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.

Congratulations fuzzpig and your dh!

Just treated my friend and family to a pizza express lunch for her dh's birthday. I had 50 in Tesco clubcard vouchers so I just had to top up with 23. I had budgeted 30 so that's ok.

Re toddler snacks. Mine eats a lot of rice cakes and oatcakes. Bananas and grapes are also popular. He has been known to have the odd packet of skips or chocolate buttons when I need to ensure compliance eg the supermarket.

Very happy to say that out of my £50 half term budget I have £4 something left over. I really don't think the dc have suffered, in fact I think they've had a good week. I'm going to set myself a £30 limit this week for travel and playgroups.

Congratulations fuzzpig family! Hopefully things should be a bit easier now.

For toddler snacks my dd used to eat a boiled egg, ds won't touch them. Cold cheese on toast, cold plain pasta, cold pasta with pesto, plain popcorn, dry cereal, flapjacks, carrot sticks, cucumber chunks, peanut butter in pitta, mini quiches, hm pizza or garlic bread. Basically the 'transportable' part of lunch so if dc had egg and cucumber for snack then lunch would be toast and yogurt. The same nutrition as egg salad sandwich followed by yogurt but consumed differently.

£2 car shampoo, £2 G&T.

Well done fuzzpig.

Brilliant news for the Family Fuzzpig.

NSD today, in fact, I earned £4 as I did DS1's paper round. That is £77+ in my Christmas fund now.

I'm going to write off the overspend. After all, it was mainly due to decorating the living room which is something that we don't do every month.

Also, I have three weeks wages from the old job to come on Friday, but also I will get 1 weeks wage from my new job sometime this week so it is a full wage, but then I also get a full wage from my new job on 15th March as they pay 2 weeks in arrears and 2 weeks in advance. That should make up for some of the overspend.

I will just try and make March as frugal as possible.

Bought 2 cakes and some drinks yesterday for visiting family yesterday but they gave us lunch so seems fair exchange! Donation to a flood campaign this morning at church and paid for an eBay item today but got some veg from the allotment. We have 2.39 left in grocery jar until Saturday but have 40 in the lunches/takeaways jar still so nabbed 20 from that.

Spent very little on going out with DS this month so putting that towards our holiday (minibreak at Butlins!!)

Congratulations fuzzpig

Congrats Fuzzpig

NSD here. DH and DDs went out on bikes this morning and took drinks with them.

Lovely news Fuzzpig congratulations for your family.

Finally a nsd thank goodness. I am looking forward to a fresh new budget in March. This months budget has gone completely wrong. Just loads of unexpected things have cropped up. I doubt next month will be any better though, both dds birthday, bils birthdsy, mils birthday and Mother's Day. We always treat both my mum and mil on Mother's Day because they do so much that there's never much left for me! I don't mind though because I have the two most gorgeous, kind and thoughtful dds, I feel blessed most days .

Great news Fuzzpig! Nsd here-in fact none of us left the house except dh to go to the tip. And I finally sold something - some baby books. Only a fiver but its a start and I've got a target of £100 this year.

Aw thanks for all the congrats :)

We've been spending DH's last night of freedom ironing (him) and meal planning/shopping (me)! Dead romantic we are :o

Feels really good to have a proper meal plan (well, for half a week anyway - I'm going back to smaller twice-weekly shops instead of a bigger weekly one) as we've been sort of half-planning half-winging-it lately. But the next few days are sorted and it's nice that I won't have to conjure up ideas later.

I'm also hoping DH finds out his annual leave entitlement ASAP as before he got the job offer we were just about to organise a little holiday (will be the first we've taken for a few years) - and it's partly down to being generally more frugal that it's even an option. We still can't afford much, but it'll be nice to know we are spending a little on a fun and new experience rather than frittering it on... well, whatever it was I was frittering it on!

DH is also under strict instructions to scope out exactly what food storage/heating facilities there are at work so we can plan his lunches too :o

Great news, fuzz! Where are you thinking of going on holiday?

Today should be a NSD for me, am going to a farm with DD, will make sandwiches and bring my own coffee. Will resist cafe at all costs!

