Stampeding through a sensible, scrimping September!

[PeoniesforMissAnnersley]

Thought I'd do the honours

With kids back at school and autumn weather drawing in we all need a very sensible September. I'm putting up my thermal curtains and refusing to put on the heating until October. Who's in?

Thanks fluffy and spotty for the Tesco delivery reminder and code, that's me sorted for another 12 months. I've just been filling out my Orchard reports. I had £5 off fruit and veg which was great as I didn't have to think about the best way to spend it like i did with the home one, as I knew I'd spend far more than that so it just took £5 off the bill.

fur if EE suits you then do look at the offer on Quidco. If you've not used cashback sites before I appreciate this one does look a bit too good to be true but I'm sure some other people on here will tell you that cashack sites really are free money. You'll find them talked about on mse too.

Only spent 56p today - sweetie friday for dd

Feel like I have done quite well this week

Only a week till pay day

MissA that is rubbish, remember going through something similar when waiting for my gallbladder op, was on the emergency list for about 3 days in the end - only allowed sips of water in all that time

Really hope they sort you out soon

Thanks iamnotanugget sadly no tied in to very overpriced bt for 10 months.

Thank you iamnotanugget. I like your positive spin on it.

Just did shop to be delivered on Monday- only 76p over budget Thought I would tell you all because DH doesn't seem to share my enthusiasm very pleased. Lots of nice meals planned for next week.

NSD for me Thursday, Wednesday I spent £15 on groceries. Also gave DDs £10 each for going out today. DD1 blagged another tenner off Daddy and DD2's BF wouldn't let her pay for anything. So they are each ten pounds up.

Will try to read through tomorrow, got a business lunch that we are hosting.

Just out of curiosity, how many times do you think a girl/woman can say they want to split the bill before it turns into an ishoo if the bloke wants to pay? Sounds like DD2 tried 4 or 5 times today.

We can't get the cheap broadband where we love but we're paying £40+ with bt for phone and broadband then £70 with sky all in so I moved to southern electric. Line rental is £14(?) and broadband £11 but free for first six months. Really pleased with their service and if I call (on their free number) I always get straight through.

Mega spend today as it's my hen do

Eek! Have a great day today spotty!

Adora do you mean her boyfriend paid? Does it worry you?.

Fur spell it out to him that the free football is costing over £800 a year when you could get bb & ll for £60 a year by the sounds of it.

Last time I rang BT to cancel they offered me massive discounts so that might work for you too. The cost of me cancelling my current provider is still cheaper than staying with them.

Spotty have a fantastic evening. Is there a theme to the hen do?.

Tesco delivery pass I forgot to remind everyone you get 10% back off topcashback too.

My theme is no willies or veils or sashes etc etc. Off to get the train in a few hours

Good morning Ladies, I have been following this thread on and off since early 2013 and I would love to join.

While trying to camouflage our financial,situation in front of the DCs, I am going to have to be even more careful now with the funds that we have and strict money management is in order, in particular now in the run up to Christmas, as I don't want to entirely rely on my parents to help us out.

So step one will be to control the food bill. I reckon with a lot of discipline and clever shopping, I can manage on £50 per week for two Teens and myself? Is that realistic? Our Lidl is conveniently on the way back from DD's swimming lessons, so no detours necessary. On the other hand, I am not so sure, if Morrison's are not even cheaper than Lidl now. Has anyone done the sums here?

Fuel: Minimum spend is £50 per week and this is a fact.

Utilities: I am keeping a close eye on the utilities and I hope that direct debits will be adjusted soon. I am still paying too much due to my Ex having accrued a massive utility debt at my expense, having the Megaflow on all the time and hot water and heating on permanently. Now as he has "left" got evicted our electricity and gas is under £3 per day and we still have hot water. Any energy saving tips massively appreciated. We only have the hot water on first thing in the morning now and the boiler is on a low setting. Due to security, our outside light has to be on all night though.

Home baking is not am option, my range oven is 15 years old and costs a fortune to run. All baking and roasting has to be done in one go ideally only once a week.

TV/Internet: I have reduced our Virgin Media contract and received a netflix voucher for 7 months, so now we are paying £35, but DS does not have his favourite cooking programmes anymore and tennis. I have to look at this again, because these are his main interests and I appreciate that he would like to watch these channels.

eBay: I must put outgrown mini Boden etc on EBay immediately and massively declutter, as our house is soon going to go on the market and we will not be able to put all our stuff into a much smaller house anyway. To be fair, I don't mind having a smaller place, as I am fed up looking after this nightmare of a house to maintain and clean.

I hope you don't mind me joining this thread. Mumsnet has been my lifeline over the last two years.

karen welcome to the thread. I've read your thread in relationships and you are awesome .

