Join the Fantastic Frugaleers for a February full of frugality

[northender]

Shiny new thread ready for Sunday. Newbies very welcome. This is a wonderful thread full of encouragement and support

How's the new job Em?

Hello, I am trying to eat healthily but its not perfect so take vitamins and minerals as well. I don't think I'll get malnutrition.

I have to be pretty stingy as I am paying a mortgage and bills from benefits at the moment so really need to cut down below £10 per week, which I have done pretty successfully. This month I am trying to keep to £3 per week, using stored food and frozen food with £3 on yoghurt and bread as a few people suggested dairy was missing. Bread allows some lunches to be beans on toast. Today lunch was a cupasoup .. I have one more left from some bought in dec for work lunch/snacks. I top up with porridge if there are hunger gaps.

For those of you who like us go through bread but prefer buns these are brill, works out about 4p a bun and they're delicious :-) mortgagefreeinthree.com/2014/07/30-minute-rolls/

£8.11 today

Should have been only £1 on eggs from bloke at work.. but last minute DS rang to ask if he could come over so ended up in the co op again getting something for his dinner ... and more milk ..and clementines as ive eaten all of those now .

I do wish he'd give me some notice , then i could get something out of the freezer before i to work . Call me an overindulgent mum, but because hes unemployed i like to get him something healthy to eat (so it usually meat and salad) and then at least I know hes getting one decent meal each week) .

Me? Im having the remains of the vegetable curry i made the other day .. (and very yum it is too!)

I've got a bitch of an ulcer on my tongue. It's right at the back and making my ear hurt its so bad! I had some pretty crappy blood results today show vitamin d deficiency and possible lupus which I could really do without on top of anything else.

Does anyone know anything about family law? I've got a question but don't want to start a thread as want to be discreet...

Didn't know that fluffy! Thanks for that. My fil who I think is the frugaliest person about is actually doing this and has done it for the last few cars (get it on lease and swap it in 3 years). He's a big vw polo fan and it suits them.

Gosh - hope the noodles tasted good!

Kinda NSD in that I paid the cleaner and since it's something I do every week, I don't really count it. I take about £50/week out and pay her out of that, I almost never spend cash, so I tend to have a few notes leftover so it makes me feel good if I don't go to the smt one week for example!

I had leftover chili today with rice. Will probably bring that for lunch to work tomorrow.

Vinegar, oh dear I didn't know you were trying to survive on benefits. Have you got access to shopping apps like shopitize or checkoutsmart or quidco clicksnap? Sometimes you can double up offers ie two apps run similar promos & an item is either very cheap or free.

You need to check the minimum amount of cash you can withdraw in one go, sometimes it's a £1, others its £5 which is too much when your running a tight ship.

vinegar that really doesnt seem do-able I hope things get better for you soon ..

However instead of vits (which are expensive and you pee them out much quicker than those found in real food) ...

Couldnt you make veggie soup? buy carrots, onions (loose ones are cheaper) and red lentils (a coupl e of sticks of celery and a clove of garlic in is also good if you can afford it ) Get cheap stock cubes from morrissons or lidl , and some ground cumin and coriander and blackpepper to add..

If like me you have an 'easyweigh' shop you can get spices cheaply in small quantities (lentils also) ..

Add some shredded greens also at the end, and tin of tomatoes if you can afford it . Also dont forget if you can access to some garden herbs ,, a bay leaf or some rosemary or thyme makes all the difference

cook the lentils with the onion and carrots before adding in tomatoes or salt , otherwise they wont soften properly

will make a huge pot . and keeps all week in the fridge .. Much cheaper than cup a soup and pleany of mins and vits ..

Thanks laska, doing a lot of that kind of stuff, and have saved in freezer so will be eating more than bread and yoghurt. The vits and minerals were cheap and are reassuring. I have some ends of frozen veg packets and lentils/rice etc and had a chicken from m&s voucher so can make stock soon. Its very 1950s but also fun being this organised!

£30 shop in Aldi; meal plan is egg fried rice with prawns; leek potato soup with those 30min rolls!; tuna nicoise salad; beans on toast; spag bol x2; omlette and salad.

£18 dentist and I've had to re-book for a filling and scale and polish February is getting expensive!

vinegar are you only budgeting for yourself? I often wonder how little I could get food bill down to if I was just catering for me - I used to get by on not much at uni (as my money was being redirected to more sociable activities) but also used to do lots of little bits of shopping here and there - would never have done a weekly shop - and tended to do more grazing and only eat enough so I wasn't hungry but could do this more often through the day as I was dossing around the house studying.

