Amazing April Austerity.

[CremeEggThief]

Hi All,
Taking the liberty of starting a new thread, as I went to post spends on the old one and it's full.

We had a lovely day out at the seaside and visited an old lighthouse as part of it. As we rely on public transport, that's always a big part of our days out spend.
£9.60 bus fares.
£9.60 train fares (with the family railcard).
£6 lunch from Sainsburys ( £3 meal deal each).
£4.50 entrance to the lighthouse.
£7.10 coffee, hot chocolate and cookies in a café afterwards.

Oh and DS needed a haircut, which I think was £6.50.

Need that art class sounds good. There's an art class near here for adults that we could go to possibly if ds took to it. That might be a place to meet people.

I shout a lot. It's not helping that we're now dealing with more medical stuff and we're having to cajole/threaten/bribe ds to put up with medical interventions. We all feel as if we just need time off. If we had grandparents around to play with ds for an hour a day, I do not think we would be having this discussion at all but they're too darned far away.

I think not having extended family near by to help out is really hard, I moved back to my home town to be near my mum as need her support! I'm not surprised you feel a bit stressed ipsos if you go to bed at the same time as your ds you basically get no you time! I l adore my dd but God i look forward to my evenings when she is in bed

Plan today is read through some stuff the solicitor has sent me (eek!) go to Lidls, house work and have an OT visiting later to review some of dds sensory issues.

Best get dressed then

ipsos - I shout a lot... And I get frustrated v easily. My son who is 8 is not at all into football (I don't know if you read it as he is into football). It doesn't help that his male classmates all are. So he doesn't really have many male friends (if any!). He's into chess...and he's actually found his forte in that. So he goes to these weekly chess clubs and feels at home. Unfortunately for us, chess camp (we did kinda find some) are an hour away each way so not really viable.

However, because there were no alternatives a few years ago, he had to go to football camp. And that was when he was under the care of great Ormond st (well, he still is), and had weekly/monthly blood tests and medicines.

Not trying to pile in on why your child can't or can do holiday camps. I'm just echoing what need said, that there are alternatives. Even a half a day alternative.

Hi everyone, I used to post on this thread ages ago and need to come back with my tail between my legs as I have got in to more debt and dont even have anything to show for it. It's mainly just buying stuff here and there on the cc but never really paying it back. We took out a low interest loan to cover the cc a while back and make headway into clearing our debts but the card is getting higher and higher again so I'm going to cut it up I think.

Have just switched banks to M&S so should get our switching gift card through soon hopefully.

I need to cut down our grocery spending a lot, I'm going back to shopping online as I can't control myself in Tesco it seems. I'm ending up doing at least one weeks shop a month on the credit card.

I need to use up the stuff we have rather than buy more.

I need to plan more cheap days out and take a picnic.

I have a bag of stuff that was going to the charity shop but it's been in my room for ages, will now reassess and put what I can on eBay and then go through the whole house and do the same.

We have a holiday booked that ive only paid the deposit on so I have to be sensible otherwise we'll just sink lower and lower into the debt (and I want moving house to be a plan, not a pipe dream).

Anyway that's me, looking forward to catching up with you all again.

Welcome back hairspray

Morning folks. I have to get up but really struggling this morning [yawn] head is a bit messed up too for various reasons. Anxiety at super high levels. Aaaargh.

Will look out for those sausages Em, I doubt I will get them anywhere near me though unfortunately.

Lila Returning to Penny's is fab, there is a good branch in a town I visit sometimes for work so I like to zip in, pick up a few bits quickly and try them on in comfort at home, then I can return them if needs be in the horrible branch in the town where I'm based for work. Still need to be more disciplined with my Penny's habit though!
Oh it will be great when you get to eliminate one of your credit cards. DH and I each have a credit card, we have no debt on them fortunately, but it would probably be a frugal decision to eliminate one of them, just to save the stamp duty. I'm not sure if I want DH to see all my credit card activity but that's a silly reason not to do it. Will have to think about that.

Oh and as of next week I'll be doing an extra 5.5 hours a week at work. I know it's not much but it'll add up I'll be sad to spend less time with ds though.

£17 in Aldi on moisturizer and some extra fruit/veg snacks. DD seems to be on a mission to finish the grapes as quickly as possible, I've had to hide them!
Ipsos places near me do art/craft for kids, also drama/stage crew/costume design etc and cookery in the holidays. Some of these are at local schools. I appreciate that here in Brum there might be more going on than in smaller towns but worth doing some research near you? What's on 4 kids is a useful website.

