Frugaleers Flying into the New Year All Welcome on the January Thread

[SpottyTeacakes]

New thread hopefully someone can add some old links?

Well done fuzz

I've just found £7 in change just lying about the flat. Mostly big change (50p and £1) so that's gone into the jar. But the rest has been put in purse and equivalent amount transferred to coin sweep account.

Hello, Happy New Year! Hope you are all ok.

Welcome back nanny, and welcome moopy.

How did the interview go NK?

How's DH today babs?

Lovely gift fuzz

We have BG cover, just for the boiler. It was fantastic in the old house, when we had an ancient boiler, they never missed a same day call out. Perhaps factor that in? That, in the middle of winter, when your heating a water goes, it will be fixed within 24 hours tops. Here, we have cover but it's less 'valuable' iyswim?

New Year Party was amazing, so brilliant. We had 60 people here in the end. DH did a mega playlist and the kids danced all night. Adult and kids games. Too much drinking. Last folk left at 3am, we got to bed about 4am. And left with so much booze and food! The freezer is stacked. Definitely just milk and fresh for ages.

Just leftovers today and snoozing on the sofa.

Dry January here too.

Thanks :) glad you've found some change too! I can't actually find my wallet .

We are going to keep the change in the jar anyway, try and add to it a bit more this year as it didn't really get anywhere in 2015. Just 1p 2p 5p pieces.

We made a frugal decision today, DD's friend popped round and invited her bowling. Would be a tenner. I said no, feel a bit mean but then I also don't want DD thinking money like that comes from nowhere! And I don't feel so bad since we had already marked today as a Family/Quiet Day - I got a weekly planner whiteboard for £4 in Asda the other week, and I've decided to write 'Quiet Day' on one of the magnets because we need to book those in, especially for DD's sake - she gets really frazzled and unhappy when we do too much. Booking it in/discussing it in advance seems to be helping. We are using it to fill in each Sunday and discuss the week ahead as a family. I'm planning to start using it for meal planning as well!

Afternoon all, happy new year! Lets hope 2016 is much cheaper than 2015 was (for me, anyway).

Banking all up to date. I've spent all my personal spends money already (eek).

Everyday money left: £189.20 and 13 days to payday, not too bad at all given that I haven't had my board money from DS1 yet either.

Food & Fuel money: £249.66 - we have loads of food in the freezer and just need fresh stuff, packed lunch stuff. I hope to have some leftover.

I've seen an interesting idea that I'm going to try in order to save for next Christmas (although I'll probably get bored). You start on 1st Jan with a penny in a jar (or a bank) and then pay in 2p on 2nd Jan, 3p on 3rd Jan etc etc, and apparently by the end of the year you will have £688. Maximum you end up putting away is £20 per week by December but as I'll be using it for Christmas I'll probably only do it to the end of November.

LOL that'll teach me to post before I read - I see the penny saving has already been mentioned!

Happy New Year all😊
We had a great night in with Jools Holland, we have every Xmas & New year we have been together (22 years) NSD spent husbands £3.50 on toilet roll and bread, start the year as I mean to go on😉 we had a two you walk with friends, kids, dogs, now I a. Cooking a new years lunch that will have us all asleep by 7pm.

two hour walk, stoooopid auto correct**(not my sausage fingers)

:o I'm really excited about doing the challenge. I actually couldn't believe it added up to that much, I thought it must be one of those things that people all share without actually checking (it was on FB) so I checked it on Excel! I was wondering about only doing it up til before Christmas as well, but then I do shop throughout the year for Christmas anyway so won't necessarily want the large chunk of money on 1st Dec.

What I'm thinking of now, since I'll have the separate account, is doing it right up until 31st Dec (when it'll be 1p since we are doing it backwards) and then starting again in the new year. I'm hoping that things will be a little more stable (although who knows, with the health/work situation as it is) and we can double it i.e. £7.30 on day 1 (no leap year!), then £7.28 etc down to 2p at the end. That is probably a step too far though, so if we can't manage it we will just repeat the challenge.

I also want to figure out how to use the earnings from my teaching. I am probably not going to manage to keep my salaried job in the long run :( :( so I'm glad that I have flexible, illness-friendly teaching to fall back on and now rather than just doing it casually I will want to try and get more pupils (so far I've only advertised online a couple of times and didn't chase anyone). In an ideal world I'd shove all the money in a pot but so far we've really had to use it for day to day living - so I have a lesson on Wednesday for example and use the tenner for bus fares the next day.

