Only Halloween will be scary in October - NOT our finances :)

[Leilandri]

Oldies and Newbies welcome....
Can't believe we are approaching the end of the year so fast. 9 months of money-saving, thriftiness, waste awareness. We deserve a large

it's good to feel so positive isnt it mum23girlys

I do find myself wishing my life away though, we are 18mths away from being debt free and I am just wishing those 18mths away and I shouldn't really because my girls are growing up so fast anyway and in 18mths they will be 14 and 8.....eeek

Xroads so do you currently have a credit on your CC? If so, could you use the CC to buy groceries, not exceeding the £60, instead of taking it from the bank? Just a thought.

mum23

How much milk does DH get for his £1? Would it be worth him eating something else, taking some thing with him from home, or does he have to use the canteen?

That's one of my little bugbears, btw, paying hugely inflated prices for food because it's in a convenient sized package. I once spent ten mins looking at lables getting DDs to grasp the fact that the pots of apple purée in the supermarket work out to £25 per kilo of apple and my local grocer was flogging them for £2 for 3 kilos.

Not sure what I'll spend today, but I'm trying to keep it as low as poss.

Adora - me too - although some things can be good value. For example when they have an offer on pots of cut pineapple in Sainsbury's, you get more weight for your money than buying a whole pineapple where you then chop off 50% of it.

Just paid for creche this morning, £2.70. Not planning any further spends today. I am taking the DS's to the GP later about a couple of things, but any prescriptions arising will be free.

Adora I'm the same with trying to explain about the amount you get in handy size packs. He takes £1 and that last 3 nights worth of cereal. He has a card that gets swiped at canteen but lowest you can put on card is £1 if that makes sense. He gets 2 of the little bottles for 32p. Think they are 250ml each. So not bad value. His work canteen is pretty reasonable. Usually he takes a meal from home but when he's night shift he has a big dinner then just cereal around 3am. This is progress as I've weaned him off spending a fiver on food and snacks every shift at canteen

Just sold another £7 of clothes on fb and they're getting collected 2nite. Yay! Have also just checked online bank and for the 1st time in months years we aren't up at our overdraft limit the day b4 payday. Only £18 off it but still an improvement

Xroads I know what you mean about wishing your life away. I'm always thinking that in 14 months I won't owe on my car and then it'll just be the mortgage. Which unfortunately is back to 25 years as we've just moved. Last house we'd got it down to 10 by overpaying. So once car loan is paid off we will overpay half of what we would've been paying to that and maybe even save for a long awaited holiday with the other half
You must be really looking forward to being debt free. Just don't forget to enjoy your dc's while they still want your company. I've 3 girls, no surprise given my name I suppose. I've got 6 yr old twins and my little babe will be 2 next month.

60p spend yesterday, which is good for me.

Today 50p so far on a playgroup. I need to do the Aldi shop later, which will be ~£25.

I have written a nice, satisfying letter of complaint to Orange, who took 13 working days to get a new router out to me. Which meant 13 days when I couldn't actually use the service we are paying for. I do not intend to pay for this.

The ebayer who bought my laptop has 40 more minutes to cough up £82, otherwise I am doing a second-chance offer. I'm annoyed, as I assume that this will result in a lower sum than the original bidder made.

Yes, ali some things are better ready prepped, but the ones that aren't really aren't.

Glad you've weaned him off his fiver a shift habit mum23

I'm doing very well with the no-spending and am hardly spending owt at all now on weekdays.

Just checked my bank balance and have £525 left with 15 days left until pay-day. I'm going to have some money left at pay-day as my road tax is due at the end of the month and it'd be nice to be able to pay it out of September's wage rather than Octobers.

^^ that last message says I am going to TRY and have some money left at pay-day for the road tax.

£4.80 on food and £1.70 on bus fares. Oh and another £4 on the window cleaner, who always seems to catch me out! So, £10.50 total.

Well, we had the talk about the credit card............
He raised the subject, saying we have just about scraped through this month, but we need to be watching what we spend. I said that I do, and there were lots of things on the bill that should have come out of his pocket money, or at least been discussed first. Silence ensued. For a long time. With grumpy snappy hurt outbursts.

Anyway, that was this morning, and I have just found his credit card on his desk. Feel relieved, and a bit sad too. It is clearly very hard for him.

