Let's make merrily with August austerity!

[CremeEggThief]

Hello All,
I've taken the liberty (again!) of starting our new thread for August. The merrily sort of ties in with Christmas and keeping an eye on any bargains out there, if you're super organised and like planning ahead.

Today's spends were £5.10 on travel, £1.20 on 2 bottles of water, £4.20 on 2 hot chocolates and £17.25 on a meal out (long story!).

Makingchanges, Adora, CremeEgg, Audit, needastrongone and 574 thank you all very much I am just relieved it is all over!

MissA good luck for today

Hoping for a LSD today, I really must stay in and get on with some housework.

Ohhelp hope you have a lovely holiday I hate packing too, and for some reason I have to have everything up to date in the house before I leave so I am so exhausted by the time we arrive I can hardly see straight.

Ohhelp, it's Yarm, so might be a bit too far north for you! Have a great holiday. X

So not going to be frugal today; have an appointment to have my hair and nails done as we are going to France on Monday for a fortnight (but staying with in laws so kind of frugal). I haven't even contemplated packing yet! Well done to your dd fantasea and good luck MissA

Took DD to cinema this morning using Tesco cinema vouchers. I reckon that saved me £11 just on tickets. Went to see The House of Magic which was ok, but nothing special. Cost me £6.20 for sweets and a drink although we shared.

Even managed to come home for lunch and have remaining burger from tea yesterday when would normally go to McDonalds, so I am getting better. Normally a cinema trip would be £30-40 today was just £6.20 (or £11.20 including the cost of the Tesco voucher last week)

Hope your ok MissA

Fanta so glad dd got the results she was after. Will she go to uni?

£72 tesco delivery.

£15 work stuff

£24 aldi
£15 Morrisons. Will get £3 back from that because the cats food was "try me free" & £1.80 off checkout smart (which is crap at the moment).

99p card.

Changed electric suppliers too, new DD should be £38ish a month.

Couldn't get cashback on it though and I tried really hard.

Spent £27 yesterday as took dd out to the cinema and out for tea.

Im going to a friends tonight, for cocktails god knows how much ill spend when I pop into tesco on the way to get alcohol supplies.looking forward to a good night though :)

thelongdarkteatime and Spotty thank you both very much DD is having a gap year while she thinks about the next stage

£53 in Tesco but got a lot of bits on offer and that should last me well into next week

Hi all
I'm back from France! Spent too much. Will have a think and post later.

Good luck missA. Let us know how it all went. And well done miniFanta! I work in a university and used to do clearing and entrance related stuff so if you want to talk through options I'll be happy to help if I can. Fwiw, taking a gap year is always good. I would say a vast majority of students do not know what they want to do. A lot of them are either guided by parents, or ideals - sometimes not achievable due to wrong a levels chosen (there was a recent article on this). The gap year will give her some food for thought as to what she wants to do.

An ex student of mine did a gap year, came to uni and ended up doing a phd (because I spotted her when she was in my first year class and then again in my final year class). She has done v well but she has no doubt that if she didn't do the gap year she wouldn't have been so clear that she really wanted to go to uni. She most probably would have just done the usual faffing around, wasting time, not turning up to classes etc. she did more than her fair share of clubbing and drinking etc, but she was v sensible as well as she knew more what she wanted to get out of her life.

Good luck!! (Sorry that turned out to be a longer essay than I wanted!!)

I hope you have a lovely holiday ohhelp. I like Russell brand, have you seen his youtube channel? Very funny.

MissA is probably in recovery now having lovely pain meds.

ohhelp hope you all have a great time

NK thank you very much, that is very kind and helpful of you

I am hoping too that MissA is recovering well.

£12.95 on an Indian takeaway, including delivery. And worth every penny! I think it was the first time I haven't cooked some sort of dinner since before the summer holidays (although I have had a few lunches and coffees out).

£76 on school shoes. Phew. ..kids are set now!

Had lunch in giraffe cafe as had to stay out. ..one kids meal was free.

Spent a fortune in boots on clinique but got 2 fab bonustimes. Plus a tenner on sanctuary body butter and got a great travel set worth £10.50....anyway, spendy but it'll all last ages.

