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

mystic It can be hard accepting loans, but I think it might depend on who is making the offer. When we were really struggling, I would let my mum or dad take the kids out for the day, and I had a friend who used to pass on all her DD's clothes to me, to use on my own DD. These were kind, heartfelt gestures with no pity involved and didn't make me feel indebted to them as they were not monetary. I am also sure that more folk than you think will be struggling.

Introductions. Myself and DH, 2 teenagers so essentially 4 adults. No debt. DH runs own company, so works long long hours, travels a lot and has a lot of stress. However, is 'master of his own destiny' and, now the business has got through the recession and is established, has financial reward.

Been lucky with property as we bought our first house 18 years ago in a dip and sold it at a peak and that pushed us forward massively. Plus, we took the plunge to make a big jump up 3 years ago and buy new, with a lot of input ourselves. So, we have our dream house and a big mortgage, but at least 60% equity.

Also have a DD who rides and we own a pony and that SUCKS money out of our house in a way that I can't describe!!

My reason for being here is to prove to we can live on the wage we draw from the company, and not rely on the annual dividend that is not guaranteed, but we have been treating as such.

unescorted That is SO amazing, well done you. Such an achievement to pay £32k off Any tips to share?

Brittanyfairy love the name! do you mean 70 or 100 euros a week?

It must be creative cooking day
.I have made my 'Doctor' chicken and herb soup (just like my French friend does it ,clear broth, and choppedcarrots celery onion , and lots and lots and lots of fresh herbs .. It smells wonderful, even through my cold (which is in my head and cheset )
..
......and i reckon i also have just made my best curry ever..

Dhal was made with lentils ,onions chopped carrots and curry spices, garlic and ginger . and curry base with the cheap mushers, onions tomato and the buffalo wing chicken .. then all mixed together with some very finely chopped spinach and watercress flung in at last min ..

Im not sure what you'd call it, and im sure it could no way be authentic ( though i make my basic spice mix al'a lovely Madhur Jaffrey ) but whatever it is . its DEEE...VINE

I have been cooking a lot of veg stew, topped off with dumplings, all done in the slow cooker, which is both incredibly cheap, pretty healthy, and really hearty and warming on a cold day. And DS loves it, especially with the dumplings - but he's fine without dumplings as long as there's enough potato in it.

Have recently made it even cheaper by stopping buying those flavour pots (wee little plastic pots with sort of jellified herbs in them) and just buying a 89p jar of mixed herbs. Lasts longer and is a lot cheaper, and has less salt.

What makes the taste difference IMO is after dishing up a bowl, putting a teaspoon of butter on the top, and by the time you've got it to the table, the butter has melted through the stew. Lush.

Mmm buttery stwe sounds amazing - 2 week meal Plan on the go here, lasagne hm garlic bread and salad tomorrow, burritos, burgers, pasta bake,hm fish and chips, pizza, chicken curry, fajitas to name but a few. We are both terrible and eat breakfast on the go, usually fruit and a yogurt, then luniches at work consist of sarnie, crisps, fruit, hard boiled egg, and a homemade brownie/cake :-) not the most slimming of plans but dp has decided our 2nd spare room is the gym until we decide for kids so treadmill and exercise bike keep the lbs at bay :-)

Me DH and cat , grown up son and daughter. 2 DGC

DS has been long term umemployed and has mental health issues , and sometimes i end up having to bail him out . That got me into quite a lot of debt a couple of years ago , so ive been doing tough love now for a while , and what ho, he seems to be surviving and finding odd work..(and now lives with a girlfriend so its up to them how they live).

Also i think I coped with problems by just spending too much.

DH intending to retire early this year , and so i realised a while ago that i simply had to address my spending. We have a reasonable income right now (and I work F/T) but every year was spending about £3000 over my income and relying on DH bonus to sort it out. This had to stop.

DH was always a saver and we are lucky in that mortgage will be paid off when he finished ( very little left on it) , but like needastrongone i need to prove that we can live in our income..

We are not well off , but doing ok.. so lucky.. However as well as DH retiring im in public sector and we have many redundancies on the horizon . Im hoping to keep in my job for another few years so until i can retire ratherthan be made redundant but unless we get another government , this May I cant see my and many other public sector jobs surviving that long..

So frugal it is..

Not sure if this is a frugal fail... So I went to pay for ds' party. Deposit for 14 kids, £70. Mad. This whole party is going to cost quite a bit of money. I'm not bothering with party bags - they will provide that, and what ever is in there will be it. Plus cake of course.

I've told ds the next birthday (8th) we will go away to Legoland or something.... I'm sure I can get a family getaway for £200!!

