Judicious January Jangling & Juggling *blows budgeteering bugle*

[claretandamberforever]

Sorry, couldn't resist going overboard on the J's

Happy new year y'all. Welcome to expert budgeteerers, newbies, lurkers and de-lurkers. We're a very friendly, non-judgmental bunch so please use this thread as you choose whether it's as a spending diary, to confess your money sins, ask for help or have a general whinge at the cost of living.....

I forgot to put what was in the pm I got the other day, I'll do now.
I got Pearl Drops toothpaste in Home Bargains today for 99p. £3 less than Tesco had it next door..

I forgot to put what was in the pm I got the other day, I'll do now.
I got Pearl Drops toothpaste in Home Bargains today for 99p. £3 less than Tesco had it next door..

Opps sorry.

Ocado for Waffles, pizza, burrito etc.
Asda pizza

Blogs- whatsfordinnermom
glutenfreegobsmacked.com

Hello, feeling ready for frugaling to begin!

Spent around £60 petrol today and £18 on a frivolous shop i.e. just yummy things to eat on our return from visiting relatives (feel we deserved it after an almost 2 week stint!)

Budgets...£175 grocery (includes nappies, toiletries and anything bought in supermarket), £125 petrol (no long journeys planned), everything else £75 (to include decorating our bathroom) childcare £185, personal (i.e. my bank account) £80. So £560 from joint account, £80 from own account.

SORRY!! Wrong thread

Eddas thank you, I didn't realise that. I have looked on our local one and it says it's £3 on a sunday. £1 more but definitely still doable for a treat sometimes. I'm always horrified by the cost of the cinema to be honest.

Abbey it's worth getting an Odeon Premier card (loyalty card.) I find after paying full price for the whole family once or twice we get a free ticket so DC can go together alone for half price (they're older than yours. It's expensive but the loyalty points add up quite quickly. It's not the weekly thing it was when I was young though.

No problem abbylou. Glad to help. You can also go a bit cheaper on wed with orange wed. I'm not an irange customer but have asked friends to request the code then they text it to me and it the staff just ask for the code. Also if you have a cineworld near by they are a little cheaper. We pretty much always go to kids club rather than a normal showing as it is very expensive

Fluffy and WoodBurner thanks for the info, I'll try it out and see how it goes then, even if it took me a couple of washes to work out the way to do it it'd be worth it

Well, to my surprise I've managed to find a butcher, fishmonger, grocer and bakery all in the local-ish area! Going to check them out this week/early next week, I already know the bakery is cheap, apparently so is the grocers, the others are regular places so shouldn't be expensive (we live v close to a naice area, chicken is the cheapest meat available there at about £11.50/kg so I usually assume that local places will be too pricey). Hoping to get nice food at good prices and also make me more conscious of what I buy and the budget.

NSD again! Won't be tomorrow, going out to see family.

Morning. I need to check in more - last night I spent £2.98 on two packets of soup at Waitrose, their own brand. Each packet contained a single portion .

Tomorrow I'm getting up early to investigate my local area (I only moved in three weeks ago) like what delasi did. I know there's an Aldi a ten minute walk away and a huge food market round the corner. I'm too reliant on the big supermarkets and shouldn't be.

Also wanted to mention Pret for their delicious organic filter coffee, a bargain for 99p.

coco What a bargain for your toothpaste. It may seem sad but I'm getting quite excited about going to Home Bargains in Leeds later this month.

Urrgghhh. It's only 3rd January and I'm already losing control. I saved £10 by not having to buy wine last night but then I've just spent £12.94 on a 2014 Organised Mum calendar. In my defence, I need something like this or our house doesn't function with 2 adults, one working full time and me working 4 days plus 3 children to organise. I think I could have got it cheaper though if I'd have tried. However, I did immediately pay the money from my current account to my credit card so it's gone and I can't spend it twice. I also forgot about a £3 meal deal from tesco and I've been charged £6 for using my overdraft last month. So my left to spend is now £0.02. I was hoping to have lots of NSD's at the beginning of the month to build up a buffer, not doing too well there!

IKEA trip today, I need more storage as the house is out of control. We've agreed a budget of £200 so if I can stick to this I can count it as an NSD against my personal spends (which is my real issue, our bills account is generally not too bad). Petrol is covered from a 'pot' of money so although I think I'll have to fill up, the money is allocated for that already.

I am annoyed about the items I forgot and the calendar - hopefully the calendar will help me organise my finances as well though!

Although if this had been last month I would have been about £30-40 in the red already with no plan for the rest of the month. So I guess I'm doing better than that!

On statutory mat leave until end of April so at the moment I'm overdrawn and at the max on two credit cards. Going to borrow from dd's credit union account to get back in the black & set up weekly standing order for my return to work to pay her back by year end.