£129 tesco delivery sorted for our hols. Includes 2 boxes of beer, bottle of baileys and other indulgent treats but will save us a fortune! Emptied fridge out all bar some ham and fruit that I'll cobble together for a packed lunch as we'll be on the ferry at lunch time and it would cost a fortune!

Yesterday £4.80 for lunch (but that included a pack of butter which is now in the fridge, plus £7.99 in the pub for 3 drinks. One of the other mums offered to pay, but since I was the only one actually drinking, that didn't seem very fair. Most of the mums at dancing are great, we try to help each other out with the picking up/dropping off/running around. That is vital during show times. Still waiting to see if DS will be in a West End show for a 7week run! I am having to pre-sign the licence as I won't be here when they are actually issued.

OhHelp I find it harder packing the car to go away than suitcases. I want to take things to cover EVERY possible eventuality, whereas with flying, I know I can't do that!

I don't normally have a problem with the weight of the cases, I guess it is practice. I use really large Holdalls, with wheels, that don't use up much of the allowance. The challenge this time, is that I always overpack, normally taking 3 large holdalls between 5 of us, so I am aiming only to take 2 bags between 5 of us.

We normally get a taxi from the airport, to where we stay, which costs about €40, this time we are hoping to get the train from the airport, then a taxi from the local train station, which should be about €15-20 instead. This is the main reason for trying to take only 2 big bags. Then we'll have 2 carry ons plus the buggy. DS is good at pushing the buggy, DD will try hard, the one who isn't pushing the buggy will rake a carry on, leaving DH and I a case each plus one carry on to manage.

Well, DD2 has dropped off, and I have a whole heap of ironing for my holiday (running out of time emoticon) so I'd better crack on.

Now I'm cross. Just found out I'm entitled to a £5.10 refund from TFL but I only have until 24/8 to collect it, and I won't be using the train by then!

Audit how exciting for you that your DS could be in a West End show if I remember correctly, was it Joseph? DD had a friend when she was in year 7 who was in Joseph, we went to see it but I think she wasn't performing on the night that we went which was a shame. Fingers crossed for you

Hoping for a NSD today

£46 petrol filled up the tank so should last two weeks, use my 8p off a litre from tesco so was only 119.9!

£4 something in john lewis cafe but got my coffee and cake free, dc had gingerbread ladies and a drink.

Fanta yes they were in Joseph a couple of weeks ago, and they are in that again the first week in September, but the show going to the West End is Evita, DS was in that the week before Joseph started.

DH's car is in the garage as it developed a leak. The loan car won't start, so DH has taken mine. I will be rushing to the pet shop later to get dog biscuit to cover our holiday and take DD2 to her swimming lesson.

Meanwhile, I have the best son in the world . I am madly ironing and needed a couple of bits from the supermarket. He walked to the local Tesco, but they didn't have any lettuce which I wanted for tea, so he offered to walk in the opposite direction to go to Sainsbury's. What a darling (plus he is excited about holiday and he knows I'm doing prep for that)

Spendy couple of days, went to Liverpool 1 for the day yesterday; the older 2 pottered off to do whatever teenage boys do and dd & dsd2 played in the artificial beach that is there for the summer. £60 lunch out as a treat for them all (not something that they normally do when they're with their mum) & £12 for parking. Then £35 in Asda, only went in for some nail varnish for dd, but bought loads of reduced meat and fish so hopefully will reduce next month's shopping bill as it's a 5-week one.............

Audit I love Evita too! Do you get to see him in all the shows? That must be so lovely. Also, your DS sounds fab

Hi all thanks so much for all the well-wishes. I had surgery yesterday and am feeling rough as a badgers arse today! They found a lot of pus in my tummy which was causing the pain but slightly worryingly didn't find any cause for it. The big chief surgeon says he thinks it won't come back and I am on loads of antibiotics so fingers crossed that I'm well on the road to recovery now.
Just going to catch up on the thread! One thing - I've been in hospital since Thursday and will be until Monday at the earliest so that's 4 NSDs in the bag!