Judicious January - Long may the credit crunching continue

[roguepixie]

So, the credit crunching team are into Year 2013. Happy New Year everyone.

Let's continue our cost-cutting, , money saving,penny and pound pinching, NSD ways.

wow your farmers market is clearly cheaper than ours. £40 would probably only cover half of that at ours so I've had to stop using it :(

Back from lunch and spent a lot. That's put paid to all our good work so far this month. We didn't have pudding, shared a starter and had some of the least expensive main courses and I only drunk lime and soda but even so it was still too much

Another NSD for me today . Went to the park but took a bottle of water and told DS in advance that I didn't have enough money to go to the cafe but I'd make him hot chocolate when we got back. He accepted it really well, thankfully.

Wish I'd known about the reduced sliced cheddar Fluffy but I expect it's part of the Lidl weekend offers, is that right?

Yes, there's a woman on money saving expert who posts the offers before they appear on the Lidl website.

Lidl is cheaper than aldi for cheese, they have 1.2kg gammon joints for £3.99. It's not a weekend offer, our local ones got loads of them.

Fluffy, have you a link to the Lidl Lady on MSE?

forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4385283

It's in mse forum under food shopping and groceries.

So cross I missed the free Austerity book again on Kindle - I had logged off earlier in the evening - drat.

I've not left the house today (while waiting for the snow which didn't arrive), so another NSD today as I thought.

A small spend today of £2 on chips, because I couldn't find any potatoes to go with our roast gammon . Annoyingly, they were the first thing I saw on opening the cupboard later!

Must fill in ds1's school application online later. All a bit confusing as we hope to move soon, and have sold out house (but further up the chain have yet to sell), and think we have found a place we like, but obviously we cannot put those details as things stand. Had thought it'd be all sorted by now but sadly this was not the case

Oh that's a pain, jen. Here's hoping the chain gets moving quickly, so you can put down your choices.

I spent £11.19 today: £5.30 on bus fares, £5 in a café and 89p on milk. I also spent £154 of my Christmas money online on new stuff for the kitchen! My trigger was my toaster dying, but I've been working out what I need for months anyway. I still have £46 left over, so might put that towards a couple of new throws and some cushions. Goodness knows my 6 year old sofas, while not fit for the tip just yet, could do with some jazzing up!

Jen What a PITA! Have just done DS1's application. I found it all rather emotional, didn't think I would. He's a bright boy, and is ready for school, but now that he's actually going THIS year, I am so not ready for him to be that grown up I'm squirrelling away £10 a month at the moment so that come July I should have £70 to kit him out in school uniform and shoes etc.

NSD here today after all, didn't get to the shops for top-up. Will make it out tomorrow tho.

Need to buy compost and degradable plant pots and get sowing some veggies :)

Thanks for that link Fluffy, I'm going to subscribe to that thread. I usually shop at Aldi but will give Lidl a go. The gammon sounds good, I bought a small one at Aldi which was £2.79 and nowhere near that big.

I think she starts a new thread every week, which is a bit of a faff.

I didn't know you could subscribe to the threads.

Yes, above each thread there's a green bar and one of the option is 'thread tools'. Click on that and a drop down menu appears - click 'subscribe to this thread'.

Application done so fingers crossed. It is a frustrating situation, not least because we had a complete chain before, but then our buyer's buyer pulled out, so we lost the lovely place we'd had an offer accepted on . I do work for my dad in conveyancing, so you'd think I would be wary of getting too excited, but we just thought it was all going ok! Still, never mind, we still have our buyer and are back on the market just in case, do at least it gives me an incentive to keep the house tidy!

NSDs this weekend, and I plan on staying home tomorrow so shan't spend anything. I'll catch up tomorrow, off to bed now.

Hi everyone. I found this lovely thread a news days ago but it's taken me ages to read it all. I would like to join you as I've decided to give up work to be full time sahm. I'm sure we can manage but I do think I'll need to track every penny.

Economy - it's probably a bit late for you if your contract finishes in April but I've discovered the Bill Angel app to stop me over spending. It's free, you just tell it what date your new bill starts and your monthly allowance and it tracks your usage, sending you an alert when you've spent 90/100% of it. Very useful.