Some energy tips:
Freezer - keep it full. I usually put crumpled up newspaper in there when it starts looking empty.
Heating - turning the thermostat down by 1 degree c can reduce costs (up to £60 a year)
Device chargers - turn the chargers off as soon as your phones etc have charged. Better still charge your phone at work.

For other savings see Fluffy's link up thread and don't forget moneysavingexpert.com.

Karen Welcome.

Tue 16-Sep-14 20:53:26 See my links on this post. Theres loads of good advice on those links.

You are signed up to Topcashback, quidco and Tesco orchard aren't you?.

If the kids are teenagers they are old enough to be sat down and explained to re helping mum keep the bills down etc.

I've put my weekly shop through mysupermarket.com in the past and aldi has always been massively cheaper. Lidl prices are broadly similar to Aldi. I would make a meal plan and try there.

Do you have a slow cooker? I bought the Asda one for £15 8 years ago at least and I cook all my meat in there, much cheaper than putting an oven on and so tender. I give a joint or a chicken 4 hours so at 2p an hour its 8p. An old style oven is probably 3kw, an hour and half in there would be 45p. Little savings made frequently add up.

The biggest drain on electric is anything that heats or cools. So ovens, hobs, freezers and hot water are massively expensive. My phone used to charge on 2p overnight. I think the talk about charging phones being expensive is government spin. Even putting my electric blanket on overnight was only pennies.

It is worth buying a cheap electric monitor that plugs in and one that fits onto the electric meter to monitor use. Eg I found my washing machine uses less on a rapid cycle than an eco but the reverse on the dishwasher. I wash our clothes on cold now because apparently other countries don't heat the water & I haven't noticed a difference.

Only heat rooms you use, so in the day I heat the lounge. Im not in the kitchen/bathroom long enough to be bothered about it being warm. At night I put the heating on in the bedroom half an hour before bed. I don't leave the heating on if im out.

If you can, draught proof the house. Fleece lining on curtains and door brush draught excluders make a real difference to the house. All our doors have the draught excluders from B&Q on so when I heat a room all the heat stays in and doesn't vanish upstairs.

Thank you Cool and Fluffy.

I have immediately turned the thermostat off for now. The boiler is on the lowest setting.

It is not worth spending on the house anymore, so we make do with what there is. It is a massive house and the central heating is going to costs £££ in the winter, so is it may be more cost efficient to our the fire on after school and use a couple of electric heaters to keep the rooms warn that we actually use, say, sitting room, dining room, study? The kitchen is usually ok anyway.

There is an electric towel rail in the family bathroom anyway, so the bathroom will be warm. I must not under any circumstances use the underfloor heating in the conservatory, so unless it's a sunny day, the conservatory won't be used.

The massive fridge/freezer looks expensive to run. I am almost thinking of plugging in the car fridge and using that instead? Or is that an overkill? There is no more fridge in the kitchen, so we have to go into the garage anyway every time we need milk.

As soon as it gets colder I should may be shut the doors to the rooms that we are not using at all and just air them out?

I was pleased when I have just realised that I am going to receive my Morrison's £5 shopping voucher today when we get fuel on the way back plus I have another £3 voucher, so we are £8 up on the weekly shop.

I do meal plan and I try and stick to it too, but I do get persuaded to buy treats, cakes etc which adds up. It is unfortunately cheaper to buy them rather than making them which is sad. I find popping into Morrison's in the evening is great, lots of reduced cakes, bread, croissants etc to stick into the deep freeze. May do that later rather than going now.

I need an additional £250 next month to buy the things we need and a further 150for a short trip during half term if I dare to go camping so I have high hopes for eBay and I will hopefully get a part time job, as my ex is currently making me redundant and my contract with him is not exclusive, so in theory nothing is stopping me from taking in a second job? I may have to get some advice on this.

15£ on a playmat bought of a friend, used to be 50£ from new and it looks really nice
8£ on lunch...

Welcome Karen

If it's a new boiler it should be cheaper to switch radiators off in rooms you don't use and heat what you use with gas.

On the energy saving trust website it says to run boilers on high, I tried it at the last house and it didn't work for me but you don't know until you give it a go. Our gas fire there was very expensive to run as well.

We had an ancient baxi boiler in the last house so I turned rads off using the turny thing on the side (technical term there) I had to use pliers to do it.

The oil filled rads we used at the old house cost us a fortune to run, I didn't save money but a lot of their rads were on internal walls so they didn't work as well as rads under a window so it was cosier using the oil filled ones.

On the inside of the fridges it should have a stick on panel that states wattage, then you'll know which one is best to run. As long as you don't mean running the fridge off the car all the time because your battery will go flat.

If you find any cheap "sausage dog" draught excluders or you can make them then put them under doors, it honestly makes a huge difference to the feel of a room.

