Impromptu no spend week

Posted by louisa on Monday 13 December 2010 in anti-consumerism, frugal | 12 comments

I’ve decided to have an impromptu no-spend week this week. Well, actually, not a no-spend week – a no-spend fortnight-plus, until the end of the year.

No spending days/weeks/months are an often promoted technique by frugal/anti-consumerism people but I’d never really done it before. Many of my days are no spend days, I probably have no spend weeks more often than I think too – it’s not something I’ve felt was an issue I needed to address. But recently, I’ve been buying a few too many (used) books online, or too many (second-hand) things off eBay and I realised I wanted a bit of a self-enforced time out.

Since I’m really wanting to cut down on my frivolous spending not essentials, I’m giving myself five exceptions:

• Food – I’d need to do a lot more planning to avoid spending any money on food for a fortnight (although, to be honest, John pays for most of our food anyway so it’s not something I spend a lot of money on these days). I will try very hard though not to buy any take-out though or pick up a chocolate bar while I’m out and about – only buy food to be prepared at home.
• Food/medical treatment for the animals if needed – definitely an essential not frivolous thing. Although no random ad-hoc treat buying for the cats or dog – they’ve got enough at home already.
• Bills – I think I’ve paid all the automatic direct-debits for the month already but if any are still due from my bank account, they’ll come out anyway.
• Bus fares – necessary for getting about – not that I leave the house much really. Will probably be only a few day riders (at £3.30 a pop) depending on how much I have to go to Bingley for rehearsals over the next few weeks. No taxis home though – I’ll wait for the next bus and/or make sure I get the last one.
• A birthday present for someone because, as usual, I haven’t been organised enough to buy it in advance and avoid having to face Leeds city centre on the run up to Christmas, ugh. I don’t tend to buy birthday presents for people – just give presents at any time when I see something I think people will like/need – but this person is an exception.

My main worry is that I’ll just rely on John to buy me things instead – take-out food or the Saturday newspaper – so I’ll try hard not to do that.

My main temptation will be going to the city centre to buy that birthday present. I’ve not been there for months and probably won’t be going again for a good long while, so the spendaholic devil on my shoulder will tell me to take the opportunity to look in the clothes shops for thick woollies I haven’t been able to find elsewhere or check out what bargain wool is on offer this week in the market. I could use another warm woollie jumper but I don’t need one, and I certainly don’t need any more actual wool. I’m a sucker for non-repeating bargains. Resist! Resist!

The key thing I want to get from it isn’t the desire to never buy anything every again, it’s to make me conscious about when I do spend money.

Have you had a no-spend week/fortnight/month/year before? If so, got any tips to avoid temptation?

Frugal hair and fur management techniques ;)

Posted by louisa on Monday 13 December 2010 in frugal | 2 comments

Last week on Move to Portugal, Laura mentioned that they’ve realised it’ll be a lot cheaper to cut her husband’s hair at home than have him go to the barbers every month.

She asked if anyone else had any related frugal tips and I left the following comment:

My boyfriend has been shaving his own head (or having me help) for years.

He’s gone through a couple of sets of cheap, rechargeable battery clippers but now swears by some mains powered ones – a lot more powerful so the job is done faster and his dad has had a pair that’s lasted 20+ years. He just wishes he’d got them sooner.

When I had long hair, I used to trim it myself to keep it free from split ends – curly hair is very forgiving ;) Now I have it shorter so I go to a hairdresser – but only once every four or five months or so. As [another commenter] Carla says, keep it simple – don’t have an elaborate style that needs constant attention or products, and you’ll save loads.

When I lived close to a hairdressers training college a couple of years ago, I used to go there – would cost £4 for a cut (or £2 on half price Tuesday) and would easily rival a cut I’d have done in the city centre for £30! (Actually, that’s another saving idea if you don’t feel like cutting your own: it used to cost me £30 for a hair cut in the city centre [Leeds], £20-25 at a good salon in a poorer suburb about a mile out (where I lived), and now I live about 8 miles out, it costs me £10-15 a cut. Pretty much the same quality cut, much lower price!)

On the subject of hair, we also clip our dog ourselves rather than paying £45 a pop. We bought more good mains powered clippers and a pair of hairdressers scissors (for the bits that need trimming not shaving) for that price instead – far cheaper in the long run. The first time we did it she looked a little ragged for a couple of days but we quickly got better at it and now she looks gorgeous all the time ;)

Saying I get my hair cut every “four or five months” is actually a bit of optimism rather than accurate – it’s more like every eight or nine months because I hate going to the hairdressers (the enforced small talk mostly) but by that point, my hair really starts bugging me so I’d rather go slightly more often. The hairdressers I go to now is around the corner from our house – less than a minute’s walk away – and is more than fine for my basic cut, and so much cheaper than heading to a fancy salon in central Leeds (extra expense + bus fare + time).

Regarding Lily, it’s win all around us clipping her here. It’s a great bonding experience, she finds it a darn sight less stressful than she would going to a groomers (she feel asleep during the clipping the last two times), and it’s far, far cheaper. Our aim with her – as with ourselves – is to be clean-ish & presentable-ish and we can meet those goals here. She wouldn’t excel in Crufts with our grooming but she’s clean & pretty enough to dunk herself in mud in the woods, and that’s all she (and we) care about.

As well as his head, John, my scruffy boyfriend, shaves his not-so-designer stubble with his clippers too – he has no need to be baby’s-bum smooth so no need to spend money on expensive razor blades & shaving cream. Another time when laziness = frugalness! ;)

Realising “Kept for best” is wasteful

Posted by louisa on Friday 10 December 2010 in decluttering, frugal | 1 comment

Yesterday, our friend Strowger tweeted a link to this article by “essayist and programmer” Paul Graham about “stuff”.

