credit crunching

[ramtops]

perlmonger and I have decided that we're going to try to live frugally for a while. We don't spend much on going out but we do seem to get through a lot of cash, and I'm not entirely sure where it goes. So I have started recording what we spend on food, cutting out eating out, books, dvds, clothes, and so forth. I also have two demijohns of home made wine glooping away in he kitchen, but I hadn't realised that fruit wines take about *six months* before you can drink the wretched things, so that's not going to be an instant saving.

We started this on Tuesday, and already it's a huge success. Not. We blew 40 quid on a pair of tickets to see the incomparable Richard Thompson in January (well, we had to, didn't we?) and yesterday, despite our very best attempts, we spent 3.70 on two lamb burgers innabun from the very good butchers on Gloucester Road.

And i really want to go and get some plants for the hanging baskets. I don't think I'm going to be very good at this ...

Still, I'm going to sort out stuff to be eBayed and Freecycled, so we might be clutter-free, at least.

Comments

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. We work at home, so we don't drip spend money during the day. Lunch is generally home made soup, cheese and crackers. Or I buy a big gammon from Costco, cut it into quarters, and freeze it, cooking 1 bit at a time. That works out really cheap for cold meat.

We have about 5 digital cameras we can sell, and all sorts of other gumpf. We hardly ever eat takeaways - I like to cook, and am fanatic about not wasting food, hence the Reactive Cooking (http://www.reactivecooking.com) blog.

We aren't veggie, but we eat more meat-free meals than meaty ones, and meat ones are normally bulked out with far more veg than the recipe says, and I generally add beans too. We eat well, because I'm fussy about ingredients, and I never buy any sort of ready meal, or jarred sauce, but I know I'm very lucky because I don't have any sort of commute.

I took the clever step of writing a web site for our local folk club, so we don't pay for tickets, and we usually get bought drinks!

[r-is-for-rachel.livejournal.com]

regarding DVDs, i stopped buying them a few years back when i discovered that Bristol librarys do DVD rental - most they lend for a week at a time and most cost £1-£2 a go!