I tried for a NSD and did only spend 40 cents on a cup of coffee in the machine at work.

I also spent 50 euros on diesel and 16 on a new gas bottle for cooking - but I budget for these every month, so don't really class them as expenditure because I consider them to be bills.

It was apparently pancake day here in France yesterday so the DCs asked for pancakes for tea - so nice, cheap and easy. But have run out of eggs now so they can go on the list with the dishwasher tablets tomorrow.

Another 2 euros in the jar.

thats great vinegar .. i think i must have missed your earlier posts.. are you on your own and are you able to work? if so anything offing?

Not quite a NSD here... £177 on home heating oil (budgeted) - wanted a topup before new baby arrives as last time we ran out I couldnt restart the damn boiler and it was freezing until FIL sorted it - dont want to risk running out again :/

£89.90 in Asda, went with mum and DS, mum bought lunch in the cafe which was kind of her. Needed quite a few things that Id forgotten (size 1 nappies, a blanket etc etc) and stocked up on washing stuff loo rolls and that kind of thing on offer, birthday cake for DS etc. Dont think I did terribly considering the amount I came away with. Quite a few whoopsie bits for the freezer. Next project is batch cooking for the freezer :)

Lilac Re: frozen veggies we always have frozen sliced peppers and mushrooms in the freezer too, so handy for chucking into sauces etc and minimises waste.

We are also looking at a car loan here - Something about leasing them doesnt feel right to me, I think we'd rather it was our own property and we could pay it off and eventually the payments would stop lol!

really good thanks tayto, nice office (new desk is in a great position - right by the huge window), small office, only 15 people, work is interesting and I'm getting stuck in.

best part...proper tea and coffee and a proper kettle. My old place had a crazy have-to-use-both-hands-and your-nose-to-get-it-to-work hot water tap. you know, for safety.

its nice to be treated like a grown up again. (also nice to actually be taking time, and wanting to choose cute outfits every day...)

Vinegar, is there a food bank in your area? Hopefully you can manage (sounds like you are doing a bloody amazing job so far) but after being really skint once I found it really reassuring to know there was one in our town and if we really had nothing there would be somewhere to go.

NSD.

Not only able to work but highly productive too.. but that led to poor luck in the past as I worked in a very political workplace and didn't notice that my '£6million more income generated than a person on twice my salary' would turn several influential people, including my boss into some very sinister enemies. I've struggled to get comparable work for 6 years now as the reference they all look for is from that employer , so it cost me over 150k.I've had to be adaptable and resilient but of course its also cost me the opportunity to build a family. Tribunal service and judge were awful. Clearly didn't understand the evidence and were (we knew) employer biased. Boss has tried similar tactics with the person I mentioned before who got twice as much as me for less than a third the size of same job. Still haven't found a way to make the most of it sadly.

Ok my friends exh has told her he's taking their dd to the usa next year for two weeks in term time. Friend has said no, but would be ok in the summer holidays or easter etc. He's said he will get a court order. What do you reckon his chances are? (She will be five and in year one he wants to take her the first two weeks of summer term but she will obviously need a few extra days to recover from tiredness too).

There are no extenuating circumstances. Exh dad has booked a holiday for the whole family he owns his own business so no work commitments that don't allow holidays in school holidays. That's what I think, surely no judge can go against government policies, if they said it's ok for them they'd be saying it's ok for everyone. My friend would be happy for them to go in the holidays she's not being difficult for the sake of it.

Thanks

Not banking. I was recruiting graduates whose appointment contributed a percentage of generated research funding. Each graduate generated £35,000 full cost equivalent salary per year of funding plus a publishing multiplier if they published in a top journal in the first four years of appointment. The general estimate was that each recruit generated an average of £60,000 per year (some research grants were in the millions). I recruited 120 more than the previous recruiting levels, accelerated publishing rates(researched aggressive graduate science recruiters, initiated a comparably 'success-focussed' induction and trained and required reporting deadlines to be adhered to) so even conservatively that's 7million a year extra funding. I also helped raise the applicant quality with some simple process changes and marketing comms guidelines and this funded around 20 more students as they were eligible for some bursaries aimed only at world class researchers that we could accommodate.

Lsd today-not through want of trying though! Drive to post office to post some parcels that I sold on fb only to discover that i'd left my purse at home! Other than that just some chaff for dpony this morning.
I did make £44 selling old clothes on fb though!