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.....

Non spend day here too. I priced up new brake blocks for my bike, they will cost £7.99 and £12.00 to fit. I have you tubed how to fit them and I reckon I could do it myself. Am gonna give it a go!

NSD for meeeeeee

.

at the NSDs...

£59 on drycleaning
£3.89 on two "value" ring binders - plus side is my office is now super tidy and organized

BUT tomorrow should be NSD, and our meal plan is working really well.

DH went mad when I was in hospital and made 8 mini bowls of jelly for me (it was all I could eat in hospital) and now 6 of them are still in the fridge ...any ideas? How long will they keep?

Jealous of the NSDs too! Popped out with a list yesterday that clearly said 'cotton wool, food waste caddy, apples' and came home with two bags of groceries (£11.98) and a pair of trainers for dd (bought with Christmas voucher). I have also topped up groceries today at Aldi (£9.77) and been out with work colleagues (£6.42). I am yet to replace my unsaveable food caddy. Am I spending more money than usual or am I just more aware of it?!

On the plus side, DH is really getting on board with being frugal. He's paying an extra chunk into our joint account and on more than one occasion he's got a little Tupperware pot out to save a little scrap of food before I've had a chance to!

We've just had an invite to a family party in February which involves an overnight stay in a B&B. I'm already looking at this month's budgets to try and save enough to pay for it. Seeing it as robbing Peter to pay Paul but in a very positive way!

Supermarket. 150 bloody pounds, bemoans having pets to feed and a DH with food ishoos, but I checked before leaving and found I have a spare mop head, and only bought half the amount of cheese that DH thinks we need. I am still struggling to see how we spent that much bloody money.And I stuck to the lists, multiple because DDs are doing a meal each this week. I did get small treats to sneak into the cinema for future use.

NSD for me yesterday but £34 for petrol today, should last until this time next week when we will only be three days away from payday. Am struggling a little bit to stretch to the end of the month but due £10 back for DD's dance show tickets which should help a little. Am determined to make last week's ludicrously expensive Asda shop pay - so far it has made 4 meals for us & put 1/2 pack of beef mince & a small pork joint into the freezer, back to Aldi this weekend!

Turnoff will the council replace your food caddy free of charge? Mine does.

£2 on playgroup and £1 on bin liners. I'm determined to declutter. By the end of this week I want 2 bags of rubbish, 2 bags for charity and 2 bags of stuff to sell. That should help make home feel a bit bigger.

Those charity bags they put through the door make excellent bin bags you know, my family collect them for me because we don't get many.

£1.99 on stuff at aldi I forgot on Saturday

£30 on petrol.

Still waiting for John Lewis to confirm price match offer

Definitely ask for the council to replace the caddy, it's in their interests for you to recycle.

Got my free eye test this week in tescos & I've got a free contact lens trial voucher for boots which saves a lot of money. Just got to find a monthly contact I like. I got the voucher when I bought a cleanser in boots.

Epiphany moment when I realised leftover gravy can be frozen in a ziplock bag last night.

I think jelly will keep a few days but you can't freeze it. I'd cover it in custard and scoff the lot.

I'm trying to persuade dh to get a free haircut at the local college. The hairdresser he sees does a rubbish job & charges £10 so I don't see how it could go wrong really.

www.hotukdeals.com/deals/join-quidco-get-a-20-cashback-bonus-spend-online-m-s-1793410

I've just applied for this, or dh has, when it says how did you hear about quidco select local press & the papers in there.

at my lack of frugal mindedness! I actually have a small brown food caddy under the sink filled with bits and pieces; the one I wanted to replace was a more attractive shade than council-brown but [gives self a severe talking to] for goodness sake woman you are on a budget! suck it up and save yourself the £12.50 you were about to spend on a new shiny one from Amazon! Thank you ladies, this is why I need the support of this thread. In answer to my own question above, yes I am spending more money than usual and it's time to rein it in again.

3frugalthings: have taken perfectly good food caddy out from under the kitchen sink; out tonight with friends but will just have tap water (good timing of 5:2 diet!); have sorted 5 items for ebay to list this weekend.

£15.99 in Lidl.

I'll read through later.

Sorted out some stuff to eBay... feeling a bit dubious as fees etc seem to have gone through the roof, but figured it was worth a try as every penny counts at this stage.

Well done on the caddy victory turn

Actually your name reminds me of a little victory - turning off lights and everything else and have brought our elec/gas dual fuel bill down from £78 to £40 per month!

