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

[roguepixie]

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

Well, DD came home with her coat ripped and beyond repair so we went out to find a new one. We bought a lovely one in Tesco half price in the sale for £12!

We then went to McDonalds and spent the other £12 we saved. Arghh.

All right, 1 Feb HAS to be a big date for us, chez Spook.

In the meantime...I went to Tesco on the way home from work. Quorn: three items for a fiver. Included massive portion of mince, plus other stuff I was craving, which is less good value than the mince portion admittedly (sausages, burgers. DH: How can you possibly crave Quorn??!) Plus reasonable value bean burgers. Re burgers: note to self, 2012 is the year to soak beans and not rely on tins. Quorn compares favorably to meat in price. BUT not when only ONE PERSON is willing to eat it (unless I put a beef stock cube in the quorn mince. which I do do.)

Last year's au pair ate all my crazy veggie things, so was economical and bonding!!. this year we have been moving periliously close to three separate dinners per person...four even with the DCs who eat at five....AHHHHH!!!!

Anyway, sigh again. biddy if you have a strategy for economising whilst not seeming like a TIGHT GIT let me know.

ladyH I'm with you re the quorn but am recently slightly more converted as I've actually found a way to make it quite tasty!

Loads of veggies sir-fried or roasted in olive oil, loads of garlic.
Fry off the quorn with an onion, stir into the veggies,add approx 1pt veggie stock & leave to simmer for ages.
When reduced & thickened stir in a good dollop/carton of passata.
Leave overnight then re-heat as bolognese /lasagne sauce the next day.
The kids will never know it's not meat, till they see your DH eating it!

If they turn theire noses up at the veggie just puree them in with the passata & then add to the quorn!

Hey, once again not caught up but wanted to let you know this.

DH went to Blockbuster to hire a film for Monday night (as it's my budget birthday) and as it was so long since we have been, he had to complete a new membership form.

As a result, we now have a free rental a day for the next two weeks - might be worth signing up for a fortnights entertainment.

Morning All, just jotting down a manic post before work. I didn't managed to get to my laptop yesterday as DS was busy on it doing his English homework when I got back from work - Monday is my day to do the evening shift as well so I didn't get back 'til late!!

Yesterday (Monday) was a NSD for me - the first in a fair few days. Although I did send of the Ebay sales from the weekend I paid the postage from my Ebay account so it was all included.

The frivolous spending was brought home to me the other day when I was out with DS. The remarks of "Can I have X", "Can I have Y", "Can't I just have a game" etc really made me realise how much I had been spending on 'gifts' and 'treats' for him. Now, I'm not against treats for children but I realised how used DS had got to always getting something when we went out -even if it was only a lego mini figure (at £1.99)!!! I explained that he really did have enough of everything and that these treats needed to stop. Apart from a minor 'glare' in my direction he took it all in his stride . Let's hope I can turn him into a saver and not a spender .

Apart from an oyster bus fare it should be another no spend day for me.

Bossy
Thanks for that. DH doesn't mind the mince in the tomato sauce I do. Ate a generous portion of lasagne with it on Saturday night.

Think I can do the same with the sausages...think someone posted a chili receipe on the other thread but I can probs make one up. The key is in the seasoning, that's right.

PS there's a Downton update.

Morning all. Pleased to report that my good luck is continuing into today! DH buying the car yesterday put us slightly overdrawn so that a direct debit set to go out tomorrow would bounce & we didn't have quite enough money to cover it. However, have just re-checked bank account hoping for a small miracle & there it was - £200 from Santander for switching to them before Xmas, which I had totally forgotten we were going to get!

Spending so far today: £1.32 at Debenhams cafe for cup of tea (included 20% discount for using Gold card & I got a final stamp on my card so next tea there will be free , £6.00 on formula for DS2 (on offer plus used £1 voucher).

Hope everybody else is having a good day too!

Hi ladies. Just popping in quickly. Not had chance to get on for a few days.

