Fearless Frugaleers Finding Their Feet in February

[SpottyTeacakes]

I've got fruflu

Lovely quilt north! Did a massive Chinese New Year party yesterday. 20 people to feed. All cooked out. Happy Sunday!

Collie When they've got a really awful cough like that, if it's because they have goo stuck in their lungs, then giving them massive amounts to drink can help. The goo gets stuck because it is very sticky goo, but if the child is really well hydrated then the liquid also transfers into the goo and softens it. I had to give ds a whole litre of apple juice once to unstick a bad cough but it fixed it in under an hour. For some reason ds will drink any amount of liquid as long as it is in the form of those small innocent smoothie cartons. It really saves our bacon when there a bad cough under way.

I learned all this from a consultant friend of mine who also has a tiny one, and all her consultant friends got a really bad cough one time when her ds had it too.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Frugal win - our council tax payments decreases in April and we save £40 a month! This is because when we bought our brand new house the houses hadn't been graded for council tax so we estimated it and set up a direct debit anyway - so we wouldn't fall behind. When the houses were eventually graded we had to pay more for the remainder of the year to make up the difference. So glad we did this!

girlie you will notice this with your new build. It'll take about 4 months to get council tax set up. my frugal advice is to estimate what your council tax would be and the council will let you pay by direct debit in the interim. It worked a treat. Our friends down the road didn't bother and had a £600+ bill to pay. It was the same with gas / electric. We weren't allowed to pay them directly so we opened a new account and set aside £85 a month for it.

bloody new builds! They can be so complex.

Don't worry about talking about your stuff on the thread fuzz. One thing that I've noticed on this thread is that periodically each of us hits a tough spot, and that we can solve the problem much quicker by talking about it on the thread. I think it's great that we can take turns like this.

Solving these problems like this really helps avoid us spending a ton of money on retail therapy too, so I really do think it's central to the frugaleering.

I'm still talk-talk-talking in RL here. Knackered, but it's going well.

Thank you all, the quilt project was supposed to be a relaxing one over a couple of months, but I was ill for a month over Christmas & the baby was earlier than expected so it turned into a race against time! I loved doing it though & have definitely found my ideal craft activity. I need to work on the frugality of it though! This was an exception because of what it was for but new fabrics are pricey so I will be looking in charity shops etc too.
fuzz sorry you've been having such a rotten time, there are employment law people on MN legal boards, you could ask for advice there (have only skim read thread so far so apologies if that has already been done).
need sorry to hear about your friend, sounds like she has a good support network around her.

Welcome to all newbies, I say this often but these threads really are a great place for support and encouragement.

Spends yesterday: treated ourselves to breakfast at the fab but pricey Gloucester services on the M5 (same company as Tebay on the M6). Amazing food, much needed after a crack of dawn set off. Dh went to the pub with his dad before & after football but football ticket is pre paid for. My only spend was a little bet (£1) on my football team which came in so I am £6 in profit on that!
Today shouldn't be too spendy, may go for a walk as its a good forecast, then the afternoon is likely to be spent watching rugby & cricket on the tv. We're staying with Pil but Sil, bil & baby are coming round later so more baby cuddles then.
Have a lovely weekend everyone, will try to get back to posting daily now

Ipsos thank you for the advice. DS is much better now. He's also too young to understand that drinking fluids will make him feel better. And it can be battle to make sure he's drinking enough. Good advice for when he's older though

Happy forced love day!! Frugal Valentine's Day today for us. No cards. No presents (when did it become the norm to buy presents) no flowers (I might get some daffs tomorrow yesterday in the shop a bunch was selling for £5.....)

Just beach walk and slow cooker dinner.

No spends planned.

Went to garden centre yesterday and looked at plants but didn't buy any as they're pricey. Am going to see if I can get cuttings.

Saw the most beautiful orchid though. Shiny and black with orange centre. Looked like a butterfly. £89!!!!!!! So obviously didn't buy it. But so beautiful.

That quilt is beautiful north, a friend made a quilt for DD and it was the most special gift we received. I wish I could sew.
DD slept well in the end until the stupid bloody cat woke us all up yowling at 5.45! He kind of did us a favour though because she woke up, coughed a lot and then went back to sleep until 8 so we actually got a lie in.
fuzz you are not hijacking the thread at all, ipsos is right, we all have our bad times and help each other. We all just hope your situation is sorted out as soon as poss and that things get better.
Was going to be NSD but decided to have take away with friends tonight. Haven't seen them since before Xmas so really looking forward to it.

We're off to he cinema to see the good dinosaur. Dh bought me a coat. I love it and Valentine's Day was just an excuse really. I got him a mug to stop him stealing mine. We don't usually buy anything. He's cooking tonight too as we saw it on a Jamie Oliver show and both thought it looked amazing so dh said he wanted to make it and today seemed like a good day.

Can I join in frugaleers? We're fairly careful anyway as in a dmp but I'm about to start uni in March so my opportunity for earning excess/ot is gone. At present after all bills paid we have about 250 each on personal spends but we're trying to save for a trip away at beg of April for a big birthday for me dh didn't listen when I said I'd rather ignore it. As well as a family holiday in June.
North that quilt is beautiful I have all of dds first clothes cut in to squares to quilt together but I've never got round to it she's five this month.

Welcome cheese

Hi Collie I know what you mean about it being difficult to get them to drink. It's these that ds drinks:

www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/things-we-make/kids/kids-smoothies/strawberries-blackberries-raspberries

He'll drink four in a row if I give him the chance. They cost a bit but they're the like the magic cure for a bad cough.

