September is here and our money-saving steps up a gear

[economymode]

Starting us off for September. Newbies and old hands welcome!

I wrote a long post and it disappeared - dammit.

About £6 yesterday, but £10 in Boots points on expensive formula milk for DD. Any ideas how to get her to drink full fat cows milk?! She can't stand the stuff at the moment!

Almost a NSD forecast for today but need to get some cream for a watercress soup I'm making tonight.

£4 left till Saturday of my self imposed budget..... might be tough but I'm going to keep trying!!

Hope you all have good days....

Anyone want to share their spreadsheets for tracking money? I think I need to start doing that.

Thanks guys, can't believe what a difference such a small thing makes. Doing a stress free school run has a massive knock on effect to everything else.

I'd love to have a spreadsheet but I haven't got Excel on my computer, I'm not sure how much it costs?

I write it all down on paper (old school )

Shoop, could you not just mix milk into things - pancakes, cereal etc etc. My son won't drink milk, so we get it into him in other ways. Also yoghurt and cheese. They don't necessarily have to drink milk to get their calcium intake!

Sorry for short post, electricity going out any moment for work on the street....

So, power still on, despite saying it was going off 'right now' an hour ago..

Not a bad few days, considering we needed to get stuff. All got as cheaply as poss.

*50p yesterday on play group

• £7 on catfood
• £10 on electric tootbrush (ebay)
• £55.65 cheque for Tumble Tots subs (this is the only 'big' thing we're doing)
• and I have now pretty much done the Christmas shopping - sonic t-shirt and lego calendar (cheap from ebay) for MrEconomy (he's a geek) came to around £30. EconomyBoy has a train set that we bought a couple of months ago. Never before have I been so organised. Will be very grateful when December comes around.

Rabbits mine doesn't have excel either but there is a basic works programme and that has an excel spreadsheet - it also has lots of templates for household management but I haven't looked into them properly. My spreado is a work in progress at mo Somehow spent £7 on childrens books in british heart foundation a bit cross with myself but putting thme away for christmas.

Sainsburys didn't have the bargain golden syrrup and I got confused with 55p evaporated milk as opposed to £1.40 condende sweetned milk. Did buy £1 squeezy bottle of tate and lyle syrup so will def make flapjacks soon.

Trying to make yogurt at the mo ... prob should go and look after my 22 month old now!

Nah, I'm sure the 22 month old can manage making the yoghurt, no?

I got the rest of the weeks groceries this morning, £30 and £2.40 on roads doing school run.

Thanks Pookey I'll check if I've got basic works.
I once used evaporated instead of condensed, it didn't bind. Still tasted nice, I just had to eat it with a spoon

Well done economy :). DS's birthday is the end of this month, so I can't think about Christmas until after then. Having said that, I booked our pantomime tickets today. £25 (on the credit card. Sh!) for DS and I on the day school breaks up, so it will be something to look toward to. Other than that, today's spend was between £14 and £15, on milk, sugar, bus fares and our pre-swimming treat in a cafe.

Doing well here this week.
Sunday turned out to be £47 - £8 for DS1's clock, and the rest on top-up shop.

£12.50 on Monday at mummy meet. Paid for another mummy to have dinner, but she will get mine next week, when I'll no money, so it all balances out.

£20.50 on Tuesday - spent the day with DH and DS2 at the allotment while DS1 was in nursery, then spent £3.65 on chicken food, £8.62 on some winter veg plug plants and garlic bulbs. Then later £8.23 in Morrisons - got 6pk of white rolls for 9p a pack, so got 7 packs for the freezer. Sausage rolls 4 for 27p, sliced chicken at 24p for 300g, doughnuts at 17p for 6, and some other bits.

Today NSD - another allotment day, with a lovely picnic of sausage rolls, chicken and salad baps and doughnuts

Have to go uptown tomorrow. Have got a wedding to go to in a few weeks, my boys are wearing smart shirt, waistcoat and nice jeans. Looked in DS2's drawers today to see that he has no nice jeans, only mud incrusted ones from all his crawling! So off to Primarni for me. Need tights for my outfit, and a new tie for DH too.

