How To Save Your Money and Cut Household Expenses ile ilgili görsel sonucu

Cut household expenses and save cash - a guide to saving money

How to save your money and reduce home expenses? Think about the old saying: "Take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves!"
Times are getting harder and you should be thinking about saving and investing not squandering resources and throwing money, literally, down the drain.
Living in Limousin in South West France and trying to survive financially by a bit of this and that we live on a tight budget - but we love to enjoy the good life. To achieve this I took a lesson or two in thrift from times gone by.
People in this hidden part of rural France have always lived on small incomes but they also enjoy many of the pleasures that make life worthwhile. I looked to how people manage their money here - how many of us could reduce our home expenses by 50%?
I began to think about all the ways I manage to live a life that many envy, on a very basic income.
Think 50%. If you use half of everything, your annual housekeeping bill goes down by HALF. ou really can save a small fortune just by giving your lifestyle a little thought. Just try it.

What you can do to beat the recession

  1. Share more
  2. Use less
  3. Waste less
  4. Buy less
  5. Look out for real bargains
  6. Think smart when it comes to money

What are household expenses?

I have defined household expenses very loosely but I'm really thinking about food, the energy bills, and all the little things that cause us to fritter away our money. But more than that, I include clothes, costs of furnishing, baby products (those dear little creatures) and, in the end, I confess, just about anything that we spend our salary on.
This article is not about high finance, making money quickly, indeed, it's not about making money at all - rather it is about making the most of what you do have and, above all, it is money saving ideas, how to save your money and how to budget money.

Share your home and make money

Take in a lodger

Ok, I know I said that this is not about making money, but this is one thing you can do if you have a spare room to actually bring in a good amount of money every month to make your salary go further.
The last time I lived in England it was possible to take in up to two lodgers without incurring any problems with the authorities - before you became a hotel, or house of multiple occupation and such like. This is my top tip for saving money. The lodger will give you a bit of rent and contribute to the household expenses. If you're lucky you might even be able to do a bit of swapping - babysitting for cooking etc.

Welcome a language student into your family

When I lived in cities (London and Exeter) I used to welcome language students to my home. They would live as part of the family, take meals with us and join in with whatever we were doing. The advantage of language students is that they were usually very nice, well socialised, interesting and appreciative. They only stayed for a few weeks or months and didn't fully share the house - no messy kitchens to wake up to. You will also make lifelong friends and may even be invited to go and stay with them. Did I also mention that the pay is good?

Foster children or look after older people in your own home

I've never done either of these, but you might like to look into this area and see if it would suit you.

Join a LETS scheme

Join a 'Lets' or other no-money skills and services exchange scheme, where you can swap objects and services with others in your community.
"LETS - Local Exchange Trading Systems or Schemes - are local community-based mutual aid networks in which people exchange all kinds of goods and services with one another, without the need for money." Have a look at the UK LETS web site.

No LETS scheme near you? Why don't you start one?

More ways of cutting costs by sharing

  • Swap things with friends
  • Hold a clothes swapping party
  • Have a baby or wedding shower with pre-loved items
  • Pass on children's clothes to friends with younger children
  • Exchange and barter - one man's meat ...
  • Join or start a food club (see below)

Cut food waste and cut your food expenses by half!

I was recently watching Economy Gastronomy on, yes, I confess, English TV, when I realised that a family of five spent as much on food per year that my entire annual income. On the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, (16 12 09), it was reported that as much as 50% of food is wasted in Britain. As an artist, one has to live on ones wits as, in general, everyone loves and admires what you do, but nobody actually pays you to produce it.
So, having got over the shock of watching this family pouring perfectly good food into their waste disposal unit I've come up with these ideas to eat well and waste less.

