Marvellous Money Saving March.

[CremeEggThief]

Hi All,
Thought I'd start a new thread for all regulars and anyone else who is interested in saving money in March .

Have a great time in London. It is worth getting (or borrowing) an Oyster card for the tube. Otherwise it is 12 for a zone card. I nearly fell off my perch when I realised how much tube travel is.

I am off to Darley Dale to watch my boy race in a cycle race. Then off to Manchester... nothing like trying to cram everything into one day.

I think you can lose your contactless debit card now for the same price as an oyster but my friend usually lends me one.

Food shopping being delivered this morning. It's an expensive one hopefully can do next week cheaper! Also need petrol.

spotty have a lovely time in London.

Enjoy spotty! And well done to unescorted for the pay rise!

Last night's curry was £17. Not bad.

Today will be weekly shop spend.

Will be LSD today I hope, £15 on wine yesterday but no other spends. Picked up more work from a client so am now super busy for next week. Girlie the butterflies look great. Not too pricey as well.

This weekend I will finish painting for my sister, then will start off some seeds indoors.

Kept trying to catch up with the thread yesterday and getting interrupted so thought I'd confess my spending then go back and read. Actually yesterday was NSD apart from £1 contribution to non uniform day at work. I'd pay a pound to wear jeans and trainers every day, much better for being on my feet.
Thursday night's meal out was double what I'd planned. I'd intended to use the 2 meals and a drink for £14.95 menu but there was nothing I fancied so we ended up buying starters to share then a main course then I succumbed to a pudding plus chipped in for wine so it ended up costing just over £30. Ouch! It was lovely though.

Thanks everyone.

We had the butterflies last year and dd still talks about it. Got it on amazon for like £12 then you pay for the caterpillars separately.

Spent £26.68 yesterday on food.

Supposed to be going out today but dd2 is ill. Argh, really terrible timing.

LSD yesterday.

£2.50 for a toastie and a drink at DDs baby class.
£20 on dog food and treats
£1.76 on cards for Mothers Day

Should be a LSD again today. Have DSD and might go to local garden centre to do come Mother's Day craft thing that she can take home to her mum. Kill two bird and all that!

£5 on chips and cake. That should be it for today. Maybe another 3 if we go to the scooter park

Plus I've completely run out of supermarket bags and they are very useful!

Ha, yes, same here. Unfortunately DH took in the tesco delivery last week (I was in bed so can't really complain...) and gave them the entire bag of bags IYSWIM when they asked if we had any. Apparently the idea of leaving a few spare didn't cross his mind

Ah, don't you just love it when grocery substitutions work in your favour? Just got full price Haagen Dasz instead of half price Ben and Jerry's, and a 250g box of chocs instead of 40g! :o Happy Mother's Day to me

north it's difficult To tell. There's lot's of new builds going up around us and the new Middle class want To buy a new build. Then the market just Stopped because of new tax laws which are not yet in place. Everyone seems To have been holding their breath over that and the agents say they have literally been twiddling their thumbs in the office waiting for the phone To ring. They say it's picked up in the least couple of weeks. The ecónomy seems To have ground To a halt and elecciones are not for another 3 years or so.

Glad the school is dealing with the bullying and I hope things improve for DD.

Spotty hope you have a lovely time with your friend.

unescorted hope the cycle race went Well and DS enjoyed it.

Will update later after shopping.

If like to join, as I've recently had a realisation in my life - if I don't stop buying Handbags, I will end up with no deposit fund but I wardrobe full of designer handbags!

I currently live with my parents - so no bills apart from phone £50.00 & have been putting all my wages minus phone bill away. So around £1,000.00 & living off my tax credits so around £80.00 each week.

Though, I'm desperate to stop smoking! So that's £50 per week & then I'm struggling with lunches at work?
Anyone have any cheap, yummy ideas?

I've also been on the EBay train & have very easily made about £20, which will pay for conditioner as I have ran out!

ARRGGHHHH I've spent loads today. My groceries hasn't come off my figures yet coz it's not left the bank but I went to Iceland for two packs of Slimming World sausages and ended up spending £21.50. I did get 3 ready meals and 3 lots of sausages (6 in a pack) but also got some frozen fruit and apples and pears.

(This is on top of the £53 my Morrisons delivery yesterday came to..)

(and the £36+ I spent IN Morrisons in-store today).

My friend is doing a bake sale on Tuesday at work and has asked me if I would donate something. I'm not much of a baker but I make a mean malteser fridge cake so I said I'd do that. However I kind of forgot about how expensive it is to make! I worked out £7.42 and she'll be lucky to get 12 small squares from it.

I also fancied making a mint aero cheesecake I had seen a recipe for, and also wanted to do some chocolate chip muffins (for us, not the bake sale). I had no baking ingredients in at all so I spent £15.31 (EEEKKKKK) just on ingredients. It smells lovely, hope it tastes as good. It will be a nice dessert tomorrow after stew and dumplings for tea.

Then I spent £13+ on groceries and pepsi-max just for my slimming world friendly stuff. I think I'll be hard pushed to come in under budget this month if I am trying to follow Slimming World.

Also spent £9+ in the chemists and £8+ on cards.

