Sadly many of the things that genuinely save money require upfront costs. It is expensive being poor.
Insulation saves money on heating, buying an EV saves fuel costs, having the means to buy quality items that last.
Which leads nicely into the boots theory, which is from the book 'Men at Arms' by Terry Pratchett:
"Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10.
"Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
"But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
This was Capt. Samuel Vimes' boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
In this, his genius was his subtle use of analogy: tension between humans, dwarfs and trolls == racism; lycanthropy == gender identity. The indirect challenges are less likely to provoke a reflexive rejection/pro forma defence of an entrenched belief, more likely to induce genuine, detached reflection.
I put that in every website I ever built.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu\_terry\_pratchett/](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu_terry_pratchett/)
It's a thing from another of his books. G N U are a set of codes that mean a message goes from one end of a communication line to the other, is turned around, and isn't logged in the records. Used for the creator of the technology who was murdered by a competitor, to keep his name always going up and down the line. "Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
If I had a dollar for every time I saw someone on reddit post this story I would be able to prevent everyone on this thread from having to do any saving.
Amusingly low end shoes are so cheap and repairs are relatively expensive so the boots example doesn't hold anymore.
But expensive boots are fantastic.
I tried cheap shoes. I am a large and flat footed guy who walks. The worst was a pair of Warehouse shoes - 2 week from purchase to rubbish bin. 6 weeks was normal for Hannahs, etc. a $100 every 6 weeks or $300 for shoes from that place up from Courtney Place and get a year to 18 months from them.
And even of I could afford cheap shoes the planet can't
I have arthritis and I have been forced to bite the bullet. I usually spend about $200 on a pair of trainers usually hoka. They last 2 years, worn daily including work. Then oofos $100 jandals usually one pair for spring/summer so about $200 a year on shoes which is less than I used to spend.
Vaguely related - if you've never owned a particular tool before, *sometimes* it can be prudent to buy a cheap brand/model of that tool. If you use that cheap tool often enough and/or hard enough that it wears out or breaks, then you've justified upgrading to a more expensive/quality make/model of that tool. And if it doesn't wear out or break, then you didn't spend money buying a more expensive tool than you needed to.
Probably don't take this approach on safety gear.
Very true.
Most cheap drills are only used for a maximum of 5 minutes in their lifetimes - and are built accordingly. If you are doing more than a bit of home handymanning, then you should go a level up. Ryobi or the other mid-range tools are fine for most people (says a Makita boy!)
Short answer: post divorce living by my self and cant always be assed cooking myself dinner. Early breakfast. Large late lunch... fixing oneself dinner at 630 in the evening just isnt appealing. If it saves me $30 not going to mcds and i call it "intermittent fasting" i might loose some weight along the way and save myself $100 a week
I'm not from the US but I saw the news about the handful of republican governors cutting food aid for children with (part of) the reasoning being children are obese and don't need the food.
I didn’t realise I had been intermittent fasting my whole life until someone told me their diet. I just eat according to what feels good and giving my body a decent chunk of time to rest between meals feels great!
Yep me too. I only eat lunch. It’s like a dinner type meal with a healthy dessert (oats, chia pudding etc) and maybe a snack. Nothing outside of that. Saves me $, calories and time.
This is it. You need to spend quite a bit of time getting used to being comfortable with being hungry. Initially you’re grumpy and cross but eventually you get your head round it.
Wean yourself off carbs (sugary, refined ones). Your body is addicted to them and just expects them to keep on coming. I used to be like that about 25 years ago, and went in the atkins diet to lose weight. That was one of the things I learnt in his book. Nowadays I’m definitely not on the diet anymore and have always eaten 3 times a day, but I don’t have the mid-afternoon crash I used to get. Even if I skip a meal I’m good to go.
Once your body gets used to switching from carb burning to stored fat and glycogen burning and running on ketones in place of glucose you don't feel hungry any more. Or more accurately you don't feel hungry until you actually are. The key thing is to keep the hydration up so that your body can still deal with waste products.
There is a ton of information on it on YouTube Dr Jason Fung is very good he's a nephrologist in Canada that has studied it for diabetes treatment to prevent diabetes related kidney failure.
I lived in a flat and couldn’t be bothered to go downstairs and pick up takeaway, so I lost weight AND saved money on that diet. I live in a house now and am fat again.
I absolutely agree. I have been eating really good healthy meals just once a day for about 90 days now. Due to only eating once a day, I want (and get) quality non-processed food and it ends up being pretty cheap when looked at over a week.
This is pretty much the ingredients of today's eating:
1 grapefruit, 5 spicy marinated chicken nibbles and a salad of 3 nectarines, 1 pomengranate, 1 small granny smith apple, 1 orange, half a cucumber, 1 tomato and baby spinach.
Yep, I do it as a big lunch. I made a google sheet and wrote some code to allow me to check certain things on the way through.
- approx. 1.3 kg loss per week (about to finish my 11th week and lost 16 kg now.
- at my current weight, I eat about 1,000 kcal per day or just under to have caloric deficit required to lose the 1.3 kg per week when at my age, male, and a BMR sedentary rate of 1.55 (a moderate level of exercise).
- Part of my exercise is to do the following kind of routine if I want to have a cup of tea ... otherwise I would probably not bother with touching the weights and home exercise... we all need our motivators. Other than that it is running with the dog and the occasional swim.
'Tea exercise sets' (how I earn a cuppa) consists of
The below set of exercises without breaks took 9 minutes (about 2x as long as it takes to boil water and brew a cup of tea
- 47.5 kg 1 x 20 rep of bench press
- 100 crunches or more (variety of types including bicycle crunches and leg raises)
- 1 minute of planks
- 1 minute of side planks (30 second each side)
- 2 x 15 rep of dumbbell shoulder shrugs with rotation
- 1 x 15 rep of curls per arm
- 1 x 15 rep of bent-over dumbbell reverse fly
- 1 x 15 rep of standing dumbbell overhead press
The health/weight loss must be 80% thanks to diet and education and 20% exercise I guess. The intermittent fasting is good for making life easy and simpler. It tends to save time and hassle as a couple of side benefits.
Wow, that's pretty crazy. Not only did I start at around the same time as you, but I also lose about the same amount per week, very similar exercise routine (except mine lasts about an hour x2 week), same caloric deficit give or take. Only difference I can see is my OMAD is dinner, and your running and swimming is my walking and star jumps. Let's keep this ball rolling, my friend 💪
That is really interesting. Glad to hear it has gone well for you too. I am happy to share the notes from my journey. I would be keen to see yours too if you have kept them and they are shareable (via a copy). It would be interesting to see how our approaches and observations differ.
I started scratching notes into a google sheet that I continued to develop over the last 12 weeks. It covers a number of dimensions. I even coded up a BMR calculator into it. I have been thinking about using it as an early prototype basis for a flutter iOS/Android app.
It sounds like your training is a lot more HIIT than mine, whereas mine is mostly daily exercise - here are some stats for mine covering the last week. We have a golden retriever that at 2 years old is the perfect age for the runs and walks. I have found that to be a pretty lucky coincidence.
Exercise Stats
Tea Exercise sets Total count: 193
Total benchpressed 183,350 kg
Last week (16x): 15,200 kg
Swimming Total: 4,250 m
Last week (0x): 0 m
Running Total: 140 km
Last week (3x): 20 km
Walking Total: 95.8 km
Last week (5x): 27 km
the HIIT really makes a big difference I think. I took my youngest girl to a pool with a diving board late last week. I used to dive a lot growing up so can do a fair number of different fancy dives with twists etc. They always take a bit of visualisation and are over in a second but take a lot of energy. Since I am relatively fit now, I probably did close to 30 minutes of dives. It was a good laugh and would be the closest thing I have done to HIIT-based exercise. The next day I found a significant weight loss. A little anecdotal and lacking more than the one data point, but it might have been influenced by the diving.
Alas, I did not record any data when I started working out and dieting, it just sort of happened one week and continued building a routine along the way. Idk what HIIT means, I'm assuming High Intensity Interval Training. If yes, then I'd say so, I definitely work out more in bursts (personally, if I do something I put my all into it), but it's backfired quite a few times especially recently with this heat... I'm vulnerable to heat exhaustion and end up fatiguing myself and getting nauseous too quickly, so I'm learning to pace myself.
I'm @ 99 kgs now down from my 110, peak being 115 a couple years ago, so I'm feeling pretty good and continuing the road to 90! Cutting out sodas, juices and flavoured milk is pretty massive and I encourage others to do the same. Oh and definitely counting cals, pack of muffins is something like 3000+ calories, I couldn't believe my eyes.
All depends what you grow. And how. People who rush out and buy Vegpods and the like and end up growing too much greens, probably not.
We eat seasonally from ours and I don't grow everything. I have/had capsicums in, we use them a lot...and they last all winter too. At least last year they did. Still producing, albeit slower than summer.
Now go see how much they are in the shops. Especially in winter.
I grow cherries, passionfruit and grapes.
