On the subject of sugar, for some strange reason I used to stock several different types of sugar in my pre-budget days.  White sugar, brown sugar. Icing sugar, raw sugar , castor sugar and honey.  Needless to say it all got eaten up once the stringent budget was in place.  When I think about it, how ridiculous having all those choices.  Obviously there is no harm in it, but it’s not really even practical.  Now I will not restock any type of sugar until all sugar/sweetner is gone.  Then I go to Bin Inn and fill my own container, which is cheap and cuts down on wasteful packaging.

 We do purchase a lot of things unthinkingly and great stocks of food sit in some of our homes untouched for months.  Now-a-days we only stock what is required for the week and make sure that is all eaten before buying any more. I sometimes think of struggling people starving in the 3^rd world and wonder what they would make of someone having 6 different types of sugar in their pantry. Would they think we were lucky and rich or greedy and stupid?

I shouted the girls out for tea to say thanks for being such good sorts about our changed lifestyle. A local restaurant enticed us in with an advertising discount voucher that promised the chance of a free meal.

We missed out on the ultimate reward, but still received a sizeable discount. The meal cost us $62, which we didn’t count in that week’s budget, as it would have only left us with $13 to spend. We are getting good at living on next to nothing, but we are not that good. It was a great night out – we had a laugh (or we may have gone a bit hysterical in the presence of all that food), but my point is, was it worth it?

I’d have to say no. When you have been living reasonably well on $75 a week, it becomes too hard to justify spending $62 on one meal, regardless of how enjoyable. So that may be a rare downside to our budgeting challenge – it is hard not to be analytical about value for money, which leads to an overdose of cynicism when faced with buying decisions. It doesn’t end with food and groceries, either. You start analysing every spending decision and questioning the value – not that that is always a bad thing.

Nowadays when we grocery shop, it is not a matter of what we need to buy, but more like what we can avoid buying. We walk past aisles and aisles of expensive, attractively packaged products basically thumbing our noses at all of them. At the checkout, it is a great feeling to hear $75, please, instead of $475. You see, we are not missing out on anything. At home, all our food and hygiene requirements are met, not only at a much lower cost but, in most cases, at a higher level of quality with the stuff we have learnt to make ourselves.

Our quest to make our own house-cleaning products has opened our eyes to opportunities to make other stuff ourselves. Danni has discovered that quality moisturiser, lip balm, shampoo bars and other cosmetic items can be made cheaply and easily at home. The products are so good that she is sharing them in a pamphlet and is running classes from home (Thursdays at 7pm). Join us – it’s a great way to save money.

 Next week: Where are all the recipes?

* If you want to get in touch with Lyn, you can email her on pigtitsandparsleysauce@gmail.com or phone 754-8600, or see the website, www.pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz.

 Hi Lyn, Good on you for letting everyone know your secret to success.  It is always great to see when people share the secrets around.  I have enclosed $10 for the recipes to some home cleaning products, especially washing powder.  I thank you again.

Hi Lyn, Can you please send me your fab recipes.

Hi Lyn, Please find enclosed a  $50 cheque and SSAE for the two books re:  Baking Soda and White Vinegar and recipes. I am excited about this new opportunity to save $$$$.  Thank you so much.

I have sent out over 500 recipe pamphlets and sold 300+ books.   There has been 7pm class nearly every Tuesday night at my place since I started running them in early June. I’ve done 24 demonstrations and have about the same number coming up.  Lynn Putt (7524033) has started MAKE homemade cleaning products classes in Coastal Taranaki and Colleen Hall (06 3670031) is teaching people in Levin/Horowhenua  the MAKE money saving skills.

 I have had the odd query from people using the home made cleaning products, mainly asking if the laundry powder is OK for front loaders? And what does it do to the septic tank? The respective answers being , yes fine for front loaders  and, no problem the products are beneficial for septic tanks… but I have had no complaints, not one!! And I think that says a lot for these inexpensive simple concoctions of washing soda, baking soda, water and white vinegar, that with the right instruction can literally save thousands of dollars off your grocery bill.

Money saving aside, the planet will also benefit from less packaging and your life will have a lot less chemicals in it if you make your own toothpaste, hair wash, laundry powder, dishwashing stuff, deodorant, all purpose/window cleaner, oven cleaner, carpet cleaner, kitty litter, odor eater etc.