Good news on the scooter rabbits hope life gets easier for you from now on.

Does anyone have any good and cheap ideas for a 2nd anniversary gift. It's supposedly cotton for 2 years......

I'm impressed economy...I haven't even started to think about Christmas yet. I probably should.

Rabbit - I have a simple spreadsheet that I use. I have a tab for each month. At the end of every month, I download a file from my online banking current account thing, that shows all the payments/debits from the account that month. I then have a simple formula at the end to show me whether I'm up, down, or even at the end of the month. The final tab on the spreadsheet keeps track of the net result for each month.

My DP uses Microsoft Money and goes through the bother of keeping all his receipts and then using them to assign all his spending from his current account to categories at the end of every month, so that at the end of every year he can see how much he's spent in each category. I just can't motivate myself to do the same - it takes him ages!

Anyway, if you want a copy of my spreadsheet let me know, but a) it's not that fancy, and b) it's only useful if you do online banking.

Today I've spent £3.20 on onions, bread and yoghurt. Hurrah.

I'm impressed economy...I haven't even started to think about Christmas yet. I probably should.

Rabbit - I have a simple spreadsheet that I use. I have a tab for each month. At the end of every month, I download a file from my online banking current account thing, that shows all the payments/debits from the account that month. I then have a simple formula at the end to show me whether I'm up, down, or even at the end of the month. The final tab on the spreadsheet keeps track of the net result for each month.

My DP uses Microsoft Money and goes through the bother of keeping all his receipts and then using them to assign all his spending from his current account to categories at the end of every month, so that at the end of every year he can see how much he's spent in each category. I just can't motivate myself to do the same - it takes him ages!

Anyway, if you want a copy of my spreadsheet let me know, but a) it's not that fancy, and b) it's only useful if you do online banking.

Today I've spent £3.20 on onions, bread and yoghurt. Hurrah.

Oops, apologies for double post.

Leilandri - how about baking a cake or some cookies, and icing them with a personalised message, or his initials or a love heart or something? Not sure how you can get cotton into that though! Or else if you want something a little more spendy the obvious thing seems like a cotton shirt...TK Maxx have some really nice ones at low prices. I got DP a Calvin Klein shirt for his birthday from there, and it was something like £20.

economy thanks for the suggestions. I may try cows milk on her morning porrigde. I've tried half and half bottles - half formula half cows milk, but the little monkey just spits it out. She still loves her morning and evening bottles (she's only 13 months) so I want her to enjoy them. But I also want the convenience and relative cheapness of cows milk.....we'll get there I'm sure!!

I'm hopeful it may be a NSD for me today. Breakfast and packed lunch sorted and dinner planned so I won't need to buy any extras on the way home.

Lel I see you have children - what about making some "vouchers" for your other half....like a cheque book type thing. On the vouchers you could promise various things like lie ins, breakfast in bed, gourmet packed lunches, a meal out, etc. PIL did this for us at Christmas last year with babysitting vouchers and it was really appreciated. It isn'too expensive and things like the meal out could be saved for when you're feeling a little flush? I know it's not cotton related....sorry .

Yesterday was a NSD.

Today will just be butter and bread. and anything I see on offer

£10 for the childminder and £1.90 on a loaf of bread and a cinnamon doughnut from Greggs. I needed it after cleaning the whole house!

NSD today. Probably my last one for at least a few days, I have some spendy stuff coming up.

I have never even tried a cinnamon doughnut, but now I want one...

