Austerity in October - *blows the budgeteering bugle*

[claretandamberforever]

In here please.....

Pinch punch, first of the month.

What's gas insurance? Do you mean like boiler care plans?

£24 gardening bill
£1.35 bakery
£5.12 Sainsburys (used a fiver in Nectar points to reduce it to that)

And DH took out £30 to go to the pub, intending to spend £20. Good man.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/boiler-insurance

Like this?

MrTumbles I hope your DD is feeling better. And others who are under the weather.

Seems a long time since I posted this morning

Hope everyone has a good weekend. I'll be going to this school thing tomorrow, just not sure what time yet.

Well, today, tomorrow and Monday will have to be NSD because I only have a fiver left out of yesterday's money.

Tuesday will bring in my JSA but out of that has to come my media bills £35ish, plus water, rent for the washer and I really do have to buy some new shoes and a coat. Since sandals and a hoody are no longer compatable with the weather. I don't mind being cold but being soggy and cold is miserable.

So we went to aldi today and spent £106!! Omg.

But it included that lovely £6.49 bottle of fleuris for boss's dinner party tonight (which acc to supermarket comparison was £9 at sainsburys), a £9.99 wooden toy thing for my goddaughter's first birthday (on list of things to get this weekend), a new bike lock for dh (4.49), a shower head set (ours needs replacing since we moved in here 2 years ago!!) £17.50, and a whole load of other things that we usually stock up on when we are at aldi. I think we can skip shopping next week (other than milk and fruit/veg/bread) which is just as well as I'm at work on Saturday again...! Happy weekend everyone.

After lunch I'm going to cook up a storm. The gammon is already in the slow cooker - love nigella's ham in coke recipe!

Hello all

Spendy day today

£7.20 on a book of first class stamps
£20.00 to DS1 after it turns out he has used £20 of his own birthday money to put a refundable deposit down on an A-level maths book he needs to borrow from school (refundable at the end of the school year) and although I am in money saving maverick mode I can't let him spend his own money for this purpose! I'm not that much of a tyrant.
£68.46 in Morrisons (76 items) but I am a bit disappointed as I only had to buy 4 days worth of evening meals so I think that is quite a lot! It's buying sandwich stuff for four people that bumps up my shopping as our evening meals don't use lots of expensive ingredients, also got a chicken for Sunday roast but that was only £4.
£2.00 on having my fringe cut.

£3.99 I alternate between three brands of hair dye and Live was by far the cheapest this time around.

Earnt £5 as the paper shop owner asked DH if one of us would mind doing an extra paper round for him today. DS1 couldn't do it as he had training, so I fell for it. It's nearly paid for my hair colouring and cutting so it was gratefully received.

DH has had to buy a new e-cig charger today as his broke. Apparently he doesn't think he should have to pay for it out of his budget! (even though his budget is more than mine for three of us!). I just smiled serenely when he said this and waved him off to the shop to buy a new one (with his money). He makes out like he's "just bantering" but he'd have bit my hand off if I'd have agreed.

I wonder what his budget is actually for?

alabasterangel I'm doing the vacuum bag thing later.

He thinks his budget is just for fun money and anything boring I should pay for out of the family money! >.

Wow you really cracked on didn't you?

Are you under contract to the broadband? I only ask because we've just signed to primus and its very cheap but there's no tv package.

We watch everything on iplayer etc catch up so we could legally ditch the tv licence.

We pay council tax over 12 months.

Everything I can get through topcashback I do, plus I get them to price quidco if they are offering more cashback. You can get £200 a year for things you'd buy anyway.

I shop at Aldi.

There's a website called "feed a family of 4 for £100 a month", its designed to give you 5 fruit and veg a day.

I switched my liz Earle c+p to cream cleanser from the body shop removed with a muslin. Make ups mostly superdrugs MUA range, it's BUAV approved and very good. I love the eyeliners.

