No spend January?

[corinewmoon]

After he festive blowout and considering ive got some big bills in January, (MOT, car tax, insurance) I have decided to try a no frivlous spending month. There is nothing i really need to buy, (apart from new school jumper and coat for DS) .
So I will be taking my lunch to work every day,
I will avoid costas,
and i will limit my self to one bottle of wine per week
I will aim to spend £200.00 on food shop for the month
I will not go for leisurely stroll to the shops during my lunch break.

Any one else want to join in. ?

Glad you like the 1910 diet piece. I find all that stuff fascinating.

Well, I've done a stock take and this week's shopping bill via Sainbo's online is due to come to £66.71, which is rather better than last week's. And that includes stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, although I am relying on three lots of protein coming out of the freezer.

I do think their food website is looking good. The recipes are sensible and tasty looking, and they have a lot of half price and other special offers that really impressed me this week. And they are not paying me to say that.

For anyone looking for reduced cards/ Christmas wrapping paper etc - try Waitrose and WH Smith. Both places still had lots yesterday.

I was abit crap at this today. :(

Brought my lunch to work (bagel) but was starving so spent £2ish in Tesco's on some Belvita breakfast biscuit things. They were reduced though & I now have a pack in the cupboard at work. TBH though, if I'd eaten breakfast I wouldn't have needed them - I am rubbish at eating breakfast though.

My mum picked DD2 up today, then after work I picked up DD1 from singing club, then met my mum in Waitrose. They'd already been there some time, my mum had brought DD2 a cupcake, so it was only fair for me to buy DD1 one, too. Then another cuppa for my mum, one for me, DD2 was still hungry (been there over a hour by that point, and she is always starving after school) so brought her a £3 kids pasta meal, too. Which is more like a snack really

^ that lot came to about £12, so abit shit today really. That's pretty normal for us though, at least twice during the week, once at the weekend. All of a sudden I've spent £50 on nothing & wonder why I'm maxing my overdraft. I need to accept that I am not the kinda a girl who can fritter money away in Waitrose cafe. I can't seem to accept this though [hmmm]

Lady harriet, neither have I in ours, but if you do an online shop, sometimes they give you options that wouldn't be available in your local store. Our delivery man comes from a really big store further away from me.

Reckon I'll stock pile tinned tomatoes when they're on a good offer though as I always use them.

Don't you just love it when for some crazy reason your long waffling post disappears and MN goes offline
So, evening ladies, managed to make my way through the thread, loving the ideas & tips flying about.
I think I'm already quite tight good with money but we need to tighten our belts somehow.
We shop at Costco & Makro, that definately helps with stuff we can hide store in the garage. We are overrun with loo rolls though!
Re the tomato discussion, just before Christmas our local ish Tesco had a fab offer of buy one four pack, get two free. We will now be eating mostly tomato based meals for some time. The same goes for baked beans (same offer!!)
MM xx

Oh, forgot to add, DP has spent £9.08 at CoOp this morning on essentials, milk etc and a birthday card. I am pleased to say I've spent sweet FA since last Thursday, get me (pats self on back)

Well I don't think I'm doing too badly

Did a Tesco online order today which came to just over £60, for 4 of us ( actually 6, but I didn't buy anything for my 5 month old twins!). I've mealplanned until next Wed so we should be okay, though we'll need top ups of bread and milk over the weekend.

Apart from that I haven't spend anything for a couple of days. Oh yes I did, £2.30 on stamps. But still, not too bad.

Batch cooked chilli con carne today and padded it out with lots of kidney beans so that'll do DH and I 3 meals.

We had the last of our xmas turkey tonight! A Turkey, Leek and Ham pie I made and froze last week, and it was followed by apple crumble made from cooking apples we were given ( I'm bfing my twins so eat LOADS atm!) That remionds me, I have more cooking apples in the shed. Must do something with them.

Does anyone bank with Lloyds TSB? I signed up to their Money Manager service, in their online banking site. Quite an eye opener! It categorises all your spending and totals your income and expenditure every month -not comfortable reading, but I recommend it to help get a grip on things!

I got my paper in John Lewis for 75p a roll, really good stuff too. I have seen it in Waitrose as well. The ribbon and crackers and decorations were from a local independent garden centre. Cards were from Charity Christmas Cards - there is a long list of charities who have reduced cards at the moment. I picked the ones that support Paget's Disease and Osteoarthritis as Wilena Hitching suffered from this very badly (she was the inspiration for the Austerity Housekeeping blog) and I have Osteoarthritis. I've got some 'free' or cheap presents from shop4online to put by for next Christmas and general use. It's a good website, but you have to watch the postage costs carefully.

I've realised I only spent £1 yesterday. It was in the town centre car park and I sprinted back to the car so the machine wouldn't tick over to the next hours charge.

