Don't Panic, December is frugal this year.

[Fluffycloudland77]

NSD = no spend day
LSD = Low spend day

Quite a frugal couple of days here. 4.20 euro yesterday and 7 euro today. Tomorrow will be spendier, as we're travelling back to the UK.

cremeegg hope you've enjoyed your trip to Ireland.

I'm improving everyone thanks for concern.

I'm monitoring prices of dishwashers in sales at the moment, ours is a waste of space as often doesn't clean stuff as has been this way for over 12 months. Keeping an eye on Siemens as recommended here.

Today may be spendy
last night I bought 4 cloth nappies in a sale but one is a replacement for 1 someone purchased for me a few weeks ago €48, considering this is the same as 4/5 packs of disposable nappies I'm happy enough, need to replace Velcro on more of them & that's pretty much ds sorted until toilet training.

Should be nsd

Christmas Day, Boxing Day and yesterday were all NSDs. Boxing Day shouldn't have been as I should have had a couple of drinks with friends before the football but felt so lousy I stayed at home instead.
In Devon now until Tuesday. Dh will spend some money today at the pub before his football. I have £55 of fat face vouchers and could do with a hoodie/sweatshirt/jumper so may see what they have. Out for tea tonight but fil paying I think so won't be spendy.

Meeting friends we haven't seen for a while tomorrow but it's going to be dog walking and then one of them is making lunch at her house so tomorrow should be okay too.

Before we left last night, I made sure all leftover cooked meat was bagged up and frozen. Should be enough for at least 4 meals for the 4 of us. Think I've enough food in the freezer for at least 10 days of main meals. NYE we're going to a "jacob's join" family party at our cricket club. We need to take a savoury dish, a dessert and some nibbles and then it's all shared. The only cost will be drinks. NYD my dm has invited us over for lunch/dinner. So with some good planning I should be able to keep spends right down over the next few days.

Sorry for the long post but I find it helps my planning and to keep focused if I write it here! Will do my 2014 review later today. Love reading everyone's. Everyone has made so much progress, this is such a great thread

Hope no one minds if I have a little moan...

I really need a new job with a few more hours and more money (I reduced my hours at current job due to childcare issues). I can't apply for anything because dd's school offers zero wraparound care and there's no nursery attached. There are two child minders and both are full. What am I supposed to do?! She gets the bus there at 8:15 and home at 3:20. Dh does two mornings a week but even so that leaves me about 9:30-3:00 to be able to work/get ds to a nursery would have to collect him once dd is home so would be paying a fortune in petrol too. It's ridiculous. I'm destined to be poor forever (I know we have more than lots I'm just fed up there's no chance of doing any better for the next 12 years).

Poor you Spotty , I always found childcare around school,a nightmare and was glad when my youngest started secondary school. Are you able to get a job where you can work evenings or weekends to fit around your DH working and school. It's not ideal but you could look on it as a short fix.

Feeling very frugal after making two Turkey, ham and leek pies and butternut and chestnut soup with my leftovers. Later I will make a quiche Lorraine with the last of my ham. Hopefully off out for a bracing walk later.

spotty I can't believe the school don't operate any wraparound care in this day and age? There are tons of grants available for this kind of thing, or at least there was when I was a school governor. We applied for one, and also invested some of our capital budget. Offering excellent, flexible nursery care often leads to the children remaining at the school throughout their primary career, and the bottom line is, you get funding per child. That's a tough situation.

Spending will be small today. We have friends coming over and I think we might need to extra tins of lager, but I have made a big spag bol, and have salad and garlic bread etc.

I have also ordered a grocery shop for the 3rd Jan, but this is mainly to cover packed lunch type stuff, which we will have nothing of, after Christmas. Cereal bars, crisps etc. So I haven't ordered much, value wise.

Ordered dog food too, but I have budgeted for this anyway, I have one of my 'pots' for the dogs

northender I don't think you can be frugal without being organised tbh, or at least it's harder.

Well dh works six days a week so if I did Sundays we would never see each other. Only evening work would be bar work and can't do that physically.

The primary school has about fifty families so I assume they don't think it's worth it. There's 12 in dd's class. They have a pre school but it's usually only open 8:30-11:30

I don't think the size of the school is an excuse tbh. We live rurally, with a lot of small village schools around here (in fairness, ours wasn't that small). It's all about working collaboratively these days, working as a group to secure better, more efficient services. Our school worked as a 'family' with about 8/10 other small schools to secure better deals for things such as insurance, plus it allows you to share knowledge and good practice.

In addition, having a larger group gives you access to larger grants etc for holiday care. So, I would pay circa £5 each per child per day for example for a week of sports coaching at the local high school 10am till 4pm during the holidays. Fantastic pricing.

I would be pressing the school spotty!!!

Although... I am a gobshite at times!!

