Frugal January, part two.

[Fluffycloudland77]

Everybody is welcome.

€2 towards a tip after drinks, DH paid for the drinks, €23

Friday £30 donation at grandfathers funeral in aid of leukaemia research.

Saturday £42 in primark on bits and pieces. Didn't need most of it. Events on Friday pushed me to it...

Today nsd.

£17.09 at the butcher's. No other spends. Packed lunch made for tomorrow (and I found a forgotten selection box that someone gave DD for Christmas lurking in the cupboard, so that's going to work with me - she doesn't like chocolate so it's wasted on her).

Spendy day indeed! And I didn't even leave the house, so the only expense for me personally was the tesco delivery.

25/1
£5.35 train - DH took our DCs out in the day to give me a break
£21.64 lunch for the 3 of them
£2.80 bus fares
£3.80 drinks
£2.99 magazine for DD
£24.98 DH new trainers and socks (both much needed)
£75.63 Nandos - DH took his DCs out in the evening for some grown up time/late birthday thing :)
£98.49 tesco - much more than usual but stocked up on a fair bit I think...

Fuck. Ing. Hell.

Oh well thankfully DSS was able to give DH the money he owed him. DH now has around £150 cash which he's decided to use up before touching his debit card. Also his account is much healthier so really pleased I did that transfer.

I'm just trying to get my head around Quidco, never used it before but think it's about time I did.
If you buy something online through Quidco, what happens if you need to return it?
Also, do you need a PayPal account? I don't have one!

You don't need a paypal account, you can have a direct payment to the bank or amazon vouchers.

If you return something then usually the cashback is declined.

fuzzpig £75 on Nandos???!

Had a roast chicken and boiled the carcus with the broccoli stalk, carrot tops and bottoms and half an onion. I'll probably just end up drinking it tomorrow, but it's better than chucking it?

Dh & I had a meal in Ask! Recently & it was £45 for the two of us.

Luckily I had a gift voucher to use up.

Just done a mealplan and have enough food in the house until Saturday . I've been buying food rather sporadically since being off and this is the first time I've actually written it down and been organised and I feel so relaxed now!

Having -
Mon- king prawn and noodle stir fry / kids -leftover chicken and noodles
Tues- sausage casserole from freezer / kids - pasta bolognaise bake from freezer (using up food from commute days)
Wed - chicken pie, mash, veg / kids - chicken drumsticks and veg
Thurs - salmon and roast veg / kids - sausage and mash
Fri - fish and chips /nuggets and chips.
And....relax!

girliefriend hope your dd is feeling better. I know from bitter experience with my dd how horrible it can be.
bantam glad you had such a fab time. I remember going into an FA cup tie against Arsenal years ago and thinking I'd be happy with anything less than 6-0. We went 2-0 up early on and were in heaven. Don't get too excited, you could draw us in the next round!
This weekend has turned out to be spendy as dh decided to come to the football with me (we support different teams so don't usually go to matches together) and went to the pub, albeit fairly briefly, before and after the game. It was child free though so worth the spendiness!
Have £30 until Thursday which should be fine as I've done the food shopping and neither of us need fuel in our cars.

Had a lovely day out with friends and a picnic so nsd yesterday until up half the night with poorly ds and managed to spend about £40 I think. It's all useful but we could live without it.

Hoping for a nsd. Need dh to get some butter beans but that can wait a few days. Forgot that I paid ds' nursery fees last week that was £115. Hoping to make it a nsd week (apart from the butter beans!) who thinks I can do it?!

Go spotty! I've fallen off daily tracking of spends but have been following the thread daily. I've been keeping an overall eye on my monthly target and am doing ok.

pass it's interesting that you have separate meals for DC. My dd had a complete meltdown last night as she didn't want to eat lentil Dahl and vegetable curry. Admittedly it wasn't the most attractive plate of food but it was made out of things already in the cupboard/freezer. She doesn't eat a great deal anyway so now I'm thinking that I sometimes need to feed her her own meals rather than our austerity dinners!

Spotty, I'll join you in an attempt at an NSD week - I can't immediately see why I shouldn't be able to be NSD from now till Friday (Saturday I'll need to do food shopping). I'm going to get back on the bike today now I have my ski gloves, so shouldn't need to top up my Oyster card, and the house is full of food.

The down side is that the credit card bill has arrived covering Christmas - ouch, is all I can say. We can pay it without dipping into savings but Feb will need to be very austere.

