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. ?

What's depressing me a bit about this thread is that it seems we only have food budgets left to economise on. No one's cancelling flash hairdressers, second holidays, random shopping sprees - because we didn't have them to start with.

I have a cheap gym membership and contact lenses (both frozen for life so quite affordable) but that's it.

Fuel, food and energy prices are so much more expensive these days .

Bossybritches, that no bag idea is absolutely fantastic! Why didn't I think of that???

Meglet, you are right. What bothers me is that for years and years pre-credit crunch I saw all sorts of cutbacks and major economies having to take place in education, with 'difficult times' being invoked at absolutely every turn. I recently had occasion to review some raw data from 1999/2000, and some from 2003/4 in which interviewees were talking about how difficult school and personal finances had become for those involved in the sector - genuine problems usually borne out of local and national Government's mishandling of various things. Digging down I have found repeated out and out lies made by local councils and other organisations in relation to finance, in order to serve their own ends, always invoking a rhetoric of limited means, cutbacks, and excessive demands on the public purse, which in so many cases was blatantly untrue. I am left with a bitter taste in my mouth and a deep mistrust of local Government in all its forms.

Meanwhile it is very often people like many of us on MN who go around attempting to pick up the pieces, but for what? So it can all happen again? Even trying to have a public life and sacrificing free time to influence matters for the better seems to have little effect. This is one if the reasons I put a lot of effort into the Austerity Housekeeping blog - what the author Charles Handy would call 'lighting small bonfires in the darkness'. At least it helps a few people live more comfortably while the powers that be attempt to flog them a la horse in Animal Farm.

I really don't like what has happened to this country. But for mow MN is free and we can shelter here.

meglet you are spot on, if I tighten my belt anymore I shall be cut in half!!

It saddens me that I've always said I'll cut back on anything but food as I think it so important. We don't eat crap but we definately eat the cheaper versions of everything & I do yearn for a nice bit of steak occasionally. Even eating out at our local pub is a very rare treat which we won't be doing for the forseeable future. it's so bloody depressing!

Agreed Boffinmum, this is my coffee-house equivalent.

Don't get me started on Local Govt......

Good chat & company & some very sound advice when I need it.

I actually have an account code for a local cash and carry so perhaps ought to go up there now. Anyone else tried that?

Dunno Boffin they're great for bulk buys so if it saves petrol & time & is something you use a lot of it could be cheaper.

However whenever I've been to our local one by the time you've added back in the VAT it's not always cheaper compared to the BOGOFFS & 2for1's at the supermarket.

Just summed up a few ideas on this blog post. Do make comments if you have anything to add!

How to reduce your food bill even more

This week's jobs:

Make batches of cookie dough for freezer
Make batches of bread rolls for freezer
Vegetable soup batch - carrot and lentil; parsnip, apple and onion
Fruit cake batch - Buy loads of Delia's fruit cake mixes for £2.50 each in Waitrose and recycle ingredients.

Boffin - they had the Mary Berry cake mixes reduced to a pound in my local Tesco.

You probably already do this, but a non-food save is to use the Say No to 0870 (on phone so can't link) website - you get the normal landline no for any 0845/0870 call centre. Best bit is that you seem to come in on another line, thus missing the queue too.

And use quidco whenever you shop online.

Can I join please? my last night of spending tonight, Curry at a friends for the new year, but I've had nothing but takeaways and meals out in December, I daren't look at the bank, but I know it won't be good
I can't cook that well but do try and meal plan, I'm about to do a tesco's shop online now and will venture to Aldi for the first time ever next weekend to see how I get on

For the broken fridge freezer people -

our chest freezer went bang the day before yesterday and we (completely broke) panicked (not least because of the £300 or so of food in there!) and arranged to borrow £350 from lovely parents when DH decided to look online for 'freezer/fridge repairers'.... upshot is lovely local man came an hour after our phonecall and fixed freezer for £47!

He (fridge freezer man) said all his clients these days are old people because young people seem to just throw a broken item away and buy a new one... was a bit of a lesson for me, and something I'll bear in mind in the future too!

It's amazing how often you can get replacement fridges and freezers on Freecycle.

Yes, knitkack our dryer broke just outside of it's warranty. We called a repair person and he said it was £160 call out plus parts & labour. I was a bit baffled, I am certain it's fixable. I got it working again for 15 minutes after googling the model and problem.