Not too bad a weekend although we've still managed to spend 64% of the month's budget and it's day 14 . I do think we can pull it back as there have been a lot of one offs so far. I've all the meals planned for this week and shouldn't need any top ups until the end of the week. However, the car goes into the garage on Wednesday so there will be that to pay.
Keep up the good work everyone

Hello and welcome to That'sinteresting

I am definitely staying home today, but need to look for a holiday on line, and if I find one the dogs will have to go in kennels.

jenduck good luck with your house and school situation.

Stormforce it's such a pain when you go out and can't relax about eating. That's why I vetoed my OH's crazy idea for my birthday dinner. He spent less than £100 for 4 of us including deserts and at his choice of restaraunt it would have been many times that. He seems to like to flash the cash even though it's tight at present, drives me mental. (see above re today's to do list)

Good luck to all those making school applications. DS is now in Y8 so none to be done until 6th form. It is a stressful time. I hope you all get your most wished for choices.

Not too spendy here this weekend. A small top-up shop yesterday. So far NSD today. Will need to spend on Oyster bus fare (does it count, as it is pre-paid? Or should I just count the expenditure at TFL?)

It's snowing here today though not settling much. Makes you want to stay in with a hot chocolate ... mmmmmmmm.

Welcome Thatsinteresting, glad to see you here.

Ooooooh, btw, belated birthday wishes Adora. I hope you had a wonderful day?

Spent a little bit today. 50p class money for DS1. Then went to Sainsbury's & got DH a DVD from DSes for his birthday, a card from them & some paper. Also found some child-proof scissors half-price (£1.24 for 3 pairs), so got those, as well as a few top-uppy bits like yoghurts & coffee. Total there £15.11, but used £2.50 Nectar points.

Then this afternoon went to toddler group, 50p, then Sun newspaper (for £9.50 hols) on the way home. Was snowing on the way home (and still is) so got wet, but drying off nicely with hot drinks! I am so happy they have started up again, I love toddler groups & so do my boys. I am of the firm belief that we have to get the DSes out of the house at least once a day & preferrably let them have a good run around (like dogs!)

DH's birthday tomorrow, but we are both working & won't be home till gone 8pm, so will do him a special dinner on Weds - I'm thinking breaded mushrooms to start (from freezer) some lovely steaks we were given as part of a hamper for Xmas, with some leftover Stilton made into a sauce, with homemade wedges & veg then just some chocolate biscuits for dessert as neither of us are pudding people really. I do agree it is so easy to spend loads on birthdays etc & uncomfortable when you have to scour the menu for the cheapest option & go without another course etc.

Very frustrating day here. Cannot see a way to rent out our house legitimately. Can't remortgage as the rental income won't be 125% of the repayment at 5.99% interest (even though the products are fixed at 4% or so), current lender also saying no although they admit we can afford the repayments.

The mortgage is less than twice DH's salary and we have £100k equity in the house. We're currently paying combined rent & mortgage of £2100 pm. Crazily our existing lender is happy to lend us a sum for which repayments would be £2,800pm but won't use their own affordability criteria to include rent. Apparently now we rent (because we've relocated) we are "high risk".

DH is preparing an ombudsman complaint and I am very close to touting our story to financial journalists.

We have an empty house and we're being prevented from renting it out. A family could be living in it!

Top up shop today £55 but should last us the rest of the week except for bread.

Total spend for today: £10.89. £4.60 on travel, £3.99 on moisturiser, £1.18 on two cards from the Card Factory and £1.12 in Lidl.

I'LL read through later when I have some more time.

I spent £2.20 on postage to send out an eBay parcel today but that was it, so not too bad really.

My baby shaped alarm clock failed to wake up at her usual 6am and stayed asleep until 7:15 this morning I was so confused I forgot lunch and so had to spend about £3 on some food at work. Nothing else though.

Jenduck that's what I always say about dd and she is only 9 months old. If we don't get her out at least twice a day we are in trouble :o

Helena, your house situation is just madness! Banks come out with the most ridiculous crap, they really do.

NSD - need to make up for that lunch at the weekend

Just wondered why people were doing this. I've cut back because we desperately need a new kitchen and when we strip out the old one we're going to have to damp proof so its going to be ££££££. we're not in debt thankfully but I dont want to go that way just in order to sort out the damp problem. I'm hoping to put aside about £200 a month for the whole of this year so NSDs etc. will help