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.

Does anyone know roughly when the next sainsburys nectar double up is? Thanks

I don't have any store loyalty cards!
I never shop anywhere that often OR I shop at stores that don't have them like asda and Aldi
I do ocado orders when dh is away (ive got a free delivery pass) and when he is here he does the grocery shop (he thinks he spends less than I do :)) at Aldi and asda. I very occasionally use tesco if we are on holiday or something
I use my local co Op for top ups but that can be spendy

Low-ish spend here. I'd like some chino's for summer, so I bought a Next pair for £20 to try. I'm hoping to avoid buying Fat Face ones (£40) this year.

Swamp this one is on until the 5th. Not sure after that. If you have spent your vouchers in one department in the last one you could spend more in the same department on different days iyswim.

It has been a NSD here so far today and most likely will remain that way!

DS has gone to his dads. I start back at work tomorrow, I am on a phased return for the next four weeks so starting off with nice short shifts.

I have spent the day creating myself a twinkly basic budget spreadsheet.. It has given me lots of satisfaction-how weird. I have set it all with my income, expected expenditure and then actual expenditure so I will just update this as and when I go along during the week and at the end of the month.

Due to me doing a phased return I shall be travelling to work and back 5 days a week which will use more petrol then my usual 3 day weeks. I am quite nervous about going back to be honest but will be looking forward to my old payback as sick pay has been a lot harder so I have been watching the pennies more.

DS ice skating is not on this week due to some competitions so that is money saved and can be put aside for other events.

We are away for a long weekend at a caravan site- It is my intention to roughly plan what we are going to eat/how often we may eat out etc and do a basic foodshop/take things we already have at home. I do not want to end up paying prices on the site and other supermarkets are an age away from where we are staying!

We also have school holidays coming up. I am hoping not to spend much during this time and use up already acquired annual passes and local things to do daily/take our own picnics etc.

I have seen a picnic bag/basket I want.. however it is like £40 and I am resisting to spend this when I usually use an old lunch box and chuck it into whatever bag we take... They just look so pretty though!

£71 in supermarket, not bad as that's 10 days food shop, pants for me, cat litter, new table mats to replace our manky ones and heaps of fresh fruit and veg.
I am probably a bit dense but how does the double Nectar point thing work please?

balls. am back on bathroom websites. and have now mentally spent thousands....

(the really childish part of me wants tiles with yellow rubber ducks on them - the sensible part of me wants a glorious "skandi" inspired bathroom with loads of wood, lovely grey/blue tiles and a huge mirror).

the sensible part of me says white tiles, basic (but nice) bathroom suite and wicked powerful shower will do as we are planning on selling and you can have your skandi style beauty bathroom in your "forever" house.

Nectar, take your nectar card to sainsburys. You can convert up to £20 of points into £40 voucher for each of the department taking part. (Clothes, electrical, household, some booze, entertainment, can't remember the others,) you then process it through the till as a normal coupon.
Top tip, get your stuff in your trolly for each department that you want then convert your vouchers based on how much you have spent. Vouchers can't be refunded and are only valid until Tuesday.
There is usually lots of info in store and the staff on the voucher till are usually very good

Em second sensible, do it up to sell.

Hello!

We had a bit of a find in the supermarket. A series of pre-made things Called "Little Dish" which include fish pie and cottage pie and things like that. Most of them are wheat-free and are designed to be interesting and nutritious for children, but made of great healthy ingredients. It said "Mumsnet" on the cover, so I had a go.

Ds loves them and they get him a great meal without me spending about 10 hours peeling 62 vegetables. Well worth it. I wanted to mention for any others who are dealing with multiple different diets in one family.

Hilariously, after Ds had hoovered one up in about 10 seconds we had this excellent conversation:

Me: Would you like to have that again then?
Ds: No. [lengthy silence]
Me: Really? I thought you liked it?
Ds: Yes but I really think that one a day would be enough.

Okay, good.

I know what you mean about missing dairy Fluffy. I do too. Sometimes I drink a glass of water and in my head it tastes like milk. I've taken to just embracing it and enjoying the milk.

Cag How is your dh getting on? Is his job being good to him?

Collie I'm all ears to hear about your new job.

We're down with family again in Devon for the weekend. It's been a lot of travelling lately but it has been intentional as the cricket season starts v soon & then we can do much less as ds needs to play as many weekends as possible. It's been a lovely weekend with lots of time with our gorgeous nephew (10 weeks old). It hasn't been too spendy so that's good.
I've got a really busy week ahead so I need to plan things carefully & meal plan to make sure I don't fall off the frugal wagon.
Tomorrow I've got a telephone interview with our building society to secure the finance for our loft conversion. Fingers crossed.

Had decided to go with the f&v subscription box until at checkout I discovered there's a delivery charge so I've decided to stick with the f&v shop after all.

Today is going to be spendy

Dontletme Look on eBay, loads of picnic bags. I got our wicker hamper in home bargains for £20. It's got ceramic cups and plates and teeny cruet set.

Dh refuses to carry it. Tk Maxx or Home Sense will have them too. I need a new cool box though, ours is full of oil courtesy of dh and was owned by Her so I'll look for a new one. They'll be 2p in the sales in August

Em Buyers want white, channel your inner Sarah Beeney and do white everything. The less you spend there=more you can spend doing your next house up. New owners might not like Skandi, they might like Austrian blinds and little bowls of bath pearls.

Ipsos I console myself with cheesecake. I can have naice cheesecakes but not the SMARTPRICE ones my frugality draws me too. I crave shortbread, never liked it when I could have it.

NSD & got £21 cashback. I'll put that towards the console table I want. Only £269 left to save 😔.

Ipsos that's so funny of your ds

We're back from London. Paid £18.55 for the train for all of us, already paid the London eye.
£2 on toilets (despite going at every free one we saw!)
£7 something m&s on picnic stuff
£7 on ice creams and water
£2.50 coffee
£4.50 bus
£50 hamleys which I told the dc was their Easter money. I'm not sure whether to reimburse myself from it or not (they both got £20 each for Easter).

NSD. Hope everyone is enjoying a lovely, frugal Sunday.

testing

£21 swimming as DD needed goggles and we got her a swim hat to try and keep her mane a bit dryer.
£2.50 on a bag £55 with 30% of and £36 magic bean.

Gah. If this doesn't post this time I'll give up. And if a million posts pop up im sorry.

Bathroom decisions made. Will be ordering tomorrow.

Ooo exciting em. Did you and dh agree?

Oh and it's scone, butter, jam. If you must have cream it's scone, jam, clotted cream. Don't warm the scone.

Ooh, contentious, Babs. I always warm up scones!

Test

Thank you for the kind words re: my job! I'm so excited and start at the end of this month.

DS will be in nursery. So we have to arrange some settling in sessions as he's going to a new one so we can all "commute" together. As our new jobs are in the same town. It also means we're within walking distance to the nursery in case of an emergency. The nursery is half the price of the old nursery which is fab.

It's been a spendy weekend.

£25 on a new toaster. The old one broke.
£5 Tassimo pods
£11 in Dunelm on a new lampshade and new pegs.

I'm so pleased for you collie I know how much you've needed a job for yourself.

I'm so proud of dd she walked over four miles today (we all did, I'm in so much pain!) and she didn't complain once