No spends at the weekend. Helped by vegging out on the settee and watching dvds instead of going out.

Unfortunately I didn't make it to Feb without having to buy petrol. I almost didn't make it to the petrol station either so i won't be pushing my luck so far again at the end of Feb.

Will catch up properly later.

£250 for disposable contacts and my 'service agreement.' I'm due for an appt.

Well, I've been getting by wearing the contacts for more than one go...many more someties. Which I guess is very very naughty.

Resolution Number Multitudinous: Find sodding glasses and WEAR THEM half the time.

Right chaps, the Approved Food delivery arrived. It is absolutely fantastic! For £25 I got:

2 jars honey for £1 (needed standing in hot water to decrystallise, but otherwise fine)
Catering pack of 1kg Dr Oetker sugar free jelly crystals for 99p (makes something like 20 pints of jelly)
5 tins eco-friendly tuna for £1
2 jars Bonne Maman raspberry jelly for £1.50
2 jars upmarket marmelade for £1
5 packets of 6 Baker Street finger rolls for £1
2 packets Fairtrade digestives for £1
4 Kelloggs cornflakes to go (with spoon and milk included) for £1
3 kg bronze penne pasta for £2.99
3 packets of 5 x Go Ahead Fruity Cake slices for 99p
Mahoosive catering pack of Crawford's biscuits - 100 individual packs of 3 biscuits in the most popular types, for £11.99
8 packets of 4 x mini naan breads for £1.

Delivery was free as I had ordered the catering pack of biscuits.
The food was mostly near or after its Best Before dates (note: they are not allowed to sell food after the use-by date, as that is a different thing altogether) so it's perfectly safe and as far as I can tell, tastes and looks the same (hence the food being 'approved').

I would heartily recommend investigating them if you have the space to store bulk buys of food, or have a party coming up (some of their crisps are 1p for six bags, for example!)

roguepixie no I don't drive however I switched energy suppliers in Nov and have just received the final bill. £184 ! I have checked everything but have ended up writing to them and saying I can pay x amount per month until its paid off

I heart Poundland and Lidl. I had to go out for milk yesterday, Poundland 2 x 750ml = £1 so I got those and then forgot I had bought milk and went to Lidl 2 pt semi skimmed = 79p. So I put the two from poundland in the freezer. A 2pt of semi skimmed from Sainsburys is 89p, every bit helps.
DD has been told she HAS to buy a hockey stick and ball to practise with. Do they not supply them at school then grrrrrr. I really do not want to pay for those for two months use

Thanks for all your comments re DD friend. She seems to be coping ok just a little bit more cheek than normal.

Moomoo, can you get one on Freecycle?

I could try I suppose boffin I was just a little annoyed they said she HAD to get one. Could they not have said at the start of the term. It just seems to be money all the time at her school. She is in Year 7 and at the start of the year I asked if there were any extras I would have to spend money on and they said no !
Then there is football boots, concert tickets, Trumpet hire and a black dress to wear in the band and a few other things I cannot remember. She also goes through a pair of school shoes roughly every month as she has a 30min walk to school each way. I paid £10 a couple of months ago to get a pair resoled. I also managed to get 3 pairs in the sales @£5 each so that was a bonus.
ok rant over

moomoo- jjb sports of all places (shop of all things para-sporty without actually venturing into actual exercise) does things like hockey sticks and football kit quite cheaply. I've found hockey sticks in there for under a tenner. Agree though that it's something the school ought to have a stock of if they're offering it. However, she might find she loves hockey and wants to join a club after this introduction, which would be good. I'm afraid teenagers cost more and more as time goes on, until the moment they leave home to go to university and suddenly you're cooking twice as much as you need to feed the remaining 5 of you. [voice of bitter experience]

Hi all, it's tax day... I have a slight problem that I don't think I ever got round to signing up for self assessment online services so I'm potentially a bit stuffed. Somewhere in my mahoosive pile of un-sorted-out bills there is perhaps a letter with the info, but I'm not holding out much hope. So unless DH gets home in time to do toddler-duty this evening enabling me to search for it, I will have to cross my fingers on that one. The only 'interesting' thing about my tax situation is that we rent out a flat but I am fairly sure that DH has included it in his return because he owns it (with mortgage obv) and I own the house we live in (with mortgage).

