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.

Thanks everyone. Hoping this baby puts in an appearance soon.

About to send an invoice for £100 for some admin work that I could do more of, but have decided to rest up rather than stare blankly at a spreadsheet. £100 is better than nothing!

This morning I sold a cot top changer (that I bought on ebay for 99p but wasn't suitable) for £12. Not a bad profit! Then I went to Aldi and spent £30 (£5 of which was disposables for night for EconomyBoy) - agree that even their prices are creeping up, but still cheaper than the coop, which is our other nearest supermarket.

Jen, hope you track down that money soon - that kind of thing really stresses me out, so I know how you feel.

Thankfully we're not at the stage of having to cope with school closures, got a few years yet!

economy that is a good profit, well done!

jen - eek, hope the cash shows up soon.

DS1's school is closed today, so we're at home. The boys have played in the garden and we're staying in so it will be a NSD.

DH will have had to buy some lunch at work. but he is going to suss out whether he can take his own in future.

Great profit economy!

Hope the money turns up Jen.

Good news here. Our estate agent thinks we might get £1000 a month for our house up north so that would reduce our subsidy to about £200 a month rather than £750 a month.

More good news - I have an interview for a job on Thursday. Not spectacularly well paid but it's very local so no commuting!

economymode we have a co-op. Watch the prices. Twice this week I've caught them having one price on shelf and another on till. Bonjela £2.79 on shelf came up as £2.99 on till. 8 jars of baby food on special offer of 8 for £4 came up as £5.50 - no logic at all since they are 75p each. Its not the first time I've caught them doing this either. They are extortionate enough as it is without cheating you as well

Economy, you could make a business out of deals like that!

Well, it is almost close of business and the money has not turned up . I know the fault lies with the receiving bank as I did another transfer from the other bank to a different account today and it was there in seconds, as expected. So, tomorrow I will ring & give them a piece of my mind speak to them. We have had to take money out on the credit card to cover these funds, so there will be a cash withdrawal fee which I will expect them to refund. Just also slightly scared they have lost £400 of my money!

Tell them you will be making a complaint and want to escalate it to higher complaints.

Maybe the systems are down but banks will fob you off. There back office is probably in India so they can't blame the weather.

Tweet the CEO? Sometimes works.

Another nsd today. Yay!

Gosh I would fuming about that cash! Phone and give them a good talking to :)

I have a feeling they don't have one, I looked when my sheets fell apart. Their facebook page is one long stream of complaints about rubbish customer services.

Jen hope your money shows up.
Helena Fingers crossed for the interview.
Economy great profit. Hope BabyEconomy makes an appearance soon, can't wait to hear your news.
Fluffy Hope you feel better soon

NSD here :)

Hi all. What a lot to catch up on! I won't try and mention everything, but yay for the good news of babies and interviews and houses to rent out and boo to bad news of taxes and disappearing money and weather enforced spend.

Not too bad here, random spends on shopping top ups as I've been trying to use up things from the freezer rather than do a proper shop. All shopping this month only £230 which I am very happy with.

I had my interview today which was extremely hard work - 2 panel interviews, a test (which included having to take a fake phone call half way through!) and a lunch. I felt exhausted when I came out! Should hear back this week, but if nothing else it's given me a confidence boost. Thank you for all the good luck, I think it helped . Good luck with yours on Thursday Helena

DS's school was shut today so we went for a walk in the park. Popped to Asda on the way back as I realised this morning we were out of cat food, so I'm now £7.26 lighter. Can't wait to get paid later this week. Trouble is, my rent goes out the day after so I'm more or less skint again straight away .

Sounds good, albeit exhausting,1stMrsFrugal. Keep us posted. Best of luck for yours too, HelenaGrace.

Jen, fingers crossed your money will be there first thing.

NSD here, but DDs have decided to cook all meals for the rest of the week, so they've written shopping lists. Back to volley ball for them tomorrow so that'll be a coffee for me while I wait.

Jen I hope that money turns up very soon.

Hope everyone is coping with the weather. We had a shower today never happens in summer. I'd forced DDs to have a walk after lunch. We'd just turned to come back when itt started raining, we were drenched!

1stMrs that sounds like a good interview. I hope you get the job, but even if not it's good practice.

Adora trying not to be of your weather!

The money finally turned up sometime between 4.45 & 6.00 - so, after DH had been to fetch the car using money from credit cards . But it seems that the faster payment system for the whole of Lloyds was down yesterday, and I guess Halifax comes under that umbrella, so at least that explains it.

Today should be an NSD as am in work, but will go for a stroll at lunchtime & look in the £1 charity shop here. DS1 needs some long-sleeved tops, so I will buy any nice ones that I see.

Have also got the car booked in for its MOT retest on Thursday, so should be able to use it again from then & go to visit DGrandad. He is on a ward now & moving around, but they discovered more blood yesterday, so we are hoping it's just old blood dislodged by him moving around, not fresh stuff. Feel guilty that we didn't visit him at the weekend, but the combination of no car, snow & small kids would have made it very tricky.

jen yay for the money turning up, what a PITA though that you had to take cash from your credit card - will they pay the withdrawal fee for you? DH and I have taken to leaving some cash in our savings accounts that are linked to our current - the interest rate is shocking, something like 0.15% - but the money is there and we can access it any time if we need to. We use it for things like car repairs and paying tradespeople, where you can't always use a credit card but need actual cash.
Don't feel guilty about your DGrandad, he wouldn't have wanted you to try and get there in this weather with no car I'm sure.

MrsFrugal - I was exhausted just reading that, fingers crossed for you getting the job!

Helena good luck on Thursday.

DS1 back to school today, hurrah!

It isn't going to be a NSD today, but it should be a very Low SD. I need some carrots, that is the only essential.
The only other thing I might buy is a pair of snow boots for DS2. He was freezing on the school run this morning and I felt awful. I will see what they have in Sainsburys and Mothercare which are both very local to us.

Yay, jen. So glad it turned up first thing!

DS was back at school today. Already spent £4.30 on bus fares, as we had SO much stuff to bring this morning and the snow was just too deep (we live a mile and a half's walk away). So I expect to spend at least a couple of quid more on bus fares today.

Had awful morning. Decided to book a taxi to get DD to school this morning as weather so horrible. It didn't turn up and when i phoned they said it would be an hour minimum before it did so we went out to get the bus. Finally arrived at school at 9.10 when she was meant to be there at 8.40. Thankfully a lot of people were coming in after us and they were letting people off signing late book but still very annoying. Then a bus back. I have a monthly pass so at least I didn't fork out extra. Nightmare getting the pram through the snow too

So cold by the time I got back I went to local cafe and had a fry up - £4.15 then popped into shop for milk, bacon and a few other bits £7.95. Felt I deserved a spendy morning as i've now done my 12 NSD I was aiming for this month. Im going to up the target to 15 though and see how I get on.

Jenduck im glad your money appeared I can only imagine the feeling of relief

Jen glad the money turned up and that grandad is mobile, fx re the dislodged blood. Did DH have to get cash from the CC? If so defo kick up a fuss re the delay.

We haven't been shopping yet, don't know how much DD's grocery bill will come to but I'll do my best to keep it under control. I'm viewing it as enhancing their education as schools here don't do home economics, not even sure UK schools still do?

Economy sorry you're uncomfortable.

Cremegg congrats to you be an Auntie, and also to your DSis

OMG I've just spent £435 fainting dead away. BUT its paid my building and contents insurance for an entire year and saved me just under £200 for the year on my current policy in the process and thats AFTER paying their extortionate cancellation charges. Don't insure with Barclays they charge a huge amount and unimpressed with their customer services - they offered me less than a fiver a month discount when I said I was thinking of leaving them. They clearly didnt want to keep me so I'm leaving

I'm going to review all my direct debits one by one this week and try for a better deal on all of them. Tomorrow its the energy bills which just seem to keep going up and up and up.

Has anyone had any success getting a better deal with Virgin. We have phone, broadband and TV with them and its a fairly expensive package although nice to have. I don't want to switch provider unless I have to as I find their service to be good and they are helpful when things go wrong unlike BT who were dreadful and took TWO YEARS to refund me £42!

Ali tbh we don't normally have much money spare, and anything we do have we are trying to put towards paying off credit cards etc. It is actually a testimony to our efforts that we have been able to scrape together the 'spare' £400, even from credit cards, as this time last year, we would have been unable to even get the original £350, let alone spare money!
Re snow boots for your DS - could you just get/knit a really thick pair of socks to go inside his wellies?

What a pain for people having to spend on bus fares because of this weather. I cannot blame storm for that fry-up at all!

Adora fortunately we had most of the money, just had to get £50 or so out on cc, so not terrible, but still shouldn't have happened.
I like your idea of educating the DDs! A real life lesson!

Have spent £3 today - £2 in charity shop, got a pair of M&S jeans (not new, but fairly good condition & needed a spare for when my current pair are in the wash). They were also offering a free paperback when you spend over £2 so got myself a trashy novel to read . Then £1 in Boots for nail varnish remover.

storm we have also not had much luck with Virgin in the past, they don't discount much. If you can, switch to Sky, who do excellent joining deals & also when you threaten to leave

Oh, and don't forget to go through Quidco or Topcashback for all these changes you are making!

storm - that is a good deal for buildings and contents!
I don't know about deals with Virgin, we recently got Sky to knock over 20% off our monthly bill because we threatened to leave. We have the full package of TV and HD for £52 a month now. It sounds a lot, but we so rarely go out because of the cost of babysitters, and we do watch the sport and movies regularly so for us it is a good deal.

jen it is hard isn't it? We have CC repayments and it is such a PITA - all our own DHs fault though! We do keep cash though, because of DH being self-employed. It is no good having no debt but no cash and losing the house because we can't pay the mortgage... We will get there.

economy - I hope economyBaby comes soon, those last couple of weeks when you've got SPD and a toddler are the absolutely worst bit. Yes having a newborn is hard, but at least you can walk and lie down properly in your own bed!

I spent £43 in Sainsbury's in the end!
£15 of that was snow boots for DS2 (jen he needed new wellies anyway so not much in it) - they are fab because they open right up and you do them up with three velcros so there is room to have extra socks and to tuck their trousers in. DS2 is somewhat chunky of leg so we can never get his trousers inside normal wellies
Then I got a reduced beef slow roasting joint, and also a kilo piece of gammon for only £5. Milk, fruit, veg, bread and crumpets, fish fingers and frozen pizza.

We are away at the weekend down at my Mum's, and I'm not going to do a big shop for the week. We have got enough things in the freezer to last for dinners so I only need stuff for lunches plus fruit and veg and milk - and that takes us up to payday.