Whilst trying to find ever more frugal ways to cut back on our grocery shopping, we were looking at how much we spend on meat, especially as its one of the most expensive product lines in our weekly shop. We’re a big fan of bacon, who isn’t? (Apart from the Veggies, sorry this post is… Continue reading Budget busting bacon misshapes, money saving
Tag: money saving
Garden cooking, Dutch oven & a brace of conies
We were pondering whether or not we should invest in another brand new and shiny garden BBQ, as the cheap and cheerful ones you pick up from the supermarket or local hardware store never last for long.
This year I wanted to scrimp and save by creating our own and keeping it very frugal, for a while we were playing with the idea to use an old metal drum or maybe a full brick BBQ, as we had plenty of left over bricks. Decisions decisions….
Brewing our own light beer
I have been keen to learn how to make my own beer and for Christmas my sister bought me a wheat beer microbreweries kit. I know it’s a kit with the premade syrup already provided, so the process is much easier than preparing the hops. But I figure, you have to start somewhere just with learning the basic principles how to “home brew” and this kit just gets the ball rolling.
My efforts most likely will not be as tasty as the beer you buy from the shops, but hopefully this will get better with practice, plus the amount of beer you get for the money you spend, is so much better ROI for only a little effort.
Saving money: Energy bills Part 2
At first glance around our house we knew there were plenty of improvements that could be made to maximise our energy efficiency, despite not having a great deal of knowledge on the what and how.
The key consideration was how do you achieve these home improvements on a limited budget without borrowing any money on these government green schemes? Well first step was to work out where we stood.
Slashed our water bill by 57.3%
A year ago we were looking at ways to reduce our water bill and after rummaging around the web we found a few online calculators to gauge our annual estimated usage. Of course for these to work and have any level of accuracy we had to answer as honestly as one can, in some cases slightly over estimating the amount we generally consume. It’s better to overestimate to receive a nice surprise of a slightly lower bill, than to underestimate and receive a much larger bill at the end of the year.
So the first step was to work out if a meter was the best way forward to cutting back on our bill by calculating our average usage…
Saving money: Energy bills Part 1
These days we just don’t have the time to continually check the rates/tariffs of each of our suppliers, just imagine how much time it would take to check each and every one. Our suppliers are certainly not going to make it easy for us to keep tabs on their costs comparatively to their competitors that would just too helpful and considerate of them. No, no, we had to spend the time researching the in’s and out’s…that was until the dawn of price comparison websites!! Here are just a few of them:*
Saving money: Energy bills – intro
Aside from the government “re-assuring” us that they plan to change regulations to force the energy companies to put us all on the lowest tariff, it still does not help the underlying problem, the price per unit of energy for both gas and electric! It’s all very well putting us all on the lowest tariff, but if that is continually rising through inflation and market wholesale prices, where does it leave us? NO WHERE I hear you scream! Especially as prices are continually rising and will continue to do so, forcing ever more people into fuel poverty.
When we first started trying to seriously cut back on our monthly out goings, one of the first things…