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

[SpottyTeacakes]

New thread hopefully someone can add some old links?

Yay....made £50 today selling old books/DVDs to Ziffit and a workout DVD on a Facebook sell page

£50 is wonderfull. Well done.

Great news stumbly!

Had crap stuff in my sainsbury shipping for the second week in a row. The on offer pork joint went through at £5 a kg instead of £3 and the gammon joint I ordered that was supposed to be 6-700g was 1200g and so twice as expensive as I had been estimated and far too big. I ordered some flowers with a free code and they didn't apply it so was charged for them. I used the online chat function and Moaned about it all. As none of the things were flagged on the paperwork I Had no chance to quibble with the driver. They've given me a £13 e voucher so I can use that next week. They also didn't send me any milk as they didn't have the one I ordered and there was no suitable alternative. It was one litre of blue cravendale. Not that hard surely?! So need milk now.

Car insurance needed renewing, if it tracks we'll get £60 cash back with quidco. Fingers firmly crossed!!

So many posts since I came back on Saturday!

So ill start from here, but just reading back a small bit ,

Hi Spotty Thorness Bay is about as far away from me as you can get on the island.. Im on the west end, not far from the Needles .. I do know the site though and my friend used to clean there, ill ask her about it , but I think it has a pretty good reputation. Will you have a car? . the buses here are quite expensive and if you are using them it would be best to get a weekly 'rover' ticket , (look up Southern Vectis , the bus company, website) . Also I dont have small children , and DGS is a little too small to bother about going out much when he comes here, . but ill also ask some people at work for recommendations..
Dinosaur Isle in Sandown , comes to mind as a place to go and the beach at Sandown is sandy ,Also there is a good Roman Villa at Brading if they like that sort of thing , and Ryde has one of the biggest sandy beaches around , you can safely walk right out when the tide is down and Ryde has quite a lot of fun things to do with little ones , (also an Ice rink!).
if your kids are older and like being out doors you should find loads of things to do , hope the weather is good for you , the island is a pretty outdoorsy place ..
West Wight ( where I live) has stunning countryside , but beaches are not sandy (except Colwell bay) however , Compton Bay has dinosaur footprints onthe beach , and there are guided walks and fossil hunt walks ( check the Dinosaur isle website)

so back to Frugaleering:

I have paid off the Christmas credit card (was bugetted for so came out of savings)

But this month will be a bit stiff, as have House insurance to pay out for and am still waiting for the cheque i paid for boiler repairs to be cashed ( it died on us a couple of days before Christmas , but luckily I got it fixed in time though it cost us £279 unplanned for ) but am now back to square one with the budget , and we should be ok for this month. But we do need a new fridge freezer, ours is making weird noises , so thats another thing to come out of reserves

But now at lease i do have a (small) reserve fund . This time last year I was in such a different place, in debt. always overdrawn , but what helped ( and its obvious really , but I had never managed it before ) was having a spreadsheet (YNAB in my case) and writing down everything i bought and needed to get for the month on that ,

AND (and this was where I always fell down before - DUH!) ONLY taking what the spreadsheet said I had in the bank as the real amount of money available and NOT what was actually in the bank!..

So stupid , but for all these years before starting YNAB, I had relied just on looking at my bank balance , thinking 'oh its ok I have £300' and spending THAT.. ( and of course then finding that id spent the money twice or three times over ..

You know i'm quite intelligent in other ways , can work out cause and effect with other things but somehow never applied that to my money. and then ended up overdrawn, in hock to credit card everymonth , so silly really .

oh yes, we have to pay for out holiday , flights etc , also but thats budgetted for ..

.. but DH is retiring this year , so it will be out last expensive hol in a villa I think . (we have the campervan plan in the making, from my pension money for the future !)

May well look again at iow for next year.
That's rubbish abliut sainsburys what pleased you got it sorted though. Can you freeze the gammon in two halves?
I've heard lots about zifit I will have to have a root about that's a good result stumble.

whatabout Quidco is great , I always use it , recently got £30 on Uswitch for changing has elec suppliers and another £30 for getting a new 0% credit card from Post office money . Will be using it for house insurance also.

if your purchase doesnt track do make a claim through Quidco , I always do and usually they honour it ..

OH yes and thanks all for the 'welcome back' messages.. i'm intending to make Frugaleers my habit again this year. with Dh retiring , I'm going to need it !

stumbly wow £50 is great!

Well done Stumbly!
I'm looking to make more this year, either by getting a small 2nd job or by earning more (obviously hope the latter). We're on a pay freeze and I'm at the bottom of my grade,so although you'd think I could get more I really can't.
I'm applying for a new job which is £2k more per year so all adds up if I get an interview......and then the job! I think I've got quite a good chance, but I thought that about the last interview! It's at DHs work so we'd save on travel and it's half the commute which would be nice.
I only spent £5 on a return to work today so LSD, but I had to spend that so I've still not mindlessly spent money yet (despite the sales trying to lure me)

Laska I have two degrees and still get caught by the "headline" figure in the bank account as being accurate and forgetting what will be coming out. I either need to switch back to a bills account and an everything else account or start a good spreadsheet. I don't use my laptop anymore so want to do it on my iPad. Not sure how feasible that is.

