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.....

Quite promising start here, 99p on new back for Boy 1's Blackberry (hoping to stop the "Muuuuuum I neeeeeeed a new phone cosmine is broken"), plus £3.50 on screen cleaner for the gadgets. Also splurged £10 of my Christmas money on both Star Trek films. Tesco £40 on topping up fresh things, MIL went to Leeds today and got me some fab bargains, 20 clementines-£1, 10 Granny Smiths-£1 (had just ordered 6 from Tesco for £1.75, robbery) so we have full cupboards, full fridge, stuffed freezer plus made sure to buy mozzarella and peperoni to make loads of pizza on Saturday, Hubbypants not at work this weekend and we are absolute devils for the 'stuffit-lets-phone-something' performance.

Fluffy Thanks for that link, I actually have a bag of soda crystals and a bar of Simple soap that have no use at the moment and I'm slowly reaching the end of our detergent. So, time for a laundry gloop question Roughly how much does this make/how big a container would I need to hold it all? In the link it says half to one cup in the wash, which sounds like loads because at the moment I use something around 50ml of liquid Fairy. We use cloth nappies so I don't want to clog them with soap. Do you think 50ml gloop is more or less equal to 50ml liquid detergent? I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be, but then I don't really understand how these things work!

Yes primus will retract the cashback. Very annoying it is too.

I use an old aerosol polish cap to measure gloop, one per wash but play around with it and see what works.

I'm excited about washing gloop! Must try to find some soda crystals -I live in France and have never seen them in the supermarket!

Nearly a NSD here-ran out of coffee so spent 3€60. But made 68€ doing cleaning, so I guess that is ok. Going to have a look at MSE for the budget spreadsheet and do a freezer inventory tomorrow :)

This thread is great, thank you for your kind words frugalfuzzpig I'm proud about almost beating the debt, but not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel wrt to becoming a homeowner-it is just toooooo expensive over here!

I'm in. I foolishly overspent like mad last year & had to confess all. So I really want to get in control this year. I'm at my parents until Saturday so not spending anything, and all meals are paid will be more careful with my spending

£20 or thereabouts on soft play incl lunch for all 4 of us. But it's only the second time we've been out other than to family/friend's houses over the whole holiday.

Not got anything planned for tomorrow - hoping to sort out the DC's rooms to find proper places for Christmas stuff.

I also want to find time to do a proper meal plan. I love the idea of a monthly one but find I panic when I see all those days of meals to think of and my mind goes blank. I will give it another go though.

delsai

I made around 5/6 litres of gloop, I don't know how it would cope with nappies because fairy non bio probably has bleach in it to compensate for the lack of enzymes.

delsai I used to use a nappy bucket to store it in. And I washed cloth nappies with it, they came perfectly clean but it doesn't get the stains out - you hang them on the washing line and the sun bleaches those out. Obviously in winter they get a bit scummy looking, but the first bright spring day usually does the trick to brighten them up again.

And to dose it I used an old breadmaker cup, about half of one of those. It's a handful of the gloop really.

Cocolepew I am sadly quite excited by your organisation. I have done my meal plan and list and have shopped accordingly.
Dh and I have been through our finances very recently with a fine tooth comb cutting out everything we can. Things are vey tight but we have a very large debt to pay off. It is gradually coming down.
Despite having not much money dh and I are determined this year to do more stuff together as a family - cheaply obviously! We both have demanding jobs that require a lot of work at home in the evenings/weekends so we want to try and organise our time better. My plan is to do a jobs rota for housework as we currently leave it all to Saturday. I am going to try and do a job a night and also want to encourage the children to do their bit and at least clean up after themselves!
TheOnlyMrsW wow that is a lot of vouchers! Did you get all them for Christmas presents? If not I am very impressed you have held onto them. They burn a hole in my pocket and I always spend them really quickly.

abbylou some were for presents, others were from work. I'm a sales support in a non-commissioned role so sometimes the lovely boys I work with get me vouchers as thanks. Although I'm trying to decide if it would be ungrateful to suggest they get the same ones next time . ohhelp I will check ebay to see what I could get for them, the likes of Monsoon isn't really for me and I'd probably waste them..........

