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.

I had really bad tonsillitis years ago & found drinking a whole glass of cold water to be the most soothing thing I could do.

I couldn't drink alcohol or coffee for a year afterwards without getting it again.

Penicillins marvellous isn't it? Like someone's put the fire out.

NSD for me today

Car is costing me a fortune. The only good thing is I've just done a speculative insurance quote for renewal (not due til May but I can budget if I've got a ballpark figure) and it was £200 less than last year. I might be able to reduce it further depending on what job I go back to after Mat leave (one job I will need to use the car, one I won't so won't need business insurance).

The only good thing about horrible weather is we're not going out so not spending money! No little trips to the shop because we're bored.

Frugal Valentine's day for us yesterday: BOGOF pizza, salad, nice cheap wine, reduced puddings, ice cream. How classy are we?! But I worked while DP put DS to bed and got two sticky pieces of work done. And sent an invoice

spotty I meal plan monthly. It seems to take all evening to do it, partly because I don't really want to do it but it is only 12 times a year. I think it's cheaper and we have a more varied diet. I aim to then do one small weekly shop for milk and fruit. We eat a lot of carrots as they last ages and most of the veg is frozen but we also get through plenty of fresh fruit. I freeze milk so it's available all week and bake my own bread.

Half term is here so I've drawn out £50 in cash to last the week. I've already spent nearly £20 on weekly bus pass though

Hmm interesting....I find a weekly meal plan difficult enough I just get so fed up of it, but only having to do it once or twice a month is rather appealing!

That's it spotty it's over with for a month ...I repeat several recipes and have a no cook nite on Fridays . Ie pizza for teens and fish cakes from freezer for dh and I .

Have spent £2.50 on bread and milk so far today. Having a freezer defrost and cupboard audit. And then meal planning with what is left.

No shopping until next Thursday.

Hi there I haven't checked in for a few days but have had a few spend days. Hoping tomorrow i will be bak on the wagon, it WILL be nsd.

Me and the dds have just had the most frugal and delicious tea of fried eggs and real chips. Not the healthiest of meals but eaten with such gusto- haven't had it for years

€98.32 on shopping - going to try stretch it out until next fri if possible. That included meat which is normally extra on top of the €100.

€20 diesel

Right, am finally giving meal planning a proper go this evening.

I'm dealing with needing to cook vegetarian, eating at different times and a fussy toddler. The frugal side of me hates hates hates throwing food away but if I only give DS what he'll happily eat then that's basically potato waffles/baked beans/sausages or macaroni cheese on alternate nights plus all the fruit (blueberries!) he can cram into his mouth.

So I've not done this before but:

1. starting by making a list of family favourite meals that we'll all eat and that hopefully DS will eat some of
2. putting them into a weekly planner
3. making a shopping list to cook it
4. removing anything off the list that we already have in stock

I'd LOVE to batch cook but we have a tiny tiny freezer so all we manage is to keep some milk, veg and a few bits and bobs in stock, e.g. frozen pizza and pasta dough.

Does that sound like a good start?

Yes meal planning is great but you must remember to factor in breakfast, lunch and snacks

Thanks spotty.

I'm doing lunches too but snacks are confusing - DS (2yo) is so rarely fussed about having anything to eat between breakfast and lunch beyond a drink of milk (even then we water it down a bit). He often won't snack between lunch and dinner either but seems about the right amount of cuddly too, so I don't know where he's getting all his calories from?!

Breakfast is the same every day pretty much - muesli with blueberries, so that's easy. I have started stocking up on frozen berries, or freezing my own when there's a special bulk deal.

Dd would snack all day if she could I can't afford to keep the dc I must make some soup again for lunches, need some more containers though...

£36.72 on Tesco shop and £4 pocket money for DS.

If you look on approved food they have packet cake mixes on there for pennies, you could batch them as fairy cakes.

I can't have them due to allergies but I would buy them if I could, you could do them as round cakes & serve with custard for a stodgy winter pudding.

I use Dh's marg tubs for Tupperware now, they don't warp in the dishwasher unlike the actual freezer tubs I bought

Plucked up enough courage to do my reconciliations. I'm sure my groceries budget is way out though.

Kids £74.15 remaining
Everything else: £48.12 remaining
Food; £144.08 remaining
Petrol: £25.50 remaining
Emergency: £22.20 remaining

I decided to take the tyres money out of the emergency fund as it was depressing me being in the red. Now I am depressed about having no emergency savings instead.

Not heard from insurance company other than to say they have received my documents and will be in touch

Got a £54 refund for road tax.

Christmas fund is now at £66-something. I cashed in some pennies to the coin star machine (£1.39) and had a price guarantee voucher for £1.20. I also wombled some receipts on Wednesday during the great storm when it had obviously been too wet for the staff to scour the carpark. So I hope to get some receipts from them.

Petrol is depressing me as we usually have something leftover but it's looking that we won't this month. Previously budget was £225. I put the budget to £171 this month (£54 less) but DH had to fill up his 2.2l petrol guzzler yesterday. Obviously he is doing a lot more trips in his than he did before as I did all the 'running about'. I will also have £60 bus pass to fork out for in March so that will cost more than running two cars did! We did have a trip out to Hull last week though (140+ miles).