We aren't celebrating Valentine's this year! Normally do, it's just a bit of an excuse to spoil each other really, but agreed not to due to everything else. We will celebrate when DH gets a new job. Hopefully not too far away! (I do have a little present in mind for DH when he gets one - a new bag for work, less than £20 but spectacularly geeky and very 'him' - I'm obviously not ordering it until he gets a new job though!) He thanked me this morning for standing by him through all this. As if I'd do anything but. :)

Thank you all for the reassurance about my endless ranting. You're right of course, this is a spectacularly supportive thread.

And in the meantime, any time between jobs we've agreed will be spent sorting the tip of a house out. It's really bad, due to the combination of illness and insane work hours (and TBH both of us just being generally crap at housework, it was bad enough before I got ill! ) - so this could be a good opportunity to get that sorted. I know being disorganised ends up costing us money when we can't find stuff, not just money but energy too. So it's a positive thing in that sense. Obviously the hope is that DH will find something new ASAP but it would be really helpful to have a little time to blitz the house, as with the holiday pay etc we can get by.

Tesco arrived, think I did ok with a flexible set of meals that can fit around whatever we end up doing this week. Pretty much everything is freezable.

And I can't remember who is originally to blame for mentioning this on the previous thread, but I got myself a maple pecan plait for my breakfast (ok it was a pack of 2 actually ) :o

ipsos re smoothies can you make them (and put them in innocent bottles)

Welcome cheese. Are you quite young then, or are you going in as a mature student? I've realised recently that on this list I can't really tell if someone is 22 or 55 and it makes a bit of a difference in understanding people's circumstances. Glad to have you here.

Ipsos I'm about to turn 30 so a mature student but still quite young in the grand scheme of things, had a patient last week who was 102 and still independent! I'm incredibly lucky in that I've landed a place on a work based learning degree so I stay employed and earning my wages while I train but it means things are going to be very tight for the 18 months until I finish.
Was hoping to have a nsd but we're about to run out of milk and I really should make my lunch for work tomorrow rather than buying, it's a real downfall of mine. Will also help with sw that I'm doing!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

"is DH on board with frugaleering? If he is I'd add up all grocery spends for a month and compare it to prices in Lidl/Aldi."

Adora he is to a degree. He doesn't have the patience for some things. For example, I mentioned before about us logging all of our expenditure (for a month, say) and he got a bit impatient and said it would be too time consuming. I didn't bother asking this time. But I'm going to log my own anyway. That will give me a fair picture of what we're spending on groceries and on DD (her clothes and hobbies etc.) and my own personal spends.

Also, he finds the whole meal planning thing a step too far. So when we do our next big shop (next weekend) I'll do all the donkey work in advance (plan our meals and do a quick stock take of what we have already).

Having said all that, he's quite good in other areas. He's very good at coming up with ideas for leftovers. He also pointed out that we had a fair bit in the freezer which saved us buying dinner for three or four days, while we wait to get paid.

It should have been a NSD but we need to buy milk.

Shopping list for Tuesday/Wednesday done (as coop are the cheapest here and they pay our double dividends on a Tuesday/weds we only shop there on those days). It's going to be a bit of a hefty one. But dividend is paid in April. So will have about £300 in our coop share account to use in case of emergencies (washing machine sounds like it might go...)

Have just applied for new savings account. Was talking to dh and we agreed that if and when babies come along I'll have to give up (albeit temporarily) my riding lessons but safer.

The money I'll save from these (£25 a week over, call it 30 weeks I know pregnancy is not an instant thing so sometimes you just don't know for a while) will come in handy. Have also checked the government website here re mat allowances. Apparently if I was to get pregnant id be entitled to a lump sum payment a "baby bonus" if you like. Didn't know that. It's a fairly substantial amount £2000. and then the stat mat pay as well as my works cover. So it's not all as scary as I'd originally thought.

Em are you planning to give up work when the babies arrive (assuming everything goes according to plan) or continue working? Or have you thought that far ahead?

I'm off to do the grocery shopping. This is only our second full shop under the new frugal regime. I got away with only spending €70 for the 1st one because I knew I had a lot of stuff in the freezer and it lasted 10 days, and then I had to do a mid-week delivery from Tesco because it's the only place locally that does DD2's milk.

So we'll see how much control I can keep this time around. I've got my meal plan in my head, but I'm going to go and write it down now to make sure I haven't forgotten anything.

Then I'll just need to resist all the things I never knew I needed in the centre aisles

Just done our fortnight aldi shop £60 not to bad we had lots meat in freezerscwe did stock up on outdoor bred sausages and chipolatas as £1.25 on offer at moment. Bloke behind us in q was moaning was his first time was never coming again blimey he had to only q behind us and the whole shopping experience until packing is the same as any other supermarket get over it!!

Welcome cheese.

tayto assuming everything goes to plan re babies I'll go back to work. Ideal world I'd want to split time between work and home but not sure how feasible that will be.

I'd love to be a stay at home mum but everything is so expensive here and I wouldn't want dh to feel he'd be responsible for everything iyswim. He wants to do flex time too so it's something we'd need to work out. Both jobs are doable from home (he's an accountant) so in theory we could do it without having to spend a fortune on childcare. Friend spends £1800pcm on nursery. That's average here.

We're saving now for a house and want to have as small mortgage as possible. Ideally only £700pcm (half our payments now for the flat) but for a 3/4 bed house and garden. We think it's doable though. If we pay down our mortgage and save and save to get a hefty deposit. Aiming to be mortgage free by 45.

Fair play to you for planning ahead Em. We threw ourselves into parenthood without any consideration of the financial implications. Work paid me in full while I was on Maternity Leave although I only got 18 weeks off iirc.

We noticed a big drop in our income when I went back to work on part time hours and also had to pay for childcare while I was working. It's been a tough few years and the recession hit us very hard. Our government introduced a lot of extra taxes and charges to pay for the bailout of our banks. Things have eased a bit now and we're trying to re-group and get some savings behind us.