Marvelous Frugaleers - May the Money Magic Continue into June

[Unescorted]

Just setting up the new thread for the chatty Frugaleers.

By popular request - copied from January

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/other_subjects/1324074-For-those-who-cant-afford-to-use-central-heating-this-year-How-are-you-going-to-cope

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1543785-your-top-tips-for-money-saving-and-a-more-frugal-life

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1600030-Small-money-saving-habits-petty-even

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1628874-Gas-Elec-Bills-monthly-and-SKY-so-angry

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/1911061-NO-MORE-COLD-MUMSNETTERS

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2209167-Slow-Cookers-are-shit

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2224969-saving-money

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_money_matters/2258202-Debt-mutual-support-thread-number-6-start-the-new-year-with-a-clear-purpose-and-keep-moving-forwards-even-by-tiny-steps?

orchard.tesco.com/ Sign up to this.

www.topcashback.co.uk/home And this.

www.quidco.com/home/ And this

www.moneysavingexpert.com/ And this

www.moneysavingexpert.com/cheapenergyclub ditto.

www.checkoutsmart.com/ Plus this.

www.hotukdeals.com/all/deals/new?page=3 Check this daily.

So spent 15£ in pharmacy on ibru, iron drops and d drops for dd. and 2£ on a sandbox toy for dd. my dad made her a sandbox out of old wood, it's really cool with seats
Spent also 25£ on books for my dad for dads day gift
I'm trying to find sleeping bags for dd, but all here are so damn expensive... Really missing primark and tesco lol

Girlie Do you use LED light bulbs? I know CFL bulbs run for hours for pennies but LED run for 90% less pennies. I said to a family member they should get some but they said they don't "use the lights"

When we moved in here we used 10 units of electric a day yes I'm sad enough to have logged it and now with the halogen oven and the light bulbs all being changed (mostly to fittings with 3 or 4 led bulbs) it's 5 units a day.

If you are on a tariff with exit fees you can start to switch to a new one 49 days before the tariff ends with no penalties. They don't publicise it though.

You can wash at much less than 30 too, I wash clothes on cold.

I spoke to the insurance company today, we do have fridge/freezer cover. Based on their "how many drawers spdoes your freezer have?" Estimation tool, they gave offered £150, but we have a £200 excess! I expect the content of fridge and freezer are worth more than £150, so tonight I have to transcribe the list of checked contents from my notebook into a spreadsheet.

They have asked for evidence of costs where possible. Since I shop online quite a lot, I have printed my Tesco order confirmations which have the prices. Won't cover everything, but hopefully enough to show the sort of stuff we buy regularly.

Today would gave been NSD, but school dinners to pay for, (£119) plus visiting drummer (£3) plus DS choir trip (£5) and school photos (£16.50 plus (£15.50).

Now also need to look for a new fridge freezer

Woodburner

Dh said no to wood burners

Audit is it worth it to claim? I messed up with the contents insurance, £250 excess. £150 for buildings I obviously didn't check it but I will be doing so this year.

fluffy I use the long life lightbulbs - which ones are they?

Will have a look on uswitch to see if can get cheaper although at the moment I owe money on the electric so am guessing would have to pay that off before I could leave anyway?

It doesn't help that I am not very techy savy so my friend was explaining to me how she got her sim card for her mobile from BT and is now paying £12 a month but I got all confused about how you can do that!! I am currently on a contract phone but the contract has come to an end, do I keep the phone now? think will go and ask in the EE shop where I took the original phone from.

My friend also pays a lot less for her water (on a meter) and BB and gas and electric don't think it helps that I live in an oldish flat that is just not efficient in fuel or water.

I wash the majority of washing on 30 but I am a nurse so do wash my uniforms on a 40 to kill of any bugs! In theory I am meant to wash them on a 60 but can't afford that and don't appear to have infected anyone yet so am happy that 40 is good enough.

Paid £1480 for Disney Paris for 4 days in August for 2 adults, 2 children. Half board. Please tell me that's ok. £246 for Eurostar for 4, return.

£45 at dentist on Monday. Today, £36 for cleaner, and £36 at sainsburys. We never do a top up shop but we got the mini milk trial for mumsnet and whilst there, I got stuff that I couldn't get from Aldi. So yay, free 12 lollies...!

Fluffy you inspired me to check my own electricity bills to see how many units per day I use, and whether changing to LCD bulbs from January this year had made any difference. Last year I was using 20 units per day in April and this year I have used 16 per day - maybe the LCD bulbs are playing a part in this reduction of 4 units per day? I only have normal bulbs in three fittings now and I have 13 light fittings throughout the house as I have waited until they've blown and replaced with LCD. 4 units per day at approx 11p per unit x 31 days is a saving of £14 a month! No, that can't be right surely?