Saving money on food with frugal tips

Lets start with food and the weekly shop
  • Eat less? (Most of us are too fat anyway!)
  • Try your very best not to throw good food away.
  • Buy fresh food rather than ready meals. Healthier and cheaper.
  • Buy supermarket own brands; they put alot of effort into reproducing the big brand names at cut-prices. Don't pay for other peoples fat bonus's and companies' advertising. If you are not sure if you are going to like it - try it once.
  • Do buy 3 for the price of 2 bargains, cook and freeze. Throw end-of-day bargains into freezer. You are paying for your freezer - make it work for you.
  • Cook in large quantities and freeze portions for future. Saves on gas or electricity
  • Always fill the oven and freeze anything you can't eat within three days. Organise your menu. My mother never put on the oven, unless she was going to produce a whole meal - meat, roast potatoes, jacket potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, roast vegetables and rice pudding. If nothing else, you can always squeeze in a few potatoes for the following day. Microwave them in a few minutes. Hot but with all the flavour of baked potatoes.
  • Buy different types of food, many cheap foods are good foods. The list is long but go for offal - kidney, tongue, gizzards or food that is cheaper because it looks less attractive, greyish coloured fish. You're going to eat it not paint it! Take a look at my delicious and healthy Chicken Gizzard Curry Recipe.
Use left-overs
  • Re-use all left-overs as a basis for a meal the following day. If nothing else add water and a stock-cube, whizz and produce as soup for lunch. For adults add a shake of Worcestershire sauce, chilli, zest of lemon etc.
  • Don't waste stale bread, (but do make sure bread is dry and not mouldy. Always discard mouldy food). Otherwise there is a wealth of recipes that require stale bread. Here in the Limousin, a good supply of dry or old bread is an absolute essential ingredient.
  • Here's a great way to reuse old cake or make cheap cake into something special; try my Fat Rat cake
WARNING Always be aware of food hygine. Don't re-freeze food, don't forget food in the fridge, keep food in the fridge and keep it covered. If you reheat, reheat very thoroughly, especially meat. I have a three day rule. I don't buy meat that I don't intend to cook within three days. Keep your fridge at the recommended temperature. Keep all kitchen surfaces clean and dry.

Grow your own food

Even if you don't have a garden, you can grow your own herbs, chillies, even lettuce on the window sill and they can be very decorative. You can grow tomatoes and lots of other veg in pots, but if you do have a garden, then you can grow quite a lot of your own food.
You can dig up your flowers and lawn and set up a traditional vegetable garden, but I doubt many people will want to do this. Why not grow vegetables amongst the flowers? Many are quite decorative - the squash family, chards, tomatoes .... And many flowers are edible too.
Have a look at these articles;
How to grow pumpkins for Halloween
Of course you can just buy a pumpkin at Halloween, but how much better it would be to start right at the beginning and grow your own, and it's fun and educational for the kids.

Pick your own wild food

There are many wild flowers and plants out there for the taking. Why not pick your own free food? Just be careful that pesticides, herbicides or dogs have not fouled the food. Easy weeds to eat are nettles, goose grass and chickweed. Then there is all that wild fruit - blackberries, rose hips, crab apples ... Make sure you can identify wild herbs and fruit correctly as you can poison yourself if you make really bad mistakes.
Try this recipe:
How to Make Weed Soup

Save money by joining a food club

Why not band together to buy your own food from the wholesalers? Cut out the middleman and put the supermarket profits back into the community. It sounds like a big organisational feat but some people are doing it.

Other frugal food tips for saving money

  • Be realistic about what you can eat. If you get it wrong, cook food and wack into the freezer rather than let it go to waste.
  • Peel only if you must. It came as a revelation to me that it isn't always necessary to peel potatoes and other fruit and vegetables. When I was at University and my Irish flatmate's mother came to stay and cooked us the most delicious whole potatoes complete with skins, I vowed that I'd never peel another potato! Why waste good food and give yourself more work? (But take care with non-organic foods like carrots and fruits that will have been treated with pesticides and fungicides).
  • Again, when I was a child, we would throw away celery leaves, tops of leeks, outer lettuce and cabbage leaves. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with these. Eat them up! Celery leaves are great in a mixed salad or added to soup. If all else fails, make stock.
  • That goes for bones as well. Boil up chicken carcasses and other bones with left over vegetables and make the most superb stock. When I worked inTerry's Restaurant in York, everything went into an enormous stock pot, and the most delicious soup came out!
  • Lentils and pulses are nutritious and cheap sources of protein. Use instead of meat 50% of the time.
  • Make your own yoghurt. It is easy and economical. Here's how: How to make your own natural yoghurt
  • Look hard at junk food. Do you have to buy crisps, biscuits, sweets, fizzy drinks? All poor in nutrition and high in salts, sugars and fats. I know a little of what you fancy does you good, but keep them for special occasions.
  • If all else fails I give food to a. The dog b. The cat c. The chickens. (the latter get anything sugary on the grounds that they don't have any teeth to ruin) and d. The compost heap.
  • Eat free food. There are plenty of fruits and herbs to gather from the wild, nettles, sorrel, blackberries, elder flowers, elderberries and dandelions, to name but a few. The wild foods are full of nutritional value bred out of many cultivated fruit and veg. Try making Nettle Soup, it really is delicous!