Have a fabulous frugal February with the fantastic frugaleers

[northender]

As we filled the old thread, thought I'd start a new one for February.

lol at silkknickers!

at the name explanation, not at the high sleeper savings!!!

bbc. Although I AM in fact doing a Cheshire cat-like grin at the savings. May even indulge myself with some Primark polyester full briefs as a reward!

A NSD here as the boiler has broken and so I am snuggled under the duvet with DS to keep warm ! Luckily we have British Gas Homecare cover so I rang this morning and they are coming out this afternoon to fix. Think it's just the pilot light out but it's a weird boiler and you can't light it yourself. Anyway fingers crossed it's easily fixed or it could be a very high spend day.

Another NSD here today. Normally grab coffee with friends on a Friday but there was a coffee morning at school today so we all got our coffee and cake there for free. Hurrah!

Have very frugally made a card and brownies for DH for Valentines Day. And had all the ingredients for a lovely dinner tonight budgeted in - marinated lamb with roast veg and cous cous, yum!

Have a lovely weekend all, and stay safe in the weather.

3.90 today on swimming, 11 on dog food but that will last yonks. Meeting a friend for coffee later but he might pay :D

Nsd for me

79p in morrisons
£14 in aldi, that's the weekly shop done apart from the potatoes I will get from the farm shop but its only 80p from them. I used my morrisons vouchers up so it should have been more.

The couple in front of me spent £168 in morrisons. They didn't look like they had tuppence to rub together either.

£7 on petrol.

I don't think I could spend that if I tried

Does anyone do their shopping monthly? I have a friend who does but I can never get my head around it

Nsd. Phew. Not even petrol-stayed in all day. Can't help it if dh bought lovely food for dinner tonight! Actually, he's very sensible with little bits of spending so he doesn't need to be as firm with himself as I do. Going to try very hard this weekend.

Spotty - I have started shopping fortnightly with a top up shop in the middle. Seem to be spending less

Has anyone else received a Community Life Survey invite through the post? It's a letter from the government saying complete the survey and get a £10 shopping voucher. Going to give it a go tonight

£10 (and £10 from DH) on wine and nice food for tonight - not celebrating V day but half term!

We are meal-planned until next Sat and only need to do a smallish top up shop to get there so we had the slack in the grocery budget.

Going to have the final listing on eBay on Sunday night, everything that didn't sell and some more stuff I've found in the meantime.

Decided to put off the car boot as the wind is ridiculous - hopefully by the Easter hols from school it'll be better.

Spent £38 at m&s - £20 on dine in for 2 which included choc, wine, starter, side, main, dessert, and other stuff including milk. £6 on a huge box of chocs for my students. Think I only need some tinned tomatoes.

Spotty I do our groceries fortnightly, that's as far as I can go. I do however have to top up usually on milk and bread, but I'm very strict with that and stick to just those items. I'm not sure how you would manage to have enough fresh food if you did it monthly, unless you had a really big freezer for meats/fish and vegetables, and/or plenty of long life stuff. I do spend less with a fortnightly shop than weekly as it makes me think more about eating from the freezer, cupboard etc as half the fresh meat and fish goes straight into the freezer when it arrives anyway.

We've not been so good on the takeaway front, still below my target but there's not more than maybe one more meal in that, and we're only halfway through the month. It won't be worse than the other months, I was just hoping it would be better! We'll see, we've been ill here so that's a big factor in that, hopefully will improve with our health!

I have a new goal for next month. I want to have an overall low spend month - the groceries have come down really well but I'm also happy with what we eat. When times are hard you have little choice in what you get, and we've done mega budget living before out of necessity. Right now we're okay - not rich, by a longshot, but no debt and some disposable income at the end of the month - so I try to get slightly better food as I think it's one of the most important things. So even though we've been getting nice quality stuff, our overall groceries bill is still much lower than before (shopping at Asda and not able to get a lot of the naice stuff I wanted!) so all good

Anyway, the goal. Household, groceries, and takeaways to an extent are falling into a really good pattern. But the miscellaneous expenditure is variable - I've never budgeted it before because we don't buy much, but I think now would be a good time to start and make sure I don't get distracted and buy stuff on a whim. Especially not as we've just had our big shop of shoes, clothes etc so we shouldn't need much. I'm not wanting to avoid all spends, just keep it reasonable.

