Rising food & fuel prices ?

[diamond lil]

How are you coping with rising prices ? What have you changed and could you tighten the purse any more?

[itsybitsy]

How are you coping with rising prices ? What have you changed and could you tighten the purse any more?

I buy in bulk on stuff I like/need when offers are on at the supermarkets.

The heating has been turned down and I've just changed tarif for a better deal on gas and leccy.

I've changed the times that I leave the house/work so that I am not sitting in traffic for 30 mins each way - that has saved me at least £30.00 a month on juice.

And well, yes, I could tighten the purse strings a bit more, but I don't want to. My philosophy is that if I can't afford to go out much then so be it - I can live with that, but if I'm staying in watching the box on a weekend I am not going to do it eating Tesco Basics chocolate digestives and drinking Lambrini. I like a few little luxuries - I think that's a fair trade off for a severely curtailed social life...

Saying that, I have cut back a lot on takeaway food on weekends (don't have takeaway during the week) - I think I've had takeaway once since before Christmas. I now favour cooking a nice risotto or a pasta dish from scratch and enjoy that with a good bottle of wine and a film.

**Disclaimer - there is absolutely nothing WRONG with Tesco Basics chocolate digestives and Lambrini - they are just not my treats of choice**

[preppingsu]

We have been very frugle with the heating oil this winter(put 1000 litres in around August and still have 1/3 of a tank left!) Relied on the wood burner in the main room. (free wood sourced from neighbours tree felling last year so we had to season it)
Unfortunately I am now taking the bus to uni as its £32.00 per month instead of over £100 in petrol!
No takeaways.
No cinema - used tesco points to purchase 12 Blockbuster tokens so have a family DVD night once a week instead.
Try to shop for deals but doesn't always happen - food bill is still high but includes extra supplies for prep shelves.
Any birthdays (whether family or friends) no longer get pressies (they know this - we haven't done that for years now - although we do buy a little something for those under 10yrs). They are also lucky if they get a card (but that is usually because I forget to send them!). However, a phone call or a email works just as well. It also saves us anywhere between £8-15 per month.
The children know not to ask for 'things' throughout the year as they will not get! They have good birthdays and christmas'. They also receive pocket money so can save up for items. We do not have a 'I want' mentality in our house.
I am very tight with money at the moment but it is paying off (no pun intended!)

[itsybitsy]

No takeaways.

Arggggh - that's the worst thing for me, I think, at the moment. I really enjoy a takeaway on a weekend, but I just couldn't justify £10.00 a time - that's £40.00 (or £50.00 if there's five weekends) a month!

And things are going to be even worse come summer when I can't afford to go out and drink wine in the sunshine very often...that's gonna be a killer

[preppingsu]

No takeaways.

Arggggh - that's the worst thing for me, I think, at the moment. I really enjoy a takeaway on a weekend, but I just couldn't justify £10.00 a time - that's £40.00 (or £50.00 if there's five weekends) a month!

And things are going to be even worse come summer when I can't afford to go out and drink wine in the sunshine very often...that's gonna be a killer

You'll have to brew your own wine and beer! Nettle wine, elderflower wine, then later on in the year get some scrumpy apples for cyder! Personally, neither of us drink (me very occassionally) but we have stopped buying fizzy pop -killer!

[diamond lil]

This is the problem for me, I can't save on food bills because I have to keep stockpiling at the same time as fixing normal meals. And you seem to have to spend a fortune in order to save.
Very limited options living away out here, can't nip round the corner to the market or pop into 4 different supermarkets for bargains etc. And getting anywhere involves a fair bit of petrol. If I lived in a city I'd be thinking twice about keeping a car...but then if things turned to custard how would you get out ... We've got the bike and also bycicles for backup, but need the car for the long winter.
I suppose cutting down our expectations is part of prepping. And our takeaways

[Briggs]

We have been very frugle with the heating oil this winter(put 1000 litres in around August and still have 1/3 of a tank left!) Relied on the wood burner in the main room. (free wood sourced from neighbours tree felling last year so we had to season it)
Unfortunately I am now taking the bus to uni as its £32.00 per month instead of over £100 in petrol!
No takeaways.
No cinema - used tesco points to purchase 12 Blockbuster tokens so have a family DVD night once a week instead.
Try to shop for deals but doesn't always happen - food bill is still high but includes extra supplies for prep shelves.
Any birthdays (whether family or friends) no longer get pressies (they know this - we haven't done that for years now - although we do buy a little something for those under 10yrs). They are also lucky if they get a card (but that is usually because I forget to send them!). However, a phone call or a email works just as well. It also saves us anywhere between £8-15 per month.
The children know not to ask for 'things' throughout the year as they will not get! They have good birthdays and christmas'. They also receive pocket money so can save up for items. We do not have a 'I want' mentality in our house.
I am very tight with money at the moment but it is paying off (no pun intended!)

I cringe when my oil boiler fires up. I fitted a Heatmiser thermostat a couple of years ago and I calculated it paid for itself within six months. Highly recommend it.