I'm in, there's nothing worse than January. Everyone is so skint it's untrue

Sorry, didn't check in yesterday - will post the bread in recipes, fear not,Harriet.

Bargainous MOT has been offset by bike service and quote for new patio. The latter really needs doing as it's not safe for when the boy starts walking. £3.5k +VAT. Going to get a few estimates and then probably cry.

Kinky - was your yeast fresh? If it's been hanging around in the cupboard for a while/in a packet that's been left open, that could effect the rising.

I made some yesterday and it was fine, so not sure really what could have wrong.

Make sure you give it a good knead or it could have been the white flour. Was it in a warm(ish) place? Did the rolls turn out ok? I'm feeling very sheepish now.

Spew, how about having a smaller patio and putting bark on the rest for now?

Doing really well so far have set up a daily tracker spreadsheet (geek alert!) Have worked out how much cash I have for the rest of the month divided it by the number of the days and that's my daily budget (depressingly low) So have set myself challenge on not spending it and giving us a bit more at weekends for small treats!

Taking food to work, packed lunches for kids, no takeaways and no wine!!!

Have done very well not buying coffee on way to work, had a result this morning found a starbucks prepaid card in bottom of handbag (think it was meant to be a stoking filler for DD that I forgot!) so enjoying a lovely coffee before the onslaught of work!

made bread yesterday and fed three adults and one toddler from freezer and cupboards. DH is still buying his lunches at work. Haven't really got a pressing enough case to ask him to take a portion of something from the freezer. To be fair though, I think he does it cheaply ie buys rolls or pitta and ham/cheese etc. He definitely has a box of cereal there.

I lose the moral high ground today by having had a £2.10 Costa coffee.

Boffin, the patio is a mess, so whatever we have done, it's going to cost £££. The people who built it (previous owners, who were the biggest corner cutters/bodge jobbers known to mankind) used a really soft brick for the front, so it's flaking away every time there's a frost. The slabs are all cracking and not safe - I trip on them almost every time I walk out there (especially when wet), so god knows how long it would be before the boy trips and splits his head open. We do have a fair amount of savings, and I guess this is what savings are for. Just freaking out as my mat pay has now ended. On the plus side, after 2 weeks of overflowing nappies, the boy has just done a solid poo, so I am doing a happy dance !

And I have just cancelled my Marie Claire subscription. I used to like it, but am clearly not its target market anymore. I actually really want to subscribe to Good Housekeeping, but am resisting!

Spew thanks.

I went into NatWest this am and changed a bunch of foreign currency that was hanging around my wallet. CZK 100 got me £2.37 . "If that's what it is, that's what it is," said the lady. EUR 10 got me £7.00.

I have Estonian money that apparently I can change back for a few more weeks (even though they're in the EURO zone now.)

The last time DH and I did the piggy banks (ours, not the DCs!!!)/rooting around handbags for spare change thing we got £66.

that's a superb idea. I am sitting at my desk at home and in front of me is a drawer in which we keep leftover foreign money and gift vouchers. want to guess the total while I tot it up???

stew it wasn't your recipe! It's me and my crappy baking skills . I cooked them and stuck a load of butter on them and they all got eaten - they were rather nice. The yeast was old, although I thought it would be okay as it was still sealed, obviously not that okay . Tasted nice though! I felt rather pleased with myself, so thank you .

I feel your pain with previous owners. Our shower started leaking through the ceiling, so DH took sealing strips off only to discover that they'd built the shower over another shower, which is still there, and sealed it with expanding foam - which isn't waterproof . Cretins. They've also built it that one over a window which is still there. It is one of many, many things that we found after moving. We just don't used the shower at the moment as I can't afford to repair it. It's the first thing I will do when I go back to work or manage to save the funds.

For the person who likes Belvita Breakfast biscuits, One-Stop if there are any near you have them at present at £1.19 a box instead of £2.50 ish and anyone wanting magazine supscriptions here is a link to WHSmith online at 90% off
www.whsmith.co.uk/Magazines.aspx

£15 bonus bond vouchers valid in argos , boots, debenhams etc

105 Turkish lira ... £35.82

189 Morocco dirhams that I suspect we shouldn't have taken out of the country ... £14

5 Hungarian forint ... £0.01!

2 roubles ... £0.04

1 Australian dollar ... £0.66

10 Singapore cents (I've never been there!) ... £0.05

2 maltese cents £0.03

2.5 French francs (well you never know...!)

56 Belgian francs (ditto)

8 USA cents ... £0.05

17.50 Swedish kronor ... £1.63

and finally... ?72.25 which is great because I'm going to France tomorrow!

total £127.06

lexi well done that should buy a few have fun!

spew & kinky I think your previous owner's related to mine. DIY-SOS- he bodged absolutely everything as we are finding out. Pity because basically being an ex-council house it's solid & good size rooms. Hey-ho we'll do it as we can, thank god for good DIY friends.