The Friendly Frugaleers, figuring out our finances with furry feline photos!

[Cagliostro]

Hello all :)

Your family sound lovely Italian.
Girlie Christmas is tough but people should understand. Say now, nice and early that you are only buying for the kids. Maybe arrange a baby sit swap with your brother for yours?
The Christmas threads that chips and reastie do are great as well. .

Waiting for my new dining table. Need to get a protector and oil cloth today.

£5.50 on cat food in pets at home
£13.96 in lidl on three draught excluders and four muffins
£8 something in macdonalds

Have to go to the post office in a bit to post my eBay parcels.

Collie my other SIL knitted scarves for the family one year and those were very well received. She's a very good knitter though. I really don't get on well with knitting.

AGenie that's the kind of thing I would love to receive! I've also received soap and lip balm which I adored.

wreck are the draught excluders nice? I'm looking to get a few hundreds

lifelong that's such a good idea! If someone gifted me an "iou babysitting" token. I would be soooo happy!

They're really really soft! I got an elephant, a hedgehog and just a patterned one

I like the idea of a date night gift Collie might do something along those lines and put a £10 limit on it, I have 8 adults to buy for so it really adds up.

I wish i was craftie genie I would def make gifts then! My sil is amazing at making things (look up Juniper & Ted on fb) and i have had some lovely gifts from them over the years. The creative gene sadly skipped a generation with me!

My head is a bit better, need to go back to the gp with them really. They are hormonal, they tend to start when I am due on and then really kick in on the last few days of my period. Don't want to go on the pill or anything though.

Made it round Morrisons, spent £69 but had a £5 off voucher so actually spend was £64 and approx £15 of that was non food items. Needed to stock up the cupboards and freezer so have got quite a lot for that. Plan to shop alternate weeks at Lidls for next few weeks.

I agree about animals being good for teaching children. DH and I have no kids yet but we do have two gorgeous fluff balls - our guinea pigs! They are our little babies. We are thinking about adopting a dog sometime as well but I'm not sure we could afford it right now to be honest. My student grants and loans for this term came today, but it's about equal to the amount of overdraft debt DH and I have between us...so really we're still running on nothing I am starting my part-time job next Monday though which I am looking forward to especially as that means in a month's time I should have my first (little!) pay check from there too. We still owe my parents about £500 as well but can't really afford to pay it back yet . They understand though and are not wanting for the money or anything.

Today our rent gets paid: £525 (for a one bed flat!!!), and spent about £7 on lunch for DH and I from the library café on campus because our shopping isn't being delivered until this evening and we have no bread in until then. Also I couldn't really make the walk from the GP surgery to the nearest corner shop for bread first because I had blood tests done and FAINTED afterwards! So I urgently needed to eat something! DH is still sick with a virus.

Not sure what we're going to do about Christmas as well. I like to start buying early so I don't get stressed especially as I usually have assignments and the like to hand in around Xmas time, but at the moment we really don't have the funds to be buying presents.

Ah got me a lapcat

£21 top up shop in Tesco. I needed about £4 of that. I bought ready break (Tesco version) because Aldi don't do one, dairy free spread, 12 dairy free yoguirts and some dairy free cheese that Aldi doesn't do. Then some shrimp paste, chilli bean paste, soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce and some risotto rice. I will use all of those bits for risotto and chicken fried rice which we eat each fortnight with roast chicken leftovers. They will last 2-3 months. I bought dh some pretzel chips and ds1 some popcorn and ds2 some rabbit shaped crisps. So didn't need any of those bits. And this is why I don't go!

So 45£ on dhs chiropractor when 20£ will be reimbursed from his work health insurance. He has to go back Thursday again...

meadowhay I would like to get Guinea pigs for ds but I am allergic to hay and I think he would be too. I wish I could think of how to deal with that. I haven't been able to find anything from looking online though.

Waves at Adora, Audit and Meadow. Good to see you or have you back.

Brilliant news Northender, so pleased about the angiogram.

NSD.

Lovely that you donated milk Italian, so much needed.

The egg donation wasn't pleasant, I can't pretend it was. They shut down your system, then start it back up, but stimulate you to produce more than one egg. They then harvest the eggs under sedation. So you inject daily and visit the hospital 4/5 times. They overstimulated me, so I ended up producing over 30 eggs and helped 3 couples, hopefully to have more than one cycle of IVF each. I hadn't actually thought about it for years, but did a bit today, having 'talked' about it yesterday.

However unpleasant it was physically, I didn't have the emotional stress of wondering whether the process would end in pregnancy, so I can't grumble. I've got 2 amazing kids, what's to actually grumble at?

Meadow

Probably best to get a dog when your on an even keel financially. If you can't afford a lot at Christmas then tell people, no one should expect a student to be flush with cash. Are you meal planning? Ie buying what you need for 7 set breakfasts, lunch and dinners? Feed your family for £20 a week is on Facebook. It might be £25 a week now.

£1.25 curry paste & clicksnap had an offer on free milk so I got 8 pints free in sainsbos and I'm freezing it. I uploaded the receipt in the carpark off their wifi.

