July Frugal thread, Just chatting and saving.

[Fluffycloudland77]

Everyone welcome.

I not actually sure the package I'm on has increased it's price anyway. I might watch everything I want on it, then cancel. I can then just keep an eye on what they're adding and pay for the odd month here or there when there's enough stuff I want to watch. Last time I cancelled they sent me another free month trial to entice me back after 6 months.

Just worked out my cars £6 a day. Sobering.

Have a look at second hand spin dryers on ebay, washing dries really quickly after using them.

Just spent £120+ on tickets for comedy shows (hope to recoup £90 of that though from other people). That's made July's budget look a little bit close to the red.

£5.50 for my car but add an extra £8 a day for dh's diesel.

£16 on breakfast and £9 on paint testers.

Thanks the fall wasn't too bad I mainly slid/bounced

Ooh. they sound lovely collie. Might try that this week.

I've been impressed with how cheap some of tesco's fruit and veg is this week. I think I need to stop shopping in the town centre one and start using the city centre one or the out of town one.

Afternoon All

Have never thought properly about how much my car costs to run . DH has a car through his business which we try to use as much as possible, so mine is for school/runs, local use. Will think about that one this afternoon.

This talk about tv has also got me fired up. We have to have a sky aerial cos the broadband here is so appalling. Made fatal error of getting TalkTalk tv a few years ago which was a total joke, partly because it relies on broadband. Anyhoo we pay about £20 to Sky purely for tv but am now wondering what our options are. Frankly we only watch free to view channels and don't have any extras (much to DCs disgust). If we want to watch a decent film we end up paying extra anyway for Box Office.
Could we shelve the package completely but still watch fee channels through the aerial/box?

Are there other options we haven't considered that don't need to use broadband?

Hi all, had a good time at my dads wifes 60th bday last night, was fun. There was a bar but only spent £4.50 there, petrol on way home was £30 ish and did a quick weekly shop at Sainsburys for £52, had £6 off in vouchers so actual spend £46 which was pretty good considering I got a lot for that!!

Pay day tomos

Bought us a cooked chicked for lunch will thrown a roast together when I can be bothered in a mo.

You can use the dish to watch freesat, which will just give you the free to air channels.

Friend has just got now TV and is raving about it. Not sure how that works but must be cheaper than sky. I think you can add entertainment and sport packages either as a one off or as a subscription package.

I can barely keep up with this thread so I've started another on this board about batch cooking/freezing! Doing our plan and shopping list now. :)

sadly Rafa, think free sat may be our only option as Now TV requires broadband

Five full minutes of blow drying and dds hair is still not dry! I've given up!

Thanks Ipsos. I agree about the offering of tv programmes. The only non freeview programme I really watch is Comedy Central re-runs of Sex & the City (& I already have the dvd boxset FFS!). Think the only channel DH may miss is Sky1 but don't really think he is that bothered.

Will speak to DH and get him to consider cancelling sky.

For some reason I can't get a digital signal in this flat and I'm not allowed to fit a dish. I didn't watch any TV for a couple of years and since I've had broadband I've only watched catchup. Even with Netflix, I watch so much less TV now I can't watch it live.

Wow the lousy weather seems to be resulting in much mumsnetting!! Can't keep up.

We've been away staying with friends for a couple of nights which was lovely. It was a bit more spendy than I'd have liked but well worth it. I think we've found a car to replace mine but it's going to cost £1800 which is £300 more than my original top budget. However it seems good and has a new clutch/gearbox, plus we know the man who we're buying from so I know he wouldn't sell us anything dodgy. Despite that of course buying secondhand is always risky to some extent.

I am terrible at using all of batch cooking. I made shepherd's pie topped with cauliflower cheese on Tues and we only ate half of it then forgot and left it in the oven, where it went off. I also managed to chip the Pyrex dish and ate a splinter of glass which cut my tongue, so we were a bit wary of the rest. However, we frequently do this with batch cooking (let it go off, not get glass in it!) and I need to get better at freezing portions properly.

Collie what else have you got in the cupboards? Pasta? Or else beans on toast?!

Weather rubbish here as well, dd came home with instructions on how to make a model cat. I hadn't paid much attention to it until she started asking for flour and salt!! I now have no flour and half a bottle of salt but it has kept dd occupied on a rainy day so not a total loss

I don't have any 'extra' channels and we manage alright, the more channels you have the more rubbish there is to watch I reckon!

Might take dd to watch Inside Out tomos as think it looks good.

Sorry, I meant to introduce myself! I've been lurking for a while. Essentially, DH and I always spend slightly more than we have, we have no savings and £3000 credit card debt. It doesn't seem to matter what our income is - we actually did better when I was on SMP because we watched it all the time!

We spent all our money by the 15th of the month and have been scraping by ever since. DH got a partial refund for the broken TV so we've got a little money to get us through til payday (which is Wed). We thought enough's enough and the new leaf is starting now. I downloaded Good Budget and we've been filling in all our transactions. We're now down to £42 and I think the electricity bill will come off on Monday (£38), but on the plus side we have lots of food and diesel and we can make it to Wednesday now.

Please can I join this thread? I need it!