£35 Aldi
£5 farm foods
£15 home bargains for household stuff, and a few wee bits for Christmas.
£50 petrol, but last time I filled up was two weeks ago.

Thank you everyone. Had a lovely day of doing housework while DH played on the Xbox! It has been lashing down here all day, DS2 is cutting another tooth and is grumpy, and the house was a sh*thole, so a day in was the best option. Just aswell we celebrated yesterday

£2.84 in Co-op on milk and bananas
£7 on second-hand Happyland toy for DS2 for Xmas
£17.99 on Domino's for tea but was a 'special occasion'

What toy leilandri? I love Happy Land.

Got the carousel, part of the funfair set, and 3 figures. Got the ferris wheel the otherday from a charity shop for pennies. Have amassed a rather large collection from Ebay, Facebook and charity shops - DS2 is going to have a great Xmas!!

I have most of the funfair. The music will drive you insane, but your boy will love it! I have bought most of our happy land city second hand. It lasts for ever.

Yep love love love Happyland!
After Xmas we will have...
Train track and station, baker shop, postoffice, Dr's, farm, 2 x castles(1 bad 1 good) space rocket + moon buggy + large robot, funfair, pirate ship, assorted vehicles people and animals.... Only bought the farm new and that was on offer.

Think I've gone a bit crazy!!

I seem to be in the dark about this Happyland business. Probably just as well! Glad you had a good time celebrating, Leilandr. And sometimes we all need a bit of Dominos in our lives.

Well, after cancelling the eBay transaction, the bugger finally paid up, so that's £82, hurrah! Need to post it tomorrow, although I'm very tempted to wait a good few days. But that would be childish, I guess.

Glad your purchaser decided to pay up economy

We shopped, couldn't find anything for the drama costume but got some more groceries, £20, and DDs splashed some of their own cash, £8 between the two, also I bought them two books each at school, £35. That's cheaper than a local bookshop and they don't have lending libraries here. Roads cost £4.

That's great your buyer finally paid up economy

Last night and this morn I had a few fb buyers collect so that was £20. Just as well as the girl's came home from school yesterday with a letter asking for £11 each for the school panto trip. Has to be paid by 2day! 1st I'd heard about it. Is that normal only to get one nights notice of these things? We've just moved to this school and it's the third time since August this has happened. Our last school gave us a good couple of weeks notice and even then it was never more than a few quid.

Anyway 2day is the long awaited payday and we got a nice surprise as all dh's overtime made the cutoff date which was unexpected as he was working abroad. So I did a meal plan and took my list to Asda. Only extra I bought were some halloween earrings as I've offered to help at the school disco in a bid to get to know some other mum's and also Dd1 didn't want to go unless I agreed to stay and help. Total spend was £104 but that's 14 nights dinner and enough cordial and cupboard bits and to be fair my fridge and cupboards were very bare as this was the 1st decent shop since we moved. Will have to go to aldi 2mrw for bread, crisps and garlic bread. No more than £5 though. Need sainsbury 2mrw too as the dds cereal is on offer there as are their dunkers. So that's another fiver. However that should be my shop done for a fortnight with a very strict top up of bread, milk and fruit at the start of nxt week. Fingers crossed my meal planning will work. Have even written the menu down and stuck it to the fridge so I get no moaning

Put £20 in car this morn too but hopefully that will last a while as the weather is still beautiful so I'm still walking everywhere and dh cycling to work

Apologies for long post. On phone and hadn't realised how long it was till I posted

Oh and Asda shop also included £11 of dry dog food which will last about 5 or 6 weeks.

Thanks, it is a weight off my mind now that I finally have the money.

My top tip of the day - if any of you are doing xmas hampers for presents, look at Approved Foods. They actually have a fair bit of gourmet style stuff that is IN DATE! Posh choc covered nuts, honeycomb, deli-style pastes etc. I'm doing that now. They have half price delivery until midnight tonight, if you spend over £30 - enter ship30 at checkout.

Free letter from Santa!

I know what I'm getting so theres no point writing.

And I'm too old

oh, and your basket needs to be under 25kg. They have some good stuff at the mo - lots of tinned fruit in juice, ready to use posh bean mixes, mini oat cakes (good toddler snacks)...