Hired a skip today - £90 JEEZ. We have a new carpet coming so skipped the old one, and we have a garage full of crap to get rid of too. No wonder people take to fly tipping! New sofa comes on 27th. We will probably buy some emulsion tomorrow as the alcoves are looking well grubby now there is no furniture hiding them.

Just four more days to work next week, and then I start my new job on Monday. New boss text me to tell me I had a wage slip already!! Apparently they pay 2 weeks in advance and 2 weeks in arrears on 15th, so they are paying me for my first week straightaway, then I get a full wage on 15th. I think this is a couple of hundred pounds extra.....

Sorry it's long, hope everyone is okay and got away lightly in the storms. Off to read back now.

Hi ladies I've been lurking since the NY an into the thd have been thoroughly impressed, I've even pinched a few ideas. I've been trying to be frugal because my work contract is about to come to an end (having been made redundant at the end of last year). A few days ago our car went into the garage because the oil light kept coming on. Apparently we need a new engine which will cost 3,500!! The car is under warranty but the warranty company say we only have 365 left to claim as we have a cap each year. Our paperwork says 1000 per claim so I'm going to do battle with them. That being said the car isn't worth the 2,500 even if they did pay the 1000. This is our third used car in three years and we've spent so much on them we could have just bought a new car! I'm so fed up. So yesterday we broke the cycle and bought a new car but it's on finance over 5 years. It's a good investment because it has 7 seats but it's still money out of our monthly budget when we were supposed to be saving to buy a bigger house next year. That's gone out of the window now :-(. So that's the reason I've joined, we want to pay the car off in 3 year so it's time to get even more frugal.

Btw i do a monthly meal plan and monthly shop. I have weeks 1, 2, 3 & 4 and Monday is fish, Tues & wed are quick food days as DH has two jobs so we have to be quick. Thurs is chicken, Fri is mince, sat is a treat and sun is a roast. This pattern allows me to make 4 x mince meals, ie bolognaise, cottage pie, ragu and chilli and wedges, all from one pack of mince over the four weeks. I buy all non perishables, frozen, storecupboard etc for that month plus fresh for that week, the shop includes all meat and fish for the month. Then i do a top up once a week which includes milk, bread, fruit and veg. It works out much cheaper for us. It also saves us buckets of time although the shop is brutal with DH having a good old moan about how much he hates shopping lol.

So today will be a nsd here and hopefully lots more to come!

Welcome lizzy!
Yesterday dh did the shop and it was about £65. We were meant to have met up with a friend for cake but didn't in the end as ds was v ill and we had to go to ooh hospital in the end. So I cooked quite a lot of food which will do us for today and the next.

Today will have to get the last bits for ds birthday party next weekend like last party bags etc and food. Argh!!

Oh dear NK hope nothing too serious and all ok now x

claret great news about money already ready and waiting at your new job your budgets are looking fine...and less than two weeks of this strangely spendy February to go!

I spent about £40 on my night out. It was fun, good food, good music. I was frugal by getting the bus into town and then ordering low cost from the menu (we split the bill but at least this kept overall cost a bit lower). Interesting thread on here about being tight or being frugal. I'm constantly paranoid that my frugalness will come across as being tight and as I avoided the works Christmas-do due to cost I think this money was well spent.

Our friends who had to cancel dinner a couple of weeks ago are coming today for lunch. I managed to freeze most of the food and amazingly, some of the salad I bought is still passable! Just need to pop out this morning to get a few bits but luckily don't need to re-buy everything.

Morning all! I pledge to post daily so that my spends don't get forgotten about.

I'm £5 up this morning as I did DS1's paper round and also remembered that my boss sent me home with 4 pints of milk on Friday evening so that saved us from having to buy any so I transferred it to the Xmas fund (for my own kids presents) which now stands at £71.93 (target £450).

TurnOff - I keep saying to myself that putting £1 a week into a jar at work would result in me having £52 ready and waiting for the work's christmas do, but it never seems to happen. I think a lot more people have to be frugal than are letting on, and maybe a lot of people who throw money on a night out are going overdrawn for it.

my next Xmas present buy (when I get paid on 28th) is going to be a (one litre) bottle of brandy for my mum. I have £10 in clubcard vouchers so I think I will use that to put towards it. In fact, all of the adults can have alcohol this year - so much easier to buy

what a great idea about the £1 a week! I find the christmas-do a tricky one as its such an expensive time of year. However this year, largely thanks to this thread, i too have started a christmas savings account - getting on toward £100 already! Il use this money for extras around christmas like work-do as well as presents. Im trying to get presents here and there too. In fact i was in tescos recently and saw quirky bird wine on offer at £5 so picked up a bottle to put away for a friend and i thought of you claret as you'd said you were buying alcohol for presents - think it was a hottle of red around that time!

I have £13.93 in my purse in change to last me through until payday. 26th. I should be able to do it.

£7.50 on the car wash

Free roast dinner at bil's

£3.91 in Lidl.

Hope your DS is o.k., NK5BM3.