Then we went to Tescos. Maybe it's coz we are in the se but seriously there was nothing. Maybe I just have to trawl every aisle without kids distracting me. We shall try that next time. But I spent £49 which was actually MORE than my Aldi shop yesterday. I bought £10 78 finish dishwasher tabs (50% off), some sausages (10 really big cumberlands) £3, a frozen jewellery set for Dd's friends birthday (£6) and a few other things. Ok the stuff was all going to be eaten or given as presents but still...

£20 at mcdonalds because kids were being good all weekend whilst I was ill.

In work all of next week... Just as well won't be spending!

Oh, the first cc came and it was £500+ which was a come down from the £1200 from Christmas! Happy days.

And dh got some sort of windfall of £750! Some shares I believe.

Introduction: I'm NK and I'm in my early 40s with a dh and ds6 and dd4. We spend a lot of money on childcare (when dd goes to school we would have spent roughly in the region of £100,000 in childcare fees) so I'm looking forward to not paying nursery...!

We live in the se, an hour from London. I'm in higher education so if anyone wants to ask anything about universities I'd be happy to oblige.

We have been on this thread for a long while now, primarily because dh was made redundant 3 years ago, and we went straight down to 1 income and it was incredibly scary. We don't have debts other than mortgage, and all cc bills are paid full. We need to save up however to rebuild our savings buffer, as well as pay for works around the house (carpets, etc). Have really made a difference and we have recommended Aldi and all money saving tips to one real life friend who was also made redundant. They are the only friends I know who I'm happy talking money and frugality with!!

Babsmam what costume are you making for world book day?

I'm not even sure if my DCs' schools are dressing up for WBD yet. They were both in infant school last year and went as Dorothy and Toto :o

This year DD wants to be Arrietty from the Borrowers, and DS wants to be Wally (as in Where's...). Although previously DS said Claude the dog which would be more fun.

archeryannie you know you can freeze fresh herbs? just bung in the whole bunch in a freezer bag, crush when frozen and then just spoon out what you need.

(actually though, ive not tried this with basil as i grow my own.. see below) . Id just whizz basil up with oil and keep in jar in fridge.

I am lucky as we have tons of thyme and rosemary, mint and bay in garden , all grow like a weeds here .(i transplant mint and keep a pot indoors during the winter)

I also buy the supermarket pots of basil and transplant them keep them on a sunny window sill inthe winter, one supermarket pot , has enough little plants to keep you gong all summer of you sperate them out into separate pots.

I also grow parsley outside and in the greenhouse ,and its still growing out there now . though slowly( we are in the far south) im buying parsley right now.

Butter is a good idea to finish a veg stew , also putting a drizzle of soy sauce in as well

Spotty, I really want DC3 too! :o

1/2
£97.68 Tesco delivery. Did get the eggs free (one was slightly cracked) and they gave me an extra pack of chocolate which they didn't charge for :o

REALLY hope we can manage without picking up extras this week. I actually got a couple of really easy things for me to have when I'm unwell, because otherwise I end up going to the CoOp and at least this way it's slightly cheaper.

unescorted, lila & fuzz well done on clearing debt.

My name is fluffy & I like to live frugally so we can have nice things & not get into debt. It's just me and dh and the cat. I used to squander money but about 4 years ago I realised money could be saved and spent on better things.

Since then I've made a lot of progress, bought a house, paid off all debt & I want to repay our mortgage in 10 years. Mainly so dh can retire early.

£7 today on a reed diffuser in tk maxx. It's £60 online so I am chuffed.

Nothing that hasn't already been said on this and previous threads.... reduce every single outgoing until it can't be reduced any more.

Phone - don't need a mobile, get rid
TV - freeview box
Gas / electric - shop around, turn the heating down / off, use electicity saving light bulbs. Don't use the tumble dryer.
Clothes - learn to make & mend or alter charity shop finds. Also useful for making gifts.
Food - meal plan, save leftovers, preserve any gluts, make own wine & beer, make everything from scratch. No take aways, very few trips to the pub / cinema (have people around instead). Use value range products - they complain to start mostly because of the change in sugar & salt in the product. Develop an encyclopedic knowledge of supermarket prices (in / 100g etc) so you can spot a deal on the products you would buy anyway. Be creative in what you will and won't eat. Buy spices and "ethnic" sauces from international supermarkets. Always make a pack up... for work, trips out.
Grow expensive vege - herbs, salads, tomatoes, soft fruit. My garden is a weedy mess but I still get kgs of food off it. Foraging if you can is great too, or swap a skill for allotment boxes.
Only use a car when there is no other choice - you may find that you can get away with out one, or just hire one for those yearly trips to the in laws at Christmas.
Books, magazines & films from the library.
If you have a skill swap it for someone elses - I do a mean jam and can alter clothes so I swap them from haircuts with a friend. Another cycles, but can't do their bike maintenance - dh gets lifts in lieu and allotment boxes. Ironing for babysitting.
Set up an emergency fund so if something goes wrong you don't have to resort to credit cards.

