Meagre May ... watching our bank balances go up instead of down

[roguepixie]

New thread for all of us .

Railcard not much use to us. Got one last year & with our crap rail service we didn't use it. Plus it cost more than the car even with the card.

ah, we don't have a car, so would use the train anyway. also some journeys i wouldn't make by car, even if i did have one, namely to london or birmingham. we go to both relatively often.

Thanks for the present suggestions. I'll have a look at NOTHS - I use that site as and when, just generally find the stuff on there a bit pricey. I like the Swiss army knife idea, but not sure how that would go down with my in-laws. My husband phoned his mum last night to ask for advice on this matter, and she said that his sister isn't expecting gifts. But I feel like we can't turn up empty-handed, especially after we gave our niece that money.

Janek, a family railcard wouldn't work for us at the mo, as our son is only 1 and so travels free anyway. But, I hope that they keep running this offer in the years to come!

And, welcome, FaceCrack. Sorry to hear that times are tough financially at the moment. Have a read through this and our previous threads, and ask away for advice - someone will have a good suggestion!

Hi All, and welcome to Face. This is a great thread to be a part of. We are all in different circumstances but the overall aim is to be careful, save, cut back and live within our means. One of the best things is that there is a sense of being 'accountable' to the thread ... none of us wants to post that we have splurged/lost the plot (as I have on one or two occasions) .

Meant to be NSD's here - managed one yesterday (yaaaay) but not today. Took DS to is martial arts class and went to do 'top-up' shop ... £62.00 later!!!! Not so much of a top up - did get some meat with that though. Also have a cinema ticket to buy (DS going to see the new Avengers film with his mates) and a coffee to buy as I wait for him with the other Mum's in a nearby cafe ... have a catch-up. Must admit - don't do the coffee/chat thing much at all nowadays so it will be nice to do today. Plus, DH is painting the hall so it stinks of paint at home ...urgh. Oh, and that reminds me: £16.99 on paint on the way home from martial arts (text request from DH).

Car due MOT this month...god knows what that will cost. Think we need two new tyres as well .

Now, ladies. Talk to me about Kindles. Are they any good. Are they worth it? Am interested in getting one (birthday pressie maybe???) as some of my favourite authors do e-books and I can't currently read them. I am a huge lover of books so don't think I could ever completely give up buying 'real' books, just wanted to be able to read the e-books that are currently available and also, thinking forward, would be useful to carry on holiday (if I ever have a holiday again???) or journeys. Speak to me, oh clever ladies of the thread ...

spew my dd is 6, but we have had a family railcard since she was 8 weeks - if two adults are travelling then it is nearly always cheaper to use the family railcard, even though you have to buy a ticket for the underage child (does mean they have the right to a seat too, which can be a blessing at times, particularly if you've reserved it, so it is clearly 'yours').

with a family railcard adults save 1/3 of the journey price, children save 2/3. you can also use it for advance bargain fares, making them even more of a bargain.

Even on a short journey, like coventry to birmingham it is about 20p cheaper - obviously not worth buying the railcard for, but if you have one anyway then worth using.

we got our first one because we were going on holiday on the eurostar and needed to get a train to london - it was worth buying (full price too!) just for that one (return...) journey. nowadays, we like to arrive on holiday by bedtime, so catch an early eurostar and a correspondingly earlier train to london - with a family railcard you can travel at peak times on an off-peak return.

i'm not trying to make you buy something you don't need , i'm just pointing out that you could save money where you think you don't need to. unless you never travel by train. in which case forget it!

Thanks for that, janek. I'd never thought of it like that, really. And since we do have to take the Eurostar later in the year (can you use it on that service?), where we'll (like you) travel to London by train (live in Oxford and there are tons of coaches, but on the train we could get up and walk around), so that could save us some money.

Will go back over the thread for those codes .

Ah, that offer is only for a two month card and we won't be travelling until December. But I may well get a card nearer the time - thanks again, janek.

Sod it, I've got one anyway - we can have a day out somewhere and leave the car at home!

I've had a No spend day and done a car boot ( only £25 in profit). Might try again tomorrow but depends on the weather and if it's actually on!

Can I join too?

spew with that offer you'll be able to buy a half price railcard when the free one runs out and you'll easily make that back in one journey.

Also, have you looked at the Book People's boxed book sets for a christening present? At the moment they have this Thomas collection for £20

The Folio Society also has some lovely books and some great special offers though you need to commit to buy 2 other book within 4 weeks, though if you have book lovers in your family then this is easy!

the house of mirth speaks the truth and beat me to it, you will get a code to buy a half-price annual railcard with your free card. i think the latest you can use said code is 15 aug though, but if you're definitely travelling it's definitely worth it (do a sample of tickets with and without the railcard/extra child on nationalrail.co.uk just to check though, and hopefully see for yourself!).

also, i believe there may be a rush on 15 august (or whatever the last date is) from people trying to wring the most value out of their half-price railcard which could cause the website to crash - i've heard this happened before, so to be on the safe side why not buy the new card on the 13th or 14?!?

and no, sorry, you can't use your family railcard on the eurostar, more's the pity. but like i said up-thread eurostar tickets go on sale 4 months in advance, so make sure you're ready come august, if you're travelling in december, the sooner you book, the cheaper it will be.

