I've given in.  We had the CH on for an hour yesterday and the halogen heater on for 1.5 hours in the living room and 1.5 hours in the bedroom.  I got to the point where I had four layers on (inside the house) including my really warm gilet - and I was still shivering and miserable.  Enough is enough.  The washing was so cold that I could not tell if it was dry or still slightly damp so I put it along the radiator racks to warm up so that I could decide.  My husband says I am ridiculous but we spent the best of £1.75 on heating yesterday. When it gets colder and we need more heating and then multiply up the cost across the winter......

I've been considering the cost of retirement.  I was reading somewhere (MSE or The Motley Fool most likely) that the cost of living goes down when you stop working.  I thought that this was not true at least for us.  We still need clothes and I will continue to buy them mainly in charity shops.  I have all my "work" clothes and my "at home" clothes and will wear them out before getting more.  The food bill will go up because we won't get a free sarnie for lunch any more.  My husband has a sarnie and and apple and I have a sarnie and a bowl of custard.  The custard is filling and means that I can leave half my sarnie for tomorrow's breakfast.  So we will have to start paying for weekday lunches and my weekday breakfasts.  The heating bill will rise because on weekdays, we only need heating in the evenings if it is cold enough.  Then we would need a great deal more heating and all day in cold  That bit worries me because with the cost of heating rising, that bill is scary enough already.  Travel costs won't change much.  It is a 3 mile round trip to school each day so we might save a litre or just over of diesel per week.  I always try to go shopping on the way home from school to minimise the fuel costs so that shopping trip will negate some of the fuel saved by not going to work.  We won't pay national insurance - yes but we also won't be earning any income to pay it on.  We'll still have to pay income tax on my husband's pension.  We'll still be paying at the vet, dentist, optician, hairdresser as always.  Once past a certain age, prescription charges will go unless they decide to drop that perk of being older.  Currently, bus fares drop during certain hours once in receipt of a state pension but they are talking of stopping that and the state pension itself is getting further away.

Hmmm.  If we leave work, I think living costs are going to increase and income will plummet.  I can see lots of budgetting ahead - far more than now. Isn't it a good thing that we like homemade (and homegrown) vegetable soup!

By the way, Tesco have lots of their baking ingredients on 3 for the price of 2 at the moment.  Time to stock up on enough dried fruit and flour for a few months.  I'm thankful that there is enough in the coffers to be able to go and spend a bit more now in order to get some longer term savings.