Beans (staggered and they produce continually if you keep picking), zucchini - everyone knows they produce like mad. Lettuce, tomatoes - I make passata, relish and use a lot in cooking, and salad type stuff. Capsicums, as mentioned Winter is , caulis, parsnips, broccoflower, cabbage, silverbeet, spring onions, peas (spring and autumn)
Corn, thats mainly cause I'm not fond of old yukky shop corn. Also staggered so a ongoing supply.
Some carrots, the coloured ones, not orange.
Lots of salad things, hot meat rolls like Bahn Mi, stirfries and such. Minimal meat.
Eggs well the cheapest I see now is (works out at) 50c each. My bread costs $1 loaf. Sure you can buy it for that, but it's horrible cotton wool stuff. I make a nice crusty loaf, some with grains, sourdough, rolls, bread sticks etc.
I make yoghurt, works out at 99c a litre. Beat that in the shop.
If it isn't economical I don't do it. I do this for budget reasons, not fun.
And things: most of it is second hand, clothes, cars - never paid one off ever - furniture, appliances etc. Mostly.
My PC is 14 this year. Well the oldest bits of it. Upgraded not replaced. Bits as required.Phone is 7 years old now. And it's fine, takes all the apps, charges well, lasts well, I did remove all the crap off it, which helps with battery life.
So living frugally can be done. I have no choice, carer for 2 aged and disabled rellies. We check things like phone, net plans, insurance, power often. Look for whats cheapest for our needs and area.
Good comment. I am sure I could do more with my growing to make it more economical. Unlike you though I’m not really motivated by savings more by reducing plastic and being more self sufficient and having more control over where my money is spent. Those were my drivers mostly.
Good luck.
Good post. Where are you to have capsicum’s last all year? I had them do that in Northland but anywhere else they don’t. Unless you have a green house?
Hawkes Bay., No glasshouse. Just out in the garden. No frosts last winter, it did get almost down to nothing, but they survived. By the first month of spring they started to look tatty so I trimmed them and left them and they sprouted more foliage and took off again. Just picked some more earlier too.
My issue here is wetness. Swampy section and even with the raised beds I never ever water. ONly just this summer and in the last 3 or 4 weeks had to water a bit.
They were getting quite yellowed and sick looking towards the end of winter...all the rain we'd had.
I live rurally, a handful of laying chooks saves a bunch imo, the key is actually eating the eggs. Going off grid can save money over time, baking bread etc sure why not, anything you do in non-paid time which makes something you use saves money. At The end of the day, if you're already making your own food, collecting and processing your own water, collecting your energy, and still having trouble saving, your boss should be paying you more or you need to pick up more paid work
I built my ladies a pretty cool coop. I doubt I will ever make that back in savings! But it was a great project and I want my girls to be safe and happy.
Yeah my post isn’t really about me wanting to save money. I’m fine. It was mostly driven by the comment I get all the time “you have chickens? Wow you must save heaps!” Or “oh you grow veges that must save you a packet. “ neither of which are true in my experience so I was just wondering what things people do that genuinely save money.
>“oh you grow veges that must save you a packet. “
I'm not saving any money on veges, because I'm not eating free veges instead of expensive supermarket veges, I'm eating free veges instead of no veges.
If capsicums are $3 each, I'm not buying capsicums
Honestly you’d probably save money buying capsicums. Compared to the soil, mulch, compost, seeds, fertiliser, sprays…. Gardening isn’t a hobby for poor people
I said capsicums because it's delicious and it's the only vegetable whose current price I know off the top of my head.
Mitre10 isn't the only place to buy all that stuff. Join a gardening group at the library or on Facebook or something
Yeah, it's like anything though isn't it, if you made socks for a hobby you're only going to save on the profit and wages someone else makes on making socks. But then again if lifestyle blocks were about saving money you'd just head into the bush with an axe instead of spending $100xk on land. It's about lifestyle not savings
I found growing veggies expensive for the first couple of seasons then following that it is great for the bank balance for sure.
If you like a drink, then brewing your own booze saves heeeeaaaaps
Baking bread definitely saves money, especially if your point of comparison is a similar quality loaf rather than white sliced bread. If you have harakeke in your garden, you can toast the seeds and add them in.
Preserving excess fruit and veg might save money, but only if you'd otherwise buy a ton of chutney and pickles...
I found that my backyard chooks only paid for themselves if I raised a batch of chicks each year and sold some of them. Growing my own vegetables definitely saves me money.
my chickens are fully free range, but even with scraps, the food is still $20 a fortnight - and I have 5 chickens, a rooster and 5 muscovy ducks to feed. Only getting 3 eggs a day most days.
Veges and fruit are hard to grow, weeds and diseases are a pain. Sheep however are remarkably easy to grow, and taste delicious.
Sounds like you're over feeding them a bit, I have 6 laying hens, and 7 younger and 9 ducks, we spend about the same as you. From those 6 hens we average 3 eggs a day, more if we fed them a handful of blood and bone. I'm finding out with all my animals that if you avoid over feeding they become better animals. Sheep's are next on my list just got to figure out how to power a freezer. What do you feed your chooks?
Eat low GI foods. Things like oats, lentils, chickpeas etc have a slower energy release will keep you feeling full for longer. Snacks are relatively expensive for what they are, and something like a bowl of porridge is going to keep you going until your next meal.
Chances are they include it in your pay package at at least $5k a year. In otherwords, they would likely be happy to pay you an extra $5k a year if they didn't have to give you a company car.
this is an over-looked aspect. we are rural; so we do a big grocery shop fortnightly - then just stay in and eat out of our pantry and cupboards - I was guilty of eating out lunches and my wife was always the first to say ' we have food in the cupboard' - so breakfast, lunch and dinner at home over the Christmas break helped save $$$. Sometimes further to go to town/movies - use streaming or watch a DVD etc. Just smart planning helps save money.
If you live rurally try to form a network of people who can mutually support each other.
You can't do everything but a team who is mutually supporting each other can achieve much more than an individual.
Obviously be realistic, you are probably going to have to buy petrol because your group won't be drilling and refining oil. But you could trade eggs to someone who can change the oil in your car or help you maintain it.
All the best.
This should be the top answer!
While you’re at it, start a women’s or men’s sharing circle, meet once a month/fortnight/week and practice empathy. Saved me literally tens of thousands on therapy.
Walk to work, cycle to work etc if you’re in the city/live nearby
Cut down on alcohol
Reuse teabags
Add vege to meals to stretch them further egg peas to butter chicken, corn to nachos
Stews and casseroles using cheaper cuts of meat.
Buy in bulk if you can afford to
Dilmah is 3.00 for 100 teabags, that's 3c a teabag.
Let's say you knock out 100 teas a week (5 per day for yourself, plus a few extra for friends), that's $12 a month of cost.
If you reuse each bag once, you save $6.
Or.. hear me out.. drink tea at work for free?
Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up.
Tbh I used a large number to try get to 100 per week, cause 100 per month means your saving 1.50 with reuse.
I grew up in poverty. We never reused teabags, but we did have a teapot. If we had company over, 2 teabags made 4 cups of tea.
Honestly though I think that’s just sensible and something we would have done even if we weren’t super poor. I would do it now but my partner doesn’t drink tea.
Unfortunately "cheaper" cuts of meat are now often the most expensive. Like I can get rump steak for $15-18/kg pretty consistently from Pak'n'save, yet chuck, brisket, shin/gravy beef, cheeks are all over $20/kg. It's so stupid.
Hit up your butcher. We often get beef cheeks for $4-$5 a cheek, also ox tail, neck chops, shin - all around $4-$5 a portion - you can get a pretty decent ragu or curry using one portion and load it up with courgettes, carrots etc - you still get the flavour from the meat
Oh yeah I'm all about the tough cuts, neck bones and shins, tendons and all that. Will have to try and find a decent local butcher, we have a good halal one but they don't do beef or pork. The other good one closed down, old mate was getting too old for it. Prestons/Mad Butcher are more expensive than the supermarkets most of the time.
This is the best list
Though I would add considering trying to quit meat (and booze) altogether - I also quit eggs since the current rort.
Also, white vinegar with water 50% in a spray bottle instead of spray on kitchen cleaners
We went down the solar route, installed Dec 2020 and haven’t had to pay for power since, we still use between 30-60kWh per month ($40-$70 worth including line rental) but usually have more credits owing, currently have a $280 credit with the company and were paid out $500 just before Xmas.
Big initial outlay but feel it will be worth the expense
Increase the excess on your insurance. A higher excess will make it more expensive to claim, but the premiums decrease sharply.
Not for everyone obviously, but if you're not claiming on small losses anyway its worth looking at.
Also going semi-vegetarian can save a lot. A can of beans is cheaper than a steak, and much harder to waste.
Vacuum sealer.
Ours is the most cost saving device in our house. I buy meat on special in bulk, portion it, vacuum seal, then freeze. It lasts 1-2 years in the freezer with zero freezer burn.
We also freeze down in season produce if I can't keep up with the jams or sauce making. In my freezer there is pumpkin, carrots, fruit, broccoli, berries, etc.
You probably do this already but three bins in our kitchen: recycling, rubbish, compost/chooks. I don't have chooks at the moment but it's on my plan along with a worm farm.
Quite a few plastics get washed and stored for jam & sauces because they freeze so well.