I recently flew to Invercargill to demonstrate these products at a Community Care fundraiser, sponsored by Farmers.  A big crowd of Southlanders turned up (there was even a bus full of ladies)from Tuatapare) and were delighted to be in on the recipes. They were gutted there were no classes running down there (yet), so if you are near me or Lynn Putt, capitalise on these classes being in your back yard and book in.  I will leave you with some positive feedback from Southland:  Dear Lyn.  I saw you on Campbell Live and since then have been dying to learn how you make all your household products, so I was delighted to attend your talk last night in Invercargill. Thank you for all your lovely information and recipes – I am going to start making everything this weekend. Best regards and once again – thanks.

Often the kids get used as an excuse.  I have heard this a lot lately.  ‘Gee, you are going well with your budget.  I don’t know how you are doing it. We’d love to try it but we can’t because of the kids – they would never do it!’ In my experience it is not usually kids who are inadaptable to change.  It is adults who get stuck in their ways.  Kids are probably one of the most adaptable things on the planet.

I credit my daughters, Danni and Stevie, as being the second most positive thing that allow us to live on just $75 a week groceries.  The first thing is the MAKE homemade cleaning products but more about that next week. The girls have been positive about the whole thing right from day one even though they have borne the brunt of most of the changes.  We no longer buy cakes and biscuits in the groceries, but instead of crying, the kids have adapted and now I often find them baking, which is something we never really did before.  Stevie (11) is a good cook and can whip up cupcakes at the drop of a hat.  Anzac biscuits are a favourite and I came home the other night to find Danni (17) making pikelets which was impressive. Toasted sandwiches seem to be the snack of choice and we are always eating fruit now, a lot of it donated by friends and family and gratefully accepted.

Instead of expensive cereal for breakfast I start the day with toast and often enjoy a bowl of porridge (rolled oats) which is yummy, filling and easy on the wallet. The kids are more inventive, making French toast or eggy-in-the-hole as a good tummy-filler before school.  In my opinion we are eating better on the budget than we were before.

Slashing our grocery bill to $100 a week has to be the best thing I have ever done. All I wanted to do was save some money, for a change. Now, six months later, I am a successful columnist with my own website – www.pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz – and I’ve saved over $25,000. I’ve been on TV several times and have developed my own brand – Make (as in make your own household cleaning products and cosmetics) – started a company (albeit named Pig Tits and Parsley Sauce) and engaged a franchisee, Lynn Putt, to cover Coastal Taranaki. I’m also a teacher, a public speaker and a bookseller. Amazing, isn’t it?

The truly amazing thing is that with a little bit of forethought and discipline, I now spend in one month on groceries what I used to spend in a week and my family is better off for it in many ways.

Here are a few food items I will never buy again:

Frozen chips: what madness sees us spending $3 plus on a few frozen, crinkle-cut potatoes when you can buy a 10kg bag of spuds for $6 or $7 and chop them up yourself?

Bolognese sauce: I was pondering how bad the cheap no-name pasta sauce could be when some kind gourmet pointed out that you can joosh up a can of whole tomatoes ($1.30) in the food processor by adding a clove of garlic, onion and a herb or three and voila, have really nice pasta sauce. Why didn’t I think of that one myself?

Drinks: fruit juice, wine, flavoured milk – all loaded with sugar, expensive and fattening. We don’t miss those drinks at all. It’s just cups of tea, water and milk at our place now. We all had withdrawal symptoms for about a month and had to train ourselves to remember to drink water so we didn’t dehydrate, but quickly got over it and now water is easily our drink of choice as we’ve kissed those sugar-laden, money- wasters goodbye.

Some other things we don’t get any more include biscuits, roll-ups, muesli bars, strings, tiny teddies, Milo, processed meat, chips, ice cream, pizzas, dips, fancy breads, cheeses and cake. I can’t see it doing us any harm.

Next week: What the kids ate.

* If you want to get in touch with Lyn, you can email her on pigtitsandparsleysauce@gmail.com

I might as well make it official, as of last week we are cutting the grocery budget again – this time to $75 a week.

But before I tell you why, I have an announcement to make.  My home-made cleaning products, recipes and the associated classes and group demonstrations have been an unequivocal success. Demand nationwide has been so great that I felt obliged to cater for people who wanted a piece of this knowledge but because of their location are unable to attend my Tuesday evening classes in Waitara. My answer to this was to offer a franchise type arrangement to people around New Zealand (and beyond) love the home-made cleaning products enough to enthuse others about them.

Lynn Putt from Perth Road was an early adapter who recognised value in the MAKE range and is particularly impressed with results delivered by the home made laundry powder, so much so that she has become the Coastal franchisee.  Lynn is offering two classes on a Wednesday, 11am and 7pm, to cater for people from Oakura to Opunake who want to learn how to save big bucks by quickly and easily making their own cleaning products

(ph: 06 752 4033).

