Manic Money Monitoring March continues

[lilacclery]

First time doing the thread! Feel very important

Wages were up last week & down this week but I wasn't spendy so accounts look ok.

Yesterday & today are nsd as will tomo & Fri too hopefully. Away at weekend so food out is essential, dinner & acccommodation for sat & breakfast Sun morn is already paid in advance.

Will fill in spends from last Fri to Mon later
peonies I'm reading Marie kondo at the moment

Thanks for the new thread lilac

I'm on day 1 of a week off work (using up annual leave) which couldn't have come at a better time. Dh and I have both been ill and so nothing much has been done in the house. I'm still tired but at least with a week at home I should be able to catch up a bit and rest in between. I'm starting 6 weeks of antibiotics tomorrow so hoping that makes a difference too. Things at school seem to have improved for dd which is a huge relief. We were considering moving her for Y6 but hopefully it won't come to that.

I've just been catching up on the other thread...........
audit sorry to hear about your ds' issues, hope you get support from the school.
spotty well done on avoiding the chocolate. Need the London on a budget thread looks great. I've tagged it so I can read it properly later.

My frugal things for the week ahead:
Switching to a cheaper utilities tariff as it's a while since we did
Using up a load of floppy veg which has accumulated while we've been ill
Lots of batch cooking so that we can eat well over the next few weeks without spending a fortune
Finishing off our declutter and hopefully being able to sell some of the things we're offloading

Will see how I get on!

Thanks lilac.

I've been doing my online shop to be delivered Saturday and it's £77 not sure I can get it much cheaper? £7.50 is a big pack of nappies. Maybe I need to potty train?!

How wasteful, there were two more posts left on the other thread!!

Ok, so far we've managed to do pretty well this month, spending very little. Mainly because we had to; we began the month at -700€ due to totally forseeable unfortunate circumstances. We get paid on Friday and our account it still in the black.

I've already totted up how much money will be going out of our account automatically, and it comes to a whopping 2660€ (that covers all DD and outstanding cheques).

I don't want to spend massive amounts on food, but I don't want to have to be as frugal as in March either. We both need to fill our car's tanks up for the month. We don't need anything else, but will have to buy a couple of little presents. I quite like the idea of a personal spending bugdet too for DH and I (possibly a little something for the DCs too - they get a monthly amount put into their saving account, but don't have any pocket money as such). As it's going to be Easter holidays for 2 of the 4 weeks, I think we should have some money put aside for that, not forgetting that Easter = chocolate by the shed load .

€2660 = Direct debit/cheques
€450 = groceries
€100 = petrol
€30 = gifts
€50 = me
€50 = DH
€10 = DS
€10 = DD
€100 = family activities
€30 = Easter chocolate

Total spending for April = €3490

Our average income/month is €3800

I might just be able to squirell away €300 this month without forcing my family to live off lentils, potatoes and pasta all month

*I secretly put €400 aside as soon as we were paid at the beginning of March, without telling DH or the DCs We could have spent more on food, but we ended up eating pretty well overall.

DH has just started mumbling about needing a new computer, arghhh!

Tell him no lachatte!

Our 15yo laptop finally died so we bought a new one wwith windows 8. Got a good deal but the way it works is a pain in the arse.

He's saying it's really old and not working properly anymore. He's not even had it 6 six years.

Maybe he can start saving his monthly €50 for a new one

Lachatte

My DH says same every time he uses ours but I don't care! It works!

I ve been missing most of this month still keeping track of all spends but not had time to post cause a major stressor in the family. Things will hopefully settled. But I have realised this week that things are going to be very tight for next few months! If we are to reach some of our goals.

DH and I have our own PCs as we need them for work (both teachers) and it just wouldn't be practical to share. Admittedly his is a bit shit and miss, but once it's up and running it seems to function well enough.
I got mine very recently (about 4 months ago) as I was fed up of trying to type things on my tablet and my old PC had been out of action for ages (bought in 2004), and since then I think he's been having new-PC-envy.

HIT and miss

Thanks for the new thread lilac!

So I fell off this one for a few days, has been really busy so not been able to post. Not been hugely spendy, Sunday was NSD, Monday NSD, yesterday £2 on tuna for tea then £3.34 on lunch which I can claim back.