My mum bought us a new dryer a month ago but we've still got the old one. Its too new for me to believe it's a write off. But to repair it was going to cost the same as a new one.

Excellent Knick-knack well worth the £47!

We have a local repair man like that,& he charges a £25 call out but nearly always fixes something even if it's just for another 6 months. I'm all for repair if you can, but some repair services charge such a high call out/repair fee I can see how it would seem cheaper to get a new one!

Wow, I feel even luckier now! Ours charged a £20 call out fee and said he as £20 an hour after that...

£160 call out is just INSANE - it makes me which I had some small electrical knowledge actually... it's frustrating not being able to fix things!

Anyway, at least I can buy up bargains and batch cook again! love this thread :)

Hi I am already tight careful with money and dont have much to add to all the tips on here.

However one thing I do , in the spirit of watch the pennies and the pounds look after themselves, is chase down things in the past I would have let go of. Eg a loreal face wash I bought caused a nasty reaction so instead of just binning it I have sent the recepit with a note to them and am confident they will refund me , recently DD got scammed on her mobile adding £27 to her bill and I wrote demanding an explanation/refund and got it. It is an effort but all these bits of money add up.

Oh and if it hasnt been mentioned ban calling mobiles from the landline especially as most of us have free minutes on our phones

I have not gone through all 7 pages of posts but I'm in.
I have got to get straight in 2012 and a very limited spend for a couple of months seem like a great way to start. I have had a bit of an ostrich method of financial control for too long and it clearly was never going to work.
The first step for me will be to work out what I spend my money on and work out a realistic budget.
It all seems a bit scarey and i'm not really sure the best way to start.

Can I join too, please? Desperately broke after Christmas and various dramas and I am also quite scared but know I've got to do something. Haven't read back but would just like to mark my place. I could really do with support and some good ideas

Hi Gettingeasier

I always leave feedback for products both good and bad, so if something is wrong I always ring or write, this usually results in a free replacement as a minimum or some vouchers for a shop/product. I do always leave good feedback as well though

Food plan for the week workout out and a very small shopping list written :)
Massive pot of soup made for lunches to take to work :)
6 month car tax paid for :(

I really have no luxuries to cut back on but I have spoken to BT and changed my contract to save £8 pcm and cancelled my veg box.

The next thing on my list is to start on my budget and work out where all of my money goes each month. I have had my head in the sand for far too long.

Not really sure where to start.

well the offical start of no spend January. Ive not been terribly good up til now. From today I will be practicisng my tightness skills. I dont have much of a choice because I ve bascially spent januarys pay already ( we got paid a week before christmas rather than on the last day of the month) . On top of christmas i had to pay out for new tyres, MOT and tax so £400.00 gone before my usual expenses. I also have buildings insurance and land rent to pay. Sigh,
However it is the new year, and i wont begin it by letting myself get down about this. January will be a challenge , but we can all do it together.

Corine it was car failing it's MOT that tipped me over the edge as I had to increase my overdraft.
I just have never managed to start saving for stuff like that - well for anything really.

Am I going to be told off for renewing our gym membership...it is £400 for the both of us (baby is too young to count), which includes unlimited swimming, gym and classes for the year. So I figure it is worth it. It's just a sod that it comes in the same month as paying for car insurance and MOT. I have just switched my car tax to 6 months, so it won't fall at xmas this time. Come June, I'll switch back to yearly.

Not done too well yet...
Have spent more than the weekly budget on groceries already, needed to buy a present for one of dd's friends birthday parties next week (and they were buy two save some money so we did and stashed one for another party) and then I saw a glass stopper-bottle which for £2.99 which I just had to have as I have stuped ideas of making fresh lemonade in the summer [hmmm] so that smashed all no-spending intentions... Sob...
Have not yet done my monthly budget nor my menu plan, not starting in the most organised manner...

Right.
DH went to the shops earlier. He took cash. Only bought the food we needed and as cheaply as possible.
I have ordered from Ocado with meals planned until next week.
I am avoiding Amazon and John Lewis website.
IT'S NOT A BARGAIN IF YOU DON'T NEED IT!
I am making a list of free (or really really cheap) hobbies, days out and ways to exercise.

I have spent nothing today. I have made a meal plan for the week that will run down the freezer as it desperately needs defrosting. Not only should this keep things cheap, it should also mean that I have more space to freeze spare meals.