I would urge you to read it if you’ve got five minutes. If you haven’t got five minutes, the message is “stuff, clutter, is bad, m’kay?” but it says it somewhat better than that.

It’s a topic I’ve touched on a few times on this blog – and it’s a concept I believe even if I don’t always live it. But this paragraph leapt out at me:

The worst stuff in this respect may be stuff you don’t use much because it’s too good. Nothing owns you like fragile stuff. For example, the “good china” so many households have, and whose defining quality is not so much that it’s fun to use, but that one must be especially careful not to break it.

Paul Graham on “Stuff“

I think this not only applies to “fragile stuff” but anything that’s “kept for best” or “kept to be enjoyed at a later special time, not now, not all the time”.

We don’t have “good china” or a pristine room solely for entertaining guests. We don’t have a fancy car that we worry about parking it on the street or in bad areas. We don’t really have “Sunday best” clothes – we have items we don’t wear every day, that are a bit smarter, but we don’t wear them because we prefer to wear other things, not because we’re saving them for a special occasion.

But on smaller things, I’m guilty of wasteful behaviour when “keeping stuff for best”.

For example, I frequently delay pleasure to, in theory, enjoy it all the more at the end. Sometimes this pays off: I finish a meal on my favourite bit of it so the taste of the delicious, seasoned meat stays in my mouth rather than the overcooked, watery carrot.

But other times it promotes waste. John gets annoyed when I save a piece of cake or sweets until I really, *really* want it/them – but it goes stale or sticky before that time arrives. Or, slightly different but part of the same thing, a craft project sits half finished forever because I worry I haven’t the skills to complete it PERFECTLY (when I could finish it in a “good enough” way immediately).

It’s funny, I knew I wasted cake sometimes. And I knew exactly why I wasn’t finishing that half-made quilt. But it was only after reading that paragraph that it really drove home to me quite how bad the habit is – how wasteful it is of the world’s resources, of money and of my mental resources.

Definitely something I need to change about myself!

What do you never pay full price for?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 9 December 2010 in frugal | 6 comments

There are some things that I never, ever pay full price for.

Due to a lifetime of “this is what that tastes like”, I’m brand loyal in about five cases: orange squash has to be Robinsons, baked beans have to be Heinz, brown sauce as to be HP, chocolate digestives have to be McVities and my breakfast cereal has to be Mornflake Chocolate Squares because first thing in the morning, I’m a big kid who hates nutrients and fibre. Out of those, it’s only the cereal that I ever buy full price – all of the rest come up on offer regularly enough that I just stock up when it’s on offer and that’s enough to tide me over to the next time the offers come around.

With other things, I don’t care about the brand – I’ll just buy whatever is on offer. Canned tuna for example, or pasta or butter or toilet rolls. It’s rare that there isn’t one brand on some sort of offer and if there isn’t, and we don’t *really* need it (which we rarely do, as we tend to keep good stores), then we don’t buy it. Again, the offers come up regularly enough that it’s never really worth paying full price just to have it then. I don’t think I’ve ever bought tuna or toilet rolls at full price, *ever*.

There are other things we rarely pay full price for: sugar, cat food, sweet treats (like chocolate biscuits or cakes), cooking oil, cleaning products (particularly washing powder, soap and shampoo) and jam (when we have to buy it).

Away from food and groceries, it’s very rare that I pay full (new) price for clothes – they’re either on sale, I have a discount code or second-hand through a charity shop or eBay (although that’s not without its problems…). And books – I buy more books than I should but they’re mostly from Amazon‘s marketplace or Abebooks.

What do you never pay full price for? What do you only buy when it’s on offer? Do you have any offer-surfing tricks to share?

Saying no to TV saves us £145.50+ a year

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 December 2010 in frugal | 4 comments

Over the weekend, we got a letter from the TV Licensing Authority – a prompt to confirm that our circumstances had not changed, that we’re still not watching TV.

For a long time, the TV Licensing agency’s website was vague – it seemed to suggest that you needed a licence if you owned a TV — it seemed deliberately unclear and phoning the agency wasn’t much better. Now it’s a lot clearer: you only need it if you have a device (including computers, phones, games consoles, digital boxes or recorders) that you use to watch or record a television program as they’re being shown on TV or virtually the same time.

You don’t need one to watch pre-recorded DVDs/VHSs or play games – which is all we use our TV for: we’ve not watched broadcast television for years and years. It saves us £145.50 a year.

(I’m in no way advocating cancelling your TV license if you do watch TV as it’s being shown, on whatever device. As it’s classed as a tax, it’s a criminal offence to avoid paying if you should be. But if you don’t watch television, you can register that you don’t need a licence at http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/noTV )

But the £145.50 is just the tip of the iceberg really. As we’re already using cable services for our landline and broadband internet, chances are, we’d have signed up with our cable provider for TV instead of sorting out a Freeview box or whatever. Our cable provider’s cheapest (non-offer) TV service costs £6.50 a month = £78 a year, but I could see it as a slippery slope – certain channels are only available on the more expensive packages – £11.25 or £23.50 a month… And we’d see a whole lot more adverts and lifestyle inspiration ideas – it’s hard to know how much more that would cost us a year…

For some people, TV – the licence and any monthly cost – is a good deal when you consider it on a per-hour-of-entertainment basis. But for us, it’s not a good deal at all, so we’ve opted out.