Frugal Living - Irish Budgeting

June 4, 2022June 18, 2022

Do you make room for you, in your budget?

Budgeting may mean saying no to some things, as its not in the budget right now… You may have to prioritising some needs over others, some wants over others.. this is all part of creating a budget.

While creating a budget, you should prioritise your 4 walls first.

Your 4 walls are; Your housing, your utilities, your food and your transport.

Next you should look at other bills and direct debits, make sure you have allocated enough money for these.

After these categories you have your variables, the costs that can go up and down. You will decide what goes in these categories by deciding what your priorities and due dates are.

Some of these may be Sinking Funds, some may be household expenses, but either way there should be categories that are for both you and your family to use without feeling guilty.

You need to make room in your budget for you!

In our budget I try to save about €20 a week for me to spend on whatever I want. Some weeks I spend it all, something may catch my eye or I might meet a friend for coffee. Other times I might save it up and spend it on a bigger item. Today I got my nails done, €25 well spent!

We also make room in our budget for my daughter to do horse riding lessons, my son to do GAA and support his love of software development (which can get very expensive!). We also give them pocket money, and enjoy saving for days out in the summer. My husband also uses revolut vaults, and puts personal money in one for him.

By allocating money to yourself, and also to family members, you are giving yourself a little freedom, freedom to treat yourself without it affecting your budget.

I am never going to tell you to not buy yourself a coffee, to say no to drinks with friends or to bring back the dress you love.. That’s the beauty of budgeting! You have budgeted a certain amount for you, and how you spend it is totally up to you and what is important to you!

Now myself and my family have done a no spend year. At that time, our priority was to save every extra bit of money that we could get our hands on, so that we could get the keys for our home. That was our families priority at the time, but we knew there was a time limit, as a no spend period is not sustainable long term.

Long term I believe allocating some money to spend as you wish, for everyone in your family, is going to help you and your family stick to that budget.

Think of it this way, are you better allowing yourself some personal money while keeping to your budget long term, or depriving yourself and then finding it all too restrictive.

Do you allow room in your budget for you?

May 23, 2022June 18, 2022

Budget Home Baked Bread! – Only 49 cent a loaf

My sister Jen sent me this recipe and it has been such a hit in my house! A loaf never lasts past breakfast anytime I bake one. I find myself baking at least two loaves at a time, just to get the change to have a slice myself!

There are only 3 ingredients plus some warm water, which makes this a simple and also frugal bake.

You can use strong white bread flour or plain/all purpose flour, which means you will probably always have the ingredients for this bread in your cupboard. The only other ingredients are Yeast – I used fast acting, salt, and as I said warm water.

I have linked a video above, where you can watch me making the bread, and I show the folding technique. That is the only thing that I really think is important to watch as it would be difficult to explain in words.. but it really is a very simple bread to make!

Recipe

3 Cups of Strong white flour OR Plain Flour (all purpose)
2 Packets of Fast action Yeast
1 tsp Salt
1.5-2 cups luke warm water (too hot and it will burn the yeast)

Method

Into a large mixing bowl place your flour, yeast and salt. Give it a good mix with a spatula.
Add 1 cup of the luke warm water to the dry mixture, and mix together with the handle of the spatula. Then add a little at a time of the remaining cup of water until you notice the mixture coming together as a dough. It should still look a little stringy, and should be sticky to touch.
Now cover the bowl with some clingfilm, or even a tea towel. Then place the bowl in a warm place for 1 hour. I am lucky enough to have a warming feature in my oven where it stays at 40 degrees Celsius, but if you have a hotpress that will work great too!
After 1 hour, you are ready to shape your bread! First sprinkle a generous dusting of flour on your counter. Then take the bread out of the bowl and let onto the floured counter.
You are going to start folding the bread, if you need to see how, see the above video.. but you essentially fold one end in, and then the opposite, then fold the side in and then the opposite, and keep going about 10-12 more times. It should start to feel less sticky, and more bread dough-like. It should also start forming into a loaf shape.
Next you are going to flip it over, and start shaping and tucking the dough so that it forms the classic round loaf shape, and becomes firmer.
Next place the rounded dough into a bowl lined with grease-proof parchment paper, and leave to rise for 15 minutes.
While that is rising, place the container that you will bake the bread in, in the oven at 235 degrees Celsius. This is to heat up the container so that it reaches temperature before you put the bread in it. Ideally you would use a dutch oven, however I use a casserole tin every time and it works great!
After 15 mins, sprinkle some flour on top of the loaf and score the top. You can use a scoring blade if you have one, but if not a sharp knife also works great.
Then take the container out of the oven ready for your bread, open the lid, and lift the bread in by the parchment paper. Pop the lid back on and place in the oven for 30 minutes.
After 30 mins, take out of the oven. You are just going to take off the lid and slide out the parchment paper, and pop back into the oven for about 10 more minutes, or until golden. This will held your bread to become crusty.
Once golden brown, take out of the oven and tap the bread underneath to make sure there is a hollow sound. Leave to cool on a wire rack for at least 1 hour, and enjoy!!

If you try this recipe let me know below, and I really enjoy any pictures of your bakes, so please do tag me on instagram if you make it!

May 21, 2022June 18, 2022

Feeding 5 People for €5

With food prices soaring, inflation hitting our food budgets, back in March I started thinking about how I could help families like mine…

That’s when I decided to do a meal that only cost €5 to feed all 5 of us!

I set some rules for myself… Obviously I wanted to stick to a €5 budget (where possible)! I wanted to make the meals somewhat balanced, with a focus on fresh ingredients. I wanted also to change the shops where i purchased the ingredients, as i was aware not everyone has the choice of where they can do their food shop. I wanted to include meals that would suit different diets, so that if you were vegetarian, celiac or even just very picky, there would be a meal for you.

I do not include cupboard staples, things you probably already have at home. It is just the main ingredients that i include in the costing of the €5 meal. However many of these ingredients can be used for additional meals, and also there are usually also leftovers!

So my first meal was a chilli with ingredients from Aldi. It included minced beef for €2.69, Basmati rice for €0.99, carrot & parsnip tray for €0.49, passata for €0.49, and baked beans for €0.25. The ingredients cost a total of €4.91.

I posted the full meal on my Instagram, in the form of a reel, and it was very well received. At the time of this post, there are 100k views on this particular reel. I have continued with these reels since, and post a new feeding 5 people for €5 meal every week since.

So far my meals have consisted of the above chilli, fish and chips, a sausage casserole, chicken and pesto with baby potatoes, a chickpea curry, spaghetti carbonara, butternut squash risotto, roast chicken, spaghetti bolognaise, and spaghetti aglio e olio.

I will post some of the recipes in future posts, but what i would love to know, is what is your favorite type of food? Do you like Italian, Indian or Asian? Do you like good home cooked foods, or are you a meal in 15 mins kinda person?