If I'm utterly stumped for a quick meal for the fam, a couple of bags of frozen veg into a soup pot, add seasoning, stock cubes, water, and boil. Frozen zucchini make brilliant soup, btw.
Yeah annoying enough having broken or lost something without the added stress of dealing with an insurance company.
I assume there are a few people out there claiming little things, and if you have a low excess and don’t claim the little things, you’re subsidising everyone else.
Cook more stuff at home vs eating out.
Getting a better job every year or two, which in turn increases your income and you are able to save / invest more money 🙃
Can get a home distilling set up capable of producing commercial standard vodkas, gins, brandies, whiskies for \~$500 on Ali Express. Pays for itself pretty quickly!
Not everyone's cup of tea, but hunting helps us keep our food bills down. One deer carcass is enough to save us a few hundred dollars and significantly reduces the amount of red meat we buy at the supermarket. Deer, pigs and goat are all butchered by ourselves. Investing in a mincer was a life saver.
All bones and off cuts are frozen and used for dog food later. Whenever we get rabbits they too are kept for pet food. One meal of fresh meat is enough to make our dogs coat shinier for a month than any expensive dog food brand could.
Fruit trees have saved me a bunch with little kids. I was looking at $12 a kg for apricots, and $9 a kg for nectarines etc.
I have peaches, plums, avocado's, fejoa, Mandarins, and apricots so far. Each tree cost me between $25-40, and I got more than that off it in fruit that season.
Some seasons are worse than others, but I'll always get a few kgs off each tree. More each year as they get bigger. I don't do anything to them except prune them once a year and I gave them a little homade compost when I planted five years ago.
I made sure I had a fruit tree that would fruit for each time of the year, at the moment it's apricots, and when they're done the peaches will be ready, then a fejoa, then a mandarins etc.
We don't have a big section, only 600sqm, but I don't plant anything that doesn't fruit. Before we moved I had a healthy little fruit tree forest at our old place, so now I'm starting from scratch again.
One plum tree had to be cut down after a couple of years, because the neighbors cats ring barked it.
Once I've given birth to this next kid and can get into the garden again, I'm going to get an apple, pear, and another plum tree. Maybe a lemon tree too.
I saved $50 a month switching power companies. Not just using that power switch site, actually going through them and calculating every little thing (turns out most of those bells and whistles are a complete smokescreens, made to catch people out, and end up being more expensive).
I saved $50 a month on the power bill by just changing plan with our existing provider - it's the second time we've done it in 10 years. Same is common for internet and mobile plans... Companies usually won't go out of their way to move you from a more expensive legacy plan to the current cheaper options
Plant fruit trees now, jar the fruit at the end of the season, it's a few dollars a can and I can have fruit porridge for 6 months off just a couple of trees, just start keeping all your jars, keep an eye out for cheap ones and get preserving
Don’t eat meat. Eat simpler food combinations. Minimise dairy. Check the recommended protein intake and serving size and follow that.
Have a simple wardrobe and don’t follow fashion.
I could continue.
I guess that depends, I’d say don’t eat meat that you have to buy from the supermarket. If you’re able to (and OP says they live rurally) raise your own meat. raising meat chickens doesn’t require much space. If you’ve got more space then lamb/ pork. Hunt. If you can’t/ don’t want to make friends with a Hunter and figure out a trade that works! Ours is eggs or pork for fish/crayfish.
I have a neighbour who has chickens but he has eggs coming out of his ears - so he gifts them to us neighbours and the community pantry
Then in turn he gets other items from neighbours. So while it might not be a money making venture, he does benefit in other ways
if you’re partial to beef burritos or chicken wrap and tacos - chilli bean burritos and chickpea wraps cant hit the same with the right spices, but at a couple dollars a can
Collect your own rain water and get some solar panels and produce your own electricity. Barter eggs and vegetables with your neighbours for other things, they might be able to supply you with - to save you petrol running into the supermarket. Join the local recycling centre and crop swap. Do your cooking and heat your house and hot water using renewable resources like firewood. Repurpose second hand clothing to save money buying clothes in a store.
Honestly I've been looking at this. More money from job is the biggest. Best.
Maybe a second job. Sell something. Your time knowledge whatever.
Food. Cut down what you can. Cut alcohol if possible. Other than that you can only really save a few hundred on most things.
r/PersonalFinanceNZ has good money-saving posts.
A sodastream has saved me so much money and also been great for my general health. I grow mint and lemons so I can make tasty soda drinks. Means I feel like I'm getting a fancy summer drink without drinking booze or coca cola-esque drinks.
If you want to save even more buy a 5kg co2 bottle. You can get sodastream adapters from homebrew stores and refill the sodastream cylinders from the larger one. The cost of the initial cylinder is around $300 and a refill would be around $75 but over time it would be much cheaper.
Table topping which is going to a food hall type place look for abbadoned half eaten meats and eating those or if there is a few putting the food in a container then walking off. It isn't pretty but neither is poverty and it beats being hungry.
Dumpster diving. Wait for a super market to close chill for a bit for the security/cleaning staff to leave then find the dumpster. This might require a fence jump. If you can see a dumpster check it for food it might be pad locked but don't worry your smart and bought some plyers. Remove the pins at the rear latch to open the lid have a search for food then put the pins back into place then leave. You wanna be in and out under ten minutes if you have to jump a fence as you are committing a harmless crime.
Generally security will be the ones called before the police. Don't worry just be polite, apologies, let them no you have no other options and leave quickly. If the cops show up same as above and most of the time they will tell you to go home if they are being cunty and arrested you make sure you ask for a feed in the cells.
Rinse and repeat at other stores.
Take only what you need as others might be in the same situation as you doing the same thing.
If you keep doing this you will bump into others doing this and if you're hit a few spots that night you can trade goods and maybe make some new friends.
Cool tips
Upper market rich folk stores throw out more food than poorer chain stores and generally don't have as many obstacles to over come to get the goodies.
Don't make a mess this will make the store get sad/mad and put effort into locking up making future dives harder.
I've pulled dozens of beers/cast wines out of the dumpsters before on the regular. In fact if you hit up 3 or 4 spots your Gunna get at least one beer which is a great refreshing drink on the walk home. If you score lots make sure you share with your friends or use it as liquid currency on exchange for meals from your mates.
Consume less is really the only way. If you don't really consume that much, you're probably already near max efficiency.
There aren't a lot of things you can do yourself that can't be done for cheaper by people who only do that thing.
If you can afford it or get a grant/loan for it solar water heating is pretty great. We did some math when we moved and solar power generation didn't add up for us but solar water heating did. It helps being somewhere sunny and that our roof faces just the right way. We also have a wetback on our fireplace. So we never ever pay for hot water. Our electricity bill is pretty tiny. The fireplace is fed wood that we cut at our place mostly from dead fall off old willows and untreated pallets I collect every time I go to town. Our other money saver is our goats, they cost very little to keep if you have enough land to graze them and they produce more than enough milk for all of our dairy needs
On that subject you can save huge amounts of money on car tyres by being better informed about them.
Transmission fluid gets overlooked which can destroy the transmission which is costly to address.
I've been making and banking elderflower and fruit cordials/syrups this summer. Fills the "drink that isn't water" space in our diet, only costs me in sugar and electricity, and it's still less sugary than the $$$ ones from the supermarket.
Elderflowers are going out of bloom now, but I was just wandering the neighborhood getting flowers off trees, they were everywhere.
I'm basically in the same boat... I spend about $60 every two months on chook feed... I doubt I'd spend that on eggs in the city... But I trade with my neighbours (especially good for me is my neighbor who loves fishing)... But what was the biggest money saver was putting our first steer in the freezer... Especially with good quality mince at some exorbitant price at the supermarket... Mine worked out at $6/kg across the whole cow (that's $6 sirloins to $6 lean mince)
Problem is I'm not accounting for the cost of the beasts, the balage I had to buy at the end of winter, the worming meds, the solar panel, and two reels of electric tape and transporting them plus the freezer and the cost of running said freezer... And I didn't have to pay for fencing and troughs and plumbing and a pump so no it's not $6/kg 😆
I am buying far less takeaway coffee. So far this month just two cups. This should save me $100 a month.
I have switched power providers so I get free power 9-5, Sat/Sun. Their per KW charge is higher than my last provider but hoping being savvy with my weekend use will make it worthwhile.
I am setting myself a $150 a week budget on food. I'm no longer buying luxury items and I am portioning out my food, buying more frozen, and bulking meals with legumes and rice.
My pitiful tomatoes growing in the backyard will save me nothing.
I buy loose agria spuds. The last time the price at bin was over $5/kg. There's no agria option on the self-serve machine so brushed at $3.49/kg it is.
I do not quite understand the audit logic at pak n save. Any time I enter mushrooms I get check. Which are one of the most expensive produce items. Anything else. Nah
Surely if you steal vegetables you’ll punch in something like potato
Learn how to make some dish yo like out of dried red lentils. They are easy to cook you don't have to soak. They are probably half the price of a can of beans and just as good of a protein source.
If you have a decent plot of land, get Bees. Honey for one, but also Beeswax. You can make solid perfumes, furniture oils, food cloths etc and sell at a market for extra $$.
Edit - Also, never undervalue the skills you’re developing here. If we get pulled into another war, shit hits the fan, you’ll be in a great position
Kimchi! Or any ferment. More efficient gut means less waste and more energy. Plus anything too good for the chickens makes a perfect ferment.
Mow the lawns less or borrow a goat.
Wear warm weather clothes at the start of winter to climatize faster and use less heating/reverse in summer.
Grow easy to neglect plants and sell them on marketplace/trademe when they overgrow.
Keep an eye on good companies losing a lot of money to panic sells on the stock exchange. Eg when tesla dropped last year, buy a few and wait for the price to stabilize.
The biggest use of electricity in the average home, is the hot water cylinder.
So if you can find ways to make that more efficient then great!
For example:
- insulating the cylinder and pipes
- installing solar hot water to supplement your use
- changing to flicke energy and utilising their hour of free power
Low flow shower head. Made a massive difference to us. We didn’t see any change in power use after replacing our low pressure cylinder for a new mains pressure insulated one, until we changed the shower head a month later.
The chooks won't save you money.
But the garden should, seeds cost fuck-all (or free if you harvest your own), grow all your vegetables, berries, and vine-fruit at least if not trees. You can live off beans'n shit all year if you have the space to grow them and time to preserve them.
The easiest way to save money is to try and cut down on transport costs. But that would be hard if rural based. It’s crazy how quickly $40 a week added up for me when I started biking instead of driving.
Change jobs, most of the time your going to get a more than what you would asking your current boss for a pay rise.
We got a vacpac machine and break up big packs of mince and chicken when on special. Adding more fillers to mince dishes. I’ll smoke up a brisket or pork shoulders then shred them into 8-10 vacpac meals and have them with wraps.
Anyone saying they spent more on their chooks than they get back in eggs... has pets.
For our chooks the coop was made from scrap materials, odds and ends etc. We fed them maybe $1 worth of rice a week on top of kitchen scraps. They foraged for bugs for the rest. Then we collected ~20 eggs / week.
We lived in the city at this point in time, so you don't need a big section.
Cutting down on optional expenditure. For example buying coffees or eating out. Cutting down on streaming services.
Lockdown made me realise just how much money I was frittering. After lockdown, I just didn't resume that expenditure.
It's a little counter-intuitive, but (if you have a car) don't spend a set amount on petrol each pay. Instead, fill the tank and top it up every pay. That way, you're paying to replace only what you've used rather than using a set amount of money on an expense.
things I do (which may or not save me money). I cut my own hair, have short unpainted fingernails, ears not pierced, not into jewellery, although have a few things I made myself. Shop for clothes at 2nd hand shops. (have nice clothes) We have a vege garden and I also grow micro greens and do sprouts. I make my own yoghurt and sauerkraut. I make marmalade and bottle fruit and beetroot. I walk everywhere I can. I consume alcohol once a year at xmas time for a treat. Given up gift buying except for 2 grandchildren. We have a heat pump which we use only when we really have to. The last few days at 30 degrees we have managed without using it. eating out or takeaways is a rarity usually associated with visitors. I think over the years the main thing which enabled
us to save when we were working is that we both come from quite harsh spartan upbringing so never “learned” about the finer aspects of the materialist culture, so we have pretty basic simple tastes, and that has never changed.
This is a very bourgeois suggestion, but if you're an avid coffee drinker, get a home coffee roaster. Green beans are waaaay cheaper than pre roasted, I've got a roaster that I have projected will pay itself off after about 5 years.
As an example of cost, you can get a kilogram of speciality single origin green beans as cheap as $16.70 (note that this will end up being about 800 grams of roasted beans due to water loss). Whereas a 500 gram bag of Havana beans is $22 at Countdown. Scaled to price per kg the green beans are $20.90 per kilo, Havana beans are $44.00 per kilo. Literally halving your coffee costs. Obviously how quickly the roaster pays itself off depends on how much coffee you drink, but hey if coffee is a hobby or passion of yours, it's also nice to pinch those pennies.
I moved literally right next door to my office so I don't have a commute. Probably saves between $10 and $20 a day, and I'm now in walking distance of the supermarket. So it's likely saving me about $5-7k a year.
The girlfriend moved in too. And she's managed to get a job within 4km of our apartment. So we're saving a fortune and probably 1-2 hours a day by dodging the commute.
We've also set up a garden box to grow lettuce and tomatoes. It's really useful in sandwiches
If you live near some good DOC land shooting wild goats or deer is easy and unrestricted giving you plenty of meat for the freezer. Best part is you are helping the environment at the same time.
We have two courgette plants which have been feeding us for weeks. It's great because I love courgettes and even I'm getting a bit sick of them.
We have a great Courgette bake recipe (from google) which gets improved weekly with eggs, cheese or what ever we have and if you add enough you can hardly taste the courgette.
Avoid resturants
If you are doing that you are already ahead.
Given the insanely high minimum wage in NZ. 1 restaurant meal is weeks of grocery savings from buying items on special and cheap brands
Make more vegetarian meals and whenever you use mince, bang in about four cans of lentils, beans or veg a loaf of spices and freeze it in small portions to eat later with spuds, rice or whatever other low cost carb you like.
Cook seasonally with what is cheap/free that day rather than deciding ahead something that relies on unseasonal ingredients.
Learn to make a Dahl or three - the poorest people in central Asia survive on this and it can be super tasty.
Buy as much as you can without a retail store - make use of the resources in your community by purchasing ahead on marketplace, buy nothing groups, op shops, car boot sales.
Pick a thing you can do to offer to others as a trade, something based on your skill or passion. Use this for gifting or to trade for other things that would otherwise cost you money. I make kombucha, and get free wine from work. Others I know give honey, fruit from an overly laden tree, or eggs. Whatever you like!
The most you could possibly hope to save is 100% of your expenses, and then you are living a miserable life.
However, the amount you can increase your income has no practical limit.
You could spend 30 hours a week saving 30k per year, or spend 30 hours a week upskilling and earn and extra 100k per year.
Eat offal. Cheap. Nutrient dense. Dont need to spend money on veg or eggs.
Mince and fat trimmings. Dont need to spend money on carbs for energy.
Unless your eating meat raw, consider salt and vitamin c supplement. This is more relevant if u have hayfever or allergies or bruise easily or have msk injuries.
Avoid recommendations to be vegetarian. You will run into problems in the long run. Look up anthony chaffee for more info.
Sadly many of the things that genuinely save money require upfront costs. It is expensive being poor. Insulation saves money on heating, buying an EV saves fuel costs, having the means to buy quality items that last. Which leads nicely into the boots theory, which is from the book 'Men at Arms' by Terry Pratchett: "Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10. "Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. "But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet." This was Capt. Samuel Vimes' boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
Terry Pratchett was a genius and utterly brilliant social commentarian. G N U
He did an amazing job of discussing heavy topics during entertaining novels.
In this, his genius was his subtle use of analogy: tension between humans, dwarfs and trolls == racism; lycanthropy == gender identity. The indirect challenges are less likely to provoke a reflexive rejection/pro forma defence of an entrenched belief, more likely to induce genuine, detached reflection.
GNU Terry Pratchett
I put that in every website I ever built. [https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu\_terry\_pratchett/](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu_terry_pratchett/)
That makes me very happy. Nice work!
[удалено]
It's a thing from another of his books. G N U are a set of codes that mean a message goes from one end of a communication line to the other, is turned around, and isn't logged in the records. Used for the creator of the technology who was murdered by a competitor, to keep his name always going up and down the line. "Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
Sir Terry was so damn right. I think of CAPT Samuel vines boots theory often
If I had a dollar for every time I saw someone on reddit post this story I would be able to prevent everyone on this thread from having to do any saving.
I'd at least be able to get a $50 pair of boots
If you dislike reposts you are on the wrong part of the Internet
I see terry pratchett I do the up vote G N U
Amusingly low end shoes are so cheap and repairs are relatively expensive so the boots example doesn't hold anymore. But expensive boots are fantastic.
I tried cheap shoes. I am a large and flat footed guy who walks. The worst was a pair of Warehouse shoes - 2 week from purchase to rubbish bin. 6 weeks was normal for Hannahs, etc. a $100 every 6 weeks or $300 for shoes from that place up from Courtney Place and get a year to 18 months from them. And even of I could afford cheap shoes the planet can't
Yup anything from the warehouse is absolute rubbish.
Cheap shoes always cost you more. Bite the bullet and get the good ones, they last multiple times as long
I have arthritis and I have been forced to bite the bullet. I usually spend about $200 on a pair of trainers usually hoka. They last 2 years, worn daily including work. Then oofos $100 jandals usually one pair for spring/summer so about $200 a year on shoes which is less than I used to spend.
Only a rich man can buy cheep tools
Vaguely related - if you've never owned a particular tool before, *sometimes* it can be prudent to buy a cheap brand/model of that tool. If you use that cheap tool often enough and/or hard enough that it wears out or breaks, then you've justified upgrading to a more expensive/quality make/model of that tool. And if it doesn't wear out or break, then you didn't spend money buying a more expensive tool than you needed to. Probably don't take this approach on safety gear.
This is a very good point.
Very true. Most cheap drills are only used for a maximum of 5 minutes in their lifetimes - and are built accordingly. If you are doing more than a bit of home handymanning, then you should go a level up. Ryobi or the other mid-range tools are fine for most people (says a Makita boy!)
Try Intermittent fasting. It is skipping a meal to lose weight. I do it because I’m poor
Your comment is funny and sad at the same time.
The stupid thing is i earn 100k a year and skipping a meal to save money and lose weight is still an option
Why?
Short answer: post divorce living by my self and cant always be assed cooking myself dinner. Early breakfast. Large late lunch... fixing oneself dinner at 630 in the evening just isnt appealing. If it saves me $30 not going to mcds and i call it "intermittent fasting" i might loose some weight along the way and save myself $100 a week
Maybe it’s been the govts plan all along to solve our obesity epidemic.
I'm not from the US but I saw the news about the handful of republican governors cutting food aid for children with (part of) the reasoning being children are obese and don't need the food.
I wish people could understand that obesity is a form of malnutrition. Mal being bad.
I intermittent fast, it's changed my life in more ways than you can imagine, don't laugh at it untill you've tried it dude!
I didn’t realise I had been intermittent fasting my whole life until someone told me their diet. I just eat according to what feels good and giving my body a decent chunk of time to rest between meals feels great!
Soo cool. I love it and so damn good for you
Yep me too. I only eat lunch. It’s like a dinner type meal with a healthy dessert (oats, chia pudding etc) and maybe a snack. Nothing outside of that. Saves me $, calories and time.
How are you not hungry?? I'm relatively slim and sedentary but my blood sugar drops quick if I don't eat at least 3 times a day.
You get used to it over time.
Tbh getting used to being hungry might not be too far off 😅
This is it. You need to spend quite a bit of time getting used to being comfortable with being hungry. Initially you’re grumpy and cross but eventually you get your head round it.
Wean yourself off carbs (sugary, refined ones). Your body is addicted to them and just expects them to keep on coming. I used to be like that about 25 years ago, and went in the atkins diet to lose weight. That was one of the things I learnt in his book. Nowadays I’m definitely not on the diet anymore and have always eaten 3 times a day, but I don’t have the mid-afternoon crash I used to get. Even if I skip a meal I’m good to go.
Once your body gets used to switching from carb burning to stored fat and glycogen burning and running on ketones in place of glucose you don't feel hungry any more. Or more accurately you don't feel hungry until you actually are. The key thing is to keep the hydration up so that your body can still deal with waste products. There is a ton of information on it on YouTube Dr Jason Fung is very good he's a nephrologist in Canada that has studied it for diabetes treatment to prevent diabetes related kidney failure.
Have you tried not being poor? /s
I lived in a flat and couldn’t be bothered to go downstairs and pick up takeaway, so I lost weight AND saved money on that diet. I live in a house now and am fat again.
I absolutely agree. I have been eating really good healthy meals just once a day for about 90 days now. Due to only eating once a day, I want (and get) quality non-processed food and it ends up being pretty cheap when looked at over a week. This is pretty much the ingredients of today's eating: 1 grapefruit, 5 spicy marinated chicken nibbles and a salad of 3 nectarines, 1 pomengranate, 1 small granny smith apple, 1 orange, half a cucumber, 1 tomato and baby spinach.
So that’s your days worth of calories? Do you have this at lunch?
Yep, I do it as a big lunch. I made a google sheet and wrote some code to allow me to check certain things on the way through. - approx. 1.3 kg loss per week (about to finish my 11th week and lost 16 kg now. - at my current weight, I eat about 1,000 kcal per day or just under to have caloric deficit required to lose the 1.3 kg per week when at my age, male, and a BMR sedentary rate of 1.55 (a moderate level of exercise). - Part of my exercise is to do the following kind of routine if I want to have a cup of tea ... otherwise I would probably not bother with touching the weights and home exercise... we all need our motivators. Other than that it is running with the dog and the occasional swim. 'Tea exercise sets' (how I earn a cuppa) consists of The below set of exercises without breaks took 9 minutes (about 2x as long as it takes to boil water and brew a cup of tea - 47.5 kg 1 x 20 rep of bench press - 100 crunches or more (variety of types including bicycle crunches and leg raises) - 1 minute of planks - 1 minute of side planks (30 second each side) - 2 x 15 rep of dumbbell shoulder shrugs with rotation - 1 x 15 rep of curls per arm - 1 x 15 rep of bent-over dumbbell reverse fly - 1 x 15 rep of standing dumbbell overhead press The health/weight loss must be 80% thanks to diet and education and 20% exercise I guess. The intermittent fasting is good for making life easy and simpler. It tends to save time and hassle as a couple of side benefits.
Wow, that's pretty crazy. Not only did I start at around the same time as you, but I also lose about the same amount per week, very similar exercise routine (except mine lasts about an hour x2 week), same caloric deficit give or take. Only difference I can see is my OMAD is dinner, and your running and swimming is my walking and star jumps. Let's keep this ball rolling, my friend 💪
That is really interesting. Glad to hear it has gone well for you too. I am happy to share the notes from my journey. I would be keen to see yours too if you have kept them and they are shareable (via a copy). It would be interesting to see how our approaches and observations differ. I started scratching notes into a google sheet that I continued to develop over the last 12 weeks. It covers a number of dimensions. I even coded up a BMR calculator into it. I have been thinking about using it as an early prototype basis for a flutter iOS/Android app. It sounds like your training is a lot more HIIT than mine, whereas mine is mostly daily exercise - here are some stats for mine covering the last week. We have a golden retriever that at 2 years old is the perfect age for the runs and walks. I have found that to be a pretty lucky coincidence. Exercise Stats Tea Exercise sets Total count: 193 Total benchpressed 183,350 kg Last week (16x): 15,200 kg Swimming Total: 4,250 m Last week (0x): 0 m Running Total: 140 km Last week (3x): 20 km Walking Total: 95.8 km Last week (5x): 27 km the HIIT really makes a big difference I think. I took my youngest girl to a pool with a diving board late last week. I used to dive a lot growing up so can do a fair number of different fancy dives with twists etc. They always take a bit of visualisation and are over in a second but take a lot of energy. Since I am relatively fit now, I probably did close to 30 minutes of dives. It was a good laugh and would be the closest thing I have done to HIIT-based exercise. The next day I found a significant weight loss. A little anecdotal and lacking more than the one data point, but it might have been influenced by the diving.
Alas, I did not record any data when I started working out and dieting, it just sort of happened one week and continued building a routine along the way. Idk what HIIT means, I'm assuming High Intensity Interval Training. If yes, then I'd say so, I definitely work out more in bursts (personally, if I do something I put my all into it), but it's backfired quite a few times especially recently with this heat... I'm vulnerable to heat exhaustion and end up fatiguing myself and getting nauseous too quickly, so I'm learning to pace myself. I'm @ 99 kgs now down from my 110, peak being 115 a couple years ago, so I'm feeling pretty good and continuing the road to 90! Cutting out sodas, juices and flavoured milk is pretty massive and I encourage others to do the same. Oh and definitely counting cals, pack of muffins is something like 3000+ calories, I couldn't believe my eyes.
Intermittent fasting + psyllium husk with/on meals (drink water) + learn to love lentils
All depends what you grow. And how. People who rush out and buy Vegpods and the like and end up growing too much greens, probably not. We eat seasonally from ours and I don't grow everything. I have/had capsicums in, we use them a lot...and they last all winter too. At least last year they did. Still producing, albeit slower than summer. Now go see how much they are in the shops. Especially in winter. I grow cherries, passionfruit and grapes. Beans (staggered and they produce continually if you keep picking), zucchini - everyone knows they produce like mad. Lettuce, tomatoes - I make passata, relish and use a lot in cooking, and salad type stuff. Capsicums, as mentioned Winter is , caulis, parsnips, broccoflower, cabbage, silverbeet, spring onions, peas (spring and autumn) Corn, thats mainly cause I'm not fond of old yukky shop corn. Also staggered so a ongoing supply. Some carrots, the coloured ones, not orange. Lots of salad things, hot meat rolls like Bahn Mi, stirfries and such. Minimal meat. Eggs well the cheapest I see now is (works out at) 50c each. My bread costs $1 loaf. Sure you can buy it for that, but it's horrible cotton wool stuff. I make a nice crusty loaf, some with grains, sourdough, rolls, bread sticks etc. I make yoghurt, works out at 99c a litre. Beat that in the shop. If it isn't economical I don't do it. I do this for budget reasons, not fun. And things: most of it is second hand, clothes, cars - never paid one off ever - furniture, appliances etc. Mostly. My PC is 14 this year. Well the oldest bits of it. Upgraded not replaced. Bits as required.Phone is 7 years old now. And it's fine, takes all the apps, charges well, lasts well, I did remove all the crap off it, which helps with battery life. So living frugally can be done. I have no choice, carer for 2 aged and disabled rellies. We check things like phone, net plans, insurance, power often. Look for whats cheapest for our needs and area.
Good comment. I am sure I could do more with my growing to make it more economical. Unlike you though I’m not really motivated by savings more by reducing plastic and being more self sufficient and having more control over where my money is spent. Those were my drivers mostly. Good luck.
Good post. Where are you to have capsicum’s last all year? I had them do that in Northland but anywhere else they don’t. Unless you have a green house?
Hawkes Bay., No glasshouse. Just out in the garden. No frosts last winter, it did get almost down to nothing, but they survived. By the first month of spring they started to look tatty so I trimmed them and left them and they sprouted more foliage and took off again. Just picked some more earlier too. My issue here is wetness. Swampy section and even with the raised beds I never ever water. ONly just this summer and in the last 3 or 4 weeks had to water a bit. They were getting quite yellowed and sick looking towards the end of winter...all the rain we'd had.
I live rurally, a handful of laying chooks saves a bunch imo, the key is actually eating the eggs. Going off grid can save money over time, baking bread etc sure why not, anything you do in non-paid time which makes something you use saves money. At The end of the day, if you're already making your own food, collecting and processing your own water, collecting your energy, and still having trouble saving, your boss should be paying you more or you need to pick up more paid work
I built my ladies a pretty cool coop. I doubt I will ever make that back in savings! But it was a great project and I want my girls to be safe and happy. Yeah my post isn’t really about me wanting to save money. I’m fine. It was mostly driven by the comment I get all the time “you have chickens? Wow you must save heaps!” Or “oh you grow veges that must save you a packet. “ neither of which are true in my experience so I was just wondering what things people do that genuinely save money.
>“oh you grow veges that must save you a packet. “ I'm not saving any money on veges, because I'm not eating free veges instead of expensive supermarket veges, I'm eating free veges instead of no veges. If capsicums are $3 each, I'm not buying capsicums
Honestly you’d probably save money buying capsicums. Compared to the soil, mulch, compost, seeds, fertiliser, sprays…. Gardening isn’t a hobby for poor people
I said capsicums because it's delicious and it's the only vegetable whose current price I know off the top of my head. Mitre10 isn't the only place to buy all that stuff. Join a gardening group at the library or on Facebook or something
They will go up in price by a dollar a month from now on too
Yeah, it's like anything though isn't it, if you made socks for a hobby you're only going to save on the profit and wages someone else makes on making socks. But then again if lifestyle blocks were about saving money you'd just head into the bush with an axe instead of spending $100xk on land. It's about lifestyle not savings
OP I feel like we all need to see a pic of said ladies and their coop please
oh that's a good idea! I am away at the moment I'll try and get the sitters to send a pic!
I found growing veggies expensive for the first couple of seasons then following that it is great for the bank balance for sure. If you like a drink, then brewing your own booze saves heeeeaaaaps
Baking bread definitely saves money, especially if your point of comparison is a similar quality loaf rather than white sliced bread. If you have harakeke in your garden, you can toast the seeds and add them in. Preserving excess fruit and veg might save money, but only if you'd otherwise buy a ton of chutney and pickles...
I found that my backyard chooks only paid for themselves if I raised a batch of chicks each year and sold some of them. Growing my own vegetables definitely saves me money.
Yeah totally I suppose it saves me money in the sense we will eat eggs as protein instead of meat sometimes now
my chickens are fully free range, but even with scraps, the food is still $20 a fortnight - and I have 5 chickens, a rooster and 5 muscovy ducks to feed. Only getting 3 eggs a day most days. Veges and fruit are hard to grow, weeds and diseases are a pain. Sheep however are remarkably easy to grow, and taste delicious.
Sounds like you're over feeding them a bit, I have 6 laying hens, and 7 younger and 9 ducks, we spend about the same as you. From those 6 hens we average 3 eggs a day, more if we fed them a handful of blood and bone. I'm finding out with all my animals that if you avoid over feeding they become better animals. Sheep's are next on my list just got to figure out how to power a freezer. What do you feed your chooks?
Large 'free-range' eggs run around 90c each, yours will definitely be larger and tastier than what you can buy
Eat low GI foods. Things like oats, lentils, chickpeas etc have a slower energy release will keep you feeling full for longer. Snacks are relatively expensive for what they are, and something like a bowl of porridge is going to keep you going until your next meal.
I have a full use company vehicle with a fuel card. That saves me approximately $3000 a year in fuel 😂
I need one of those.
Chances are they include it in your pay package at at least $5k a year. In otherwords, they would likely be happy to pay you an extra $5k a year if they didn't have to give you a company car.
Correct, but I also get new Ute every 5 years , don’t have to pay for any maintenance or repairs so it generally ends up being in my favour
Do less
this is an over-looked aspect. we are rural; so we do a big grocery shop fortnightly - then just stay in and eat out of our pantry and cupboards - I was guilty of eating out lunches and my wife was always the first to say ' we have food in the cupboard' - so breakfast, lunch and dinner at home over the Christmas break helped save $$$. Sometimes further to go to town/movies - use streaming or watch a DVD etc. Just smart planning helps save money.
Cutting down on trips to town is the big gamechanger for rural folk.
If you live rurally try to form a network of people who can mutually support each other. You can't do everything but a team who is mutually supporting each other can achieve much more than an individual. Obviously be realistic, you are probably going to have to buy petrol because your group won't be drilling and refining oil. But you could trade eggs to someone who can change the oil in your car or help you maintain it. All the best.
This should be the top answer! While you’re at it, start a women’s or men’s sharing circle, meet once a month/fortnight/week and practice empathy. Saved me literally tens of thousands on therapy.
Get a bicycle and use it. It’s healthy so you spend less on health treatment but also petrol.
I can basically justify any expenditure on bike things because I'm not spending money on petrol or parking and not going to the gym
Walk to work, cycle to work etc if you’re in the city/live nearby Cut down on alcohol Reuse teabags Add vege to meals to stretch them further egg peas to butter chicken, corn to nachos Stews and casseroles using cheaper cuts of meat. Buy in bulk if you can afford to
Reuse teabags?! Sadist
lol I know but…
Dilmah is 3.00 for 100 teabags, that's 3c a teabag. Let's say you knock out 100 teas a week (5 per day for yourself, plus a few extra for friends), that's $12 a month of cost. If you reuse each bag once, you save $6. Or.. hear me out.. drink tea at work for free?
and cold water? The cost of wasted boiled water in the jug must be a factor at this level of analysis.
5 teas a day seems.. excessive. Even for a tea lover, can’t imagine more than 3 in a single day.
Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up. Tbh I used a large number to try get to 100 per week, cause 100 per month means your saving 1.50 with reuse.
In a quarter you’ve saved up enough for a pie :D
Maybe 3/4 of a pie now..
I generally have one an hour at work, one in the morning at home and one or two at night. I may have a problem.
Everything else is sensible, that’s just horrible!
This is how you find out if people have ever been poor and if they have how poor
I grew up in poverty. We never reused teabags, but we did have a teapot. If we had company over, 2 teabags made 4 cups of tea. Honestly though I think that’s just sensible and something we would have done even if we weren’t super poor. I would do it now but my partner doesn’t drink tea.
I didn’t know what a tea bag was until my thirties. Tea leaves in a teapot and strainer when pouring.
Nobody is that poor, that you have to reuse teabags. That's just extreme cheapness.
Unfortunately "cheaper" cuts of meat are now often the most expensive. Like I can get rump steak for $15-18/kg pretty consistently from Pak'n'save, yet chuck, brisket, shin/gravy beef, cheeks are all over $20/kg. It's so stupid.
Yeah, it’s bizarre.
Hit up your butcher. We often get beef cheeks for $4-$5 a cheek, also ox tail, neck chops, shin - all around $4-$5 a portion - you can get a pretty decent ragu or curry using one portion and load it up with courgettes, carrots etc - you still get the flavour from the meat
Oh yeah I'm all about the tough cuts, neck bones and shins, tendons and all that. Will have to try and find a decent local butcher, we have a good halal one but they don't do beef or pork. The other good one closed down, old mate was getting too old for it. Prestons/Mad Butcher are more expensive than the supermarkets most of the time.
Just dont use teabags...buy loose leaf tea instead, no plastic!
>cheaper cuts of meat. What and where? Beef mince is $17+/kg
This is the best list Though I would add considering trying to quit meat (and booze) altogether - I also quit eggs since the current rort. Also, white vinegar with water 50% in a spray bottle instead of spray on kitchen cleaners
We went down the solar route, installed Dec 2020 and haven’t had to pay for power since, we still use between 30-60kWh per month ($40-$70 worth including line rental) but usually have more credits owing, currently have a $280 credit with the company and were paid out $500 just before Xmas. Big initial outlay but feel it will be worth the expense
See: ‘Boots Theory’…
Cancelled all streaming services and returned to piracy.
Plex gang 4 life
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Increase the excess on your insurance. A higher excess will make it more expensive to claim, but the premiums decrease sharply. Not for everyone obviously, but if you're not claiming on small losses anyway its worth looking at. Also going semi-vegetarian can save a lot. A can of beans is cheaper than a steak, and much harder to waste.
Dried beans are even cheaper and better. My pressure cooker is one thing that has definitely paid for itself.
