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

Right so did o.kay ish at Morrisons!!

Just working it out so in total I spent £87

However £8 of that was shopping for my mum and I got a total of £15 off in vouchers! So actually I have only spent £64 which is much more sensible Plus my freezer and cupboards are now full so should last all of Easter hols and then some.....

Adora we have a pot full of coppers should definitely use it!

Good for you, Spotty.

NSD.

Just checked my online account, the pet insurance people have paid up £370 has gone in, fantastic! Have put £340 straight back into savings as I think that is how much I took out to cover girlie cats op, which has left me with a grand total of £30 in my account.

Thank God it is pay day tomorrow.

If anyone has pets I would strongly recommend Argos pet insurance, have only paid in £12 so to get such a large pay out has already made it pay for it's self!

Other spends today 90p parking and £1.20 on a local paper.

Should be a cheap wend packing for our holiday on Monday, can't wait

You & dd must be so excited for your holidays girlie

Blimey. Few days away from the thread and you all chat like loons

I thought the London thread was brilliant, glad you guys like it, great source of information, folk were really kind to post all that stuff.

Well ladies, I have chickens, two of them. I love them, they are fab. One has laid an egg already! Ddog1 would like to eat them but ddog2 couldn't care less. I have already ordered an run extension, so I will be able to have another chicken!

Spends today was £30 at the beautician on 2 lots of vouchers for friends birthdays, and £10 at the feed shop (dog treats and grit for chickens)

girlie Petplan is good for insurance in that the vets claim direct, so you don't have to find the money.

Also £66 Morrisons delivery, cross with myself as my basket must have contained 2 lots of washing tablets (on offer), which I didn't need. I know they don't exactly go off, but unneeded spends.

Will post again my frugal wins and fails for last months money.

Nsd.

Girlie I've forgotten where you're going?

So, I was within disposable income in March, without accounting for any dividend, which is my remit and goal I set myself.

Frugal wins - paying more off than needed for DD's ski trip. Paying £100 deposit for a Maths trip for DS at short notice. Covering a large service bill for DH's car, out of my 'pot' for car expenses. Covering the cost of decorating using another of my budgeted 'pots'. Saving to a high interest account and ISA. ISA is long term saving as I will realistically have 2 kids at University in the foreseeable future.

Frugal fails - over budget on food, needed the Xmas '15 'pot' to cover the deposit for DS.

I really hope you have a lovely holiday girlie, who's having the cats?. Argos insurance noted .

Chickens . Dh won't let me have chickens, I wanted rescue chickens. Granted we don't have the space & the cat would be a constant threat but I had chicken optimism and he stomped all over it.

Audit, email yodels ceo & complain. I do it all the time. I've had £30 bank charges refunded & two free plants worth £35 this week from complaining. The plants thing was yodel too.

98p on food bags & earl grey in Homebargains.

£3.50 on squash and Waldorf salad in Sainsbos.

£7 cat food, chips & body lotion in aldi.

There's a mobile app called "mobileXpressions", if you sign up they give you a £5 Amazon voucher after a week, I worked out that if you left it on your phone it's about £30-40 Amazon vouchers a year which I'm going to save for Christmas presents. I've just had the first £5 voucher & redeemed it straightaway in case mobileXpressions stops trading.

NSD

It slightly makes up for the fact that I opened a webpage this morning for my first class (who had asked what Hipsters were - I teach English in France). I left the page open in the background (you could see the webpage in the bar at the bottom of the screen); at half past four, as I was shutting down the PC, I noticed the name of the page: Hipsters' testicles. I had every single class today.

Spotty we are going on a Parkdean Holiday near Croyde in Devon, we will be sharing a large static caravan with my friend and her children. it works well as she is a single parent as well, so the kids have someone to play with and we have someone to chat to!! Also saves me lots of money in splitting the cost of the holiday, will take the bulk of food with us as well.

Fluffy My mum is having the cats for me, they have stayed at her house before so shouldn't be too stressful for them. Although my mum is slightly stressed at having to give girlie cat her steroids twice a day!! I have to say though girlie cat has been a in the pill taking dept, not been difficult about it at all so far

Ended up getting petrol, filled the tank up for £42 which I thought was quite good.

Oh sounds great bet it's lovely that way hope you have a great time

:o :o :o at hipsters testicles!!!

Oh my gosh. I seem to have some potential piano pupils already! I mentioned that I was thinking of doing this to some other home edding parents (I used to teach in a music school before having DCs), and a couple are very interested! :o

I have NO IDEA what to charge though. I have one possible pupil for free lessons (his mum is, amazingly, looking after my DCs once a fortnight for free while I work) and other than that I'll be looking for any skill/lesson swaps for my DCs which seems quite common in the home ed community, but generally I hope to have some regular pay-per-lesson pupils too.

