A WOMAN has lifted the lid on her frugal ways and how she’s saved enough money over the years to retire early with no mortgage or debts.
But she’s had to make plenty of sacrifices along the way, as Jane, who calls herself a ‘frugal Queen’, revealed she lives in a home that doesn’t have a central heating system to keep them warm.
Brit Jane lives with her husband Mike in Brittany in France in a large property and says that they pride themselves on living a “thrifty, frugal and money-saving life on a super tight budget”.
Opening up about one of the ways that they have cut back, she focused on how they heat their home without having to rely on radiators, only having two heat sources including a stove.
Instead, she explained how they have taken it back to basics by burning wood, which they are able to get in large quantities from a local supplier who lives within a mile of them for a competitive price.
Jane said: “We buy wood here in this part of Brittany from local farmers.
“They all have trees lining their hedgerows – those get too big, they cut them back and they grow back,” she clarified as she said they lived in the middle of a forest.
Jane then said they take their wood by hand log by log and store it in their shed ready for when they need it most – a process that takes up to two days, but that Jane said was fine as it would go on to save them major cash.
She also confessed that they bought approximately 570 worth of logs – money left over from their monthly budgets – as they prefer to have “too much than too little” to act as a “buffer” for the colder period of the year.
And it certainly comes in very handy, as Jane went on to reveal that they start burning the wood whenever the temperature first starts to plummet.
In the video posted to her YouTube channel, she continued: “We will start burning wood when it’s a cold evening, so we’ll have a small, what we call, a six log fire.
“Then from October onwards it can get quite cold.”
Jane said the wood made her “feel safe” as she knew that it would keep them warm – and wouldn’t affect their finances in the long-run.
She added: “Inflation can’t affect me. If they put up the price of electricity or gas, that’s not going to affect me – I have got ahead.”
The couple, who maintain that their collection of wood will “see them through to summer”, also showed how they use it in and around their home – plus the other tricks they have up their sleeves.
She revealed that despite the three-bedroom home having very thick walls, it doesn’t keep the heat in, so they still require some clever hacks to get the job done.
Jane explained: “We purposely bought a house that was south facing. So we get sun and sun again all day.”
She added that they’d made sure they insulated it properly, and then used wood to go the extra mile and allow it to rise to the top of the building.
Jane explained how they use the original oak fireplace in the daytime – and make sure it’s not burning at night – as she said: “[Our heat source] is a 9 and a half kilowatt stove.
“It heats the entire area and is very warm and toasty. What we like about having a wood stove is that it’s that incredible radiant heat.”
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