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!).

fluffy thanks anyway. Don't think the NT is "us" atm anyway. I've never enjoyed stately homes/gardens/castles etc (uncultured eh)

£40 on osteopath, back started twinging so I pulled my 3 month check up early. £15 tescos. ..included swashbuckler mag up thread for ds and a different one for dd. Hiding in holiday bag and will spirit out if it rains!

Otherwise nsd, gp are taking kids out to farm and they will be bled dry instead of me . Am wondering if kids will work their magic in the gift shop as I never give in!

Thanks pass I'd forgotten about summer dresses. We have Clarks shoes too owing to my dc having very wide feet.

£2.24 in Aldi as I needed nappies and got a half price voucher in my bounty pack. I usually use reusable nappies but they can't seem to cope overnight and I'm not about to wake my dc for a midnight change!

£1 on ice cream. That should be all.

fluffy did you say I can leave my energy supplier 7 weeks before the contract expires or was I imaging that?

49 days to be exact, ring them to be sure but sse knew about it when I said I was leaving early.

I read it on mse energy club so it must be true.

Spent day at Leeds castle. Free coz we had use of annual passes. Free lunch as brought own food. Spent £3.60 on ice cream, £20 at the shop. Argh. £13 at shop for food. Tonight's dh's birthday. We are having a nice home cooked meal by mum as we hardly have that as they live in my home country. So I miss a lot of the local food. Bought him something he wanted from Amazon. £70.

£3 on ear plugs.

£4.86 on some random lunch items from the corner shop - grapes, bagels and an apple - all hugely over-priced and not even needed. Despite starting afresh today it seems my mindless spending hasn't caught up!

fluffy I would usually never query a reduction in my favour! the amount was just so shocking that I had to check I'd heard correctly!

Fuzzpig,
We are going to Edinburgh (well, actually staying at a Premier Inn in Dumfermline) for 4 nights next week. Like you, we will be eating out the whole time. We have paid for breakfast each day at the Premier Inn as they are lovely but rely on cheap places to eat the rest of the time. We sometimes grab a sandwich from Asda or another supermarket and then something more substantial for the evening. We often go to a Morrison's or Asda cafe. Also, good family pubs (reasonably priced).

NSD today. Mainly spent sorting through junk and things for charity out of the garage.

Ordered some of school uniform from Asda...£90
Still have school logo jumpers, cardigans and book bag to get though. Also, shoes for DS10.
Took kids out for a river walk but called at Lidl for a box of Magnum's (£2), 2 donoughts (50p), a choc cookie (35p) and loo rolls (£1.55).
Oh, and went to Sports Direct for football socks for DS10 (£4 for 2 pairs)...also same out with shin guards (£3.49) and a nice pair of football boots reduced to £12.
Roll on September when I stop spending so much!!!

Spendy day here! £3.60 on travel and £6.90 on lunch. £2 on 20 foil containers (for batch cooking for my freezer, before I start back at work full-time) from Poundland. £16.48 on painting stuff and a plant at Homebase. And £103 on some much-needed new clothes for me! Oh and £3.50 on a nice bunch of flowers. So, £135.48 in total!

fluffy, know-er of all things frugal, could you please link the site that has a menu plan for feeding a family of 4 for £100 please? There's a couple of recipes on there we like but all my bookmarks got deleted and I can't find it searching. Many thanks.

The website shut, the domain names up for sale now.

Shame isn't it? Something must have gone wrong for them.

Frugal Queen did some meal plans to feed a family of 4 on much less, I think £40 - you could use her plans and add extra fruit/veg treats up to your budget?

Thanks MissA. The website I wanted was a few years old but was feeding a family of 4 for £100 for the month. I suspect even using their plan it'd be more like £125 now. Thankfully things are nowhere near that tight for us now, we normally spend around £65 a week, but in leaner times I've used some of the recipes and actually enjoyed them so I was still making them occasionally. Thank you for mentioning Frugal Queen though, I'll have a look for some inspiration.

Thank you Fluffy. It was a good site. I use some of the ideas on there just to cook cheaper. Maybe they realised the budget was now unrealistic? Back to Girl called Jack it is then......