Sainsbury order done to come on Saturday morning £60 - that is my average at the moment. I would like it closer to £50 as we are getting muscle food orders and doing a monthly Costco shop. I'll go back through it later and try and get it closer to £50.

I need to organise tax and insurance for the new to me car coming tomorrow. I don't have any NCB as I've got a company car so it's looking at nearly £500.

Bees my ds loves chess too. Oddly it's what he does when really ill, like in the thick of having the worst part of scarlet fever. He always reaches for the chess set even at those times. I will look and see if there is a chess club here. Thanks.

I'll try that website Pointless thanks.

It's really weird but the more I look, the more I just find daycare type setups for school age children in the holidays. Like this: www.artycrafts.co.uk/
It's always £30+ for a full day of taking ds off my hands. It's like there are no other SAHMs at all here.

There definitely are non-working parents here though, but they are all non-local and go back to their home country in the holidays. I wonder if that means I'm also meant to ship out in the holidays?

Taught two new pupils this morning :) :) that's really cheered me up. Lovely family and I reckon the younger one will get on well with DD too (DH took our DCs out this time).

£30 seems a lot for that kind of daycare Ipsos we have a council run playscheme that was roughly £18 for the first child, £15 for siblings, so not much more than £30 for 2 children rather than one, that was 8.30-5.30. So affordable that we may do that a couple of days this summer even if we don't technically need the childcare.

That sounds better Cag.

That's great about the new pupils cag.
DD has started to kick when having her nappy changed, it's very frustrating, I'm afraid I just lost it and shouted at her. She wasn't very bothered in fact she laughed but she did stop kicking. I feel horrible now though.

Blimey that's expensive ipsos, min 2 days too

Ipsos, I don't get your point . There's no problem with you having some time in the holidays, just because you don't work outside of the home. Mine used to go on my non working days sometimes. Sometimes, that would be because they specifically wanted to do a particular club. Sometimes, that would be so I could get some stuff done in the house and we could then all go out for the day for the rest of the week.

Our primary school used to work in a 'cluster' with other local primaries to access additional funds to provide clubs during the holidays at minimal costs. Our local cricket club used to team up with Yorkshire CC to provide a simply amazing cricket week of coaching and fun for the total cost of £30 per child for the week (10am until 3pm, you didn't have to use all of the week if you didn't want). There's loads of stuff available I am sure.

The club you linked to may even do half days.

DH started our business when the DC were babes in arms. 70 plus hours a week for years. I was on my own with 2 small DC for a long time. I get how hard it is. The odd break for a few hours or day here and there was brilliant for us all.

Are there still any children's centres about? The one near me used to do lots of play activities cheap

Pointless would it upset your dm if you just sent her top to charity shop or put on facebook to sell? I'm just catching up this is back 4 pages or so!

Hope em is feeling better. I have a cleaner as I work full time and have two children, I go out two evenings per week to work as well. I hope to stop this at the end of the year, I may have to cut cleaner back to every second week then, spending a half day of weekend out at swimming lessons and another half day cleaning plus the usual chores like laundry and cooking etc meant I didn't have anytime for me!
bees I'm attempting to declutter to make cleaners job easier, slowly like a tortoise but house is definitely improving.

Cambridge County Council website has loads, lists all the local schools and the clubs offered. Much cheaper than £30 too

Just back from Lidls somehow managed to spend £53, although £6 of that was on an electric toothbrush for dd. Hmm still over budget though. Am wondering whether being at home over the Easter hols has some how pushed the food bill up? Plan to avoid supermarkets altogether next week and just eat what we have, the freezer is pretty full so need to start working through whats in there!

Spent my Tesco orchard voucher and got a lovely bunch of flowers for free even the woman behind the till was impressed and wanted to now how to join the programme

Lent dd £2 to get a bear with in the charity shop, just reminded her to give it back to me

House stuff all seems to be going through, am slightly worried they will suddenly announce everything is done and we can move next week or something! Need to look into removal companies. Does anyone know anything about buildings insurance?

Ipsos Can your DH take some time off to help during school holidays? Even if it's one afternoon a week to take your DS out alone.

I very much doubt you are the only person in your area in this situation.

girlie your rent should include buildings insurance. So you should need just contents insurance. Check with your housing association but I'm 99% sure!

I doubt whether she'd notice lilac! Mum is good at sewing and the fabric is lovely so I might say that it's too big and she if she could make it into something for DD to wear.

need Thanks for the council link. Thanks for listening to all this. It's the thinking out loud that helps me most, and much more than the helpful suggestions. Only I can actually see what is happening here, and for anonymity I obviously have to miss a lot out, but thinking aloud is very helpful.