Thanks for the warm welcome.

Today has been good. Our friends treated us to lunch, an unexpected treat for my birthday. So all we have bought is two coffees and I left a £10 tip for lunch so today racks up at £14.40 which is better than expected. Tomorrow is the weekly food shop. I've meal planned for the week so hopefully it won't be too horrendous.

We also wouldn't use the railcard but thanks for the tip.

HelloFace , welcome

We've had another spendy day here, lunch out, news school bag for one DD, the other is a fussy pants so will keep using the existing one.

So, roads £4
Lunch£30
School bag£20-ish, OH paid while I was avoiding pre-teen meltdown so I didn't see the price
Mid afternoon coffee-£5

Gotta stop doing these lunches out. Next weeks going to be a heavy one as we're BBQing, don't yet know numbers but it's a business type group. Oh what fun, I can hear you all clambering for an invite

No car boot today. Not near enough to justify the drive anyway.
Going to Cinema later. Hopefully we only have to pay for dd1 as dh gets two tickets free though it depends on who is selling ( he is a casual contract which rules are a bit wooly on). Plus £5 on petrol to get there. So £20ish today.

Had a good weekend on the spending front so far! Saturday was looking to be a NSD until I popped into Aldi for a few 'bits'. £28 later, I realise I need to stop looking in the 'special buys' aisle!! Got a new bike lock and compression shorts for DP, much cheaper than they would have been anywhere else though!

Sunday we took the kids to the Muppets film at the cinema. As it was the Kids AM film, tickets were only £1.50 each, so £6 in total for the outing (we took in our own snacks and drinks (DC too young to realise that I am an embarrassing mother!). Was looking like a cheap day until I went on eBay in the evening and won a pair of shoes, pirate outfit for DS1 (he is going to a pirate themed party next week), and a book! £38 in total, but the good news is that it's all paid for by my Paypal balance from things I have sold myself! So not sure if that really counts!

Today I am hoping to sneak off shopping for a few hours to buy a new outfit for next weekend's hen night, so am bracing myself to try to be restrained! I have set myself a budget of no more than £50, so I will see what I can get for that. Will update later.

How are you getting on with the Christening present ideas Spew? Someone has already suggested it I think, but I think a collection of nice children's books (Beatrix Potter for example) is a really nice gift. Some nice things we got for our DCs were silver photo frame, engraved silver tankards and nice children's crockery and cutlery sets.

You know, I thought of the Book People last night when pondering Christening presents. But had forgotten about it again by this morning, so good job I checked in here!

Thanks for the railcard tips, will def get one when our free one runs out, if only for our trip to London to catch the eurostar (shame you can't use it on there, but will book that as soon as tickets become available).

Really liking the thread this month !

I went to asda for our weekly supermarket shop as I thought it would be cheaper. It probably worked out the same as going to Sainsbos. Bit annoyed really as it is poor laid out and and really busy. Our local sainsburys is much nicer.

Anyway, I spent £93. I did buy some shorts for DD £4, a roasting tray £4 and 2 bottles of wine for £10. I wouldn't normally buy those things so my food bill was around £75 as budgeted.

ApprovedFood-ers - what is good and what to avoid, please? Thinking of doing an order after all, but wondered if there is anything really dodgy that should be avoided like the plague...

spew to date I've placed 4 orders with Approved Food, and I have only good things to say about them. Everything I've received has been well packaged and good quality. The delivery has been within the given time too. I've bought mostly packed lunch snack things (choc bars, muffins etc) soft drinks and squashes, baking ingredients and various sauce mixes, no complaints here :)

I've had a blow-out on ebay, over £100 spent on various Happyland items for DS2 for Xmas My baby clothes and bits on facebook sell sites have been going well over the weekend tho, over £50 raised. Just have to remember to pay the money back into the bank, instead of frittering it away!

spew

Approved Food
DISCOUNT CODE......spend £30 or more on products and ensure your basket weighs less than 50kg, type in discount code MAYDAY and the next 300 sales will receive a 10% discount on their shopping.......HURRY

Thanks

For just under £30 (using that code), I got shed loads of tinned fruit, couscous, loo roll, tinned lentils, soft drinks, dried apricots...we may be eating a lot of the same things for a while, but we'll be doing it cheaply!

Damn I should have used that site for store cupboard stuff instead of Asda.