 pork steaks = 4 meals, 1.4kg of Braising steak divided into 350g bags = 4 meals, 8 thick slices of Belly pork = 4 meals, 2kg of sliced smoked bacon (it has a million uses) divided into 250g packs = 8 meals.

From my stock take I had:

1 pack of homemade faggots (for our supper tonight with homemade oven chips and beans, 1 shoulder of pork joint = 4 meals, 1 beef/sirloin joint = 2 meals, 1 pack of bacon pieces = 3 meals.

One shop and 52 meals!

Here’s the menu plan


So far, I’ve planned 28 meals and will have enough in my freezer with the addition of a few meat free days for another 28 days. I don’t religiously stick to my plan; if I fancy something different or something which I planned for another day then we eat that instead. For me, menu planning is all about making my life simpler and having to shop less. My butcher supplies large meat packs at prices lower than any of the shops around us and I’m happy to come home and re-bag meat into portion sizes appropriate for us. Menu planning makes my life simpler as I never have to stand in the kitchen, or worse the supermarket and wonder what we’ll have for supper that night.

I keep a very supply of staples in our cupboards and they include pasta, rice, flour, tinned vegetables such as beans and tomatoes. I buy sauces and marinades in a mass bi-annual purchase from Approved Food and have enough sauce mixes, jars of apple sauce, spices and jars of cook in sauces to last for months and months.

I’ve also made 48 muffins today for the freezer - chocolate and raspberry and blueberry. I use frozen fruit from Aldi and then allocate two muffins to a freezer bag and freeze them all. I take out one bag of muffins a day to go in Dearly Beloved’s lunch box. I now don’t have to bake him any other treats for a month! All this gives me more time for quilting, walking and gardening.

Over to you Dear Reader and here’s a chance to ‘ask Froogs’. If you have something in your pantry or freezer and lack inspiration, share it on here and either myself or another Dear Reader can come up with some suggestions. Alternatively, share your menu plan ideas.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxx

Recycle your way to a healthy bank balance

Earning extra money

Hello Dear Reader,

In these current economic times, everything has a currency. Now, I love a good clear out and like to have a reasonably minimalist home so I don’t like clutter or any unwanted items lain around. I thought I would take a moment to share all the ways I make extra money by recycling. Over the years, we’ve accumulated a few mobile phones, usually ones we’ve bought second hand in the first place but I had three to get rid of. I want all of you to go and find that retro brick you’ve got and you think is totally worthless and consider selling a mobile phone. I know that environmentally they need specialist recycling and disposal and you can’t just throw them away. We checked out the companies that offer cash for mobile phones and after research found one that offered ease of use, a sturdy freepost bag, fast payment and the highest prices for the phones we sent. We no longer had any use for them but were certainly glad of the money for what is essentially a recycling service.


Take another look around your home. We still had some of the kids’ DVDs, computer games and CDS as well as some DVDs of our own. Charity shops here get a few of them but some of them are worth a few pounds and again, we did our research and found, via the internet, recycling services that paid us for items we didn’t need any more. We escaped all of the ebay fees, hassle and simply popped them into a freepost bag and were sent the money via paypal. It couldn’t be easier. Of course, some get taken to the charity shop but ours are fussy about any of the 18 rated games or DVDs so we sold them and recycled them at the same time.


So, let’s see how far we’ve got in this clear out. The mobile phones have gone and they’ve sent you some money. The CDs, DVDs and computer games have also disappeared from under the TV. You’ve got lots more room and the front room looks at lot tidier as does your bank account. No need to rest yet, go upstairs and check out all the clothes that don’t fit or never fitted in the first place! I’m quite happy to buy clothes from ebay and I know other people are too. I had a collection of work suits in every shade of black and grey and I have no use for them any more! I had them dry cleaned on a two for one offer and then photographed them and got them onto ebay when they were having a free listing weekend. It’s a bit of work to get that done; to check there are no holes, or marks or stains and take a close up of any imperfections and clearly state they exist in the description. They all sold and there’s much more room in my wardrobe.


Parts of my house resembled a book shop and many books were gathering dust. I had kept every book, including university texts which cost me my week’s food budget when I bought them. As a mature student, every word of every text was read and for many years I was loathed to part with them. I shook myself one day in the realisation that books were over running the house and some/a lot had to go. I listed all of the academic texts and sold all of them via the internet bookshop. I listed them cheaply and covered the cost of postage and made valuable space and recycled at the same time.


Now there’s the advice for ‘everything else’. When we’ve needed a really good clear out, we’ve taken everything to the car boot sale and had our own version of Poundland and we’ve had the last hour of so of three for a £1 just because we don’t want to take it home. If you look at the few items here and there, and the small but welcome extra bits and pieces of income it can bring you, then you can recycle and help the planet at the same time.

Over to you. Have you ever recycled anything to make some much needed cash? Who has a brilliant car boot sale story to share? Was anyone else surprised like me that their old relic of a mobile phone was actually worth any money.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs


Disclosure - this is a sponsored post, however I used the mobile phone recycling service, received the payment and the opinions given here are my own.


National Trust Free Weekend

free days out

Hello Dear Reader,

Just a quick hello before I head off and get weighed at fat fighters. This weekend is the National Trust’s free weekend. It differs from weekends before as you have to go to their website and down load a voucher which you have to redeem when you get there.

You can download your voucher HERE and it admits up to four people.

The terms and conditions are HERE.

The list of properties taking part or not are listed HERE.

Over to you, who else loves the National Trust but rarely goes as it’s so expensive. Who’s a member or a volunteer? Where will you head to? Us? We’ll probably go for a stroll around Lanhydrock house and gardens.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxx