Kicking off frugal February to save money

Long time readers will know that I have joined in with No Spend January for the past few years. It is such a great way to kick off the new year and getting your finances in order. I wrote about it in this post. However, this year I decided to go for a frugal February instead and make this my no spend month.

A no spend month, for me, means no spending on anything other that the usual unavoidable bills, food and fuel. I had already budgeted for gifts as it is my brother’s birthday this month and we are expecting a new baby in the family.

Plans for Frugal February

Buying to sell on

I did, however, decide to allow myself to buy stock for my eBay business. Over the past few months I have bought barely anything, instead focussing on the items in the pile in my office that I have chosen to ignore for ages! However, I have done most of that and have very little to list, so I have been out to some charity shops on the hunt for bargains that I can sell on at a profit. This is a large part of how I survive financially since I was made redundant a few years ago. Therefore, since I have hardly anything to sell, I see this as essential spending.

I went on the hunt yesterday and picked up a few nice things, which I will be showing on Sunday on my YouTube channel. So if you are curious, go over and subscribe!

Immediate no spend fail

Whilst I was in our local hospice clearance shop, I spotted a lovely cream three seater sofa in perfect condition for just £60! Now, as I am supposed to be on a no spend month, I knew that buying it would be an immediate fail for my Frugal February. However, a decent second hand sofa is on our wish list. The current one is extremely old and tatty and wasn’t improved when Archie decided to pull out some of the stuffing.

In the circumstances, I decided it was too good a bargain to pass up. It is arriving next week! Archie will not be sitting on this one (theoretically anyway.)…

Meal planning for low carb eating

I continue to plan our meals in order to save money and waste. As I would like to go back to low carb eating, which I know helps my fibromyalgia symptoms, I need to find ways to do low carb on our small grocery budget. Not easy when prices are rocketing.

To help with my research on this, I asked the clever folk on my Facebook group, My Second Hand & Frugal Life. I don’t intend to hit it strictly for a couple of weeks, as we have quite a lot of high carb things I don’t want to waste. Mr S can eat some of them, but some need using fairly quickly.

I kicked off my semi low carb today with a bowl of scrambled eggs and some mushrooms that needed eating. If you have any tips for eating low carb/keto on a budget, I would love to read them in the comments below.

Bones from the butcher

One frugal thing I will continue to do that will be budget friendly and suit a low carb diet is making bone broth. It has a lot of good health benefits generally and makes the best stock for soups and stews.

I got another large bag of bones from the local butcher for £1.50, along with two chicken carcasses that my mum didn’t have space for that were in her freezer. 

As they were semi defrosted by the time I got to them, I used the chicken bones first and froze the butcher’s beef bones to use next. I squeezed two chicken carcasses in my slow cooker and left them going all day, with onions, a couple of carrots and some celery. It tastes amazing! So full of flavour.

I made some more ramen style soup with rice noodles. Courgetti will be a good low carb replacement for noodles.

Growing our own food

Talking of courgettes, I am going to buy some seeds and grow some in the garden this year. We had a veggie garden for years but have had a couple of years off. However, with the price of food going through the roof, growing some of our own food again seems a good idea.

We need to be realistic about the limited time we have, though, so will focus on just a few plants that we know will grow successfully. We already have red currants and raspberries each year as the bushes are in place. But I am thinking we should be looking at runner beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, chard, beetroot and courgettes at least.

A job for our frugal February will be to sort the seeds we already have to see if any are in date, buy more of what we plan to grow and give the greenhouse a good clear out and clean.

Are you planing to grow your own to save money this year? Check out my post 15 tips to save money in the garden.

Are you doing Frugal February? If so, how is it going so far? I hope you haven’t had any mega fails like me 🙂

I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky