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!).

A new chest freezer shouldn't use that much electric. The trick is to run them on low & not leave them open while you choose what you want.

Decide what you want to get out before you open it. Dh leaves the freezer open while he puts peas in the pan etc. drives me mad.

Can I rejoin please? I've been absent while we've been buying a house (busy on the Property & DIY threads) but now our dear first ever house has become a Money Pit, and we're very close to running out of money before we even move it . We are having to spend over £15,000 just to put right asbestos (ripping it all out and repairing the house) and I'm so so sad because I'd saved money to spend on decorating the house and buying some furniture (secondhand) and doing it up, and now it's all gone.

We were lucky that the house is worth more than we paid for it (even with the extra we've spent) but it was all we could afford so I guess we'll have to consider it as an asset that we can't spend for the future?

BadVoc123 is this sounding like you too?

Sorry, been MIA for a few days. There's been nsds as I've been at work. Although we paid £40 for 2 days of sports camp. I did a sainsburys shop (v small one) and used the nectar points. Ended up paying 19p for washing up liquid and bread.

Today going to work for a couple of hours but I'm relishing the last lie in for a while. Today, even though I woke at 7 (already an hour 'late') I lazed in bed and waited for kids to start shouting! It was nice. Am now finishing up breakfast and kids are in front of TV (bad mother?). Will tidy up and get dressed, maybe cook some lunch, then go to work for a few hours to finish up stuff. Hopefully can spend most of the afternoon with them. Tomorrow am at work delivering a leadership workshop 45 min away.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Oh... Forgot to say, the cc bill arrived and I looked at it. It really wasn't bad at all because there was v little spend on things that weren't anticipated (if that makes sense). Petrol costs, train fares and the trip to ikea but all costed for as part of our holiday money. Im happy. The other cc bill on the other hand... Had better land me more JL vouchers!!

ended the two with bids - feel really bad as eBay flashed up a cross message saying I might have to pay an end item fee to discourage me from disappointing buyers in future

Oh mystic :(
Yes that sounds very familiar!
We are off to the DIY shop later today for new shower and taps :(
I am very down about it.
We are like you...it's supposed to be our "forever home" and is worth a lot more now than we paid for it but....sigh. It's left us in a mess financially.

MissA I am not very good at the ebay rules but I think it is only a buyer who an leave you feedback, so if you have just ended the sale and effectively withdrawn the books then you haven't made a sale and so no-one can leave any feedback. I hope I am right, you have done the right thing as they sound very valuable.

I have to do a big food shop today so I am making my list and trying to use up some of the stuff we already have in the freezer. I still haven't defrosted it!

Hi mystic, badvoc, we kinda bought one of those houses. It's structurally very sound and I guess having an architect for a husband helps... But it was very outdated and I don't mean it in a 'I don't like the flowery wallpaper' because we still have them 3 years on!!!!

So we bought it at a good price so to speak but then spent £7k putting the heating right, which included replacing all the GCH, boiler etc. that left us really with not much so we had to hang tight. We also redid the toilet but sourcing a toilet from Germany - it was cheaper, even with the transport costs!!

Got the tiles (we had carpets!!!!) and dh and FIL did the tiling.

Oh we stripped wallpaper in the hallway and repainted too but that took ages to complete as we both work ft.

We then ended up taking a £10k loan to do the kitchen and we are v happy with it but still there's a tonne of stuff more to do. Including all the carpets/flooring - all threadbare and probably 50 years old (really) - the woman who sold the house to us was 90 and she moved in when she was 40. We want to re do the bathroom (we went to ikea on the weekend to get new shower curtains and rail coz they were hers and I couldn't find new shower curtains that had those sort of hooks!!)... And of course the redecorating.

Plus the garden.. Ah it's never ending!!

mystic and badvoc I am so sorry to hear about your dream homes turning out like this. We have some friends who this happened to and it is heart-breaking.