Which reminds me, procrastinator extraordinaire that I am, I need to actually register now (HMRC is it?) as a proper self employed person. I stupidly didn't bother at the beginning because I was convinced I wouldn't get anywhere . According to this I'm not horrifically late - started April 2015 so would be October 2016 deadline - so wouldn't face a penalty (not that I'm going to be earning anywhere near enough to pay tax anyway, even if I kept my PT job as well) but now I've seen it's not as scary as I thought, I'll make that a priority task. Need to then find out about NI too. I have been good about keeping records, I have a little cash book where I've written all lessons and fees with dates, as well as kept a couple of receipts for related expenses. It's all getting rather real :o

SfaOkay I misread your post and thought you were saying that your DH had spend new year's on the toilet :o

Fuzzy - that's a really good idea about doing it backwards - I've stolen your idea and made my first payment of £3.66 today. I roughly spend £700 on Christmas gifts / money so it's perfect really. (I wish I didn't spend that much but have about 30 people to buy for including my DH and DS's. On some I spend more than others but even averaging out at £10 per head, it's still £300 on non-immediate family and friends!!

Back from lunch at parents. They live 10 mins away by car. Or a 20 minute walk. We walked. So have had my exercise for today. Had a nice lunch. No booze.

Nice chill day now. Tv cup of tea (or hot lemon squash) and maybe a nap nap.

Tomorrow I have my riding lesson then am cleaning up the flat and will try to get some sense of order back into our lives. Am not ashamed to say that I'm glad the festive season is over. So much eating and drinking and being social. I need to go back in my box for a while!!

I nicked the idea from FB - including the idea to do it backwards - so can't really take credit :o

I sympathise with the Christmas spend total. I am really glad I kept my spreadsheet this (erm, last!) year, as I'd stuck my head in the sand on previous years, but oh boy was it a shock.

I've already set up a much more detailed spreadsheet and documents for next (erm, this!) year. The main thing that should help is that I've made a note of all the other people that need a present, including a few December family birthdays like my great-nephew. In the past I've solely focused on my DH, DSCs and DCs, as I LOVE finding presents for them, and ended up panic buying for everyone else at the last minute which ends up stressful and expensive. Now I've got a table with all the other people and spaces to write what we get them. I did manage to do most of it earlier this year and it really helped.

Also, I've written a list of 'categories' for the DCs' presents. Can't lie, I do buy them too much, even though I've cut down a little year on year. On Christmas day the only presents are chosen by us, as my parents and Grandma give us money to choose something. I go a bit crazy choosing things! So this year I'm planning (planning!) on sticking to the table, I've even got one for stockings e.g. one book, one cuddly etc, so that I know they'll get a good range of things to see them through the year, but it won't be an endless pile of stuff.

I also need to budget for the fact they will need clothes. I was trying to deny it but TBH now they are home ed they wear things out faster due to not wearing uniform 5 days a week! So that added a lot to the overall spend despite mainly sticking to places like Asda. Anyway, they really loved getting clothes as a present so I've written that on the list and I can look out for sales earlier. We've agreed that they can choose (again in supermarkets etc) if they need a few bits in summer, but at Christmas they are happy for me to choose.

Sorry that waffle was epic.

Fuzz I'm registered as self-employed even though I only make about £50 a year. It's not hard at all, and is a legal requirement if you're advertising your services, even if you never get a job.

Once your registered you just have to write down what money you earn and keep a record for the whole tax year. I do this and then I do a tax return every year and write in the tiny vanishingly small amount of earnings, and any interest that I get in savings accounts. I started about 3 years ago and at that time we could apply for a NI exemptions certificate on the bases of small earnings, but I think that's being abolished at some points so that some people won't even have to do that. We have the option to pay voluntary NI contributions which are about £100 a years to have a full state pension at the end, but I found out that my NI contributions are paid by the government because I'm a SAHM so I didn't do the voluntary contributions.

I never make enough money to have to pay any tax, and then I pay all the money into my stakeholder pension scheme so that the government gives me the tax back, even though I didn't even pay it in the first place. It's pretty good stuff, albeit for only £50 earnings a year. It feels good though. It makes me feel like a real, earning person. It's always nice to be able to join in the conversations where people are moaning about doing tax returns. :-)

Fuzz, please update on here through the year about your Xmas buys and keep me motivated.

Thank you for explaining that ipsos :) it's good to know it's so simple. I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to dealing with finance stuff, but I'm really excited and although I will be absolutely gutted if (when, TBH) I lose my 'proper' job, I am trying to remember that when one door closes, etc. TBH, given that I get £10 for a nice relaxed half hour lesson in my own home, and earn £8.something an hour in my physically exhausting day job, it's a no brainer. Sorry I've probably been on about this several times before, I'm just reassuring myself really as I've been particularly sad about the job situation lately (not being there for Christmas and for my event in November was really horrible, I have been in tears a lot over it).

