It's all about personal priorities

This frugal (my Father would have said parsimonious) life style is all about personal priorities. We save money and get an amazing, perhaps ridiculously disproportionate, amount of pleasure in the challenge of so doing on areas that are not important to us and then we have enough to spend on the things that are. I’d rather spend £10 on a four and a half hour coach ride from Exeter to Victoria than £40 - £70 on a two and a half hour train ride. I have more time than money and I can think of so many better things to do with that money. My choice.

Mike and I live on the state pension only and we have no savings. We live in a two bed cottage on a working farm in Devon though we don’t work on the farm. (We don’t work at all for good reasons that will not be discussed in this blog.) In 2008 we bought a decent second hand car (for cash) which we can afford to licence, repair, MOT and insure every year and we use it frequently, most importantly to get from the farm to our nearest town. Depending on the convenience of timing, we try to use the bus service from there which is excellent. It is free, of course, and we have plenty of time on our hands.

The rent on our two bed cottage with conservatory and that beautiful garden (in yesterday's post) is £100 more than our housing allowance allows, but in compensation we have all the free firewood Mike can chop to use on our wood burning stove plus access to a large kitchen garden to grow our own fruit and vegetables. We love our home, it is warm and comfortable, adequate for our needs and perfectly reflects our character and individuality. 

There are a few precious items that escaped the blitz when we went sailing (paintings, mirrors, a kist, two teak garden chairs), and we have bought a few new things (our double bed and mattress, the 32 inch television), but otherwise everything in our home has either been given new or second hand by family and friends, or bought at charity shops and second hand shops. 

For the conservatory we bought these two dead comfy cane chairs with cushions (which needed a wash) for £15 at the Okehampton recycle yard. Not only is there no shame in buying second hand but we positively love the idea of re-cycling everything and keeping as much as possible out of the landfills that blight our countryside.

The wood burning stove is very effective and warms the whole house meaning we use very little oil for central heating.

I do a lot of cooking on the wood burner - potatoes and rice, steamed vegetables, slow cooked curries and pot roasts, chutneys and preserves - and we keep a kettle on the stove at all times so there is always a pot of hot water handy. I am a good cook (well, Mike thinks so!) so we eat very well, mostly at home.

We buy special offers in supermarkets, particularly stuff in the ‘reduced for quick sale’ section that is close to the sell-by date. After seven years at sea in a small boat with no refrigeration and never getting ill, we take very little notice of such things. Some fresh stuff is eaten straight away, but most dairy based products only improve after their sell by date, as does red meat. Chicken, pork and fish we freeze if not immediately needed. By contrast we pick our own freshly grown fruit and vegetables straight from the garden for next to nothing. Seeds are cheap, we make our own compost, there's plenty of free manure lying about and the work is a labour of love. We only buy what we like and need and rarely throw anything away - what we don’t eat goes to the birds or in the compost bin. We need a dog!

Almost all our clothing is bought at charity shops (drawing the line at underwear and nightwear) including shoes, boots and hats. We buy on Amazon and ebay and occasionally sell, though our stuff is usually so worn out by the time we have finished with it no one would want it!

But we don’t feel deprived at all. We have so much! Apart from our lovely home environment, we have a BT Vision package with broadband. Mike has a Pay & Go phone, which he never uses, and I have a Samsung smart phone (£10 per month contract), which I do use. I also have (and love) a laptop which was a birthday present from my family. We entertain a lot. We travel around the countryside and like to dine in a restaurant about once a month. We both like a couple of drinks at night (me whisky and soda, Mike red wine or beer). Mike’s hobbies are cycling - he has two racing bikes and two mountain bikes, and all the gear, some of it rather expensive - and painting pictures in oil on canvas, which is less expensive. His paintings are wonderful and fill our home. These four were at a local exhibition recently. You can see all Mike's pictures here : http://bannersvision.blogspot.co.uk/

My hobbies are much cheaper - gardening (actually saves us money) and writing (just the electricity on my computer). Mind you, now I am blogging I suppose I should include the cost of broadband in that!