A bit of a spendy morning for me today. Subway brekkie to get DD out of bed and to shops early. Her two day sleepover has worn her out and she looks shattered today. Anyway £5 at subway. £2 on 3 packs of loom bands and £40 on a few bits of shopping and the rest of DDs school uniform. Think she is done now. Got all PE kit from Sainsburys today, MIL got Trousers in sale at M&S and I got polo shirts from Morrisons. Got cardigans about a month before end of term as she regularly loses them. I think total spend for new uniform is about £60 so not done too bad this year, although nothing needs to be logoed.

Rest of day will be spend free as I am doing some lesson planning and DD is relaxing with her loom bands. I've tried to encourage her to have as nap but that's not happening so she'll just spend the rest of the day complaining instead. Swimming lessons later - need to try to avoid vending machine on way out.

Thanks for mentioning that frugal queen website MissA, I've copied a few of the recipes to try. We had a bit of a victory last night: after a long day dh wanted us to buy takeaway, but we talked it through and realised we had all the ingredients in the house for stuffed baked potatoes which would be ready before the takeaway could arrive and so we cooked! Saving us around £20.

In fact we've cooked for ten days in a row now (which is unheard of for us) and the food has actually been nicer! for this thread which is helping with the frugal life.

Yes thank you missa - another blog (alongside ohdeardrea) which I'm now finding myself hooked on I did check out frugal queen a while back and didn't really like it but after a good half hour's browse this lunch time I'm looking forward to reading more. Her recipes look lovely and I also try to make double dinner on Sunday so I don't have to cook on a Monday!

I'm hoping for NSD today. Just having a pottering/cleaning/packing for holiday day so no plans to leave the house until I visit a friend later. I already have some nice chocolates in the cupboard so I can take those for us to snack on.

Nsd.

Car still isn't fixed

We've had a shocker this month, spotty with our car it was £120 for MOT, now apparently it needs a £250 service for safety a month after MOT - how can this be true if it passed the MOT????

We paid £700 to get ours fixed about a month ago and then the central locking went. Looks like it's going to be that again. They've had it a week now! And I scraped the bumper in a car park

I have no idea why it would need a service for safety? I thought a service was just to keep in running smoothly?!

You're being scammed.

Check your service book, as long as you are up to date there's nothing to do.

NK do you mind if I ask what sort of food you had for DH's birthday? Pure nosiness as I love food.

Why are they saying you need the service, other than safety? And who took it in, you or DH? As Fluffy says if the services are up to date it needs nada, and "for safety" sounds like motor trade speak for " let's just tell the little woman it's safety, she'll go along with that" to me.

Cynical, moi? You bet.

Yesterday I spent about £90. Got a side each of salmon and trout which will do about 5 family meals and a couple of lunches for me. Chicken thighs too. Also sneaked in a bottle of the fab vino I had last week at the vineyard. That was about £3.15. Shampoo & conditioner on offer for DD1, lot's of other things but no biscuits or crisps this week.

There are definite spaces appearing in the cupboards which is good, I'm using things up, except it makes me a little on edge still.

Adora I always used to overbuy because I also got a bit panicky at the thought of not having enough food. It has taken a while to train myself out of it. The fridge is often more empty than full now and I've started (finally) to prefer it that way - seeing the advantages of knowing exactly what I've got and what I'm using it for. Work in progress though and we do still end up wasting some things, but it's much improved.

Speaking of food shopping I've decided to try shopping around a tiny bit. We've been only getting tesco delivery - convenience IS important because of not having a car! However as my health has improved I should be able to manage going to the market. I want to switch to doing store cupboard stuff (and meat, as there's no butcher around here) from tesco still, once a week, and getting fruit and veg from the market if it's cheaper.

Hi Adora
We had typical home cooked Chinese food - there you go... My identity has been busted! Not anything anyone here would be able to buy in a Chinese restaurant just because it's too 'home made' if that makes sense? There's this myth that Chinese takeaway or Chinese food is greasy/fat... But we really don't eat the kind of food that the takeaways make - does that make sense?

We had celery with mince pork and carrots; soy sauce chicken with potatoes, chicken curry.