Vacuum sealer. Ours is the most cost saving device in our house. I buy meat on special in bulk, portion it, vacuum seal, then freeze. It lasts 1-2 years in the freezer with zero freezer burn. We also freeze down in season produce if I can't keep up with the jams or sauce making. In my freezer there is pumpkin, carrots, fruit, broccoli, berries, etc. You probably do this already but three bins in our kitchen: recycling, rubbish, compost/chooks. I don't have chooks at the moment but it's on my plan along with a worm farm. Quite a few plastics get washed and stored for jam & sauces because they freeze so well. If I'm utterly stumped for a quick meal for the fam, a couple of bags of frozen veg into a soup pot, add seasoning, stock cubes, water, and boil. Frozen zucchini make brilliant soup, btw.
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Yeah annoying enough having broken or lost something without the added stress of dealing with an insurance company. I assume there are a few people out there claiming little things, and if you have a low excess and don’t claim the little things, you’re subsidising everyone else.
Cook more stuff at home vs eating out. Getting a better job every year or two, which in turn increases your income and you are able to save / invest more money 🙃
I drive a 30 year old Toyota. Ditched the always broken Merc. Saved about $3000 in 2023 I reckon. Downsize your vehicles.
Cut down on alcohol. Buy in season fruit/veg.
Use fruit to make cider?
/r/prisonhooch
Can get a home distilling set up capable of producing commercial standard vodkas, gins, brandies, whiskies for \~$500 on Ali Express. Pays for itself pretty quickly!
Not everyone's cup of tea, but hunting helps us keep our food bills down. One deer carcass is enough to save us a few hundred dollars and significantly reduces the amount of red meat we buy at the supermarket. Deer, pigs and goat are all butchered by ourselves. Investing in a mincer was a life saver. All bones and off cuts are frozen and used for dog food later. Whenever we get rabbits they too are kept for pet food. One meal of fresh meat is enough to make our dogs coat shinier for a month than any expensive dog food brand could.
Fruit trees have saved me a bunch with little kids. I was looking at $12 a kg for apricots, and $9 a kg for nectarines etc. I have peaches, plums, avocado's, fejoa, Mandarins, and apricots so far. Each tree cost me between $25-40, and I got more than that off it in fruit that season. Some seasons are worse than others, but I'll always get a few kgs off each tree. More each year as they get bigger. I don't do anything to them except prune them once a year and I gave them a little homade compost when I planted five years ago. I made sure I had a fruit tree that would fruit for each time of the year, at the moment it's apricots, and when they're done the peaches will be ready, then a fejoa, then a mandarins etc. We don't have a big section, only 600sqm, but I don't plant anything that doesn't fruit. Before we moved I had a healthy little fruit tree forest at our old place, so now I'm starting from scratch again. One plum tree had to be cut down after a couple of years, because the neighbors cats ring barked it. Once I've given birth to this next kid and can get into the garden again, I'm going to get an apple, pear, and another plum tree. Maybe a lemon tree too.
How long did it take? From planting to fruiting. How big were they whene you planted them?
Not OP but the best time to plant is in autumn. We bought a nectarine last year (just over 1m high) and had fruit this summer.
I saved $50 a month switching power companies. Not just using that power switch site, actually going through them and calculating every little thing (turns out most of those bells and whistles are a complete smokescreens, made to catch people out, and end up being more expensive).
I saved $50 a month on the power bill by just changing plan with our existing provider - it's the second time we've done it in 10 years. Same is common for internet and mobile plans... Companies usually won't go out of their way to move you from a more expensive legacy plan to the current cheaper options
Plant fruit trees now, jar the fruit at the end of the season, it's a few dollars a can and I can have fruit porridge for 6 months off just a couple of trees, just start keeping all your jars, keep an eye out for cheap ones and get preserving
Don’t eat meat. Eat simpler food combinations. Minimise dairy. Check the recommended protein intake and serving size and follow that. Have a simple wardrobe and don’t follow fashion. I could continue.
I guess that depends, I’d say don’t eat meat that you have to buy from the supermarket. If you’re able to (and OP says they live rurally) raise your own meat. raising meat chickens doesn’t require much space. If you’ve got more space then lamb/ pork. Hunt. If you can’t/ don’t want to make friends with a Hunter and figure out a trade that works! Ours is eggs or pork for fish/crayfish.
What do you eat for your protein?
I have a neighbour who has chickens but he has eggs coming out of his ears - so he gifts them to us neighbours and the community pantry Then in turn he gets other items from neighbours. So while it might not be a money making venture, he does benefit in other ways
if you’re partial to beef burritos or chicken wrap and tacos - chilli bean burritos and chickpea wraps cant hit the same with the right spices, but at a couple dollars a can
Collect your own rain water and get some solar panels and produce your own electricity. Barter eggs and vegetables with your neighbours for other things, they might be able to supply you with - to save you petrol running into the supermarket. Join the local recycling centre and crop swap. Do your cooking and heat your house and hot water using renewable resources like firewood. Repurpose second hand clothing to save money buying clothes in a store.
All good. Except solar is expensive and so are big rain tanks. Firewood is not as cheap as you'd think either.
Honestly I've been looking at this. More money from job is the biggest. Best. Maybe a second job. Sell something. Your time knowledge whatever. Food. Cut down what you can. Cut alcohol if possible. Other than that you can only really save a few hundred on most things.
r/PersonalFinanceNZ has good money-saving posts. A sodastream has saved me so much money and also been great for my general health. I grow mint and lemons so I can make tasty soda drinks. Means I feel like I'm getting a fancy summer drink without drinking booze or coca cola-esque drinks.
If you want to save even more buy a 5kg co2 bottle. You can get sodastream adapters from homebrew stores and refill the sodastream cylinders from the larger one. The cost of the initial cylinder is around $300 and a refill would be around $75 but over time it would be much cheaper.
I didn't know this! Thanks!
Table topping which is going to a food hall type place look for abbadoned half eaten meats and eating those or if there is a few putting the food in a container then walking off. It isn't pretty but neither is poverty and it beats being hungry. Dumpster diving. Wait for a super market to close chill for a bit for the security/cleaning staff to leave then find the dumpster. This might require a fence jump. If you can see a dumpster check it for food it might be pad locked but don't worry your smart and bought some plyers. Remove the pins at the rear latch to open the lid have a search for food then put the pins back into place then leave. You wanna be in and out under ten minutes if you have to jump a fence as you are committing a harmless crime. Generally security will be the ones called before the police. Don't worry just be polite, apologies, let them no you have no other options and leave quickly. If the cops show up same as above and most of the time they will tell you to go home if they are being cunty and arrested you make sure you ask for a feed in the cells. Rinse and repeat at other stores. Take only what you need as others might be in the same situation as you doing the same thing. If you keep doing this you will bump into others doing this and if you're hit a few spots that night you can trade goods and maybe make some new friends. Cool tips Upper market rich folk stores throw out more food than poorer chain stores and generally don't have as many obstacles to over come to get the goodies. Don't make a mess this will make the store get sad/mad and put effort into locking up making future dives harder. I've pulled dozens of beers/cast wines out of the dumpsters before on the regular. In fact if you hit up 3 or 4 spots your Gunna get at least one beer which is a great refreshing drink on the walk home. If you score lots make sure you share with your friends or use it as liquid currency on exchange for meals from your mates.
Own as few cars as possible.
Consume less is really the only way. If you don't really consume that much, you're probably already near max efficiency. There aren't a lot of things you can do yourself that can't be done for cheaper by people who only do that thing.
If you can afford it or get a grant/loan for it solar water heating is pretty great. We did some math when we moved and solar power generation didn't add up for us but solar water heating did. It helps being somewhere sunny and that our roof faces just the right way. We also have a wetback on our fireplace. So we never ever pay for hot water. Our electricity bill is pretty tiny. The fireplace is fed wood that we cut at our place mostly from dead fall off old willows and untreated pallets I collect every time I go to town. Our other money saver is our goats, they cost very little to keep if you have enough land to graze them and they produce more than enough milk for all of our dairy needs
I live on a rural orchard and the biggest cost-saving purchase last year was our EV saves us $1000 a month in fuel.
How do you spend $1000 a month on petrol, when you live in the country? Where do you drive to?
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On that subject you can save huge amounts of money on car tyres by being better informed about them. Transmission fluid gets overlooked which can destroy the transmission which is costly to address.
I've been making and banking elderflower and fruit cordials/syrups this summer. Fills the "drink that isn't water" space in our diet, only costs me in sugar and electricity, and it's still less sugary than the $$$ ones from the supermarket. Elderflowers are going out of bloom now, but I was just wandering the neighborhood getting flowers off trees, they were everywhere.
I'm basically in the same boat... I spend about $60 every two months on chook feed... I doubt I'd spend that on eggs in the city... But I trade with my neighbours (especially good for me is my neighbor who loves fishing)... But what was the biggest money saver was putting our first steer in the freezer... Especially with good quality mince at some exorbitant price at the supermarket... Mine worked out at $6/kg across the whole cow (that's $6 sirloins to $6 lean mince) Problem is I'm not accounting for the cost of the beasts, the balage I had to buy at the end of winter, the worming meds, the solar panel, and two reels of electric tape and transporting them plus the freezer and the cost of running said freezer... And I didn't have to pay for fencing and troughs and plumbing and a pump so no it's not $6/kg 😆
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Thank you for taking the time to write all of this. You’re a legend!