We were hoping Amsterdam (DD loves Van Gogh) but that might wait til next year, so we are considering Belfast for the Titanic stuff (another DD obsession - basically it's whatever they do at school :o) or we might do a night at Legoland or Chessington as the DCs and DSCs have never been. :)

Sounds lovely! I've never been to Amsterdam, would love to go

Fuzzpig, that is brilliant news! Hope the first day goes well for your dh.

Last day of half term for us today so am trying to get dd1 to do her homework. She has got masses to do - she's only 7 ffs! Seems madness to me.

Need to go out later to buy shampoo and conditioner but that should be it for the next few days.

If you go to Holland, you might try going by boat and train (overnight with a cabin). I did it for work rather than flying and it was fun sleeping in my own little cabin on a boat - if you like that kind of thing!

Also, DP told me that you can use Nectar points (double) for Chessington and other Merlin Group places. Although we still have the 2 for 1 Kellog's vouchers.

£10 petrol & £7 work supplies but no personal spends.

Got provisionally approved for the Co-Op bank account & the £100 that goes with it. I can't wait to get my compost tub and water butt.

£50 on petrol, still within budget.

Have had to book the car in to the garage on Wednesday, the back brakes are making a funny noise and I bashed my wing missor the other day that will cost well over £100 :(

Thanks Mama! Will look into it :)

I'm beginning my end of month summary early (I too need to think about writing off this month )!

Someone upthread did a good one at the end of last month so here goes with mine...

Good news: we will end the month with money in our joint account, money in our savings pot and our mini-hol paid for.

Bad news: despite this being the shortest month I have done lots of frivolous spending - big shop, alcohol, babysitter, meals out - frittering away what could be going into savings.

I read Elaine Collier's blog and am amazed at how little she and her family have spent in the month of february (it's a tiny amount, like less than £50). We need to get a few leaks in the roof investigated and I'm trying to set aside money for this, think we've probably spent around £150 this month on complete non-essentials.

My aim for March - highlight any wasteful spending in my little notebook in a different colour so I can get a true sense of money that could be saved.

3frugalthings: have returned to 'no boiling the kettle in the morning' (just couldn't face no cuppa during the terrible weather!); have stretched out some hummous for lunch tomorrow by adding some chopped up dried apricots, pittas from freezer, sorted; mil sent us home with a pack of fancy bacon among other bits following our visit at the weekend - have squirreled away in the freezer ready for mini-hol and aim to get a few bits and pieces each week as part of food budget.

Sorry for epic post, have been feeling a bit crap about the overspends, this is like confessional!

Delurking (again!)

Have had a very expensive month....oops. I stayed off work with the kids so the cminder charges me half fees, saving £120 which I'm pretty sure I spent on indulging ds and dd

Also spent waaaaaay too much money on footwear, in my defense the shoes and short boots and long boots should last about 3 years, but ouch, I got carried away there.

Booked ds party today, hall plus dj and dancers, he was desperate and the comes in at a similar price than soft play...so I'll be looking to keep price down on food (that no one eats?!) and party bags (thinking of making party cones myself rather than buy?). Plus as he doesn't actually play with any of his toys I'll save money as he's not getting many more....

Spendy weekend as friends came unexpectedly and wanted us to show them around, we ended up eating lunch and dinner out. I need to get better at explaining we don't have the cash.

It means there's about £100 less to pay off the debts this month but at the same time I don't want to put money above relationships.

DH got an insurance refund but has used it to book travel home to see his sister who has just had a very premature baby, again family are of course much more important than stupid money!

Just need to get the motivation to list last batch of stuff on eBay now, sooo not feeling it this week.

Nsd

NSD today. It's been lovely weather here and we had a great day with a friend and her DS out for a walk and then at the park.

Tomorrow I'm going to get DS's feet measured but fingers crossed they won't have grown!

3 quid on pastries but given lunch so think we're even.

Big spend just now was 216 for 4 nights holiday in a two bed apartment self catering at Butlins - the frugal Center Parcs!

NSD

£2.50 in Tesco, £13.65 in Lidl and £2.10 in the post office, so £18.25 altogether.

Not impressed to find out payroll have messed up, so now I won't get the money I earned for supply teaching in January and earlier this month until the end of March.