Thanks for that link fluffy, I will try that when I get home.

Today's spends, £2 breakfast at work (brought lunch in though), £60 train ticket to a reunion with people I used to work with. This is budgeted for within my monthly personal budget - am pleased that I've had the discipline to put off or avoid other things to pay for this - most notably cut my own hair it looks alright, not Toni & Guy standards but passable!

2nd NSD in a row for me. Am making a concerted effort this week in view of new sofa buying shenanigans

£3.50 into softplay and £1.90 for a coffee.

Just been on Amazon and bought downton abbey for my mum, epistick pen (any other yetis know if they're good?), pirate accessory kit for DS and toothbrush heads. Came to about £35. I shop guilt free as all needed.

Hi ladies, sorry I haven't been around (i'm sure no one noticed ) I'm going to catch up on the thread in a bit, but my news since my last post....

Our mortgage has now been fixed for 5 years so we know what the payments will be

DH has started his new job and the company car has been with us for nearly a week. Such a relief to be getting rid of the money pit Fiesta! It hasn't actually gone yet but BIL is having it (we're giving it to him as it has a dodgy sounding exhaust so can't justify selling it!) he's collecting it on Saturday. So on Sunday I can cancel the insurance and save £40ish a month. Also need to see if they'll reassess the breakdown cover, I think it was based on 2 cars but now only needs to be one. The petrol in the car i've been using is much cheaper too so all in all pretty good. Although I fear dh's current company car is a gas guzzler, but we're only having it for 3 months at which point he'll be able to choose something a little more economic!

Aldi is bloody fantastic! I have been for 3 weeks now and have spent so much less than at Tesco. I have to admit I'm missing the convenience of the delivery but have been enjoying comparing prices and have become a bit of a price bore surely there's only so many times I can prudly announce that something is only £x in aldi and was £x at Tesco! I went to aldi last night and they'd run out of milk, so I sent dh to Asda today, I also realised I had forgotten cheese and cat food (no list...tutt tutt!) and he came home proudly saying he 'only' spent £11, he was less proud when I said I only spent £40 on the whole shop last night he had deviated and bought 2 x pot noodle (50p each) but still £10 for milk, cheese and cat food

Another NSD. But now have to budget really crazily. Had guy come round to quote a bashing through of wall to make kitchen/diner etc. and having priced things up, it's looking like £5000.

Good news is that the kitchen we've paid off so that'll save £120/month. But the mortgage has gone up £100. So that kinda wipes that off. But Dd now gets the 15h free nursery so that should save us something like £240 or thereabouts per month.

We will have to work damn hard to get that money. I'm thinking we can possibly get to £2000 by April/may but we will need to get a loan for the rest... Sigh.

eddas I forgot my list this week, it's cost £12 more! Plus I took dh which we have agreed never to do again.

Stick a pint of milk in an ice cube tray or two. Bag it up and you won't have an emergency dash to the petrol station.

fluffy, dh offered to go shopping last night but I said no because he probably would've gone to Tesco because it's nearer and because he gets sucked into offers, which Aldi don't have like Tesco do but I thought it was safer to go myself

One thing I do want to ask everyone, I was thinking about things like make up and shampoo which I won't be able to get in Aldi, shampoo I have to use Head n shoulders otherwise I get a really itchy head and it's one of my none negotiable things, I have tried other stuff in the past but this works for me. Anyhow, I wondered if anyone has any idea where to get these things a bit cheaper? I know I could stock up when there's a bargain in Tesco etc but i'd quite like to do it online so I can't be tempted to stray from what I actually want!

A bit too busy to catch up properly but wanted to report some progress with food shopping - on our second week's shop we were heading towards being over budget, but we've pulled it back a bit this week - we'd bought a lot of meat over the first two shops so we now have loads in the freezer. Just bought a brisket to try in the slow cooker. Got a couple more new recipes to try too so I'm really looking forward to this week :)

Oh and we bought an Xmas present saw Planes top trumps cheap in waterstones and we'd already agreed that top trumps will be a regular occurrence following the success of DD's first set last year :) so we thought we may as well.

Not an NSD today but went to tesco and stuck to my list!

Trying to use up the freezer contents at the moment too. I need to google more recipes for leftover ham or we'll be eating a lot of pea and ham soup!

Checking in here too. Small spend today (£15), all other days NSDs. Groceries need buying at some point soon so need to revise my stocks and make a list. Have fought temptation to buy lots of cost price stuff (industry offer, nothing essential!)