How much would you be willing to pay for very casual beginner lessons? How much do formal lessons normally cost? I'm happy to charge much less than standard as I'm not technically qualified (the parents know this obviously!) but had a few years experience.

Any ideas please?

A maths trip, need? I am intrigued! Where are they going, may I ask? :) (maths addict here)

Vocal Coaching

£27 per hour
£16 per half hour

Piano lessons

£24 per hour
£12 per half hour

This is in cardiff city, by only men aloud member.

girlie and anyone else after cheaper UK beach hols with kids .. (especially if any of you are Unison members ) You might want to look at have a look at Croyde bay holiday resort

I have to say ive never been but have heard good things about it ..

£11 on the tea and butter I forgot yesterday and snacks for DD and BFF who are upstairs watching One Dircetion help me

Hope you have a great holiday girlie

is there a oned support thread on here Adora?

I remember Robbie leaving TT & all the furore over that.

well.... ive dipped (£75) into the red now, and have 5 more days until payday ..

I do have it in my savings account so it will be ok , but I think that with the having to hand over £300 in advance rent for DS new bedsit ( next week.. have the £) and after buying a set of 'care package' toiletries etc for him in Boots .... I also adopted a 'sod it' attitude to a couple of things I wanted to buy for myself ..

But its all in the budget and I only have to buy salad for the weekend (and carrots and lentils if i want to make soup ) ..

So Im hopefuly looking forward to a less stressful April ...

There probably is Fluffy, I also remember fecking News reports about Robbie leaving Take That

Glad you got DS sorted with accomodation Laska even though it did cost you lot's of money.

Hello everyone! One day, I missed ONE DAY, and there's a new thread with 70 posts on it!

Yesterday's post which I forgot to put on here:-

Bank: £378.42 (was £458.91)
Purse: £12.01 (was £13.00)
Jar: £79.45 (was £81.65)

Grand Total: £469.88
Reduced by: £83.68
Days to payday: 20
Buffer money: £103.98
Proper Savings: £574.29

Spends:
£0.99 – bread
£52.50 – petrol
£15.00 – cheque for DS1 athletics
£11.99 – some wonder cream for my eczema
£1.00 – Kindle book
£2.20 – bus fares

Today's post:-
Bank: £349.69 (was £378.42)
Purse: £0.00 (was £12.01)
Jar: £78.50 (was £79.45)

Grand Total: £428.19
Reduced by: £41.69
Days to payday: 20
Buffer money: £103.98
Proper Savings: £574.29

Spends:
£4.95 – Slimming World
£0.03 – copper over to the tin
£16.00 – Iceland
£7.98 – 2 lots of earphones (groupon offer)
£4.75 – anti-freeze
£2.00 – coke & sweets
£2.00 – sandwich at work
£1.28 – stamps
£1.00 – bread
£1.70 – bus fare

Budget looks like this: £428.19
Petrol: £156.50 // £112.50 spent // £41 remaining
Groceries: £300 // 128.87 spent // 154.13 remaining
Interest: £8.80
Bus fares & Kids activities: £19.20
My bus fare: £14.50
HSBC credit card: £12.70
Leaves for everything else....£177.86

Yikes - I'm starting to feel a bit like I am haemorrhaging money left right and centre at the moment on stuff I don't really need and there are still three weeks left to payday.

Ooh I like only men aloud! :o Thanks for info :)

I was wondering about £10 an hour but it seems like loads. I usually taught pairs so maybe if it was two siblings it could be £15 or something. Although actually for a six or seven year old I think an hour would be too much.

I have never done anything 'self employed' like this - scary!

Thankfully while DD does like 1D she has no clue about anyone leaving... she prefers the Vamps and 5SOS anyway :o

captain £10 p/hr seems to be under selling yourself?

Good day today, last payday from job that made me redundant, got couple extra weeks pay and redundancy. was v happy to see the big amount in my pay but it's all accounted for.

£18 pizza hut buffet for 2 celebrating the windfall (I know a treat eh)

£30 easter club for ds for 2 days as he begged nicely...

I'm sniggering at hipsters' testicles!
Just popped to Asda for a top-up shop and some end of term chocolate for my lovely kids at school and ended up spending 58 quid - not good! That included 3 packs of nappies (£12) and two large bottles of shower gel plus quite a lot of chocolate and my very favourite yoghurt (Yeo Valley blueberry) was 2 for £2 so I couldn't resist it!