Yes mine will be working week only as food shopping will come Saturday. I'm going to a friend's Thursday and should really get her a new home card but I'm not going to

Hoping for nsd today. Am "shopping" at parents later. They are away and im feeding cats. They are stopping at tesco/asda/sainsburys on their trip to stock up.

We were away with them at weekend and bought a few bits for them to bring back which are way cheaper than here (tesco brand chickpeas -45p a box instead of 1.50 ) unfortunately couldn't bring back ourselves as only hand luggage. Parents took car.

Need a few bits from their store cupboard so will borrow later.

Dh has also given me a £50 voucher for m&s which he was given from his work at Christmas. Instructions are to buy meat/fish. This probably doesn't count as money does it...?

26 days until I get paid. Leftover budget is £101 this needs to pay for petrol (£35 to fill up car) parking for work (roughly £15 a week) and food.

Ememem84 M&S do a value range of food called Simply M&S. It might be worth having a look at what you can get from this range with your voucher as your food budget is tight? The fish isn't cheap at M&S, you can often get 3 packets of meat/chicken for £10 though.

It's my birthday today, so DH is coming home from work to take me out for a pub lunch, although I feel pretty crap, am full of cold. So much for him being off for the day.... (this ALWAYS happens, but par for the course when it's your own business, we never see him) DD got me a beanie hat that has 'Hi' on one side and 'Bye on the other'. DS a cookbook and DH tickets to see Dara O Brien.

We would spend £75 on a meal for the family. The DC are teenagers, so it's effectively 4 adults going out for a meal. My friend has just had this shock, as her DC have just moved to adult meals, they used to eat out quite a bit......not now

Am popping out for bread and milk and a set of cards (for stock!) later. I have my £10 voucher from Morrisons for three midweek shops, but not going to try to do that again, as I felt I did at least one shop as I felt compelled to get the voucher.

Also going to organise the carpets to be cleaned.

And DH blew my careful budgeting last month anyway by buying two pairs of expensive jeans. Ho hum, at least the money was there I suppose.....

And DH has just phoned to say two of his guys have rung in sick so he won't be home to take me for lunch (self pity)

Thanks all, payday tomos!! Have just given my last fiver to dd for her school dinners today and tomos, while I am feeling unwell its easier for her to have a cooked meal at school lunchtime.

Have the drs at 10.40, so that will prob result in more prescriptions I guess, just made the mistake of googling 'constant nausea' which was a bit scary!!

Happy birthday Need . Shame about lunch though.

Joining in if okay, rather late to the party.

Really need to save money, to climb out of overdraft.
Did first Aldi shop, very favourably impressed, especially with toiletries. About £80 but that included two pairs work trousers for DP, champagne and wine for a family party which is a one off.
Discovered the pound shop, good for bulk buying of snacks and again toiletries. Care needed not to go mad and bear in mind some things are less than a pound elsewhere eg jam, hand wash etc.
Had coupon back for one pound ninety one back from Sainsburies shop, went straight back in and spent it on extra milk which went in the freezer,so no pressure to go and do another shop to use the coupon. Just as well I did as will be going to Aldi from now on.

Welcome Opal. Aldi is fab.

While your on a roll register with tesco orchard, quidco & topcashback (free membership not the £5 a year one).

Oh and we did the Marks and Spencer dine in for Ten pounds.
We bought the rotisserie chicken, Rosemary potatoes and the chocolate fudge pud. And a bottle of merlot. Verdict, chicken was lovely, it has done four dinners and stock for soup. Chocolate pud way too sweet although if you have sweet tooth it would have served four with some custard or ice cream. I will choose cheese or fruit next time. I would say that choosing wisely and adding in a few bits of your own, this is a nice offer. Nice to know that if you are having friends over you could get one or two of these deals and still spend twenty pounds at most.

Thanks Needastrongone will bear that in mind. I have memories of buying bags of salmon from M&S (10 salmon fillets individually wrapped) for something like a tenner, so am hoping I can score one of those. If not, then just meat.

have audited the cupboard and am trying to meal plan/decide what to batch cook at present.

have loads of varying minces - beef, pork, turkey, so will probably end up making a spag bol, and some pork sesame meatballs and turkey lemon ones. have worked out that I can cook these all at the same time in the oven, then cool and freeze so we have loads left for quick dinners.

cans of tuna have stumped me though. I would usually just add mayo and have over pasta, or in a sandwich. but can't for the life of me think of anything more fun to do with it. Is tuna good for fishcakes (will have to buy potatoes).