Discovering how to make effective home-made cleaning products for a fraction of the price of the bought stuff eased the pressure off the $100 budget.  Now most of our hundred dollars is spent on food, so when I found myself throwing away rotten pineapple and mouldy tomato paste the other day it reminded me of the bad old days, when we spent a fortune of groceries and than chucked most of it away. A tight grocery budget limits the choices available in your household.  If you have the choice between bread and cake – most people go for the cake and the bread goes mouldy. If there is only bread, then you eat that and you are grateful for it. The wasted food in our house recently signalled to me that we were getting spoilt for choice again.  $75 a week is extreme… I’ll let you know how we go.

Next Week:  Our changed diet

For this experiment, I used a list of things we needed at the time.

I was pretty sure I knew which supermarket would be the cheapest and I expected it to be so much cheaper that the cost of the distance travelled to get there would be justified.

Wrong! Since shifting in June to Taranaki’s best-kept secret, the awesome little town of Waitara, I have vowed to shop locally. But I did wonder if that would put pressure on the $100 budget. However, someone pointed out to me (and quite rightly, too), that the cost of travelling into Countdown in New Plymouth or even The Valley should be taken into consideration. This led me to shop for my listed items locally at Waitara New World, Waitara Bin Inn and Countdown New Plymouth to see which came out the cheapest.

Here’s the list, which interestingly and unintentionally bears a close resemblance to the food bank list that appeared in the paper recently:

Coffee (90g), tea bags (200), a dozen eggs, tin of cream corn, tin of tuna, white vinegar, chocolate mousse sachet, pink iced buns, spaghetti, two loaves of bread, bananas.

Who do you think won?

It was actually a surprise to me to discover that all three bills came within $1 of each other. The total cost of that list was around $30 in all three shops. The items were all priced quite differently, but the bottom line was practically the same. This has led me to conclude that there are bargains in all supermarkets – it’s not the shop, it’s the shopper selecting the items off the shelf that dictates the size of the final bill. So instead of whingeing that you live in, for example, Stratford, and there is only one supermarket and it is really expensive, have a think about the way you shop. By making a conscious effort to select the least-cost acceptable item to fulfil your shopping list, you will be amazed at the savings you can achieve. Just because the supermarket stocks expensive luxury brands and places them on the shelf right in front of your nose doesn’t mean you have to choose them.

I’m just off now to have 600 cups of tea.

Next week: Spoilt for choice and the $75 grocery budget.

* If you want to get in touch with Lyn, you can email her on pigtitsandparsleysauce@gmail.com.

In six months, Pig Tits has snow-balled from an idea in my head to a media event. Sometimes I wish I had thought of a different name – too late now.

The website is attracting people worldwide: China, Bahrain, UK, the United States and heaps from Australia. People are interested in buying my money-saving cleaning product recipes, fantastic baking soda and white vinegar books, and the Aussies are chasing my franchise so they can have Pig Tits across the Tasman. And all I wanted to do was save a bit of money.

I have raised a bit of dosh by running classes and selling recipes and ingredients. I am also finding a niche as a paid public speaker. Farmers in Invercargill is flying me down for a night in the deep south as a fund-raiser. It’s called An Evening with Lyn Webster and the organisers will charge $20 a head. They expect more than 400 people! To me, that is amazing. I’m going to show them how to make their own laundry powder, so I hope it’s not an anti-climax.

I am happy to go along with this strange phenomenon and interested to see what will happen next. I’ve invested the proceeds of all this work into sign- writing my car, so look out for the Pig Tits car, which will be on the road soon.

I’m not too busy to do my Tuesday night classes (7pm) and am getting organised with some franchisees who will be taking the money-saving cleaning product demonstrations out to more far- flung areas (like Coastal Taranaki) for people too distant to attend night classes in Waitara. August is getting booked up with group presentations, but I intend to provide these as long as there is an interest – so contact me on pigtitsand parsleysauce@gmail.com or 754-8600 if you are not an internet person.

None of this would have happened if not for the positive response Jonathan MacKenzie, Robert Mitchell and Deb Sloan from the Taranaki Daily News had to a scruffy sharemilker who wandered in to their newsroom in January with a half- assed idea about a weekly budgeting column. It also would not have carried on without the positivity of 21,999 people who have shown an interest in the Pig Tits concept. Nothing makes you feel more positive amidst the uncertainty of a recession than having some spare cash in your savings account. And if you have the power to slash $200 off your weekly grocery bill, as I have, then give it a go. There is no downside. See you at the Shine Festival (all weekend in Oakura). Next week: three different supermarkets, same list. Which is cheapest?