Don't Panic, December is frugal this year.

[Fluffycloudland77]

NSD = no spend day
LSD = Low spend day

Good luck with your interview prep!

7/12
£3.99 socks for DH (from DS)
£5.35 bus
£23 breakfast
£7.99 DS thunderbird notebook for Xmas
25p buskers
£69.24 tesco (but forgot detergent aaaargh)

Thanks 574 I'm fairly calm about it but you never know!

Aldi turned into a slightly more expensive trip in that I also picked up Feta , tuna, bread and eggs which will take care of 2/3 more meals later in the week so spent around £5 so not too bad.

Other than that just hair to dye and I should be good to go. Trying desperately to me more frugal towards end of week. Only small spends for ingredients required.

Good luck sporting! Btw all of your ingredients sound yummy - what are you planning on making?

Snow-suits are ace collie and that sounds like a bargain. We just went for a puddle suit rather than padded this year for dd and now regretting as the temperature is dropping.

NSD today! Pleased to start off the week on a frugal note.

£46ish on tesco delivery. Usually shop with asda but they lured me in with the grand total of £18 in discounts

Back to asda next time lol.

Good luck sporting, I hope you get the job.

I had some cashback come through so i bought new pillows cost, £1.80 for 4. Argos wanted £17.99 so I'm pretty pleased with that.

£6 cat litter but dh can pay half that.

£3 bacon and breaded chicken in aldi. Dh used 5 rashers in one breakfast

£10 petrol.

Good luck sporting

We go through loads of bacon. I bought 3lbs from the farm shop on Friday. I then split into lots of freezable portions, some just a couple of rashers for cooking purposes, it's so thick and chunky and yummy, it's worth an extra trip. Much much cheaper than supermarkets.

NSD.

Chorizo risotto for tea, using up a leek and some mushrooms. Tomorrow is chicken broth, using more veg and leftover chicken from the Sunday dinner. Then sausage casserole (bulked up with beans), served with veg.

Cheap meal will be veggie slices, essentially tortilla with lots of veggies. Have also made carrot and coriander soup in the soup maker for lunches. Feeling virtuous

And just make banana loaf using two old, sad bananas!!

collie It's no better with a mortgage. £250 charge for an 'admin' fee for staying with the same provider but moving rates

Tomorrow involves a haircut and renewing my driving licence, so will not be a NSD sadly.

Second NSD - hurrah
going for another one tomorrow! staying in working from home..

Ooo collie any chance of the recipe for banana flapjacks please?! Sound yum and I have some old bananas that I don't want to throw out!

Paid for parking at work but will claim that back otherwise NSD. Panicking slightly about the fact that I am much less organised for Christmas than I usually am, still got quite a few people to buy for, need to write cards and haven't wrapped much yet either!!

Oh yeah
food shop £53.00 on budget - got Mr M voucher 6. yey!
gas £10.00
electric £10.00
all budgeted for mind
£10.00 Christmas presents bits again budgeted...

collie will have a bash at those myself, they sound yummy.

I have discovered a great website for recipes, which is Australian. I can't link on this Chromebook, but will do tomorrow.

recipeyum.com.au

If that works. You need to browse a bit, but some great ideas.

LSD with £3.60 for hospital parking. Hoping for another LSD tomorrow.

My second NSD in a row and third since Thursday. And, get me for frugality, we had nothing sweet in at all, so I baked some cookies from scratch! I am not a baker by any means. However, they were so tasty that DS and I gobbĺed up all eleven of them this evening.

good luck sporting - I saw a TED talk where a scientist had done a study which proved that going into the bathroom/lift (somewhere private) right before and interview and doing a powerful pose (think usain bolt) for 2 mins changed the levels of testosterone and cortisol in your body and made you waaaay more successful in interviews and other stressful situations. Maybe worth a try?

Not an NSD today - old friend came to see me, we had lunch and coffee out and bought a pint of milk. Also paid a cleaner £20 to do all floors etc as I can't.

£10 on lunch, £5 on snacks - in work at 7.30 a.m. and not home till 8 this evening. Hoping for NSD tomorrow as I have a training day with food laid on.

Good luck, sporting.

Hi everyone, can I join? I resigned from my job to be home full time with dd18 who has Down's and Autism. I've working fulltime since I was 18, and now aged 49 I'm heading into a new season of life!

Dh is fully supportive, but we will definitely need to cut our cloth.

I leave work on Jan 30th, and I'm really looking forward to it, but we'll definitely miss my salary. Time for some seriously frugal habits, so I'm hoping to learn some good stuff from this thread :)

Good luck sporting!

A very spendy day....I guess this is me catching up on Christmas shopping. Was in London for a work meeting so train fare to claim back. Then stopped by Westfield and man, spent quite a lot..
£35 Chinese shop (amazing, got stuff I've been wanting to get for ages and couldn't because my nearby Asian supermarket decided to go Thai instead...)
£8 ramen noodles for dinner
£4 tiger - chess set for ds
£11 Lego for ds
£46 uniqlo for heat tech clothing for everyone..
£16 boots for electric toothbrush for ds, and some vits for me. A friend has recommended I take some vit d and cod liver oil. To up my energy levels. I think it's the end of term, plus dark dreary weather that's really getting to me. Plus hectic non stop life. I was just thinking back to my life last year, and it was less hectic because ds didn't do tennis and dd didn't do ballet. I think we need to stop some activities.

How do you get your children to agree to stop? I feel guilty! But this cannot go on (mummy's stress levels are sky high...!)

Thanks guys, I'm more or less all set and hopefully fairly confident.

It will be an LSD as I will be 2.5 hours in interview as they are doing a 1.5 hour test part of the interview, to make sure I'm not lying on my CV I guess!

encyclo it can come as a shock but you will be able to find savings where you didn't think possible, we had to do this and at short notice. But your family is more important than any job and it is possible to not only manage on less but to be quite happy.

Starting to feel quite Christmassy this week as tree is now up. DS watched his PNP message from Father Christmas and was quite relieved to find out he was on the good list, he was even talking to the computer as he's sure Father Christmas can hear!

missA that technique sounds quite useful, I think I might try it. I could do with being the Usain Bolt of design today!

Been more Spendy than anticipated, gues that's what happens when you don't budget properly. I just never seem to get the hang of it. Enforced nsd's until Dh gets paid on Friday.

Paying the car tax and last months salary being wrong didn't help though.

Welcome to encyclo

sporting the results of the experiment were really impressive, it does seem to work (I'll be doing it next time I'm tapped on the shoulder to see the boss)