If you know what time to hit the reduced counters then that's brilliant. My mil throws food away if it gets near date let alone past it. Milks a good one to freeze, I can imagine with teens you get through lots of milk.

Vegan brownies are very cheap to make if you want something homemade, they are just sugar, cocoa powder, flour and oil. Or you can add chopped nuts/glace cherries/choc chips to make it a bit posher.

Try a weekly shop at lidl, if you don't like anything keep the receipt and take it back. I've taken things back if I haven't liked them. You just go to the till with them.

Welcome Karen I also think you are awesome.

Fluffy yep, boyfriend paid, funded by his parents as he's only 13, but I don't want DDs getting used to depending on a BF/DP/DH as they grow up.

Karen welcome I know what you mean about being persuaded to buy treats like cakes and biscuits. I find cakes work out very expensive as you don't get many goes out of a box of cakes. What I tend to do now is to buy a couple of packets of cheap biscuits for the week, and when they are gone, they are gone.

I am hoping for a NSD today.

It's a old boiler Fluffy and a bit temperamental. Our gas bill used to be £130 and since we are on our own we are now down to £1.6 per day for gas which I am happy with long term, but we have to look at the winter. We have achieved a massive saving alone by turning the hot water on only when we need it. It irritates me a bit that the boiler keeps coming on during the day - can we not just turn it off and only have it on first thing in the morning? Or does it have to be on all the time?

Nothing going off in this house Fluffy

Thank you Adora I don't believe your DD's are now dating! DS goes to a boy's school, I am a bit worried that he is not meeting enough girls. He had a lovely girlfriend but they seem out of touch at the moment.

Thank you Italian

I am pleased with my weekly shop today that included my vouchers. We went to check out a new fancy Morrison's got chicken, pork chops, mince on the 3 for 10£ offer, enough vegetables, fruit, potatoes, cakes, bread etc and I have just completed my meal plan for 8 days to include 2x spaghetti Bolognese, roast chicken, 2x pork chops and several other pasta and Spaetzle dishes. Got other essentials and packed lunch items, so all we need for the next week or so is some fresh bread, but that should be £0.50 or so per baguette. We drive past the shops on the way back from school, so that's handy. I spent just under £30.

FantaSea my shopping included 2x packets of dough nuts, 2x packets of smarties cookies, 1 family pack of Mars bars, 5 large flapjacks that DS takes to school and one family pack of mints. This, in my opinion is plenty for one week? they may complain to CAFCASS

They complained last week that other children get "way more" treats than they do. My DCs have one cake/cookie/brownie whatever in their lunch box and have another treat at home every day, apparently they are hard done to. Apparently "everybody else" has at least twice as many treats. I pointed out that our French friends have almost zero treats.

Karen - I didn't read your thread but I am sure that you are in fact awesome Welcome anyway.

I have started buying value packs of bourbons, jaffa cakes etc. We were buying far too much sweet stuff and all branded. The DC (teens) haven't noticed. Buying nothing at all didn't really work, as they would get off the school bus and buy chocolate from the shop, using their own money. It's easier to control when they are little.

Thanks for the Tesco deal, which I have signed up for, I have tried to fill up a basket but I don't find the website all that easy? Does anyone else? There's no rush as I don't need any shopping but thought I would do a basket of 'staples'

With Morrison's, you could port over all your favourites from the other supermarkets, so setting up was done and dusted in minutes. The selection at Tesco is huge and I am a bit overwhelmed at the minute!!!

Popped to Home Bargains and another local bargain store and picked up extremely cheap toilet roll, shampoo, bacon, ham, crisps (sandwich stuff really). I won't need to shop for ages now. And cards, as there is 5 birthdays this week.

We are going out for tea but taking a client out, so that will go on expenses.

Hi Karen and welcome :)
A big difference for me in my weekly shop has been to do my. Aim shop at aldi where is spend £40-50 and that leave a me £50-60 to spend on top ups and on stuff I can't get from aldi.
It means I stay in my £100 per week budget (household of 4)
Boden sells really well on e bay.
Also playmobil and lego.

I would really recommend the aldi cleaning and laundry stuff.
It's as good as fairy/finish etc.
Aldi also very good for meds...painkillers. Flu stuff, indigestion stuff.

NSD.

The microwave started burning out by the door but I've kept the reciept & it's going back. It was only a smart price one for £30. I'll be taking photos and emailing morrisons ceo too. Could've burnt the house down.

Places like B&M bargains and home bargains are good for multipacks of chocolate bars. We have sp biscuits & no ones died.

I don't think I'd turn an old boiler off, if you don't get it going again then it's a call out. PigletJohn in the good housekeeping section would know, he's like a boiler/heating savant.