So working out two budgets at present one for now to beg may & the other for May onwards.
First one will include essential bills only & second one will include bigger things like car tax Christmas tv license etc that are covered for current ones. Think I probably won't have much extra personal spends but my aim is to become debt free except for mortgage by May 2016 two years after returning to work & paying back circa €15k, will be hard but not impossible.

WoodBurner I think the calendar will be a good investment. I only have 2 DC and only one of them in school but I NEED my calendar and notice board. Good luck with the Ikea shop and sticking to your budget. I always go hopelessly over budget there which is why DH only lets me go once every 2 years!

I am cross because I only just opened some mail from our old house and there was a £7.50 Sainsburys voucher that has expired. Also I have just meal planned for all the food I have in - good news is that there is at least 12 evening meals but annoying that, having gone to Sainsbury's already this week and spent £65, I have realised I need to go back for a few more things. Hoping I can be disciplined and stick to the list.

Spanglemaker, try emailing sainsburys you'd never know they might reissue voucher & then update address details.

fuzzpig sent you a msg too, but in case it's of use to others,
have you tried switching accounts to Halifax? I did recently, I got 100 pounds for switching and then every month that I'm in credit I get 5 pounds interest. Maybe knowing that you'll get a fiver every month you stay in credit would be an incentive to stop going overdrawn?

But it's a risky thing to do if you are likely to go overdrawn because obviously there are fees and so on.

Also, Halifax is good because you can set up free mobile text alerts e.g. I get a weekly mini statement, and you can set a limit of how low you want your balance to go before they text you to warn you.

Iamnotanugget thanks for the advice on meal planning. Did an inventory of our cupboards yesterday and surprised at what we had in there hidden away.

Last night was mushroom risotto - super cheap and delicious:
fry chopped mushrooms in a bit of butter and oil, add risotto rice (about 200g for three people), fry for another couple of minutes, then add a dollop of stock (we use the Marigold bouillon powder) and simmer, and keep adding and simmering until the rice is soft (about 20-25 mins). You can make it more interesting with extra veg, onion, garlic, splosh of wine when you add the rice ! etc.

delasi interesting what you said about local shops and expecting them to be more expensive. I thought so too, but one of my clients is an independent supermarket and since working for them I've found out so much about the Big Four (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons). For example, fruit and veg at places where you weigh them are often much cheaper than the Big Four e.g. peppers can be about 35p each if weighed but are 80p EACH in the supermarkets.

www.mysupermarket.co.uk is an amazing free tool for checking prices across stores - not just for comparing supermarkets, but also so you can compare to your local shops. Especially good for people who shop online.

Just bought bread and milk yesterday. Need to collect epiphany gifts from Asda and will buy the few things that I can only get from there whilst I'm there.

We were going to go out today but instead we've decided to have a day at home doing all the crafty gifts the children got fir Christmas. Definitely cheaper than going out!

DH has worked out that his tax bill will be covered by our savings. It will pretty much wipe them out but hopefully this will be the last year of big tax bills.

Freelance Thanks for the info, in supermarkets I go by price per weight instead of packs as it's amazing how much cheaper it can be, but I never consider the comparison with independent local shops. I'm also useless for mySupermarket I always forget it exists, I'm so good at hunting a deal for household goods but get lazier with food and end up shopping in just one store

On that note, to all, remember that bigger packs aren't always cheaper. Recently when I've bought flour, butter, sugar and tuna, the smaller pack sizes have been the same price/gram or even cheaper than the larger ones.

I have now accepted that we might have to do a bit of shopping around (I mean physically going around to different places instead of just online). Used to be fine with this, but due to our location and personal factors this is a lot less easy to do now. So if local stores are a win then I'm going to plan in the time to go and make it into a nice little family walkabout too, and invest in a new shopping trolley.

Hi! I'm joining you all too with good intentions to be frugal and wiser with money! We need to budget desperately as there's a chance either of us (or, gulp, both of us) could be made redundant before Easter. I have made a good start by switching bank accounts to the Halifax so hopefully that will an extra £100 heading my way soon. A new Aldi has opened near us and I have swopped from doing an online Tesco shop every week (averaging £90) to a much more purse friendly Aldi shop at around £60 a week! Now I know why everyone loves Aldi so much!

It won't be a NSD today as I need bread and DH has taken the kids to the Kids AM showing at the cinema but it won't be too spendy!

New dishwasher £230 as my old one set-a-smokin' this morning. Nice. Though rest of day should be frugal as am now taking down decs prior to good clean downstairs after burnt out stinky shell current dishwasher taken to tip

Marking place. I'm utterly crap with money to the point DP refuses to have a joint account with me. I'm not even sure where it all goes.