It's limited to the first 15k who apply so best to get in quick.

need do you ever wonder about the children that might be pottering around as mini-needs now?

You had to have counselling Genie before you went too far into the process. I will admit this was the hardest part for me. I chose to deal with it by considering that I was giving some cells, some DNA, and it takes more than this to make a child. I chose to think this way rather than delve deeply into my soul about it . But admit, this was tricky. I don't dwell though, I think you know that probably by now .

You get to write a letter to the couples (anonymously) and only find out if the pregnancy was successful past 12 weeks. I chose to not even know that.

Also, I did it 2 months prior to the law changing so that resulting children can trace you. I wouldn't have done it otherwise, as that wouldn't be fair to my own family. The DC know I did it though.

Sorry, off topic.

I've bought a delivery pass for Ocado at £5pcm as I want to give them a good chance over a few months. I'm really impressed with the variety and quality of produce you can get.

Also about to chuck a chunk of savings at the mortgage. Better to pay down debt I think than earn negligible interest.

How many years will it knock off the mortgage Need?

Girlie Your poor cat, it was so lucky you went home. He's had a rough time of it.

Might have to put the heating on later. Bugger.

NSD Monday - hurrah!
Going to catch up with thread now.

Oh my goodness me! I've had to put the heating on in the living room (we have a separate thermostat for a few rooms) for 10 mins. The house was SO cold. It's stayed warm though. I heart insulation. I'm going to miss this!

Had to spend a £30 M&S gift card on warmer clothes for DS like jogging bottoms, pyjamas and sweatshirts. He's not getting on with jeans at all!

£80 in Amazon but only £15 cash as the test was top cash back. Got another£13.76 coming on a gift card.
Love my dining table. Took a lot of searching and saving but it's exactly what I wanted. £51 on a protector and oilcloth. Could have got it cheaper, wanted to support a local business and ended up with a bit more free so enough for the extension leaves too.

It is colder today isn't it?
Cag £70 better off a month is great, I need to manage that!
Re - Xmas I haven't managed to save up as hoped but I have started buying a few things early to spread the cost. Xmas 2017 will be really tight due to mat leave so I'm going to record everything I spend this year in a spreadsheet so that I can budget properly and hopefully make some savings next year. I bought loads of wrapping paper and cards in the sales last year so that's done and paid for.

Yes it's suddenly for chilli.

Girlie I feel the pain of your poor kitty! Thank goodness you came back.

Wreck What a lovely kitty!

AGenie Have you ever been on theguineapigforum? It's a great website and a number of people on there juggle various allergies and guinea pig ownership. I don't know how safe it is or what they use or anything but if you're really interested in getting guinea pigs it could be a useful place to go and chat to some people that might be able to give you your options anyway. I'm not sure it's something that could be overcome really though apart from long-term indefinite use of antihistamenes and that's a choice some adults are willing to make but I doubt it would be a good idea for a child. How old is your son? Also, you could make him an appt with the GP and they could probably do an allergy test for hay to check if he actually is allergic to it or not, same with guinea pig urine and/or dander too if you wanted to check all bases first.

Fluffy We don't meal plan but I think I probably should! It's a bit more tricky though as my disability fluctuates so sometimes I can make a more elaborate dinner, other times I can't manage at all and DH has to do it so I don't like to committ myself to one particular meal each day in case it doesn't go to plan health-wise, but I could certainly plan say a week's worth and then juggle about during that week. I have Asperger's Syndrome and it affects my organisational skills so I keep ending up caught out of short of something so meal planning is probs a good habit to get into.

Also I don't think people really expect gifts from us but we love to give!! We don't buy for absolutely everyone though because there's no way we could afford it, we have agreed a list of people we'd like to buy for and will prioritise the children (I have a 13 yr old cousin, and DH has two cousins aged 13 and ONE!) and then take it from there really if we have the money later or not for siblings and parents, grandparents etc. Also we only spend like £10-15 on each individual, I am guessing that is much lower than most people but obviously we've not got tons of money lol.

It is a bit chillier today but we are quite stingy with our heating for cost reasons. Although we are in the midlands so I imagine it is colder up north!

£18 odd in Body Shop, stocking fillers. Sainsbury's delivering tomorrow - £98 and I have ordered boots and trainers on shoeaholics - £79 with postage, they might have to go back depending on fit.

Girlie: my parents old dog had diabetes and use to get insulin. Hope your cat is doing better now.
Need: very impressed with your "donation of egg" such a wonderful and selfless thing to do.
We still have loads of sun and warm weather so no heating on luckily but really confused about the weather. We're in dk and it's almost October, not normal..
I found a site with different creative things to do with kids so in week 42 when dd is off daycare we are going yo start making gifts...

Meadow thanks he's quite cute. Would you ever be able to batch cook so if you're having a bad day you can just get a shepherds pie or lasagne out the freezer? I used to do it loads I really must get back into it! Although each week I have a selection of meals planned where some are quick and easy and some aren't.