We have been here 2.5 years and have has to spend (and I mean had to) £15k.
:(
What can you do?
You need, heat, hot water and roof! )

Hello all
So sorry to here about everyone having house troubles. We were very lucky when we got our house last year. The house is a "new" build (11years old),so didn't really need anything doing to it. And we managed to get it cheaper than what it was advertised for as the lady we bought it from just wanted a quick sell.
Yesterday spent £2.40 at work
Today spent £2.03 at work, £55.51 on weeks shopping, and £33.45 on nappies, and baby food/milk.

£66.97 tesco delivery

£55 at aldi - got a few bits for ds2s b day party next month too.
£70 at b and q :(
Just need a few bits from asda - prob £10
Need some hinges from ikea to finish off the damn cupboards too. Grr. It's only £12 but still....
Ds2 has discovered Star Wars lego.
I could weep at the prices! :(

frugal win today: two different lovely neighbours called over one with a huge bag of free plums off their tree and the other with a bag of blackberries from their garden. Have made a massive pot of compote to have all week with yoghurts for breakfast

Having the weirdest meals right now (dressed up as "tapas" etc haha) to use up odd ends. E.g. today - left over lentil bolognese, veggie sausages, salad, mash.

My sons school is opening it's field up on Monday for foraging.
But I don't make jam etc so not really worth it for me.

It's reassuring to know we're not the only ones - basically we decided to get rid of the asbestos in the artex (all ceilings and walls and in built in cupboards) and the big expense is putting it all right afterwards - plastering, refitting rads and lights and sockets, and insulation, etc. Then DP will paint the whole lot plain trade white and we'll have the genuine blank canvas! Except in the bathroom which has hideous floor to ceiling tiles that we'll have to live with. My brother, bless him, offered to pay for our radiators to be refitted as a literal house warming gift .

NSD for me and signed up to the freecycle, freegle sites to "buy" furniture!

You could do crumble or compote, then you don't need to faff around with jars and sterilising and fecking jam thermometers etc...

Or even just a basic vanilla sponge with blackberries or other fruit in the bottom of the tin - sooo delicious.

I just store stewed fruit or compote in plastic boxes in the fridge or freezer, it keeps really well. Lovely stirred into porridge, yoghurt or a dollop in cake mixture.

I love bolognese and salad I never bother with pasta just have that!

I've got my 'hen do' in a few weeks. Going to cuts a bit and will be the first time I've had more than one drink in over two years

That probably sounds like loads of food we're not greedy I swear but apart from the veggie sausages and salad there is only a v small amount of each thing left.

£3.60 travel and £2.60 on a chai latte in town.

I made meatballs and tomato sauce on Weds eve - will it be ok for DH to eat tonight? It's been in the fridge since in a tupperware box.

Yes I would. Wouldn't tomorrow but def would tonight.

£3 on costa tassimo pods in tesco.

I would eat it peonies.

Sorry for 'money pit' houses. We moved to a new build 3 years ago. A very small builder who allowed us so much autonomy with what we did inside and that I can only say good things about, it was like building our own but without the stress. It's very modern and trendy etc but I guess the trade off has been the lack of character features. It's our one big move though, to a kind of house we always dreamed of owning and I love it to distraction.

We have a huge garden though, which, ironically was one of the reasons for us making such a big move, but keeping on top of it really is pretty time consuming (there was inaccessible land, totally overgrown, that came with the plot, which the builder cleared for us, but nothing else, I don't think anybody realised how much land there was until it was cleared). DH had lots of macho visions of him chugging up and down on his motorised mower, the reality or mowing the lawn taking 90 minutes became clear after about 3 goes So I do understand how time consuming houses are, and, oddly, the garden costs us far more than we envisaged.

Plum Chutney is very easy to make too, I made a few jars last year as we have a couple of trees in the garden, well established and fruiting well. In addition to crumble etc.

Pretty low spend today, but just remembered DS's rugby subs are also due this month, and had an email to say that they didn't charge us for Explorers for the whole of last year, so can we pay? I am quite cross, as I raised this three times, when DS moved up from Scouts.

£48 on Aldi shop. And paid £198 for ds afterschool club. Till half term!!