Will do, bantam - apologies in advance to anyone else who hates such things! :o I am on the Christmas 2016 countdown thread too . I've been good so far (she says, a mere 7 days after Christmas!) and only got next years cards/wrap/crackers, and two large things that I've wanted to buy for years and were on very good deals. It's later in the year that I tend towards impulse buys, twitching etc... Really hoping I can keep on the straight and narrow this year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Sorry to hear about your DS, unescorted. Glad he is OK and that they caught the driver.

Loving the penny challenge idea and will join you. Am in the middle of setting up the budget for this year. Today will be a NSD.

Goals for 2016:
Pay off more than the minimum amount on the CC for at least the first 6 months of the year.
Set aside a small amount of money each month for spending on stuff like clothes, books, coffee/eating out with friends etc.
Budget for things like birthdays/Xmas etc throughout the year
Do more exercise and complete C25K.

That should be a start. Need to get a grip on the food budget as well.

Just got back from the 1st run of week 4. I might not move at all for the next week.

So tired. Take away gbk for lunch £35 luckily dh paid. Really good day though with our best friends.

Food shopping coming tomorrow otherwise I'm hoping nsd.

Ordering our usual NYD takeaway and am trying to figure out how to get cash back! Both quidco and tcb say you can't use other offers so presumably that means I can't use a 50% voucher or something which would be better overall.

Although I'm kind of wondering if we could do two separate orders to make the most of both offers! :o

£34.99 to pay off my very account, they gave me £25 off a £50 spend so it was worth using.

£79 for Amazon prime for the year. We use the tv services, I buy all my nappies from them and a lot of household goods on subscribe and save and use prime delivery especially at Christmas so worth it for us.

£3.66 moved into my penny account. This will really help me keep on top of my online banking.

Spreadsheets. Can anyone talk to me about their spreadsheets. What do you use them for? How do they help? How often do you too them in? Do you do it just on laptop or have a phone app type thing?

What I do a monkey expenditure spreadsheet and a yearly budget. My monthly ones only include the things that can vary:

Food
Petrol
Phone
Other

very simple but it's a bill account and everything else is a standard direct debit.

My yearly budget is one I got from mse and has everything that comes out of the bill account in it so we know how much to pay into it and includes the set amount for food and petrol. That's what I use each month to see if we are over or under budget. Hope that makes sense happy to email the yearly one to you if you can't find it. I think it from 2013 I haven't found one I like as much since.

Love everyone's spreadsheets.

Today was a tad spendier than budgeted for but we bought new toothbrushes, toothpaste and some posh cat food after Colliecat threw up. She's much better now.

I think we have used more gas than we should have. sometimes I just can't warm up and apparently its thyroid related. So have been boosting to 20c a few times. Ooopsie.

NSD to start the New Year.

Grrrr... Just lost really long post. Gist of it was £20.70 on a takeaway and I think I'm going to do a Xmas spreadsheet for this year too. Sorry, cannot retype it all on phone!

Just spent ages trying to figure out what a monkey spreadsheet is :o

Right, reckon I can do my spends now.
£21.06 family takeaway (used voucher code in the end as it worked out better than cashback) - pleased because normally I'd stick it on PayPal and then forget about it, but I found the exact amount in cash instead. Hungry and knackered and really looking forward to it!
£57.04 Amazon/eBay, that's out of the Christmas money I mentioned yesterday. Will probably order the other bits in the next few days (don't waste time do I :o) but waiting for a reply from a seller first

I'll be staying in tomorrow with the DCs, I'm going to tell ask DH to track all his spends as well, new year new start and all that.

Need to sort out the kitchen, was hoping to do that today but laziness/wallowing happened instead! Anyway hoping we can properly sort through the stuff in the freezer/cupboard, do a detailed inventory and make as little top up as possible. We have a £15 Tesco giftcard so that would be good to use in store rather than getting a £40 minimum delivery. Hopefully DH will be well enough to do that on Sunday (not the kind of thing I can manage myself usually).

On the subject of groceries, I noticed Tesco mentioned on either Quidco or TCB, do they really do cashback on deliveries? Seems too good to be true. I'm new to the cashback sites but not to Tesco if that makes a difference.

at monkey expenditure spreadsheet.

Probably a NSD here. The weather is vile so the chances of me going to tesco now are slim to none.

Will need to do a food shop tomorrow though.