I've not been on for a few days as I've got tonsilitis and feel hideous. NSDs tues, weds, thurs, and fri. Had to ship DS off to his dad's for a long weekend on Thursday as I feel that rotten. On a positive I am doing well with my goal of spending little on food as I have eaten half a cheapabix since Tuesday. Feeling sorry for myself but hoping to start feeling better soon.

£5.50 on a couple of push lights from amazon (borrowed my dad's when we last had a power cut and it stopped working )
£10 given to dp for a hair cut.
£81.25 later when I send dp's passport off for renewal ()

Total spend yesterday £17. £7 on a case of diet coke to live under my desk (sick of spending 95p a can in staff canteen) and a tenner on a bottle of wine for dh.

Bonus will be paid at end on month which will clear credit card . Did some maths and worked out that with new Payrise after all expenses (non luxuries) I'll have £40 a month to live on. Sent the maths to my boss with comparison to existing salary and desired salary at average market rate to give them some perspective.

Emem. My wages are way below the liveable wage. Typical nhs.

Hi spotty yes I do a monthly shop and meal plan . This supplemented by weekly top up for bread , eggs, frui t and veg. It saves a lot of time. I do have storage problems tho and stuff like juice and crisps are in odd places! I tend to buy x 4 chicken, quorn,sausages,and reapeat recipes . I mostly do chicken dinner on sun and use leftovers in wraps for mon which helps with timiing after work on Monday.i do fall off the wagon at times and forget but when I remember to shop monthly and meal plan it seems to help . Meals written on a Callander on fridge for fam to see.

Get well soon picnmix. Good idea to have time to yourself - such hard work being unwell with LO to look after too. I'm sitting here with a honey and lemon myself as I've got a bit of a sore throat. Have you found anything that helps?

emem Is this £40 for personal spends or everything else for your family? That's pretty tough. Well done with paying off CC though!!

I set myself a mini challenge of 14 NSDs this month and I've completely lost track! I haven't been to any shops at lunchtime though and have eked out grocery shopping so think I'm doing ok.

Although...spent £4.47 on a mcdonalds lunch yesterday my excuse is that dd had fallen asleep in the car after nursery and I was starving and didn't want to wake her - can you tell my diet is not going so well?

Then spent £4.06 in tesco buying bits and pieces to go with our take-away dinner - mango chutney, poppadums etc. DH paid for takeaway but it only came in at £10 as we didn't have extras. Not so much romance going on here - we both fell asleep on the sofa by 9pm watching a film!

I'm going out tonight with work colleagues and will have to break into next months personal spends - so annoying. Just hope I can keep as low as possible next month as it could be a slippery slope if I'm not careful.

Things seem to be going worse in my frugal ways not better, constantly scraping bottom of the barrel. Have a night out tonight which can't be avoided, so need spends & money for babysitter. Have exhausted all pots I can borrow from so going to just do a mini shop to get us through to wed/thurs when I'll have money again.
Luckily freezer has meat & bread plus some milk so just lunches and potatoes & animals to look after really. Hate driving all the way to supermarket twice in one week!

turnoffthelights, I find writing things down really helps. It can stop me making impulse buys as I know I have to write it in the book later plus I can see how many NSDs I've had which is cheering :)

I'm having friends over for Sunday lunch tomorrow so will have to buy for that later. Am eschewing a coffee at softplay (paid for by DD's dad) so an otherwise virtuous day

It's £40 for General spends or savings. Was moaned at for not living within my means (hence the spreadsheet for evidence). Boss has 2 houses. And has jut spent over double my annual salary on a new kitchen. (It is lovely but not the point).

I had every intention to save thousands this year. Can't feasibly do that now. Unless they start paying market rate. It isn't that much more, I'm only asking for an extra £4k. Which will raise my tax payments. But will bring me in line with others at my level. But might enable me to pay off more of my mortgage.

I am secretly smug at credit card clearing though.

Em - I hear you on the living wage debate. I had this argument with my boss the other day and his response was 'well that's the world we live in' ummm not his world when he earns a six figure salary clearly! Really pissed me off. Oh well I get to tell him I'm pregnant in 2 weeks which will be fun have no intention if going back. Was only doing this job as it fitted in around DS childcare whilst we tried for DC2. It is so frustrating trying to save and do everything you can to be frugal when it is so limited if you don't earn enough.

Moan over!

Penicillin seems to have kicked in now turnoff as I feel marginally better today. A dose of what I've got would give your diet a boost today I weigh less than I ever have as an adult. Can't wait to eat and put it back on!