Frugal through choice or necessity - what's your story?

We never went on family holidays but then neither did any one else I knew.

My mother divorced my father as he when he left the army it become clear he was a bully and was violent.

So she had to bring up 3 children working hard during school hours only. She did 3 jobs at one point. She worked part time for knitting pattern company as a designer, she also worked for a residential care home and at one point when I was old enough to be at home watching my 2 brothers for 2 hours a day she would nip across the road to clean a training centre.

So we learnt how to budget, and the how much things cost.

Mother did a mix of cooking from scratch and some simple convience foods.

We always had a veggie and fruit garden so never lacked for fresh fruit and veg.

Most clothes were either handsewn or charity shop's with certain items of clothing always being new.

We all had bicyles which were second hand and we learnt how to maintian them as we also learnt how to look after whatever we had.

We learnt to work and study and 2 of use went to university.

My DH had his own company in the 80's and lived a bit beyond what he was earning but was fine untill contracts started to drop off.

He come from a family that had money because they'd learnt how to budget, how to maintian what they had, make and restore things even though both his parents had good jobs untill his mother gave up teaching. His father was a research scientist.

We have always watched the bank balance although I am better at it than DH but I did study accountancy for 5 years at evening classes.

I've alway aimed to live within my means as it makes sense I don't have loans or credit cards and I don't buy things on HP. If we want something we save up for it.

DH has a very well paid job and I work part time for myself.

People think we have loads of money as I own 3 sports cars and DH owns 2 but we can only do this partly as we don't have children and partly because we both do all the work on our cars ourselves.

We don't take holidays abroad every year usually one every 3rd year.

We both do quite a bit of car sport we both race and I used to drift as well but don't have as much time to practise and enter competitions as I did.

We have a policy if you can't afford it you don't buy it. If you can learn to do something yourself you put the effort in and learn. We make what we have last, we hate waste and we don't buy any thing just because it's the latest thing.. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If it does the required job why waste money to upgrade?

Thats a very good policy to have, I am the same if I can't afford it I don't buy it, and I have never had loans for anything though I do own a credit card which I pay off every month never had any interest charge simply as it is safer as I buy from a lot of stores online. My husband came back perplexed this week saying someone had been in work with a newish Mercedes costing £30,000, he had afforded it by extending his MORTGAGE and I just shook my head and thought what on earth is the point of that even though we know he has another car newer than ours that he owns as well. I just put every spare penny down on our mortgage and paid it off early. I was clothed from jumble sales as a child and mum used to knit jumpers etc, my toys were very few and far between. I have been abroad but won't be going again as prefer this country and would have to take blood thinners to go on a plane.

I wish I could say I've been frugal all my life, but I havent. I've always been sensible in some ways, never had expensive holidays, clothes etc BUT we never managed our money properly, bought cars we couldnt afford, and extended our mortgage to cover debt amongst other things.

Things couldnt be more different now, we do struggle to live within our means, but that is mainly because I only work 1 day a week as I was made redundant from my second part time job. I have been looking for a job but not as hard as I should be really. I feel though that we have learnt so much, we havent used a credit card since 2008, we save for things, we budget, shop around etc etc so in theory things can only get better from here. She says lol

Life is a learning curve isn't it, I wish I had saved some of the money I spent when I first got my full time job and the 16 years I was in it.