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.

Oh yes, re surveys, I am a member of loads of sites! Valued Opinions I find very good, have about £60/year from them, I usually get Sainsbury's gift cards. Panelbase are also good, they pay in cash which is nice. I also do some surveys for Tesco Shopper Thoughts & get paid in Clubcard points. Have recently joined Nectar Canvass (Nectar points) & YouGov (points leading to money)

NSD yesterday...finally achieved one after some days of seemingly heavy expenditure.

Off to see Les Mis this afternoon with DS and DMIL (she won't go to the cinema on her own and it is a film that both DS and I wanted to see so off we all go together!!).

£5.57 on some veg, milk, puddings and crisps from the Co-op. That'll be it for today.

NSD here today. Could gladly have spent lots taking the DS's somewhere if I had lots to spend as they have been driving me absolutely bonkers
DS2 is teething and hasn't eaten anything all day and is very very grumpy. Although not his fault, it's still hard to listen to constant whinging for over 12 hours!
DS1 has woken up as the devil incarnate today, and isn't happy unless he is shouting, running around and breaking things. 4 toys have gone in the bin so far today, and they will NOT be being replaced

Roast chicken for tea, then it will be o'clock shortly after

Went to a friends for lunch and took them wine and chocolates we had left over from Christmas so a NSD here.

still can't really get to grips with swagbucks - anyone got any hints on the best ways to earn points please? It keeps sending me to gambling sites when I try to do tasks or wants me to buy things to earn points which kind of defeats my credit crunching

I am currently saving up like mad for a free Eurotunnel return trip with Tesco club card points, and I only have £11 worth so far, as I have signed up to Shopper Thoughts to try to get some more.

I think the secret to survey sites may be to focus efforts on one or two and really go for it.

BTW any other ideas about how to maximise Tesco club card points? (I think we've done all the obvious things they usually publicise).

Boffin you can also join Tesco Mum's choice (I think) & they sometimes send you products to test & you get points for filling in questionnaires after. Also if you go to a big Tesco you can get points for recycling drinks cans & of course points for reusing carrier bags

That's it, I am now unemployed. Really need to focus on achieving some nsds! Inspired by Leilanri I've set myself a budget of £25 for groceries as we got plenty in the cupboards and freezer so I'm hoping it'll be a successful and creative challenge.

SoftKitty- we're with topcashback too and this month got a pay out for insurance we took out in December 2009! It was a nice surprise as I'd written it off a long time ago.

Boffin- if you have great will power get a Tesco credit card. We use ours for everything but I pay it off every 10 days so I know exactly where we are. We never pay interest on it. You get a point for every £4 you spend, more if you buy Tesco petrol. They usually have an offer when you sign up. We also bought a delivery plan as it is cheaper and much more flexible that gave us 1000 points and we have phone and broadband with them but only because they were cheapest provider. Points build up really quickly. We had a free (almost, it was about a tenner) weekend away last year. This year I'm getting a new railcard and some Merlin passes so we have 12 months of free soft play.

I found you gov took me nearly 3 years to get a pay out so I've stopped using them. I like onepoll as they are quick and easy.

NSD.

I need to keep on top of the medicine chest, dh paid £2.25 for anadin as he will not accept that generic drugs are the same frigging ingredients with caffeine thrown in. It would have been cheaper in homebargains.

Makes me stabby. Really stabby.

Oooh fluffy that would make me stabby too! We only buy own brand drugs here. I've spent so much time over the years convincing DH that brand names are evil

Thats It is certainly a challenge! My advice is to meal plan as far in advance as you can with what you have in already. I sat down and did all of Feb, then went through the meals and wrote any extra bits on the shopping list. There are some bits that we need every month but aren't meals - ketchup, cooking oil etc, but otherwise we only need bread, milk, eggs and fresh fruit for the whole month. Quite shocking at how much food we have hoarded really!

I don't think I could be disciplined enough to do the Tesco credit card thing - not at the moment, anyway.

I am signing up for the Mums Club thing though. I was sad to just miss 1000 booster point for BlinkBox as well - I would have done that.

On the plus side I have been batch cooking.

Supper today - Extra large Tesco chicken, Tesco value small potatoes (boiled), carrots and green beans.
Lunch tomorrow - Cold chicken breast, mixed salad, potato salad from remains of small potatoes.
Supper tomorrow - Chicken curry and rice.

Desserts - Peach and brandy crumble and custard. The peaches came in a jar from SIL for Xmas and I hate them normally, but in a crumble they are fantastic. Flora in the home made crumble was £2 for 2 500g tubs. Also rice pudding with vanilla and raisins, and finally a lemon sponge cake from a slightly out of date pre-mix. All tastes wonderful, and the puddings should last all week.

Fluffy tell your DH that I only use generic drugs and I'm a nurse. Some pharmacists prefer generics as name brands are more likely to be counterfeited.

NSD here. House in the north is now advertised for rent. Hope we get a tenant soon.

No news about my interview but they did say it might be a fortnight.

I'm doing my CV for another one tomorrow. I'm also going to try some agencies although I hate them usually aren't trustworthy.

I've meal planned for the month and am off to Aldi to try to do as much as I can in there.

Austerity Housekeeping eBook is free again on Kindle tomorrow, if anyone still wants a copy.

Fluffy - my Mum is a doctor, and she buys 'Value Health' paracetamol for 8p a packet or whatever it costs!

Helena - hope you hear on interview and house soon.

Thatis - good luck with your £25 challenge! Are you looking for a new job or are you taking a break?

Fairly low spend weekend here, we have been staying with my parents. Because we were away I didn't get a big shop delivered on Friday like I normally do, so I'm hoping to get away with only spending about £20 this week to keep us going until my next online order comes on Friday afternoon. We will need bread, milk, fruit and veg and some bits for lunches - I have got dinners covered from what is in the freezer.