Most importantly don't give yourself a choice on spending... don't unless it is actively keeping body & soul together. Food, shelter & warmth is all we need - everything else is a nice to have. It sounds monastic, but I have learnt some great skills, get together with my mates, lost weight & exercise more than ever before.

Tayto we found out at 21 wk scan it should be a DD - time will tell! Sat eating a pack of tayto as we speak lol gotta love em!

Bit of a frugal fail this afternoon, top up shop of £19 - wanted to take DS out of OHs hair for a while and we needed pack lunch stuff... what we didnt need was £5 worth of chocolate and a pack of caramel squares I blame the baby...

at the speeding ticket :( can you do a speed awareness course to cancel the points?

Over 1k to rent a three bed seems extortionate :( granted we are in NI but our 5 bed semi (in process of renovation / redecoration) is a mortgage of 620 month and thats at a rubbish rate :(

I was hoping for a NSD today but ended up spending £1.50 on butter from the convenience shop and a tenner on a bottle of wine which is an emergency gift for a friend.
In our house is me, DH, DD (10 mo) and the cat. I joined the thread as I'm at the tail end of mat leave with no income so we needed to stretch out the pennies. Going back to work next week which I am absolutely heart broken about but that's another story. I've taken a big pay cut to reduce my work load and we'll be spending loads on childcare so we still need to watch our money. We'd also like to save up for a second baby, hopefully next year so the less we can spend the better.

Right I've been meaning to post this for a few days. DH and I have been complete and utter twats and I need some advice please!

I have always been rubbish at checking my bank account online, and so it took me a while to realise and then accept that our phone/internet bill was increasing. We use plusnet and it's more than doubled over the last few years when we haven't changed contract. I've literally only contacted them a couple of times when the connection has failed and apart from that I've just ignored it! Total ostrich situation! (Or is it emu?!)

Now obviously I have to figure out how to log on and read my bills online but I'm sure it's not phone use as we barely use the landline at all let alone at peak time (we have free weekend/evening calls to landlines). And it literally only occurred to me the other day - it must be data charges, right?

When we first got online (we had a couple of years without it when we first moved here) we were just using regular websites, but gradually we have started using much more data - we now have various devices on which we download stuff and watch YouTube, we use catch up TV as we don't really watch live, DH watches/listens to football stuff on BBC site, and since our radio died we use the app loads instead.

Presumably this is loads of data and as we didn't pay a huge amount for unlimited broadband like they advertise now, we must be getting charged for going over the limit or something. Total facepalm moment.

I am really clueless about this stuff so the upshot of my waffly post is - please please can somebody tell me about data and all that internetty stuff please?

NSD here. Was given a jar of damson jam. Woop (not even sure if I like Damson jam, but I like jam...so will probably eat it).

tomorrow should hopefully be a LSD will spend £6.08 on parking for work. I would walk, but (here come the excuses) its my first day in a new job and its supposed to rain. I do not want to look weather worn and windswept when I arrive.

I am also taking money to buy lunch because its my first day.

Did anyone know it's my first day at my new job tomorrow? (I have just had an attack of the nerves and almost cried...)

Oh good luck emem. I hate starting a new job it's rubbish not knowing what you're doing. I always find its the first two weeks which are difficult after that it's fine. I would drive too

Ohhelp, it was Parks. I have 4 of them.

Fuzz, first check if you can switch to unlimited with them & pay line rental upfront. Our. Deal was £165 line rental & £2.50 a month for unlimited bb.

Or you can ask how much it would cost you to leave them.

Don't forget to check how much cashback sites are offering for bb. I got £175 back for ours & bought new bedding with it.

Thanks, I'm excited. I think this could be the one....! ha ha!

Em - Damson jam is lovely. I put it on cheese & ham sandwiches.

Good luck with the new job :)

Good luck for tomorrow em!

February hasn't started off well - speeding fine and spent £20 on food in m&s on dinner, lunches and fruit for tonight and tomorrow. Will do proper shop on Tuesday in Aldi.

No excuse for speeding ticket. I was going 36 in a 30. It was non- residential so think I just assumed it was 40 (unfamiliar with that part of town). I can go on a speed awareness course so will do that if I can get the time off work.

Fuzz probably is data usage especially if youre on an old contract, worth just giving them a call and seeing what the price would be to go unlimited- if you're out of contract hae a look around too some great deals. Talk talk do a good one I think. Using the likes of videos and games online can pretty much treble your usage compared to just browsing websites :-/ well after big ship this morning did all washing and realised need a couple of new work blouses - ebay is my best friend tonight ha!!

Hahaha big shop this morning - I have not done anything nautical!!

Hello everyone joined in on the thread a good few months back (different user name) but life took over and I didn't have much time to MN anymore. Would love to join back in, this thread was an excellent support. I didn't post much but enjoyed reading everyone's updates.

Looking forward to trying to cut back and save some money this month.