£19.99 spent so far on a fan heater today as our existing one made an alarming fizzy noise, started glowing and smelling of burning, so a trip to Argos was made for a new one.

Hello everyone I have fallen off the wagon with my frugality lately what with work, internet problems and then Christmas and now I finally need to get a grip and take control again. I have spent way too much over Christmas....

I too am itching to get my tree down and get tidied up but we clear up on New Year's Day usually so I will hang on until then. On the plus side, I have frozen all the leftovers which I am going to use in the next week or so. Today's dinner is going to be turkey again with some vegetables. I am trying to stay away from a food shop for a few more days and just use up what we have.

4th NSD in a row, but DDs plan to do sales shopping when we get to the UK next week.

DH always fails to factor in all the costs of a trip, ie cost of kenneling the dogs. House sitters are going to dog sit 2 so we're just putting the two, plus 1 turtle, with the vet/kennels, for six bloody weeks.

Will try to cath up later. Well done to Lillac's DD.

ohhelp wow, well done, what a haul have you packed it all away in your freezer in an organised sort of way? When this has happened to me, no-one I know in RL can share in my joy so it is a solitary excitement for me too. I have been known to open the freezer later on in the day, just to gaze at my frugal purchases....how sad am I? Hope you have left room in your freezer for the rib roast tomorrow

collie I have a SIL a bit like yours and she is hard work. She was always rubbing the fact that her house was larger and more detached than ours and it used to upset me dreadfully. We don't see her very often which is hardly a surprise. You have my sympathy.

Went shops with dp and the kids which is always a chore. ...kids distracted and dp bored/wingy...plus I didn't actually want to part with any money, it was more checking that I wasnt missing out! Bought ds pants, dd a onesie (asda sale), me some body butter £2, and some cards half price £1.

We have £1k on 0% credit that needs paying by end of Feb, £5.5k by Aug and £5.2k by Oct. ..some will get transferred but we just want it gone which puts a dampener on sale shopping

Brilliant haul ohhelp, that'll keep you going for a week or two.

Collie what you need to do is look quizzically at her and say "oh of course it's much easier for you living round here isn't it? In the council tax is soo much more but we don't mind because it'll always be a desirable area so we'll get it back with interest when we sell" or "well the only downside to living in is its so much further out but it's gots such good schools & parks that people are willing to pay the extra to commute to work, of course you're much more 'central' here aren't you? .

£140ish on two cabinets for the lounge.
£3 dh Rennies because I took all his others.
£7.50 on posh drawer knobs from M&S for the cabinets.

Oh I'm not being very frugal nsd today but I've just booked ds and dd a mini photo shoot on Wednesday (frozen themed!) £30 including one print and one JPEG. Next two weeks are rent free so won't effect our budget

I think my question got lost earlier - what is 'coin sweeping' please? :)

I have read the Marie Kondo book :) found it really useful. The only reason I can't follow it exactly (and didn't keep up with the threads - I did lurk) is that unfortunately I am really unable to do it in a quick, intense way. I can see why it should be done like that but health-wise there's no way I could manage it - I have to do it a tiny bit at a time which is rather frustrating!

Anyway here's yesterday and today:

27/12
£9.40 bus fare for me and DCs (would've been less, but I found out when I got to work that I had to go to the other satellite branch - had not been told - if they'd even just rung in the morning I could've gone straight there instead of wasting time and money!)
£5.73 lunch, tissues and painkillers in Boots
£12 in Boots on half price wrapping paper/tags for next year (one of my post-Xmas rituals!)
£8 half price teapot (accounted for in DH's pocket money :o but I picked it up for him as I knew he wanted it)
£59.60 Tesco - lots of party food included as we had DSCs round for Xmas presents and games :)

28/12
£49.95 harvester breakfast for 8 - really fab morning with family :)
£2 DD pocket money
£1 DS going on grabber machine at harvester!
£5 taxi home (got lift there with DSCs but they went on to work after)

NSD today. Trying to cobble together some sort of food plan involving using up the obscure range of store cupboard items I have left without buying too much more next month. Could be doable but erm, interesting...

ahem I accidentally fell off the frugal wagon today.

Went Pets at Home as had promised dd that she could choose some belated Christmas presents for our cats in the sale and some how spent £30 however that included two bags of cat biscuits as well (they can only have the expensive ones as get the runs otherwise ) and some gerbil food but even so had only planned on spending a couple of quid on cat toys!!

Then went to Dun Elm for a quick cuppa which ended up being lunch £8 and then had a look round the sales and somehow ended up spending £50 ridiculous!! For that I got a huge fluffy throw for the sofa £20, a suitcase for dd £15, a gift £4, a box for all dds playmobil stuff £3, oven gloves £4 and a butter dish £3.

Feel slightly sick at how much ended up spending

Oh well it is all stuff that will be well used I suppose.

Going to take the tree down in a min as the lack of space is starting to get to me!!