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

My aunt gave me £20 to use when dd has school trips etc

That's nice spotty. When the kids get money from people they get it direct, put it in their purse and refuse to spend it as it's "special". Currently have £19 each and won't part with it

Dh has pissed me off. He gets £40 a week 'allowance' for petrol. He suggested taking the cash out and using that. I said no point as we usually underspend on petrol (especially with prices so low) so I can just transfer any extra into savings easily. Have just checked the joint acct and he's taken £40 cash for fuel. I'm pissed off because I know what he's doing: putting £30 of fuel in then spending the rest. I always knew he bought stuff from the petrol station (say £36 fuel and £3 on a sandwich and chocolate which I couldn't be bothered to get worked up about but this has really annoyed me! I'm being unreasonable aren't I?!

Just catching up on the last few pages.

"Well HELLO PAY-DAY you sexy beast!" That made me laugh bantamgirl

needa thanks so much for the recipe. I've saved it to a word document. I love all the ingredients so it should be a winner.

expectingno3 very sorry to hear about DD1 being bullied at school but I'm glad the school are finally taking some action

MissA have a lovely time in Rome

Passthecake that lego was a good find

Spotty that was nice of your aunt to give you something towards DD's school trips etc. As for your DH, I can understand you being annoyed. You told him not to withdraw the cash for the petrol and then he went ahead and did it anyway - like a defiant child. I'm sure you don't begrudge him the few pounds but it's like he's being sneaky.

I also have good news and bad news. The good news is that the bank approved our car loan . We're hoping to collect the new car on Monday.

The bad news is that we ordered €310 worth of home heating oil a few weeks back. DH said he'd drop the money into the fuel depot. Came home from work yesterday to find an invoice from the fuel company for €310! Turns out DH forgot to pay them . Meanwhile, he treated himself to new clothes to the value of over €100! As it happens, we'll be ok because he's trading in his old car and the garage will pay us enough to cover the cost of the oil. But this would have left us in major difficulty if we hadn't been trading in the old car. I really need to keep a closer eye on him where money is concerned.

Actually I don't think yabu Spotty that would annoy me as well! I think with being frugal the saying 'watch the pennys to save the pounds' is how it works so frittering away any money is

I have spent £3.50 today on some extra bits needed to make dd bday cake, its a dessert island cake and if I do say so myself has come out rather well

Got dds friends over tonight for bday tea and sleepover - wish me luck!!

Oh and I still can't bookmark - very annoying!!

Exactly tayto it's sneaky! He has form for being sneaky like telling me he's going out with his brother but actually going out with someone he knows I hate. Great news on the car loan!

girlie there was a thread in site stuff from someone else not being able to bookmark

I am in two minds over what to do with my car, I currently have a Peugeot 207 which I have had for about 18months (its 07 reg) I paid £4300 for it and it is a good car, not let me down and very good on long journeys. I drove to the lake district in it a year ago (I am in Somerset!)

However I am a community nurse so when working do lots of small journeys and am finding it just eats the petrol. Plus it costs more to tax (£180) and cost a fortune last year to service and mot (around £400)

So my dilemma is do I sell this car and downsize, although will obv lose money on what I paid for it but in the long run a smaller car would cost me less iyswim......

Any thoughts??

Yeah just saw that thread spotty hope they fix it soon as annoying on threads like this one which move so fast - I lose me spot!!

Frugal win - DP and me took turns with DS making Valentine's Day cards from our huge box of card making stuff. Really sweet. In your face over-commercialised 14th February!

Frugal progress - up late last night with DP reviewing out household budget and how much we both have for personal spending - aim is for me to get back to working part-time hours again by April (currently doing about 30 hours a week using up weekends and evenings as well to squeeze it in).

We've come up with a way (due to our peculiar income situation and use of four bank accounts) which means that the household stuff is covered, if either of us over-spend on personal stuff (mobile, social stuff, haircuts, clothes, random shopping) it doesn't affect the other person. Any extra income from either of us goes into our household account and we can jointly agree to spend it on other stuff if we want. I think it's going to work, but it took ages to work it out and we had to admit a few home truths about spending...

Spotty no, I agree with you, I think it is sneaky and deceitful when he knows the reasons WHY you say "No, we're not going to do it that way, we're doing it this way" then just goes and does it the other way. I'd be FURIOUS and SHOUT A LOT (not that doing this seems to deter my DH!)

Afternoon all - have done my spending for the day

Bank: £1106.38 (was £1136.38)
Purse: £16.40 (was £4.73)
Jar: £11.20 (was £11.20)
Grand Total: £1133.98
Reduced by £18.33
Days to payday: 27

Spends:

£5.00 – haircut DH (even though he gets almost as much money as I have spare, me paying for his monthly haircut is still non-negotiable and causes arguments so I just foot the bill) >.<
£1.75 – Budgie food. Saved about £1 on this as I went to an indoor market where there was a pet shop to buy Trill as Morrisons didn't have any in stock or online. However it was self service so I just scooped loads into a bag and when he weighed it, it was £1.75 and I reckon it weighed twice as much as the Trill boxes do. A box of lesser weight is £2.25 in the supermarket so I'll send DH to the market to get it from now on as he works in this town.

£5.00 – phone case for DS1's new phone. (now I only have to worry about him losing it and not dropping it - in fact, as he's got more spare money than I have, I might secretly take this back from him....I'll see how I am for money at the end of the month)
£6.58 – a pair of trousers and a top for work from the charity shop.