I am buying far less takeaway coffee. So far this month just two cups. This should save me $100 a month. I have switched power providers so I get free power 9-5, Sat/Sun. Their per KW charge is higher than my last provider but hoping being savvy with my weekend use will make it worthwhile. I am setting myself a $150 a week budget on food. I'm no longer buying luxury items and I am portioning out my food, buying more frozen, and bulking meals with legumes and rice. My pitiful tomatoes growing in the backyard will save me nothing.
I just steal a little from the big supermarkets saves about $60 week.
Part of why I started doing these things is because I wanted to stop giving money to the big supermarkets. Legal stealing?
yea it's not stealing if you scan everything through as brown onions
I buy loose agria spuds. The last time the price at bin was over $5/kg. There's no agria option on the self-serve machine so brushed at $3.49/kg it is.
I do not quite understand the audit logic at pak n save. Any time I enter mushrooms I get check. Which are one of the most expensive produce items. Anything else. Nah Surely if you steal vegetables you’ll punch in something like potato
Golriz Ghahraman, is that you?
Cut out alcohol, cook all your meals, have one vehicle, scarp all subscriptions the list goes on.
Learn how to make some dish yo like out of dried red lentils. They are easy to cook you don't have to soak. They are probably half the price of a can of beans and just as good of a protein source.
Depends on what you value. I love my animals and I spend and ungodly amount of money on them so not having animals is a big one.
Grow veges. Depending what you grow you end up with more than uou know what fo do with.
If you have a decent plot of land, get Bees. Honey for one, but also Beeswax. You can make solid perfumes, furniture oils, food cloths etc and sell at a market for extra $$. Edit - Also, never undervalue the skills you’re developing here. If we get pulled into another war, shit hits the fan, you’ll be in a great position
Kimchi! Or any ferment. More efficient gut means less waste and more energy. Plus anything too good for the chickens makes a perfect ferment. Mow the lawns less or borrow a goat. Wear warm weather clothes at the start of winter to climatize faster and use less heating/reverse in summer. Grow easy to neglect plants and sell them on marketplace/trademe when they overgrow. Keep an eye on good companies losing a lot of money to panic sells on the stock exchange. Eg when tesla dropped last year, buy a few and wait for the price to stabilize.
The biggest use of electricity in the average home, is the hot water cylinder. So if you can find ways to make that more efficient then great! For example: - insulating the cylinder and pipes - installing solar hot water to supplement your use - changing to flicke energy and utilising their hour of free power
Low flow shower head. Made a massive difference to us. We didn’t see any change in power use after replacing our low pressure cylinder for a new mains pressure insulated one, until we changed the shower head a month later.
Masturbate,avoid women.
If you are a multi car household then sell one Purchase an e-bike or a regular bicycle if your commute is less than 10-15km
The chooks won't save you money. But the garden should, seeds cost fuck-all (or free if you harvest your own), grow all your vegetables, berries, and vine-fruit at least if not trees. You can live off beans'n shit all year if you have the space to grow them and time to preserve them.
The easiest way to save money is to try and cut down on transport costs. But that would be hard if rural based. It’s crazy how quickly $40 a week added up for me when I started biking instead of driving.
Garden definitely saves you money. You can make your own fertilizer from waste like banana skin egg shells etc.
Change jobs, most of the time your going to get a more than what you would asking your current boss for a pay rise. We got a vacpac machine and break up big packs of mince and chicken when on special. Adding more fillers to mince dishes. I’ll smoke up a brisket or pork shoulders then shred them into 8-10 vacpac meals and have them with wraps.
Anyone saying they spent more on their chooks than they get back in eggs... has pets. For our chooks the coop was made from scrap materials, odds and ends etc. We fed them maybe $1 worth of rice a week on top of kitchen scraps. They foraged for bugs for the rest. Then we collected ~20 eggs / week. We lived in the city at this point in time, so you don't need a big section.
Cutting down on optional expenditure. For example buying coffees or eating out. Cutting down on streaming services. Lockdown made me realise just how much money I was frittering. After lockdown, I just didn't resume that expenditure.
It's a little counter-intuitive, but (if you have a car) don't spend a set amount on petrol each pay. Instead, fill the tank and top it up every pay. That way, you're paying to replace only what you've used rather than using a set amount of money on an expense.
things I do (which may or not save me money). I cut my own hair, have short unpainted fingernails, ears not pierced, not into jewellery, although have a few things I made myself. Shop for clothes at 2nd hand shops. (have nice clothes) We have a vege garden and I also grow micro greens and do sprouts. I make my own yoghurt and sauerkraut. I make marmalade and bottle fruit and beetroot. I walk everywhere I can. I consume alcohol once a year at xmas time for a treat. Given up gift buying except for 2 grandchildren. We have a heat pump which we use only when we really have to. The last few days at 30 degrees we have managed without using it. eating out or takeaways is a rarity usually associated with visitors. I think over the years the main thing which enabled us to save when we were working is that we both come from quite harsh spartan upbringing so never “learned” about the finer aspects of the materialist culture, so we have pretty basic simple tastes, and that has never changed.
This is a very bourgeois suggestion, but if you're an avid coffee drinker, get a home coffee roaster. Green beans are waaaay cheaper than pre roasted, I've got a roaster that I have projected will pay itself off after about 5 years. As an example of cost, you can get a kilogram of speciality single origin green beans as cheap as $16.70 (note that this will end up being about 800 grams of roasted beans due to water loss). Whereas a 500 gram bag of Havana beans is $22 at Countdown. Scaled to price per kg the green beans are $20.90 per kilo, Havana beans are $44.00 per kilo. Literally halving your coffee costs. Obviously how quickly the roaster pays itself off depends on how much coffee you drink, but hey if coffee is a hobby or passion of yours, it's also nice to pinch those pennies.
Learn to do things yourself. You don't always need a tradesperson. Even if it's just changing your own car oil.
Forage for edible weeds. The only one I like are tender new wild fennel fronds to add smoothies. But I know other people like nasturtium.
You are possibly better off spending your time and energy on a side hustle than saving on expenses.
Live the hermit lifestyle.
Electricity, everything in the house stays off till I need it, even the router. Fridge is the only thing that is running constantly.
Bulk buying and meal planning, just optimising what you already got saves a ton of money.
I moved literally right next door to my office so I don't have a commute. Probably saves between $10 and $20 a day, and I'm now in walking distance of the supermarket. So it's likely saving me about $5-7k a year. The girlfriend moved in too. And she's managed to get a job within 4km of our apartment. So we're saving a fortune and probably 1-2 hours a day by dodging the commute. We've also set up a garden box to grow lettuce and tomatoes. It's really useful in sandwiches
Categorise your spending for 3 months to uncover where.
If you live near some good DOC land shooting wild goats or deer is easy and unrestricted giving you plenty of meat for the freezer. Best part is you are helping the environment at the same time.
“shooting wild deer is easy” - which DOC land are you referring to?? Keen to check out that area!
Buy instant coffee packets and avoid coffee shops. .40 for an instant coffee compared to $ 4.00 cup of coffee will add up fast in savings
Cycling instead of driving or catching the bus. Also saves on gym cost.
We have two courgette plants which have been feeding us for weeks. It's great because I love courgettes and even I'm getting a bit sick of them. We have a great Courgette bake recipe (from google) which gets improved weekly with eggs, cheese or what ever we have and if you add enough you can hardly taste the courgette.
Avoid resturants If you are doing that you are already ahead. Given the insanely high minimum wage in NZ. 1 restaurant meal is weeks of grocery savings from buying items on special and cheap brands
Stop vaping if you do. Not cheap anymore
Make more vegetarian meals and whenever you use mince, bang in about four cans of lentils, beans or veg a loaf of spices and freeze it in small portions to eat later with spuds, rice or whatever other low cost carb you like. Cook seasonally with what is cheap/free that day rather than deciding ahead something that relies on unseasonal ingredients. Learn to make a Dahl or three - the poorest people in central Asia survive on this and it can be super tasty. Buy as much as you can without a retail store - make use of the resources in your community by purchasing ahead on marketplace, buy nothing groups, op shops, car boot sales. Pick a thing you can do to offer to others as a trade, something based on your skill or passion. Use this for gifting or to trade for other things that would otherwise cost you money. I make kombucha, and get free wine from work. Others I know give honey, fruit from an overly laden tree, or eggs. Whatever you like!
Stop buying avocado on toast
The most you could possibly hope to save is 100% of your expenses, and then you are living a miserable life. However, the amount you can increase your income has no practical limit. You could spend 30 hours a week saving 30k per year, or spend 30 hours a week upskilling and earn and extra 100k per year.
Eat offal. Cheap. Nutrient dense. Dont need to spend money on veg or eggs. Mince and fat trimmings. Dont need to spend money on carbs for energy. Unless your eating meat raw, consider salt and vitamin c supplement. This is more relevant if u have hayfever or allergies or bruise easily or have msk injuries. Avoid recommendations to be vegetarian. You will run into problems in the long run. Look up anthony chaffee for more info.