An Avalanche of Austerity for April - Mumsnet frugaleers continue!

[MissAnnersleyismyhero]

Thought I'd start a new thread for April

italian Ewan is brilliant!!! Ours was a gift from a friend who'd done a bit of research on good baby buys. In the early days it helped when I put dd back into crib after feeds - it helped her and me back to sleep! We also found it really useful at about 18months when she got more active in her cot as she would happily listen to the music and could switch between sounds herself. I found the batteries ran low quite quickly when in high usage and one of the music choices has now broken from dd's enthusiastic button presses!

NSD again, thank goodness, roll on payday.

Frugal things: added extra tin of butter beans to left over casserole to make it stretch to another dinner and lunch tomorrow.

Nsd

Thanks springbright, he is hereby ordered, so hopefully he will be loved by the little minion :)

So NSD became a spend day, Ewan cost 29,95 euros...

silk and queenie DS is okay. He was a bit subdued but I think that was because we've had a very busy few days and he has not slept well so it's all catching up on him. Last night, I roused him when I went to bed and he was all irritable so I figured he was okay. His lump has gone down too.

I spent just less than a tenner at Tesco's buying bread, salad, milk etc for parents who are coming back tomorrow from their long trip abroad.

How much is the creamed coconut from Asda or Lidl? At Tesco, it was about 80-odd pence. I really like the idea of buying in creamed coconut instead of coconut milk. I wonder if they do half fat coconut cream?

italian - leading you astray with spending! Will hopefully be the best £20 you ever spend though !

glad DS is better, CoolCadbury. Yes, there are times when one needs to have a grumpy child

I am trying out a frugal Jamie Oliver tip - pickling old vegetables. I have stuck a chopped up green pepper (that no one likes!), half an onion and a carrot in the vinegar and spices of a gherkin jar. Jamie reckons if I leave it for 8-10 weeks I'll have a cracking veggie pickle. I'm reserving judgement so far, but consider it worth a go and it looks quite pretty in the fridge

Ooh, I like that idea, silk. I sometimes end up with ropey looking veg. Today, I tried his chicken korma. It was fantastic, especially as I had all the ingredients in.

Thanks for the suggestions re my electricity bill. I called bg today and it would seem that my readings have just been estimates for ages so the big hike is under estimations accumulating. I think I understand! Anyway I will do a monthly reading from now on and they're going to send me an appliance gauge (not correct but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called).

55p on mirror. fluffy I was up in arms when I realised it was 45. I used mine today but got a bottle of wine for my ex, which he gave me the money for, so not too bad. Spent 42.78 but ex gave me 6. If Aldi wasn't in spitting distance of me I'd be considering changing allegiance to aldi.

Frugal snacks - sorry I can't remember who was asking. My DS is 22 months and he loves oatcakes and rice cakes. Otherwise known as biscuit and cake. One day he'll realise he's been swizzed all this time.

Trip to Sainsbury's was partially successful. I got cheese but they didn't have any skimmed milk so I got cake instead , it was for the baby!

I always find my wraps get broken in the freezer. I usually make my own now. They only take a few minutes and cost pennies. They're never round but do the job.

Dc snacks. Banana and raisin flapjacks made with tiny amount of sugar. Cheese and pepper flapjacks. Hard boiled egg. Cucumber, carrot sticks and a couple of olives. Ricecakes. Dried figs, dates apricots. Butterbeans. I used to make lots of things for dc1 but with dc2 I tend to just spread a meal out so say lunch was going to be cheese salad sandwich, yogurt and fruit then snack would be cheese, cucumber, breadsticks and tomato and lunch would just be yogurt and fruit.

Will catch up later, DD1 has classmates here and the preteen boy didn't want food

Today I spent £8 on bread, scourers, chocolate for preteens - remains unopened - and biscuits for school next week. £1.20 going into town, twice that coming back as traffic was tailed back about 5/6 KM that I could see following what looked like a sever crash.

DD1 may need new school skirts, today's looks more like belt, I'll see if there is enough leeway in moving buttons so it sits on her hips.

Other than that I just need to say, they're growing! I dropped a few lettuce and pepper seeds in an ice-cream tub with a bit of mud from the garden and I have lot's of lovely green shoots don't know which is which coz I put them all in 1 tub, but they are growing.

I've frozen wraps, always works for me. That reminds me I have to make some corn wraps tomorrow so that DH can have his "choripan" at the weekend. We're having a few friends over for a BBQ and the obligatory item here is chorizo in a crusty bread roll with pevre

Another easy chicken recipe, made this tonight after a long absence from the menu.

Spanish baked (or possibly baked Spanish) risotto from BBC Good Food, or as close as I remember to the actual recipe

Roast chopped onion, garlic & toms, about 200C for 10 mins, in oil, add chopped chorizo, brown chicken thighs/drumsticks and add to mix, after about 20 mins add rice (I used long grain tonight) chicken stock, prawns ( I never do) and I slung in some paprika for an extra little kick. Cook further 20 mins. Serve as is or with salad/ veg.

Takes about 40 mins cooking time in all. Tonight I used two legs and two wings, 3/4 cup of rice and 2 cups water, fed four of us plus lunch for school tomorrow. DH would have liked another chicken leg but it wasn't available.

Not the quickest but very tasty. I suspect it may actually state red pepper on the recipe but I've never added them and have lost the piece of paper.

Glad that your DS is okay Cadbury

I've got a wrap recipe that works out at 17p raw ingredients for 8 plus a bit of salt and water.

My ocado order arrives tonight £31, I need aldi cat food though because waitroses is lower in protein and he'd be hungry all day if I fed him that.

Hi everyone!

Never did get time to sign up for this thread earlier in the month. DH has been job hunting all month but finally has a contract. Not the permanent job we were hoping for but it's a good start.

Just got to eek out May's money for 7 weeks until we get paid again.

I managed to save £1000 this month so that will help

I believe yesterday was my first NSD for this month!! Mad. Today will have to pay for music for dd and gym for ds. Argh. Run out of milk too (I blame the fact that I've had to have cereal these days due to kitchen refurb and the fact that I have builders in situ). I've even run out of the uht milk! So will drop in at a supermarket to pick some stuff up. And antihistimines.
Happy weekend everyone!

payday over here for me (not DH though!)

Paid off CC 3 in total, DH is closing it today. Now we only have 2 credit cards to worry about, and an old Overdraft of DHs. When DH gets paid we should be able to cut the overdraft in half at least.

Am owed £110 in expenses from work which will go off debt as soon as it hits my account (will be next Weds apparently).

Savings now £300, this is supposed to be for emergencies but also for things like birthday gifts for nephews etc, I am hoping to build it to £1000 for pure emergencies then start a separate birthday/xmas fund once I'm not funnelling all my spare cash to debt!

NSD yesterday, meal plan is working well. Am determined not to top up, except for the meal-planned items like salad which we have physical cash set aside for.

Its okay springbright, DP came home with 50 euros in Tip :) and when seeing the reviews, if just half of it will work, then I will defn not regret it :)

ohhelp Well done on being officially debt-free. Woo-hoo! Fantastic news.

Thanks, Adora.

miss wouldn't you be better off paying your debts rather than have savings? But to be fair, I would probably do the same thing as well.

Well done ohhelp! Amazing news and shoes us all just how successful frugality can be!

Also well done miss! Right now if say emergency is such a safety net. It's looking like our roof is going to be mega bucks. It will wipe us out but not sure what we'd do without a savings pot, get into debt I suppose!

cool the savings are so I don't get into more debt if there's a small emergency, I'm following the Dave Ramsey plan which says to build an emergency fund of £1000 and then snowball every penny onto debt.

It's built around a philosophy of never getting into debt for any reason (excepting your mortgage) ever again. Once you're debt-free he recommends building an emergency fund of 3-6 months salary and then overpaying your mortgage.

ohhelp & miss well done. I bet you feel so much better now. It's a great day when you realise money will go into the bank & not fly out straightaway.

£30 ocado
£3 cat food
£1.80 soap and work stuff (laundry gloop day, just ran out of January's batch)
80p farm shop potatoes
£5 draught excluder.

Got to send an eBay parcel back grr. I asked a specific question and they still cocked it up. I will be leaving negative feedback.

£11.30 in tesco on not much...the pitfalls of trying to do a 10minute run in with a basket and toddler on foot! I had to leave a whole basket-full of things at the self service check-out as dd merrily plonked in 2-3 random items for everyone of mine. My main reason for going in was buying something to eat for lunch - the cupboards are bare! I've been super organised and made up 4 extra ham-rolls for Monday work lunches and frozen them. First time I've tried this - hope it works!

Really well done Ohhelp, as Fluffy said, it feels fantastic to know your money is yours when you get paid.

That sounds like a good plan MissAnnersley and well done on that CC.

I need to get food for the weekend, have physical cash so won't be over spending.

miss I've heard of Dave Ramsey before but just had a quick reminder by googling him. 7 baby steps. Yes, that makes sense.

Well done on getting rid of CC3.