No more random spending for 3 months...........any takers?

[Collision]

Starting from 1 September DH and I have decided that the only things on the cc bill will be

food

petrol

car insurance (due 7 Sept)

We are no longer randomly spending on ANY clothes at all. The boys have their uniform and I have new NEXT-sale boots and a warm waterproof coat and we do not need ANY MORE CLOTHES.

Proper meal planning and shopping at ALDI and Sainsburys.

No more Costa lotta coffees.

No more takeaways or cheapy McDonalds/KFC for the kids.

We will use the library for books so no need to buy any.

Packed lunches

Coffee in a flask if I take the children out along with snacks and drinks bought from supermarket and not random cafes.

The boys are pretty much ECO anyway and brilliant at turning off lights and water etc and they only have showers and not baths.

We want to cut down on spending to see how much we can save over time. DH has a great job and I work at school FT so it will be interesting to see what we can do.

GULP!

Anyone want to help join me??

Carrots eeek - £170!!!

My DS1 has the £30 specs and so far they have been worth every penny!

Weekend was not so good for me, DH forgot my cousin was coming to stay and hadn't bought enough food (he does the main food shop as he is p-t sahd and I work ft) so ended up doing top-ups on Friday and Saturday - about £25. However for entertainment we took the DSs to a local forestry site and walked through the woods so that was v cheap, even allowing for the ice-creams the DSs had at the end of the walk, and we stayed in on Sat night, drank and sang along to last night of the proms!

Sunday I was a bit jaded and by the afternoon we succumbed to the munchies and had sweets and crisps from the local shop...

Yesterday was back to a zero spend. Today I am just about to fly up to Manchester for a meeting so there will be some spending but I should be able to claim most of it back in expenses.

I know Abgirl dh and I felt sick. It just all came at once and with a funny fitting we can't economise without risking damaging her feet.

We have had the £30 glasses before too and they saved us money in the long run as they were much more robust and didn't need replaced or cost us on trips to get them repaired. Fingers crossed this pair will be the same.

We were lucky and happened to get a free pair when we bought the £30 pair so that should help too - if the frames last then we might be able to just replace lenses next time as he can wear the spares while the new ones are made up.

That is assuming he hasn't outgrown the frames again of course

FootballFriend I started a thread about it so there is a lot of info here but our opticians now supply them for children.

The ones we went for are modular so you buy each eye piece, in the correct prescription for that eye, and then they give you a kit to hold it all together (straps and nose piece etc).

The optician said they don't need to be a perfect prescription for swimming so they don't need updated as often but they do make the children much safer in the pool as they can see instructors, other swimmers etc.

I am hoping for a no spend day today - we certainly need it.

poppyandsneeze you don't need a credit card to sell things on Ebay, just a Paypal account which you can set up as long as you have a bank account you can link it to. Very simple and safe.

It is well worth doing, I made £250 selling clothes on Ebay a few weeks ago, some Joules things even sold for more than I had paid for them (bought in the sale) and I had had a few years wear from them!

I have another bag of clothes to list (inc a lot of Monsoon ball dresses etc) and am hoping to make the same again, if not more. It's very satisfying and you find yourself scanning the house for other things that you DP don't really need and can sell!

Thanks for the advice about the ebay selling. I did a massive clearout of the bedroom at the weekend. Couldn't be bothered with the selling off part - even though we need the money. I bagged up the items and took to my local charity shop on Sunday !!! Never mind.

We are being really good at the moment, we took the children to Costa to have one last coffee (and we weren't paying - I complained about the service I received previously and we ended up having it all for free this time). Went into Boots and used my points to buy some essential smellies.

Nearly used my Nectars points for the £12 of shopping, but realised that I wouldn't quite have enough points and want to keep them for Argos for Christmas presents. So all in all we haven't spent much. Took money out over the weekend to live on for the rest of the month. We are also sorting out a new bank account - as I asked to have my account overdraft reduced and the computer 'said no'. So I informed the girl that we would be looking to move our account in the next few weeks!!!

Ideally using the cash - I predict that if we don't use our bank account again for the rest of the month that we should only be overdrawn by £50 !!!

Will check in and let you all know at the end of the month if I have managed this.

No spending yet today, though some things are needed soon - realised has outgrown his school jumpers. He's 3 and has some 3yr ones and some 4, both sizes are too small! So will have to get some 5yr old ones. They aren't expensive but the shop is a fair distance away so prob not today.

DS1 starts swimming later, so that's £50.70 for the term, and orchestra tonight but cousin is babysitting so that's free :)

I have failed again. Dd's violin needed its bow restrung. I didn't expect to have to pay for this today but I did. That's another £40. Not a random spend but still another spend of money that is fast running out. Help!

I need to pay for tennis, Rainbows, Beavers and guitar lessons either now or very soon. And DD's party on Saturday and birthday next Tuesday. Beginning of term when there is a birthday is painfully expensive.

Yesterday ended up being more expensive than expected as my flight up to Manchester was very turbulent because of the wind and I was sick:( Am not a good flyer at the best of times so decided to get the train home and had to fork out for the ticket (£79) - but work are refunding - the expense is at the wrong time of the month though as pay day isn't until tomorrow.

Going to spend tonight writing a budget for the next pay month and allocate everything, including money towards christmas and to pay off some of next year's holiday already sitting on my credit card. Going to involve DH as well so he has some ownership (at least that's the theory!).

Lawrie we pay for beavors and swimming by monthly direct debit, makes it a lot easier to budget for.

JKS I have outgrown vests on my to get list after a tidy of the DSs clothes - but they can wait a few weeks till it gets properly cold!!

Poppy definitely worth using nectar points elsewhere and not on food shopping, we save all ours for Christmas expenses too and tend to swap them for Amazon vouchers.

Oh dear Abgirl, at least work are refunding, bet the flight was horrid if it made you sick.

Well I don't know what happened but I tried to pay for swimming only to find out it was already paid for think DH must have paid for it but I don't remember him telling me!
Anyway, £50 not on my Sept spend lol.

And only £3.80 today for me & DD to swim, oh and 0.50 for my orchestra. A good few days. Nothing planned for tomorrow so maybe another good one.
(ignoring DH at work spending).

Also - started tackling kids toys today, have the beginning of an 'exit' pile - well have to make some space for the inevitable influx at Christmas!

And, made a friend's day/week by giving her a nearly full bottle of Baileys I unearthed that I had one drink from but decided with BF it still didn't agree with me and it goes off end of Oct - sure she's happy to help me out there

I never thought of looking a bottle of alcohol for expiry date!

I find I can't really plan ahead or know where I am with money as every month is different and we've never quite been 'settled' for the past 2.5 years. I've seen that budget planner on MSE and filled it in dutifully but, even with that, a slight change of budgets entered (a kind of cooking the books, I suppose) turned me from red to green. All I had to do was underestimate a bit childcare.

Abgirl sorry about the rotten flight. That sounds grim. Thank goodness they will refund the cost though.

Today was, finally, A NO SPEND DAY! Hurrah!

Infact I made some money today on ebay

Carrots - bonus!

I think most alcohol doesn't go off really but Baileys is a bit different, can't remember it's ingredients but think there is dairy in there? Anyway it got something out of the house, and made a friend very happy :)

Boden sale stuff for DD arrived yesterday, I'm happy with my choices so happy with that spend.
Unless I make it to the uniform shop later I think today could be a no spend day.

Well I spent £30 in Aldi this morning, quite pleased. I have meal planned for the week ahead and am going to try my family out on veggies meals for 50% of the week. So fingers crossed .

Also had to spend £25 to put less than half a tank of petrol in my car. My light and mileage dial was actually flashing this morning - never done that before. But put the petrol spend on my nectar to get some extra points. A little expensive this morning too as I had to pay nursery fees for the half term ahead.

I am hoping now that I don't have to spend anything else until Sunday. Fingers crossed. I have to pay my childs scout fees but am hoping that if I forget that I can pay next week instead.

I had to do a top up (bread, milk etc) shop but that is all today. Yay!

I also made some more money on ebay which cancels out the shop so I am in profit again.

Carrots - you are doing well.

Cafe with friends this morning, £2.80.

Thinking maybe fish & chips for tea later.

Well DH came home in time to go and get the fish & chips so not on my list! Have just ordered some bandana bibs for DD, so that's £11, but they are needed.

Nothing else today, no spending planned for the weekend though I will have to do some food shopping.

DD has decided that Friday is "soup day". She buys some veg from the greengrocers when she gets off the bus (lots of baby tomatoes for £1 today)
Then she came home picked some round carrots she's grown (yay, one of her first successes !), chops it all up with an onion and throws in a veggie stock cube, then we boil it all up and whiz it together. Enjoy with some crusty bargain bread on Friday night special offer - toasted with butter.
Last week she bought custard doughnuts for pudding and it all came in at under £2 for 4 of us. And this week we're having chocolate cake for pudding - just made it from a mix and it's just gone in the oven. It's a bit sparse in the tin but perhaps it will rise a little ?
She reckons she might do supper every Friday - and we have had 2 weeks running now
She's 12. Keeping to a budget is easier when you live with an angel !!!

Monday night was a different story though, when parents dropped in on way back from hols, and we had a takeaway which came to over £50 ! We did have a nice evening together but still ..

More ebay sales today but we did go out for lunch - but dh paid. We have had a few bits of bad news with the dcs so we needed a little cheering up.

This thread is great for the figure as well as the purse. It is stopping me from buying random treats when I am hanging around waiting for the dcs places and moments like that. I should have kept a tally of how often it has stopped me and how much it has stopped me spending.

Chocolate cake was yummy if a little burnt on top

• I had mine with a little Greek yogurt ! Yum

Another no spend day and I made £43 selling stuff today. I have made a total of £76 this week selling.

C&C - what do you sell? We're moving house and I come across all sorts of unused stuff. I just bag it for charity or bin it but I wonder if some would be worth eBaying. I don't suppose anyone would be interested in the DCs nursery artwork but some is good stuff that I can't be bothered Freecycling or phoning around to see if anyone's interested.

Football it is mostly outgrown clothes. I used to give them to friends but we live in a wealthy village and I suspect everyone has more clothes than they know what to do with. As I said, folk round here are well off, so I suspect we need the cash more than they need the clothes, as we are not so flush.

I also sold a toddler bike and some outgrown jigsaws, games and books.

It is amazing what sells well and what doesn't do so well. If cash is tight then I would sell stuff Football - I can't knock making £76 in a week on stuff I would have given away.

I just put one or two things on ebay a day so that I don't get overwhelmed and look out for local sales. You could also try car booting - a friend is doing that for charity just now and is making a fortune.

C&C - that's just the kind of things I've been wheeling to the charity shops. The older the kids get the more difficult it is to pass on clothes & toys for fear of somehow offending people, which is bizarre.

C&C - also good idea about only a couple of things at a time on Ebay.