2 days agency work plus 3 days freelance work plus more coming in, seems it could be a busy time for me. So I will have quite a bit more coming in. We should claim tax credits I suppose but I'm not sure how it would work out with my income being so up and down and don't want to end up owing them money. Does anyone know how it works with a mix of self-employed and agency work?

Determined to save as much as possible from now on so we may have a chance at a holiday later in the year. DH also frantically in frugal mode. I have just started a month of no alcohol for diet reasons primarily (ie. it was making me fat!) so that will cut costs as well and if we do go on holiday hopefully I'll look better as well.

Hoping to also have a frugal Easter and try and find some free things to do with DS. Is it this week with the Aldi voucher in the Mirror does anyone know?

Ha ha LaChatte!!!!

Racking brain for ideas for the easter break. Hope it's dry and sunny so we can do the park instead of soft play. ...

All hail the mighty lilaclery, ruler of the thread! :o

Here I am with my new namechange. Not been very frugal lately...

Pass have you got a city farm or something anywhere near you? We go down a lot one near us, it's free because it's a charity and it keeps DS amused for ages.

I've just been trawling trough Pinterest looking for ideas for tomorrow's lunchtime craft club at school (I animate it, with a budget of 0€ ) and have come up with loads of ideas to keep 5yo DD busy too (not so much 12yo DS, hey ho).

I think I typed "Easter crafts" in the search bar, if anyone else is looking for inspiration.

Blimey, this 2 threads a month thing is becoming a habit

Thanks for the new thread Lilac

North hope you and DH both feel better very soon.

Just paid for a month of Pilates, £60. Also crap stuff for a shared snack in school £3. I've stopped buying buscuits etc because DD1 will scoff the lot can't think where she gets that from so it's a Pain when their classmates tell them at 10pm they need to bring X for the next day .

girlie do you mind if I ask how you do your oat cakes please? I've tried but they weren't brilliant.

Just joining. Will catch up later. In a meeting now. Boring.

I am about to cash in an old savings fund - we are in 'rainy day mode'. Very unhappy about that, but at least we squirreled a bit away when we had it eh? Blah.

Need to find some cheap/free exercise which will motivate my fat behind. I used to do Pilates but classes are almost £6, and I cant really justify going twice a week.

Housework makes for great excercise, with the added bonus of having a nice clean house at the end of it

'house-work'? What is this of which you speak?

Round here there's usually some free easter holiday stuff at the garden centre and library. We're going away for the weekend though to see my sister

It's something I only recently discovered (turns out it's not as new and fandangled as I thought), really very very efficient way of losing weight.

Oh, forgot to add, it also saves on energy bills, as you can turn the heating right down.

Welcome back captain

I'm currently pricing up exercise classes, really I should just pull out my Jillian Michaels DVD shouldn't I? I love running but am time poor at the minute & my fitness levels are too low to start back into running straight away. So its either DVD or exercise class. Class would ensure commitment but will cost money, DVD free but less commitment ! I felt FAT at wedding at weekend & as a slimming class leader this has to be resolved fast!

lachatte im in awe of you squirreling away the €400 & getting away with it, just proves you can live for less when you have to. I'm trying to cut big shop to fortnightly & ultimately monthly

I wish I could put that into savings, I don't even earn that much a month hopefully when the dc are old enough to look after themselves I can work more.

Dinner is bacon and tomato pasta with parmesan. Was going to do risotto but didn't fancy it.

I lived on a very low income for years when DS was a baby and I was a single, unemployed mum. I put away 10€ a month for DS and managed to save up quite a bit over the years (I also put any birthday or Christmas money he got into the same accout). Didn't manage to save a penny for myself though back then

Our problem now is that we've accumulated lots of little debts, combined with the mortgage and all the other stuff we have to pay for that it all adds up considerably.

Basically we went from being quite hard up (me a mum/student and then DP a student) to suddenly both earning a decent salary, and having no idea about budgeting. Hindsight's a bitch.

Oh and DH is currently re-negotiating our mortgage (interest rates are waaaaay lower than when we took ours out). Today he went to a different bank and asked them for a quote (as our bank weren't particularly interested in changing our current mortgage), he came away with a brilliant offer, so that's looking promising (we'd have similar monthly repayments, but over a considerably shorter period).