An Avalanche of Austerity for April - Mumsnet frugaleers continue!

[MissAnnersleyismyhero]

Thought I'd start a new thread for April

I have serious shoe envy

Those are lovely shoes. I wish I still wore heels. Pre dc I wore them every day but now it's just flats. On the very rare occasions I do go out in heels I feel like I've forgotten how to walk in them .

£40.80 Tesco delivery yesterday, then approx £15 in Aldi and Sainsbury's today and Tesco delivering again on Monday approx £50. I have a delivery pass so delivery is 'free' and if you spend £20 this week you get £5 off your next shop. Anyway that's this week done and non perishables for the next 3 weeks. It does seem a little low but last months was quite high.

Lovely shoes fluffy

4.19 in Wilkinsons. Picnmix is half price in there at the moment. 2.21 in Aldi on milk and midget gems. I have a sweet tooth

Tomorrow is a trip to a local farm attraction but I have just made a picnic to keep costs down.

Hello all! It's insideleg here! New profile due to password complications! Hope you are all having nice weekend, only 3 pound spend on calpol so not too bad!

What fab shoes!! I still wear heels but only for work mostly. V rare do I do heels for leisure as leisure tends to include kids...!

Spent £60 at Wilkos on things like clothes horse, soap, anti-cat poo in my garden (hate neighbors' cats - how can they have 5?!!)... Should charge it to them... £16 at mcdonalds.

What I hate about this country is that to eat out cheap it almost always means a mcdonalds. Which I hate (not being virtuous, I just don't particularly like them or the clientele..!). I'm sure in many countries, one can eat cheap but not have to resort to cheap burgers. Eating at eat et al aren't cheap!

And when someone does eat cheap at a restaurant it almost always is a coupon, discount somehow etc.

Ok rant over.

Also hate hate hate McDonald's luckily because we don't eat out regularly we can avoid it plus lots of places do early birds two courses €15, meal deal in mcdonalds €8/€9

Hey gogo.

I spent over £100 on ordering presents for DS for his birthday and also a new scooter. I should be getting about £75 of it back though. My parents are overseas so they asked me to get his presents and my brother is also gallivanting about Europe for work, so asked the same. Plus DP needs to pay me his half of our presents.

Fluffy first direct are also doing £100 cash back what made you go with the co op? I can see first direct pays no interest how much would I lose because of that? (We pay in about £1700 a month for bills) sorry if you don't know the answers I'm just so confused

Do you get interest on your balance now? If you do it's probably 1-4% which isn't a fortune, especially as the money doesn't stay in long enough to accrue much interest.

There's nothing to stop you swapping to fd & then back to halifax. They impose a minimum term usually ie if you leave in the first 3 months you don't get the bonus. Fd used to pay you extra if you left because you didn't like them in the first year.

The only reason I haven't switched to them is that we don't pay in the minimum amount needed every month to our joint account.

Thank you

As someone said earlier on this thread, I too am slinking back with my tail between my legs as I have also had an 'oh fuck it' month.

So, things to do today.

1. Check internet banking for balance!
2. Do spreadsheet for last month, and new spreadsheet.
3. Stop spending money on credit card.
4. Do a new budget

(I'm Claret from the last few threads by the way, but I have had a problem logging in after the password reset. When I went 'log in with facebook', it brought me this username which I had forgotten about).

I like that phrase, 'oh fuck it month'. Every month has been one of these until recently! DS has been diagnosed with a speech disorder and we are saving to get him speech therapy. Just one 40 min session a week costs 300 per mon! Phew. Our monthly food bill has dropped in half so we're getting there... Hope you are all making progress!

Gogo sorry to hear about your DS and do hope that the speech therapy helps. You have done really well to get your monthly food bill halved, that's great - how did you do this? I have managed to get ours down by meal planning, not doing top-ups and using the freezer more, but am nowhere near halving it. What is the secret?

1 & 2 done so far. £156 left to last today and tomorrow, and it's pay day on Tuesday. This sounds like loads but there's about £30 of groceries to come out, and I have spent like mad on the credit card this month so we'd have been massively overspent if I'd have put it on the debit card.

3 - will start leaving my CC at home.

4 - still to do a new budget yet.

Gogo that's so expensive! Hope it works well for him.

I honestly can't see us ever getting our food shop down. Dp and I already eat less than we used to because the children are eating more.

Here here to 'oh fuck it month'! It happens to us all! I haven't been spending too much but have fallen off the wagon of tracking spends again; it's such a useful exercise, really need to get back into the habit.

Well done gogo for such commitment to your dc. What a horrendously expensive amount for something so essential.

We've had a return visit from the roofing people. It was a paid for secondary evaluation, I really wasn't happy with the level of detail, the only extra the guy seemed to do from the first chap was to go up a ladder outside for 10minutes and then stick his head up through the loft hatch. Apparently the roof is sound externally but needs re-felting (which he can see from inside) his rough estimate was a week long job with two lots of scaffolding . I've sent an email to the company asking for a return visit with someone actually going up into the loft and providing photographic evidence. I absolutely will be happy to pay anything if I can guarantee it will solve our long- term but not very serious leak but I now feel dubious about this company's quote. Shame as they were recommended by a friend. I'm tempted to get up in the loft and do a bit of patching but wouldn't know where to start!

gogo it is a lot of money for private speech therapy but totally worth it. We paid for DS to have a private speech therapist for delayed and disordered speech. It made a HUGE difference to his speech. Money well spent. . Also, as his speech improves you can increase the time between appt., so every fortnight. Just make sure to do the homework.

springbright how much did they quote?

We are starting our kitchen works tomorrow so today and yesterday have been frantically clearing the dining room and kitchen. I'm going to start lots of cooking so that we can just heat up in microwave - I think it's doable. Let's hope so anyway!!! Any tips welcome!

I've opened a fd account do I have to phone them to ask then to switch all my dds etc?

I've made a carrot cake had most of the ingredients already in so pretty frugal

What did the website say? Halifax wasn't very clear on their website.

I got this number off saynoto0870.com so it won't cost you to find out.

0800 242424.

Thanks will call them now

I did it