I have to say since joining you lot I do have lots of "what would the frugaleers do?" Moments. I would never normally bother with moaning to the supermarket or taking things back. I find being here makes me more accountable.

Food shop delivered, £55.
Car insurance £290

No other spends.

£8.40 in Tesco, but at least I have food now.

Hadn't quite budgeted for the tax credits having to last 10 days. So might have to borrow a bit from the penny challenge. I'd have been OK if I hadn't decided to pay the council tax 2 weeks early.

What that's really annoying

Thanks pasta! Yes we will have a car so no worries there. I'm thinking even if it's wet or cold the dc will still love going to the beach

Well it's good news here (sort of?!) dh's boss came round last night to collect some keys and I asked dh to tell him we really need him to have his wages in our account by today (often he does it in the evening of the day it's due ) anyway he phoned up last night to say he had done it and it's a good job too as we've had a few hundred come out of the account, things I'd forgotten about

Off to work in a bit and I won't see ds until 3:15! His first full day at pre school, hope he's ok. I'm sure he will be....it's such a lovely one and only 16 children in total so never too many there on one day.

laska not pasta

Spotty your DS sounds like he's in a lovely preschool and great news about the wages going into the account, I've been in that position before and have done a little happy dance in the bank!
Hopefully LSD today with only £5 bus transport for work, milk and squash costs.

Nsd planned. Back to work. Dancing fees need to be paid but that's all part of the plan

Morning all!
Supermarket shop today, my list is longer than I expected, mainly fruit and veg but also nappies and quite a few toiletries, I think it will be an expensive trip.
Also remembered nephew's birthday, too late to get a gift, will have to put money in his card.

Has anybody tried selling books through these people?

www.webuybooks.co.uk/

I'm thinking about spending the morning clearing out the attic and sending the old books to them. They seem to be inclined to pay for the postage and send me money in return. I'll report back on how it goes.

The great question is, will they pay me more money than I would save in heating if I put the books in a woodburning stove.

Spent 23.00 yesterday on a set of shopping bags - those coloured ones that you pull out in the trolley - there's 4 and then you can lift them straight into the boot. I used to do all my shopping online but we've got %10 off at tescos for the foreseeable future. Might change my mind about whether this is worth it as I have a 2 year old and a 14 month old to drag round with me. The vouchers are ins tore only which is a bit annoying.

Hopefully a nsd for me today. At work then on a speed awareness course (£90 already paid for).

Was hoping my shopping would last till Saturday but dh is on a diet and getting through fruit at a rate of knots so think I might have to do 2 smaller shops a week rather than one big one.

was hoping for nsd today but the weather is still awful so will be driving into work. Force 8 winds and heavy rain would make for a very unpleasant walk to work. So £7 parking.

might walk home though (dh will probably work late). Walking home in wind and rain is just as unpleasant but at least I can change into my comfys.

ipsos I hope you're joking re burning books...!

Did a small Lidl shop yesterday, £9.
I am gearing myself for a very interesting year. I've put my faith in you to keep me on a straight and narrow, I'll be here but I might NC :)

Ipsos a few people I know have used ziffit I think it's called and been really pleased.

I used to work in Southampton before moving home again
Yesterday I spent 60£ on my contact lenses, 3 months supply and 5£ on buns and juice for dd who is poorly...

Funny so many of you have lived in Southampton, i did my nurse training in Winchester but after the first year lived in Southampton and stayed there for 6 years in total. Made a lot of good friends who are still in the area and don't get down there enough these days

I adore the New Forest and have quite a few lovely holidays there but have never made it across the water to the IOW my mum took dd a couple of years ago and they loved it! It is def on my list of places to visit some day.

Not sure of the plan today, need to check online account for some reason it wouldn't let me on yesterday, need to do a Morrisons shop, might pop into town..... seems weirdly quiet here with dd back at school.

Spent just over £73 in Asda and I have to go out again later because they didn't have any carrots and I'd planned to use a lot this week. I really should shop more often in Aldi or Lidl, what puts me off is that I have DD with me who climbs and tries to stand in the trolley, their trolleys don't have straps but Asda, Sainsbury's etc do so it's just much easier/safer.
Meal plan:
Today - soup for lunch, veg and tofu stir fry with rice for tea.
Tomorrow - soup/pasta with peppers and creamy tomato sauce.
Thurs - leftovers/quinoa patties, baked sweet potatoes and salad.
Fri - I'm eating out, DH and DD will have something from the freezer.
Sat - soup/healthy nachos using crispy potato slices instead of tortilla chips.
Sun - cheese on toast/slow cooker ham (DH) Xmas veggie pie for me with mash, red cabbage, swede with sage and sprouts.
Mon - bubble and squeak.

Ipsos, I've earned just over £200, selling with them, in a few stints over 2 years. They also take cds and video games; the latter fetch the most.

Spotty, the Isle of Wight zoo, which is really mostly a big cat sanctuary, is also a good place to go, and it's virtually next door to the dinosaur place Laska mentioned earlier. There's also a donkey sanctuary near Ventnor, in Wroxall, I think, and if you have English Heritage membership, Osborne House and Carisbrooke castle are brilliant. The IOW uses 1930s London tube trains as the railway, going from Ryde to Shanklin, which would be a lovely little outing for the children.