Well our weekend with sil went well. I stuck to the mealplan and even ended up with leftovers to freeze as they didn't arrive until 0400 as they'd been stuck on the M61 in the snow for a few hours and couldn't face food by then.
We didn't get anywhere for cheap alcohol but in the end didn't drink too much so we have some leftover for Feb!
The car problem has reared it's ugly head again so it has been towed to the garage today . Hopefully though they'll get to the bottom of it this time.
I've done my most expensive ever shop at Aldi this morning £105 but only because I'm hoping not to have to go back there again until the end of Feb. I buy most of the fresh stuff elsewhere so still have that expense to come. I've listed everything in the freezer and meal planned to the end of Feb using as much from the freezer as possible.
Have gone over budget for Jan but as we have the majority of our food for Feb now we ought to come out of Jan/Feb quits. Just keep thinking how much better off we'll be every month this time next year with the debts paid off.

I spent £2.50 today in Asda. I bought two packs of wholemeal pasta and a pack of wholemeal spaghetti for 50p each. I much prefer wholemeal rice and pasta, and this was reduced from 95p per pack so I stocked up. I also bought a 4-pack of bounty's for £1 .

I need to pay for my car repairs tomorrow which will be about £200. It's so annoying as I was just about getting back on track and have almost paid off my overdraft. Now I'll have an extra £200 on my overdraft to pay off, plus the road tax is due at the end of Feb. I've got some things on eBay so hopefully some of it will sell so that can go towards the overdraft.

£5.99 for today, on bus fares, a bit of shopping and youth club fee for DS. I've somehow managed to pick up a stinking cold, despite only being as far as the shop over the weekend. So I'll need to invest in some Lemsip tomorrow, as I only have one or two sachets left.

I will also need to get DS a new coat for school, as the zip on it died this morning and it refuses to go up. I bought it from H&M in October, but I don't think I could take it back, could I? He's wearing his parka today, but it's not suitable when it's chucking it down, as it is here today.

Another unexpected expense will be replacing our main tv. It's only 7 or 8 years old and it's been struggling for a few months, but it seems to have kicked the bucket last night :(. I wouldn't mind, but the one in the bedroom is from about 1991 (STBXH actually bought it as an ex-rental sometime in the mid-nineties!) and is still going strong! I'm planning to get a replacement from John Lewis, as they offer a free five year guarantee, and they have some good makes and that aren't too massive, around the £200-250 range.

Lots of us on this thread have had extra expenses over the last couple of months, at what is probably the most expensive time of the year, haven't we?

NSD.

One of our relatives got a 10 year gaurantee on their telly from John Lewis.

Dh refuses to believe generic drugs are as effective as his precious brands. Even after seeing the chief scientific officer of the pharmeuetial society on TV saying they were the same he won't have it. Like I said, stabby.

Oh dear. I spent a fair amount today. It was weird. I had a strong feeling that after a fairly careful month I deserved to spend. It really is a hard additction to break So time to confess

Bacon sandwich and tea at NCT group meeting £3.50
Lunch afterwards with some friends £11.50 (appalling meal, rubbish service won't be going back to that place what a waste of a treat)
Trip to pound shop to buy ds a sippy cup, dd conditioner, some air fresher and a couple of other bits and ended up spending £17 I should really really stay out of the place.
Then went to replace various lost bits of DD's school uniform, plus get her new scarf and gloves and came out £29.50 lighter

I spent £61.50 in a day on just stuff. No wonder I had so much month left at the end of the money. I was always spending like that without a second thought. Its really shocked me to see it all added up like this. Almost glad I've done it though just to remind me what I'm trying to stop myself doing.

The good news is i've just counted up my NSDs. My original target was 12 and I've done 16. Payday on Thursday so not long to go.

Been lurking for a while but thought I'd post as I desperately need to cut down on my spending and pay off the £ I owe!As I'm a 'cashless' person as I spent on my cc then clear it at the end of each month with my wage, over the past 6 months I was gradually overspending and not quite managing to clear the balance in full so it's finally crept up.also I find its not the same feeling handing over a bit of plastic as opposed to tangible money.
The thing with these non-spend days,although they're good it's no good if you then blow it all with a big spend day the next day iykwim.so rather than nsd's I'm trying to cut down on non-essentials.
I will be £500 short of clearing my cc on pay day (thurs) but if I stick to essentials-food, petrol etc then should be able to clear at end of feb.on top of that have an extra £2500 to find to replace savings and pay off holiday-interest free until next year.
We have other manageable debts like sofas interest free,tumble drier,student loan, mortgage but not worried about those as they're all direct debits and included in our monthly budget.

Do any of you lot know anything about breadmakers?

I was given one for free, which I've started using a lot more as I haven't got the energy to make bread by hand at the moment. But the last few loaves have all collapsed after rising well. I've followed instructions, tried reducing the amount of water (as suggested in the troubleshooting bit of the instructions), but it keeps happening. Part of me (the snobbish part) thinks that it's because it's a cheapo Tesco one and wants to get a decent one (Panasonic or the like), but they are £££. Any ideas?

In other news, nsd here today.

You can buy absorbic acid off eBay/Amazon to use a flour improver for bread makers, I use a teaspoon in each batch.

When ever I've had a failure it's been due to out of date flour or yeast. Do you store yeast in the fridge?

Welcome rosvita.

Fluffy, yeast comes from a new sachet every time (it's the dried stuff) and is in date. Flour is also in date and is proper bread flour. The last two loaves were made with flour opened yesterday, so no time for it to go bad. Yeast never touches the salt or sugar. I'm this close to spending £100 on a decent machine....

Easy bake yeast or dried yeast?