August Frugaleers Part II

[PeoniesforMissAnnersley]

Thought I would start a new one since the old one is full!

Who the heck is Jeffrey and what happened at mn that's got to do with Jeffrey?!

candy That must be very hard for you? Stretching the finances is tough, and I still don't budget well for all the extra expense of summer holidays and uniform requirements.

at cock and collect.

I collected some clothes that needed altering, which cost £14. And spent £8 in Aldi, all on soft fruit. We are soft fruit bats, and I can hardly begrudge the DC eating so much fruit.

I have got a loose menu plan too.

Tonight is smoked mackerel risotto with spinach and mushroom.
Wednesday - chicken curry with squash and spring greens.
Thursday - pasta with pesto, mushrooms.
Friday - cheesy pasta bake.
Saturday - stuffed tacos and salad.
Sunday - at DF's for our meal.

Got enough carrots to make carrot and coriander soup for lunches and I don't need a supermarket shop this week either.

Candy

As long as you've got food and petrol, thats the main thing. Any utility companies owe you money?. You might be in credit as it's the summer quarter.

I will always think of it as cock and collect now.

www.organizedhome.com/printable Free printable shopping lists and store cupboard/freezer inventorys. We used to use them years ago on here.

Spotty Has he plumbed the dw in yet?. O2 priority app has some ASK offers on it.

£2.83 on an led bulb for the new lamp. Only 3 fittings left now with CFL bulbs .

Frugal win. I used my new 1.5l slow cooker today to heat my lunch up, it's like a flipping miniature furnace! it took half an hour to heat up a ragu and cheese concoction. It will save me loads compared to putting the hob on. £10 in morrisons.

Free Schwarz spice mixes in sainsburys from Quidco clicksnap Obviously if your o/h has an account you buy two on separate receipts and get two free. It's on the checkoutsmart app too but they make you reach £5 before they pay out, so potentially 4 free. They're good for jazzing up cheap meat.

That's why we're going there fluffy

Haha no he hasn't. He has sanded and sugar soaped all the walls though

at Cock and collect .. ill have to go to sainsburys more often

It beats my collegues 'Dear Sir or Madman letter' he sent out a while ago ..

Ipsos we are on Isle of Wight.. Its true that houses are much cheaper than most of the South , but jobs very are much fewer! ... Im fortunate in that I have managed to find a decent job in my field but it pays a heck of a lot less than my old one did on the mainland, (and DH works away all week)..

Candy that is hard, and the Christmas decorations are a swizz. Have you had a go at making salt dough and painting it instead? Or buying calendar pads and making personalised calendars from hand prints or foot prints? Still lots of fun but pence not pounds.

I grew up poor, summers must have been hard for my mum. She asked us to write lists of things we wanted to do over the holidays bearing in mind most of them had to be free. I remember always having brass cleaning on my list! I loved the satisfaction of cleaning brass, it was a nice activity and a job she didn't have to do! We did a lot of scavenger hunts and games of pub cricket. Picnics were frequent, best if somewhere we could walk to and we would just eat what we would have had at home!

Any loyalty points you can spend? Free activities run by the council?

You're a more tolerant woman than me.

Does he need parts?.

Yep. Single socket needs changing to a double as do the water and waste pipes. He's hoping his boss has some or will get them so we don't have to pay. Plus he needs to put new worktop on(and paint and tile)

Has he got an ETA for you?

It must be sitting there all white and shiny and lonely

There's a rumour on hotukdeals that tesco daisy powder is being sold off half price. I will be investigating tomorrow.

Nope. It's whenever his boss has time to help and he's pretty useless. I'll just be happy if it's done before Christmas

I have £125 for London tomorrow I hope it's enough. Really don't want to spend more than £100.

NK5 I saw an offer on my work emails today I think it was groupon, but I didn't pay much attention.

£5 fir slimming world, didn't lose this week, so
I need to meal plan for next week. I also need to defrost the freezer (tomorrow evening) so I can see what I have and what I need. Defrosting bolognaise and going to cook pasta for tomorrow's lunch.

£42 online at the Entertainer, including 3 Christmas presents for DD1, plus 3 birthday presents and some stocking fillers (or maybe a couple will be little birthday presents for DD2)

Phew! Managed to log back in at long last and had to re-set my password. I hope this hacking business is over now .

Right, today's spends-
£2.96 Wilkos.
£ 8.30 travel (I had to collect DS, after his holiday).
£ 3.80 Costa, whilst waiting at the station for DS.

Oh and my Sainsburys delivery came, so that came to £53.30.