I love charity shops and the small town where we went today has them in abundance and I always like to go round and have a look. It can get quite expensive as there are about 7 charity shops all around a market square but I had a stern word with myself and only bought the clothes that I really liked. The trousers were a pair originally from Next and still had the original label on them but I paid £3.29.

spotty £3 a week is £150 a year on crap. Poke him with something pointy.

£3 in homebargains. Hair removing cream, toothpaste & tissues.

£12 on a dermalogica mask on eBay, it's £29 retail so I'm happy with that.

Will be £7 later on a fish and chip supper.

I knew you lot would talk sense.

My fakeaway kebab is in the oven wish me luck! I've also put one (of our eight) bottle of champagne in the fridge, might as well use it up!

Also agree Spotty you're not being unreasonable. It's "only" £3 but it's the principle. No point having a budget if you don't respect it. Do you have a "budget line" for miscellaneous crap though for each of you? In our review last night, we worked out that DP and I both need (want) the same amount of pocket money each month but we spend it on completely different things - his goes on beer and sport-crap of eBay, mine goes on hobbies/crafts and clothes. As long as it isn't one rule for one, and one for the other, I think it's ok to have an allowance for crap - but it needs to be explicit.

Yep we both have our own money. Our joint account is for all bills, food and petrol. I put in £425 a month and dh puts in £1400. What we each have left pays for our phones, credit cards and anything else we want. When I do our monthly expenditure if there's anything left it goes into savings or if we need something I can use that.

Yesterday
13/2
£12.63 sainsburys top up
£1.49 DH biscuits (gluten free is so much pricier than normal!)

Have added up what we've spent on groceries/top ups since 1st feb and we have used way more than half of our attempted budget. Granted part of that excess was for easy dinner stuff when DSD brought a friend, and I've done a bit of batch cooking which will make it easier, but not sure it'll be too easy to come in under £400 for the month (and it's a short month too!)

£30 on riding lesson.
£5.12 in shop after lesson buying bits for dinner tonight - valentines mexican food. yummy.

pay day on 20th. cannot wait.

Cut the petrol budget to £35.

Spendy day, ended up stocking up c.£30 on dried goods as our fave local health food shop is shutting down we paid full price for the stuff, I felt so sorry for them.

£7.50 on drinks and snacks in town

£10 on washing powder, sandwich bags, sugar and other top up stuff.

£16.99 shoes re-soled and re-heeled.

99p on Kindle Daily Deals book for plane

£7 for new umbrella as somehow lost my old one hope I find it at work or something, so annoyed.

Also spent about £20 on ingredients and bottle of wine for a nice dinner in tonight (spicey roasted tomato, chilli and sausage pasta with salad and chocolate brownie flavour ice cream) and £1.49 on a dvd of The Secretary in Oxfam to watch afterwards. Oo-err. As it were.

Have pretty much done all the packing for Rome that I can now (wish I could put the toothbrushes, phone chargers etc in now ), so am planning to do a couple of hours work before having nice dinner and movie on sofa with DH.

Have made a list of stuff we will need by moving date (prob 8th or 9th July) including a cooker, dining table and chairs, a bed, new curtains as ours almost certainly won't fit, tumble drier, small sofa. we need to save like billy-o after this trip. It seemed like a good idea when we moved here to borrow those things as the previous occupant really didn't want them for the next 2-3 years (he is living in a furnished flat elsewhere in school) but now I am so sorry we didn't bite the bullet and buy them 18 months ago. Freecycle will be our friend, I suspect!

p.s. I did a perfect reverse bay park FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER today. so happy I nearly cried. I have been struggling so much with it and something just clicked today and it worked.

Speedy day, took DD1 out with friends - was lovely and not as expensive as feared!

£27 theatre tickets
lunch was free as treated by friend (woo!)
£8.75 train tickets

Also
£4.90 dummies for DD2 (darn it, really want to ditch them!)
£8.75 gifts for a new baby.

Well done, missA and have a great time in Rome.
For some reason we've got through things e.g. milk, bananas quicker than usual this week and have done THREE top up shops which is not like us at all. DH did two of them and bought treats too so I've lost track of what we've spent now and decided to just start again tomorrow! Going to John Lewis in the morning to get a slow cooker with our Christmas vouchers and have our free cake. I'm also going to return some shoes that I bought for work but have decided the heels are too high so at least I'll get a refund.

Well done for the parking, MissA. Enjoy your trip to Rome. I was there in February half term a few years ago and I loved it. Long-sleeved tops, cardis and jeans are what I recall wearing, but take a warm jacket for after dark, as I found the temperature dipped a lot.

£6.67 in Lidl.

Well done MissA! I used to be great at reverse parking but now I rarely do it. Thank god for parking sensors

171 in Aldi for the month, so included washing powder, shampoo etc.... I have forgotten some thing major haven't I? It normally costs about 200.

Ah well - I will keep the extra 29 safe so when I remember I will be able to pick it up.

40 per week on Petrol? has he priced up a train ticket - ask at the ticket office because they don't always advertise the cheapest on line? I love my train ticket - 906 per year and I can travel all over Greater Manchester at any time on any train. Saves me a fortune (parking alone would be about 1500) and it is about 45 minutes quicker to get home at rush hour...ok the trains are filthy, crowded and leak, but my car isn't much better.