Fluffy, your DH has expensive tastes. Do you buy frozen chicken breasts? they are much cheaper than fresh for some reason, but identical once you've erm defrosted them!

AbbyLou how old are your kids? Odeon cinema has cheap Saturday morning cinema (used to be called Kids club - don't think it is anymore) where you can watch films that were released a while ago for a fraction of the normal price.

Other cheap/free family outings: we cycle or walk a lot together and feed local wildlife; lots of free museums and galleries that are fun if you keep the visit quick. Geocaching?

DH came up with bright idea of buying big cuts of beef and whole salmon when discounted at Christmas. We've had 26 generous portions of lean roast beef for £12 That's 6 1/2 family dinners: roast beef, cold beef and oven chips, shredded beef stir fry, beef goulash etc plus sandwiches and cold meat with salad.
Same with salmon - £10 for a vast whole salmon - had 12 steaks from it, instead of the usual four tiny ones for £6.50.
Really enjoyed not living on chicken thighs and economy white fish for a few days!

Spent £11.40 today on giving boys and their friends money for a drink when they went out cycling, and buying self a New Year's treat ticket to an exhibition I really really want to go to tomorrow. Neither of these are essentials are they? Need to try harder. But lunch for friends was all Christmas left overs and I've checked fridge and store cupboard have at least 12 family dinners in them.

Lonelygoatherd this thread moves so fast. In case no one else answered, the vouchers can be used in Waitrose or J. Lewis.

Frozen chicken yes. Gets a bit boring but if he doesn't want to eat pork etc what can you do.

For cheap days out, If anyone wants to join the national trust tcb does cashback on it BUT if you join the scottish national trust you can pay on monthly DD & use it in all the English and welsh sites because they have a reciprocal arrangement with each other. Sometimes it's a bit much having £69 go out all at once.

One of the English isles, can't recall if its the iow or iom has the same arrangement with them but you have to live on the island.

Today I signed up for a race that I do every year. Was just under £25 but I've done it every year for about 6 years now.

£11.19 in b&m. That included a present for a 3 year old and random bits of bargainous food.

Woodrunner dc are 9 and 6. They do do the Odeon thing round here, it's £2.00. Unfortunately ds plays rugby on a Saturday morning so we can never go. Plan for tomorrow is to only spend the car park money for the panto. Dh is taking 4 bags of stuff to the charity shop and I have 3 things to Ebay. He also has to nip to the local Collect+ shop to send the Virgin box back. Hopefully he won't spend anything while he's there!
We have lots of work to do before we go back to work next week so hopefully the dc will play nicely together for a while. I have the stuff for them to make pizzas for their lunch so that will give them something to do in the morning.
We are really looking forward to the pantomime, it's something we never really do and is a real treat. I'm going to use some of their Christmas sweets to make up treat bags for them to take.

Today's spends...

Some Kindle Books but I lost track so will count them when they leave my bank.
£9.95 - caved in and joined Slimming World
£10.00 - I owe DS1 it but I can't remember why but it's my handwriting on the IOU so I must have borrowed it for summat....

Now have the added battle of keeping my grocery budget and eating SW friendly.

Claret I am the same. I am also on SW and have been since October. I was doing well but have had a serious slip up over Christmas the couple of weeks prior as well! I'll be honest I do find it quite hard to eat cheaply but that is mainly because dh doesn't really like pasta. I would live on it but he wants meat, veg etc or something more exciting. I'm getting better at it now and my slow cooker has been a godsend.

I can't believe there's only a few Home Bargains stores in London and none near where I live. Oh well, I'm in Leeds in a few weeks so will peruse then.

Claret nooooo! There was a voucher for sw in woman mag, free joining fee.

It was on hotukdeals a couple of days ago.

Abbeylou odeon do the kids club on sundays too and all week in school holidays

Instead of making gloop I just mix the dry ingredients to make washing powder. Seems to work ok.

Hope nobody minds but I've started a separate meal planning thread - it seems that cutting food bills is a big issue for lots of us so thought it might be good to have a dedicated space :)