Can i join in here? I just checked my bank account and nearly fainted . NCd for the sake of privacy. I definitely need to spend less, at the moment I have nothing coming in at all and bank account is under £50. My husband gives me money but I am really uncomfortable with this (it isn't usual for us ) and he spends next to nothing on himself so I end up feeling guilty. Most of what I have spent in the past week is clothes for self and DS (essential for DS, not for me) and supermarket shops. Aim is to spend nothing till the end of the week, and from then on to be much more frugal.
My big expense is having coffees out. I work from home (it's the kind of job where you do loads on spec before getting paid) and home is a very small flat so I just tend to go out to a cafe to get some human company and not have to work in bed just to get out of earshot of the washing machine. No more coffees this week is my goal!

I made Jack Monroe's 10p carrot, cumin, and kidney bean burgers tonight - they were pretty good . I think someone mentioned them earlier on in the thread, something about freezing uncooked patties, then oven baking them?

I mucked up the 10p thing by using Waitrose kidney beans , but they must have still been pretty cheap.

Also can i ask a question for future planning - what do you think a reasonable average weekly spend would be for 2 adults and one pre-school child? I mean food and household stuff like loo roll. Nappies worn at night by the pre-schooler but not in the day.

Hi john . Knock the coffees on the head . How much do you spend per week at the moment?

Hello john and welcome! We are a friendly and supportive bunch and there's a lot of good advice!

I'd say an average spend for 2 adults and nappy wearing child would be around £40-50 at an Aldi. We spend around that for 2 adults and 2 children 7 and 4. No nappies. The nappies at Aldi are v cheap and good quality. First child we used pampers. Second child was mostly Aldis. It was fine.

I also budget say monthly bigger items like rice (I'm Asian) and other things you might have to have like vitamins and shampoo, stuff like that. Having said that I have lots of little bottles of stuff I take from hotels etc so I'm using all that up now. Presents that friends give me, even if it's posher than normal, I'll use them. Otherwise it just goes to waste.

Frugal fail again. More clothes for me as have accepted the fact that I'm a 10. £49 at Sainsburys for clothes but that included 5 vest tops and 2 t shirts. All plain and things for now or layering. I'm sick of tops riding over the belly. A shower resistant jacket for ds, underpants for ds, ballet tights for dd and a Cinderella dress for dd which will be her birthday present.

£6.40 for Pilates class.

Welcome imonlydancing - good mini goal to get you started.

Oh how I have laughed at 'cock and collect' in fact I just had to do a blummin password reset too and it inspired my new one! I am off to search for slow cooked porn!

?56.50 on petrol and road toll. Other than that a cheap day out picnicking in the sun. I have however just booked a return ferry to France for a long weekend in October - ?198 return (ouch) but its to visit family who have relocated - kind of a duty visit.

I want to get some more Tupperware for the freezer. What capacity would you get for freezing portions for two adults and one small child? (Eg soup or chilli) Ikea have some lovely glass ones with plastic lids which come in 0.4l, 0.8l or 1.5l.

Another busy day gardening so only just managed to catch up - great thread by the way
£25 at Tesco for dog food (luckily he likes Wagg beef and veg and they had 17 kg bag for £11.99), cat food, bananas, apples, double cream, butter and squash. Also bought a coat and socks for dd and shirts for ds online with my double up vouchers so only had to pay £2
Ham, mushroom, pea and sweetcorn pastabake for dinner and apple and blackberry crumble. Dc enjoyed collecting our first blackberries. Looks like we should have lots this year - hope it doesn't mean we shall have cold winter too.

Thanks for all the advice.

We do have food and a few pounds for milk & fruit, luckily we don't really eat bread so won't need to buy that.

I've got some butternut squash that I chopped and froze so I'll take that out to defrost and make soup tomorrow lunch time. Making egg fried rice & shredded chicken for tomorrow's dinner - it's a slimming word recipe I've got, might try those carrot, kidney bean and cumin burgers as I've got those three ingredients in the cupboard.

The weather has been terrible here today, like a full blown gale. I do quite like it when autumn is on the way.

I've spent £1.50 on 6 bags of crisps today and that's it. So feeling pretty good, the pottery painting was paid for a while ago via groupon.

Taking the two youngest to the library to sign up for the reading challenge, albeit a little late, but it's free and they love to read

Thanks for the welcome and advice everyone! :)
itsall I'm ashamed to say I don't really know. Just looking at my account I seem to have spent about £50 since 14th Aug at Sainsbury's, but may have spent cash elsewhere plus I know my husband did an Aldi shop. We are in the process of setitng up a joint bank account so we can keep better tabs on it. Having an idea of what others spend is useful because I can budget if I have something to aim for, if you see what I mean. I find the real problem is time. I work a lot for someone who gets paid bugger all and though I do enjoy cooking (e.g. those burgers sound great) I find it hard to make the time for that. And man cannot live on pasta alone (except for my husband).
Anyway I just watched an old Panorama programme about Greece - that's cheered me up a bit

I need to stop going to sainsbury's for one - we do have an Aldi but it's that much further away. Considering getting one of those old lady shopping trollies on wheels...