We don't use lots of household cleaners, I have water and aldi washing up liquid in a spray bottle, a floor cleaner from aldi, washing up liquid for stain removal on clothes, bio powder, laundry gloop for delicates and cheap vinegar for fabric softener.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1543785-your-top-tips-for-money-saving-and-a-more-frugal-life

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1600030-Small-money-saving-habits-petty-even

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1645324-Money-saving-tips-for-the-new-year

NSD today. My first of the month!

Hi BlackBerry your in the right place but it looks like you've been doing a great job on your own. Shopping at Aldi and meal planning every meal for a month helps us. I do a big shop of non perishables, washing powder etc on pay day and then just buy fruit and milk weekly. Also get the most of of your freezer. A fresh pepper costs about 80p but for a little more you can get 500g of frozen ready chopped. If it's destined fot pizza toppings or stew you can't tell the difference. I also make hummus but there's quite a lot so we have some in packed lunch and the rest is frozen for later in the month. You can freeze almost anything.

Lovely day out with dh and dc using Tesco points. Made some pasties this morning, double wrapped in foil and then wrapped in a towel so 3 hours after they came out the oven they were still hot (also means we had a towel to wipe down wet bench). Did treat dc to an ice cream each and something very small from tge sweet shop as we left. So apart from petrol, £4.94 which I'm happy with.

Welcome to Blackberry

I have had a very spendy day today - again, weekends seem to be like it atm, but will blame it on moving house! Spends were as follows

• £155 on oven from Ebay (6 gas burners, double electric oven & grill, grill plate, hood)
• £278 at B&Q on 6 pack of cheapest laminate for DSes bedrooms, 6 pack of posh laminate for our bedrooms (£40 per pack down to £10 per pack so actually cheaper than cheapest laminate ) 3 packs underlay, tub of paint for DSes bedrooms, tub of paint for outside of house, Spiderman wallpaper & stickers for DS1's bedroom
• £2.50 on drinks in car
• £10 on McDonald's Happy Meals

Have put a few bits on FB local selling page but no bites yet.

All this does mean that we should get DSes bedrooms & lounge ready to move in within the next couple of weeks & our bedroom well on the way.

If anyone needs paint, B&Q are doing buy one get one half price on indoor & outdoor paints.

Yesterday would have been a NSD (it took me a minute to work out what that stood for)) except that I had to give DD her €3 pocket money.

Pretty easy for Sundays to be NSDs here as there are no shops open, except bakeries til 10am (Sunday bakery breakfast is a delicious treat - choc croissants and warm bread rolls etc - but I don't do it often as it involves getting 3 kids dressed and driving 7km to get it pretty early, before 8am really as they sell out of the best stuff! :o So easy to avoid that temptation)

DD's got a football match though so although its a NSD that will involve using a lot of fuel - going to take her friend which usually involves them taking her to another one later, so sort of saving long term by doing that :o

Fuel is a big expense - we live rurally and I spend at least €120 on diesel, there is nothing at all within walking distance, unless you count an 8km 'round trip to a very, very tiny village shop (in another village) as walking distance, more some months if there are extra longer trips, such as visiting the in-laws, which we take my car for as it is the one that fits us all in. DH spends more than I do on his as he drives 70km a day to and from work.

That cooker sounds brilliant Confused.

Tumble I've stopped doing little trips here and there in the car.

Doing our weekly shop today, so I have £70 in cash in the 'food purse' to take to Waitrose, I hope to only spend £50 (and use extra £20 to overpay mortgage again) already spent some of the week a heads food money in Neal's Yard yesterday on a dozen organic eggs for £1.80 which is better price than Waitrose!

Just wanted to add nothing spent last week aside from food already budgeted for. Food shop aide, not planning any spending today, taking DC to woods for autumn walk and will take picnic and treats with us from home.