Shouldn't need to spend much this week though.

Car doesn't have anything wrong with it according to the mechanic so that's good, means my emergency savings are still intact.

Bank: £1145.20 (was £1176.19)
Purse: £22.32 (was £40.04)
Jar: £14.35 (was £14.35)

Grand Total: £1181.87
Reduced by: £48.71
Days to payday: 32
Buffer money: £103.98
Proper Savings: £794.29

Spends:
£9.39 – Chemists
£8.33 – Cards (x 7)
£10.00 – DH
£10.00 – Petrol
£10.00 – DH (Haircut, collection into a birthday at work. Not sure why I have to pay for this but I can't be arsed arguing)
£0.99 – Amazon Kindle book

Aldi shop £33. Woo hoo. Still have meat from the butchers we went to 2 weeks back so didn't get meat. Did get some new gym bags for the children, frozen and cars! £2.99 each from Aldi. Got a spare frozen one which may be good for a present for a random little girl.

Lemon drizzle cake in oven. Defrosting chicken and mince meat. Will maybe bulk out the mince to make both a chilli and a lasagne or something... Not sure what to do with the chicken just yet. Will prob stir fry a couple of breasts and then something else.

Was thinking of making pizza for tonight too.

I've 2.5 hr to get all this done, sort of!

I was hoping for a nsd but I've ended up taking kids to soft play because youngest one was just a ball of energy and needed to run it off. Elder one had a friend over so had to pay for her too obviously, so I'm £15 poorer now.

Weekly shop came in at €31.26, so a fraction over budget, but it included non-budgeted for cat food, so that's ok.

I was away for work this week (in England) and bought a couple of presents for the DCs, but it doesn't count as it's money I already had left over from Christmas, and it's not €, so couldn't use it here anyway. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

5yo DD wanted some bits and pieces for her baby at the shop today, she had €3 of her money with her and ended up buying a real baby's bottle (worked out cheaper than the toy ones), which gave me an idea. When we got home, I dug out one of her old bibs and some washable nappies which I hadn't got round to passing on, so she has lots of "new toys" for nothing.

I'm hoping to have a no spend week, all the food is in, meals planned, no bills to pay, car still has half a tank of petrol. Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong.

13 days to payday, €25 remaining. Next week I may have to get round to making meals with the disgusting intant mash lurking at the back of the cupboard.

Can't remember who it was now but a couple of frugaleers persuaded me to try freezing bechamel - THANK YOU! I just used a defrosted bag of it. Looked a bit odd while reheating but once it was hot enough it was fine and it was absolutely as good as fresh and SO much easier from now on I will always cook it in bulk and freeze a few bags of it! :o

Good idea LaChatte I will keep an eye out for any lurking baby stuff and give it to DCs for their dolls!

Yikes! have just blown the budget on a pub lunch.. £88 for parents bro and DH . They over today and was reminded that we hadnt gone out to 'celebrate' DH and DF birthday a few weeks ago ,and this being the first time weve been able to meet since.. but hopefuly my brother will pay half ( he says he will send me the cash .. hope he does ) ..

Been working today, was very busy so am tired now!

Wasn't very organised and didn't take any food or drinks with me, that was rather silly. Normally when I work a wend I pop into my mums for lunch but she was away today, anyhow that meant £2.40 in the bakery on tea, flapjack and a bottle of water. Then later another similar amount on fanta, crisps and a bar of chocolate this afternoon in my defence I was eating literally on the run between visits and needed the sugar!!

Picked dd up from my brother and sil and discovered she has been peeing every 5 mins all afternoon, looks like another UTI she gets them from time to time. Have an appointment at OOHs at 9pm so need to try and stay awake till then!!

Oh and also gave my brother and sil £10 to take dd to indoor play area this morning and for lunch.

Oh my goodness, I went to Lidl for the first time today, it's amazing! We often use Aldi but don't have a Lidl close by but we pass one on the way to my mum's so we decided to try it today. We spent £58 but that included flowers for mothers day and a few treats like olives, croissants and chocolate plus we stocked up on things like cereals and flours for baking so I thought that was a good price. I think I like it more than Aldi as there were more treat type things and the fruit and veg looked great. Might be worth a trip more often!
Also spent £11 on fish n chips lunch for everyone and £26.50 on having my hair cut.
Tomorrow we are going to try and get new mobile phones as mine is on its way out and we have a joint contract. DH needs new work trousers but we have an M&S gift card towards them and we need to get DD something for her birthday. She will be one. Going to get Megablocks as she enjoys playing with her friend's but no idea what else

Cheap tomato pizza:
150g flour 7.5p
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp curry powder (optional)
100g lukewarm water
10g fresh yeast 3p (free from Asda)
25g sunflower oil from s-d-tomatoes ( free)

Topping:
Half a tin of tomatoes, reduced, with a tsp soya sauce and dried herbs - 20p
One sliced mushroom and tomato - 10p(?)
A little Roasted red pepper - 10p
3 s-d-tomatoes, chopped - 20p (optional)
A sprinkle of nutritional yeast (nooch) and oregano - pennies

So, this pizza cost about 70p. I had half of it with half a dozen or so potato wedges.