Did some Xmas shopping today, so a bit spendy but saves doing it later.
Got Lamaze rattle toy for friends baby (due Dec 27th) in TKmaxx priced at £9.99 on the ticket, reduced to 99p!! And a book for MiL from my boys at £3.99.
Some Lightning McQueen pens and colouring book from Poundland for DS1 so £2 there too.
Spent £2.49 on some clogs for winter gardening/chicken feeding. 1 strap was broken so reduced from £7.99. Don't need the straps anyway! :)

Got bargains in M&S for the boys wedding jeans. DS2 pair of jeans+socks for £11, scanned through till at £9 though. They have 20% off kids clothes on at the mo, so that made them £7.20. Remembered that I had a giftcard lingering in my purse - turns out there was £25 on it!! DS1 found some jeans priced at £5, went through till at £3, with 20% off came to £2.40, and that came off the giftcard too. Bargainous Enough left on the card to hope that M&S do their "Meal for Two for £10" in time for our anniversary.

Thanks for your pressies suggestions for DH. Managed to get something excellent. Was in Primark and found a tea towel saying "Save water - drink beer!" Sums up DH perfectly, 100% cotton and only £1.20!!! Also he can use it to clean up the mess he makes when doing his homebrew, win win

Sounds great, Leilandri :).

Not a bean spent here today tomorrow I need to get a few food bits to take away next week. DDs finish school for a couple of weeks so I want to get it out of the way without Pesci Pestering Children.

20 week scan today, so we celebrated with 1/2 price Pizza Express pizzas from Tesco - £2 each. I had fully intended to cook something, but the work I am doing is very time consuming and had no chance...

Shoop, does she get enough milk in her cereal and yoghurt etc? If so, then I wouldn't worry too much about trying to get her to drink it straight. From 13 months our son didn't drink bottles - gave up trying to get him to drink milk from a cup and I didn't want him to have a bottle anymore. We tried long and hard to give it him in a cup, but it would just be thrown across the room. As long as they are getting their calcium from somewhere, it doesn't matter if they won't actually drink it as a drink. Could you give an evening bowl of milky weetabix instead of a bottle? Our son may be the exception to the rule, but we just cut his bedtime and morning bottles out and he couldn't have cared less! I do make sure he gets plenty of calcium from other sources though, don't worry. If you do need to keep buying formula, check to see if you can buy it in bulk on Amazon. That's what we used to do. Hope this doesn't sound like a lecture, just passing on my experience .

Oh, and milky puddings like rice pudding, semolina, custard etc.

Today £2.96 in Sainsbury's. Every time I go in, I pick up one or two Basics products to try. I'm working my way through the range. Some Basics stuff I love, like the plain tortilla chips at 50p

Today it was pancakes for 20p and chocolate covered wafers for 66p. They were okish I'm trying to stop eating processed food anyway.

Thanks economy - doesn't sound like a lecture at all! It's really interesting to hear about other peoples' experiences. DD LOVES her bottle - has one in the morning and evening and just water throughout the day. She cuddles right in to me or DH but holds the bottle herself . We've managed to cut out her daytime bottles but I'm not sure how she'd cope if I cut out the other....perhaps I shoul start by recuding the quantity first? She was 8 weeks premature so I expect she's a little behind on certain things - food / bottles etc being one of them. I'm going to pick up some normal milk today and try it on her porridge over the weekend when we're not in such a rush to get out to work. When she gets in from nursery she has half a banana and some yoghurt (as nursery gives them tea ridiculously early) and then just before bed has her bottle. I tried weetbix but it was thrown across the kitchen . I'll keep trying things slowly - it's not really too much of a problem, more an inconvenience! Good tip bout Amazon - I'll have a look later. Also huge congrats on 20 week scan - how exciting!! Did you find out if you're having an economyboy or an economygirl?!

I need to do a big food shop tomorrow so that will be a bit spendy, but I'm going to do as much as I can at Aldi (quite excited - never been there before!). Lidl was quite a success so I'm hoping Aldi will be too - we're so lucky to have both near to us.

Leil - love the sound of the tea towel! Perfect . Your M&S purchases sound really good value too. I might pop in over the weekend for DD. She could do with some vests in the next size up.

Boer, how did you manage that?? I popped into Sainsburys' for "a handful of things I can only get there"- and ended up spending £56.33 ! It was all stuff I will use and will save me quite a bit on the food budget over the next few weeks, but I still spent nearly three times the value of my list! :(