No-spend January/Frugal February - the no-spend challenge continues

[roguepixie]

OK - am attempting to start the second thread ... hope this works.

Hey, I am rubbish at keeping up with this thread.

Glad new job is not too bad fish - intrigued to know what it is that you will be one of only 3 people doing - ignore the huffy trainer .

moomoo - hope DD and the rest of your family are doing OK

I spent £30.01 at Aldi today - but I bought The Mirror on Thursday which had a voucher for £5 off a £30 spend, plus other vouchers - I ended up getting about an £8 discount.

Have got parents coming over for dinner tomorrow - got a huge joint of gammon back in the new year reduced from £10 to £1.50 so we are having that with roast potatoes and cauliflower cheese. Total cost - less than £4 to feed six, plus leftovers. It's a 2.5kg gammon, so we will be sick of it by Thursday

My 20,000 Tesco points have come through so we are now scouring the website for things to use them on. Just missed out on the London Eye for £5 each so a bit gutted but I'm sure they will be loads of other stuff to spend them on.

Had a goodish day yesterday £9 at local shop on chocs for 6, bread, milk, magazine and movie night snacks.

Got our Morrisons shop to do today so about £30 to spend today

Hi all
Total this last week was £189.25.
Only £5 of silly spending.
Total for January was a massive £797.17.

Not really sure I can call that a success but then I don't know how much I would have spent without doing this No Spend Jan challenge. I wrote down every penny spent and I can see where I can cut back more.

Debs, I have point envy.

£42 on extra meat, £25 on bread, and about £20 on salad and stuff to complete our banquet menu. The forty or so banquet guests generously donated over £500 to DD's travel fund (yeay!) and we have tons of food and mead left over so will not have to buy much over the next week/ten days. Plus all the used trenchers are going to feed the chickens over the next few days so being converted into eggs.

I have to do my tax return by Tuesday so will have tax to pay alas.

No more spending for me this month. Should we all tally up our totals? Think I'll do mine later, still feel I spent too much but was extremely skint and did much better than usual. At least I know I can spend $40 on groceries for 1 month and eat well

Reckoner, is that total including things like mortgage, council tax, bills, child care etc? my direct debits alone nearly come to that total! I will tally mine at the end of the month though my app thing is already showing really interesting results, I didn't realize I spend so much eating out! talking of which, bad spending day today... I went for lunch with friends &deliberately didn't get much to keep cost down but the bill was split evenly (even though some had wine, extra coffees etc) so a smoked salmon bagel, a meringue &a diet coke emerge up being £20!!! But I dont mind too much cos it was lovely seeing old friends. Then I bought a maternity top for £15, a present for £10 {reduced from 20), £15 petrol & £4 car wash. Don't plan on any other big purchases before feb but ds1 also needs a new booster seat soon.... hmmm

That is just groceries, clothes, entertainment, takeaways, school stuff and guitar lessons.

Oh and a vet bill.

TheSecondComing, I completely know where you're coming from. I was in hospital for 8 days with the baby when he broke his leg last year, and we spent so much on food etc. Luckily, we could get a permit for parking as we were going to be in for a while, but even that was £20 or something. Hope your son is discharged soon.

Just been tallying up my Jan spend so far: (Not including any of the stuff that I don't have much control over - Council Tax, Mortgage, Utilities, Travelcard etc.)

Food and household stuff (for two adults, one toddler) - £430 (fishpond I can't believe your $40 monthly grocery bill!)
Clothes - £75
Presents - £80
Random stuff for me or house (including yarn, needle, some kitchen stuff, magazine, blusher...) - £75
Cash taken out (mostly goes on food whilst out, newspapers etc. I think but also baby singing classes and yoga this month) - £120
So, Grand Total of: £750... not awful compared to last few months, but not really a 'no-spend' January either!

Will probably be a bit more in the end as well as I need to buy nephew and Mum birthday present in next couple of days.

For February my main goals are:
Food and household below £350
Cash and random spending for me below £120

It will be a no spend day tomorrow and Tuesday.............all ready for no spend February!!

Am going to keep a proper tally of what I do spend for Feb............

mackerel that makes me feel better, as we have similar spending. We are a family of four plus a cat.

secondcoming hope DS is ok.

I do think I have made better choices this month. Not replacing stuff that wasn't broken (homephone) and making do with what we have (lots of leftover meals). I ordered groceries 4 times and any treats had to last all week, which was very difficult. Last week's biscuits were gone after one day. Ah well, I said and put up with grumbling :)

TSC, I hope your DS is getting better and comes home soon. Hospitals are terrible places on all sorts of levels but for food etc they are truly awful - so expensive for such rubbish.

I will be tallying up my January spend tomorrow. I will be including food, all sundry shopping and extras. Things like mortgage and gas/elec I won't include. I know for certain that I have had the lightest month for spending in a very long time. I have been so aware of every penny and accounting for it that I have seriously reduced my expenditure.

Looking forward I can't think of any major extra expenditures to come in February: no birthdays or anniversaries so that should help keep expenditure down, only Valentine's Day ... and I've been married for decades so don't do that any more

Total for month for 6 (includes one baby and one student DS) of us including expensive birthday presents and banquet supplies: (and not expecting any more expenses this month!!): £1307.35

Scary stuff.

TSC- hope DS improves rapidly.

I can't tell my total or I'll get chucked off the thread. But part of our bills pertain to holiday in US to see my parents.

Can I just say: Marmite: £3.10

Had to chuck out some veg we hadn't used this wk. Cross with self.

Does anyone go to Netto?

Also - can I Freecycle a car which is currently SORN?

Harriet, you can freecycle anything that you think might be of use to others. The only things our local freecycle tuts at our animals.

are, not our.

TSC - hope DS gets better soon. Sounds like a pretty scary time you had with him in hospital.

LadyHarriet - I've given up on buying marmite. DH slaps it on like its chocolate spread and at that kind of cost, its just not feasible.

I was doing so well until the John Lewis trip. I will tot it up later, but I think I am in the same region as Duchesse.

Not great here. We ran out of oil for our heating (DH had checked last week and said there was plenty and not to worry but on Saturday when I switched it on nothing happened. Not a drop of oil, so we had to pay ?249 for a quarter tank of oil (oil company used to let you get oil on credit and pay over 90 days but no more, have to pay upfront now). We also had to tax our car which cost ?198 for 6 months road tax. The oil won't be delivered until today so we had to spend ?22 on oil and turf for the fire to keep us warm because it is freezing right now.

All this meant there was nothing left for groceries so we are eating from cupboards/freezer until DH gets paid at the end of the week. We are having some really strange combinations but we are not hungry! DH gets paid on Friday but 95% of that is needed to cover the mortgage so things are going to be tight here for a while.

Opps ?22 on coal on turf!