Seven of my ten ebay sales from Sunday have paid up, and so I've just posted them. I had calculated post correctly for most of them (with some headroom of 10-40p a time), but one was 76p more than I had charged and another was £2 less so in the spirit of 'paying it forward'/karma/whatever, I've sent the overcharged one £2 by paypal back. Overall 70p clear though - and I used all packaging saved from previous inbound deliveries so no cost there. I now have £88 in my paypal 'account' which isn't enough to worry about it not attracting interest somewhere, and I think there is a fee when you 'download' your money, isn't there?

I am getting tempted by a fairly radical re-arrange of our food shopping habits, since Ocado put up the delivery pass cost to £6.99/month after the first year. We don't have a vast amount of storage space but we could use Costco and Approved Food type places for store cupboard goods in semi-bulk and go to the Co-op/Waitrose late at night for meat. There's a good fruit/veg grocer in the precinct on our estate where I could go after picking DS up from nursery as we're always in the car then. We could shop around much more for booze.

As far as the end of the month round-up goes, I can't do a total for the household because I don't know DH's train fares and lunch expenses, so I'm going to pick a few categories that I can easily monitor each month...
Out
Diesel: £250 (and currently just below full)
Food shopping: £200 (freezer currently full) including booze
Presents: £0
Clothes: £250 (all on me)
Entertainment: £25 (cinema, Sherlock s1 DVD, swimming)
Takeaways: £27 (one, but it fed us most of a weekend!!)
Holiday: £1000
In
Ebay: £83 (minus 50% to charity)

Now I'm going to get that Android expense manager app and look up dress agencies to sell some clothes, and cloth nappy exchange.

thanks duchesse, she has just come home and asked if she can learn to play the Saxaphone ! She already plays the trumpet and the flute

County music service if you have one! You can hire instruments relatively cheaply from them, at least until you can be certain she's going to stick with it. Sounds like she's on the cusp of her period of great teenage activity! It's great fun but really expensive.

Lexi- can you ask for them to be resent online? I did that last yera and a very kind person sorted it out for. I heard the other day that the call centre was on strike today though but that if you needed help and couldn't get through that would be an allowable reason to not be charged the fine.

yes duchesse, that's true. they said on radio 4 this morning that you have an extra two days to get your return in, because of their staff being on strike, so if you can get your info quickly you could still make it lexi.

Lexi, if you plan a little in advance you can get an evening/weekend delivery from Ocado for free. Also Waitrose do their own delivery now and they charge nothing if the order is over £50.00...might be worth having a look at and not paying the Delivery Pass fee???

Boffin I heart you even more!

Just signed up with Approved foods, did a shedload of shopping for £33!!

Was very good & did only things we WOULD have got (or not got because of price) and kept to basics.

Tins of tuna (we get through loads) 20p !!!

Also loads of snacky bits for the girls lunch boxes including that tip from you Boff for the bulk buy biscuits which brought the delivery down to 25p.

Good thing is a chum is going half with me on loads of things so I won't be overstocked & we both get a bargain.

I'll get back to you about quality!

Thanks all for the tax ideas. I called the helpline using the non-0845 number and asked whether I should have registered earlier and a very nice lady asked why I thought I needed to do a tax return at all. She talked me through some things and basically the small amount of dividend income from some shares and small amount of higher rate rebate from charity donations can be adjusted through my tax code at any time over the phone. So I'll sort through my bank statements in due course and call them with the details. A bit of a relief. (ha! unintentional pun!)

will def look into the alternative shopping now that you're all going bananas for Approved Food!!