How on earth do you only use 5 units per day? Mind you, we have everything on standby and are still using our electric fan heater quite a bit.

I'm up to £2.50 on coin sweeps now - I'm just coin sweeping to a round figure from my bank account as I was getting confused.

And I forced myself to take a tin of soup for lunch today rather than buy a sandwich from the vendor who comes to work.

NK I think that's really good

spendy day ..
£13. in Co op but i got 4x 440g packs of lamb leg steaks reduced and a few other bits and bobs .. so I think thats a good deal

Early dinner in a fab italian =-type place with DS for his birthday.. I had a lovely marinaded rare beef salad ( lowcarbing) and fizzy water and he had a huge h/m salami pepper olive pizza and beer .. plus salad and more olives to share .. it was £37 inc tip.. but definately worth it

Laska that salad sounds amazing! (As does the pizza lol!)

ipsos can you use those compacted paper logs in a wood burner? We just have a normal open fire. When we opened it up last autumn the newspaper blocking it was from 1991! We had dangerous ancient back boiler removed, imagine what we'd save on heating oil though if there was still one there

We are the worst for things on standby. Must try harder!

The trip to Disney will be wonderful :) do regret not making more of the euro star when we lived in London. We were planning a small holiday but with the car that has been shelved. Mum and dad lending us their caravan for a week in a few weeks time though (we live about 30 mins from the beach) so taking the kids down for a weeks holiday, the June heat wave had better materialise! Even if it's colder sure it's nice and free lol x

That's a real pisser about the freezer audit I'd be so upset to waste all that food.
NSD here - two in a row!

Bantam It's possible the lightbulbs made the difference. If nothing else has changed. I think lighting is underestimated, it's something you have on for hours a day, they get left on by accident.

Girlie Ledhut.co.uk is good for bulbs, you can get discount codes online for 25-30% off plus you can get cashback off topcashback and quidco. Also the aldi bulbs I bought last year are good. Ikea do them very reasonably too. It's just that not everyone has an Ikea down the road.

Normal energy savers are the Compact Fluroescent lights, they use 8-20 watts. LED ones use 1.5-10 watts.

Buying them cheaply is the key though.

I only keep the useage so low because we lived in a tiny flat years ago on a complicated tariff and would get bills of £900-1200 for a quarter. We both worked full time so we knew we didn't use loads. I would open bills and cry. They would say be very resistant to the idea the meter reading could possibly be wrong but in the end admitted the meter readers equipment couldn't take the numbers for an E10 tariff.

Nothing is left on standby here, I see it as depriving the suppliers of as much money as possible.

Microwaves just packed up. I bet I cant find the flipping receipt for it now.

peppa just sent you a huge message on YNAB ! if you want to pm me your email i can send the word doc..

yes Audit i think id actually cry losing all that food.. ours is old and cranky so after reading about yours ill be running my freezer right down before we go away , this time, (well use up most of those lamb steaks this weekend i think as family over for lunch on Saturday)

Thanks everyone. I don't know if it's worth claiming, I have to do the maths and find out. I have the list of what we threw away, and I printed the last few months of Tesco order emails which show the prices. I need to set up a spreadsheet so I can then cross reference (been an auditor too long!) from the spreadsheet to the emailed prices. Then I can see if worth claiming. The insurance company have taken details and left me to go back with details.

Frozen pizza for dinner (from the other freezer!)

We have Which too thanks Ipsos, the Samsung ones look good. DH is saying he would prefer a separate fridge and freezer, so only one dies at a time! The only good thing is that I need to do the cash back claim for our health insurance. I think I'm due back £150 for my contact lenses, £150 for the dentist and about £70 for DD1's glasses. So that will help with the cost of replacement. DH is due back about £150 for dentist and £200 from his knee op.

Today I somehow managed To spend £35 on not very much. Also Spent £6 on a treat for DDs before I saw the size of the shopping list for art materials.

Can't catch up properly tonight but North we are Due To move early July but it looks like it's Possibly going pear shaped.

Sorry to hear about your freezer audit... It's horrid! We have a separate fridge and freezer not by planning just by coincidence. Friends of ours left for Boston and sold us their ginormous fridge for little money and threw in a dishwasher too... So we went with that. And when we re did our kitchen, we bought the freezer.

Thanks spotty for reassurance! It's mad the prices though. I now have to fork out for summer camp. Argh. It's going to cost me £300 for 1 week for 2 kids. Mad. If we could we would be outta here in a caravan somewhere! Sometimes I wonder whether it would make more sense taking no pay leave in the holidays. It just seems mad...

Should be Nsd.

What sort of things do they do at summer camp? We don't have anything like that here I don't think. It would be nice to retire to the med every summer holidays wouldn't it

Got a lot of catching up to do with the thread but remembered someone on here likes converse and money saving expert email today mentioned them for £19!!! Just wanted to share :-)