[Briggs]

The cost of fuel is a serious concern for me on two counts:

1. At present, oil/kerosene heats my home and provides hot water. We have already minimised the period the boiler is on by fitting an electronic thermostat which precisely measures temperature and also provides enhanced on-off programming around our daily and weekly schedules. This is a Heatmiser thermostat and I posted above that is has paid for itself several times over since I installed it. Saving on oil is one thing, but the cost of oil is escalating faster than we can economise. Seven years ago, we paid 41p per litre, today it is 65p a litre. My concern is that in another seven years time, the cost will be around £1 a litre and at that point, heating and hot water is now not a utility, it's a luxury. It's a decision whether to 'heat or eat'. My solution to this is to fit a biomass boiler in my garage which I'm planning to have up and running before I need to refill the oil tank this winter. (Here's hoping, anyway).

2. Where I live, the cost of motor diesel is now £1.43p per litre. Unleaded is £1.39p. I recently saw £1.49 for diesel in a very rural area. I'm from that late sixties early seventies generation where we grew up with a muddled mix of metric and imperial measurements and we are accustomed to doing conversions from feet to metres and gallons to litres 'on the go'. I've often thought the switch in the 90's to pricing fuel in litres was a rather effective smoke-screen because it takes one conversion calculation to switch to pounds and pence and then another to work out miles per gallon, or miles per litre, whichever you prefer. The point I'm making is that quite soon, when petrol goes over £1.50 a litre, the media are going to make this a news story that petrol is now nudging £7 a gallon. At a nice round number like £7, it's very easy to work out the true cost of miles per gallon. I believe £7.50 a gallon will become the tipping point when the average family realises the cost of a gallon and takes stock of their motoring costs.

Most if not all of us on this forum have been working this out for years, that's why we prep, yes? So we are a little ahead of the game but at £7.50 a gallon, a high percentage of the UK will be working out how much it costs to make even the most basic journeys and this will lead to having to make life-changing decisions. I believe that £1.75 a litre will be the tipping point when a 'gallon of gas' is now considered a luxury. Decisions will be made between fuel or luxuries and it will then gradually escalate to being a choice between fuel or necessities. At this point, the economy is going to falter. The government will have to make the decision whether to ease fuel taxation in order to keep the economy going, to keep the shops open. This is nothing new, it's the Peak Oil debate but my point is that we are approaching the point of Peak Price as well.

The peak price for fuel will be society's tipping point and I have no confidence that the government can can manage the economy when so many people are under extreme fuel pressure. I do not have the answer, but this is why I prep.

I've re-read the above - Jeez what a load of doom and gloom. Sorry about that, I was on the Boilerjuice website and I just felt the need to rant.

[grenfell]

The cost of fuel is a serious concern for me
Saving on oil is one thing, but the cost of oil is escalating faster than we can economise..

Good point and I share our concern.I don't have oil fired heating but do buy petrol and diesel and it's very difficult to make savings. As has been said food can be brought in bulk but for the most part with fuel a hundred litres will have the same unit cost as a single litre and after cutting down as much as possible you are faced with the problem that it's simply going to cost more. Added to that most of my fuel use is for work and I find that I have to buy it or I don't get paid.
I do have a wood fired bread oven that is used at re-enactments and I'm planning of making more use of that at home as well as building a brick one .
I also try to cut down on waste but as we've always lived frugally there's little scope for big savings. I'm also on the lookout for other sorces of income. Many are quite small amounts but they all add up. For example , I work in maintenance and a while ago a customer asked me to take out some bluebells. This I did being paid for the work but I saved the bulbs, dried them and sold them on e bay. Likewise if I'm asked to shift rubbish I always sort it and can normally make a few quid .

[jansman]

Well, up to the end of the first quarter we were doing well. Then my income dropped dramatically. We have managed well up to now, but we are now feeling the pinch. I have my acre of land and that has helped enormously with the food bills. In fact we are supplying my daughter and son in law too!
The car does not get used a lot, as I cycle to work and Jan walks. Heating is multi fuel. Wood does not get any cheaper, and the free stuff is erratic-and sometimes is more work than it is worth! Heaven only knows what a ton of coal will cost this burning-season.
Central heating is gas,as is hot water. Fortunately, the central heating is only used when it is extremely cold, the multifuel or electric heaters cut it as we are VERY well insulated here at Chez Jansman. But there is the rub. Whilst we don't really hurt too bad on the above subjects, the electricity does sting; A lot. We use a lot of electricity, and I cannot see a way round it.
All in all we are in a fair shape, but, and it is a big but, there is nothing spare anymore. No wriggle room, and that is a concern. Sure, we could give up our once a week curry night out. Not yet though.
Just like Itsybitsy, we like a drink of an evening. At the start of the year I got back into homebrewing. Always did it when I was poor. Stopped when I got rich. Now I am 'poor' again, this is paying off big style. I actually use kits as they give a consistent result. I can brew 40 pints of beer or 30 bottles of wine in a month. I can make a good bitter or lager for 40 pence a pint, and a decent bottle of plonk for 70 pence. By doing this, and growing food and keeping the fowls , rabbits and goats we can maintain our lifestyle-but with no spare cash.
Anyway, sorry to ramble on. I cannot see the situation easing up at all. This is, I think, the New Normal. Grim thought that.