Aide=Aside

Minimalist good luck with keeping the food shopping to your ideal budget - how many are you shopping for? I wonder if food prices are higher here, there is no way I could feed our family of 5 on €50 - I do have to do all 3 meals a day, every day, as I buy DH's packed lunch supplies and the kids are all home for lunch (school finishes at lunch time) and need to take "Brotzeit" - which is a snack box usually pretty much another packed lunch, esp for DS1 who eats more than DH does - for morning break. Even budgeting, Aldi only shopping, meal planning and not including much in the way of luxuries (aside from a lot of fruit) I spend €100 over all on groceries (all the food plus cleaning products and toiletries) a week, and if I don't keep a tight reign it is easy to spend €150 all in, once the top ups of fruit, yoghurt, and fresh bread are added in :(

Fluffy today's football match is going to be a 120km round trip, and one or other of my older kids have a match or tournament every weekend - some weekends both do. Kindergarten is an 8km 'round trip (16km over all to take, go home, go to fetch, come home), though we sometimes cycle it is hard atm as the youngest is at an in-between age, hates the trailer and can throw a 30 minute tantrum and give himself a sore throat, but to get there on his running bike takes over an hour, and he can't make it home again so has to be put in the trailer, and when I go back I have to take the car to pick up DS1's bike and put it in the boot, or deal with DS2 tantruming as he won't make the journey under his own power by lunch time, when he's tired...

Nearest supermarket is 8km away, 16km there and back, but its a small, expensive one and Aldi is a little bit further.

Everything the kids do, other than just play out with their friends locally or walk the dog with me, both of which we do daily, involves travelling at least an 8km 'round trip both to take and to fetch, and every week there is a necessity to do at least one longer trip of at least an hour's drive each way.

Sometimes cycling is an option, but not in winter anyway - we usually have months on end of minus degree temperatures and ice and snow on the ground.

Driving is a necessary evil here, and cars take a huge chunk out of the budget. However if we were to move into the nearest city, where public transport would make no or just one car manageable, we would pay at the very least 3 times the rent we pay here even if we downsized to a 3 bed flat in a not very nice area, where here we have a 4 bed house over 4 floors! (Nearest city is the most expensive place to live in Germany although very nice...)

Today is going to be a NSD although I did use the last £2 that was languishing in my online betting account yesterday to place a good football treble and that netted me £10 (woo). I've put another (£9) bet on today's games but if that wins I will withdraw it and put it in my spends account, see if I can win back some of the gift money I have paid out. Let's not think about that yet though, one of the favourites is bound to let me down...gambling is a mug's game.

Done some sums this morning and have £103.93 left for miscellaneous spends plus whatever I have leftover from my grocery budget (if anything). I did have £202 altogether when I started a week ago (ouch). Yet I hardly feel like I have spent anything wails

Had our Sunday lunch yesterday so made a HUGE panful of Chilli for tonight's tea and there will be a couple of portions leftover which will be going in the freezer.

Off out to watch DS1 play football this afternoon, usually both of my lads have footy on a Sunday and DH also manages another team (as well as DS2's) so Sundays are always out watching footy for hours on end. However DS1 and DS2's kick offs clashed today so I've thankfully "missed" out on a 50-mile round trip as one of the other football dads has taken him thus saving me loads of petrol, as I have a 10 mile round trip to get DS1 to his game too.

Hope everyone has a good day xxx

Mr £50 for a family of four on an 95 % organic vegetarian diet. This includes packed lunches for three of us during week. We use a lot of lentils and beans and veg in our diet. Pretty much everything is cooked from scratch and all our bread is homemade which is huge saving for us. Once stuff has run out though, it doesn't get replaced until next shop if that makes sense, once all the organic yogurt is munched for example I won't automatically go out and replace so it's all planned to the last detail which can be pain. I can't be 'casual' about what I buy on a £50 budget at all. We all have our five fruit and veg a day as well so nothing is being cut out. We rarely run out of milk so I don't need to top up during week. The one thing I do top up on is bananas as the children don't like them overly ripe.