Frugaleers, keeping their frugal resolutions in the new year. Keep on, erm, resoluting!?

[Cagliostro]

Hello everyone! :)

£2.65 in shop - water and crisps
£5.60 taxi from town to tap - bus was late, so we missed the connecting one - will have to get the earlier bus next time.

Oh em sorry you had a shit day. Also sorry for laughing at you eating cat food

My kitchen is very today. All the dinner stuff cleared away and in the dw, sides and table wiped down with antibac and I've hung up all the wet washing and folded the dry stuff.

id so gross. It was awful. I'm consoling myself with a nice pizza. Yay.

Re Facebook preggo. I should add I have no issues with fb preg reveals. Or with other people who I'm not really friends with being preg. It's more the fact that it's all we'll see and hear about until "bubs" is a grown up. OMg. May have to have a fb cull.

In other good news my skirt arrived. And my hammam towel. Ordered on a whim. But actually all good. It'll be great for travelling as folds up teeny (but unfolded is the size of a bath sheet) and is apparently super absorbent. And it's pretty.

Yippee.

I subscribe and save on coffee pods and cat food, I find it a bit of a Godsend at times. Easy to skip an item if you don't need it too.

£41 haircut - think I haven't had it cut since last summer.

I use the amazon subscribe and save I've got one item monthly an iron supplement. Then some nip and fab pads every two months. I've just added are you ready ......
45 andrex toilet rolls for £15.29 to be delivered every two months. There's only me and dd and occasionally ds will be at home. I'll see how the every two months goes
Today's spends

90p coffee and crisps
£3.00 football subs.

Thanks Mammy for the photos. I'm going to see the film with my friend next week, can't wait.

for Em. Do you like the skirt?

Welcome new folk.

I use subscribe and save for a few bits, seems to work well.

Hope your DD is okay Knitting.

Spends
£60 fuel.
£27 Boots on shampoo and vitamins, all on offer, bulk buys.
£30 Sains. Loads of spices and unusual cooking ingredients, plus 2 Pyrex dishes half price, I smashed my one remaining dish a few months ago.
£5 class.

Had a very busy day doing piles of house stuff, a class, then met my friend for a 6 miles run, 3 mile dog walk.

Back to work tomorrow.

Frazzled I did JO prawn and fennel risotto tonight, lovely. Prawns from freezer bought on offer.

Carrot and orange soup tomorrow,

I like the idea of buying in bulk but we have such a small house and no garage or shed so have no where to store items. We have room under the stairs but that's full of kids toys (and ive cut back on those.
Had to buy lights for the house £80 ouch.
I find Jan a long month, we're only half way through. I had a tidy up today and cleaned the bathroom, so guess I achieved something

Catching up on the thread still and everyone's food talk and meal plans are making me jealous! I am really craving proper nutritious food, I'm finding the balance really difficult at the moment though as I've got to be careful about not spending too long cooking because it really takes it out of me. But I don't actually like a lot of convenience food anyway and I feel crap after. I need shortcuts that don't mean I'm eating crap.

(going to start a thread as well)

Hi. Another one having a bad day here. Just found out that dd didn't get a place in our local nursery for next year. Doubley pissed off as the alternatives are not only far from ideal , but they're also much more expensive. Grrr.
Had a NSD yesterday. Spent £3 today on salad dressing for my lunch.
Lack of planning for tomorrow means I'll have to buy lunch on the way to work. Hoping for a LSD still though.

Salad dressing was today's spend...

need yes I love Skirt

need I have prawns in the freezer so was thinking of cooking that recipe soon, my meal plan has gone awry, I forgot to defrost mince for cottage pie. Usually I would order a takeaway but I resisted and made a veggie lasagne from odd bits of veg in the fridge, it was surprisingly tasty and dh didn't comment on the lack of meat! DS was sent home from school Ill so I have a few more days of being stuck indoors , at least it reduces spending temptations.

I had a nice day today, just at work but I love my job.
Spends £6.50 for lunch with friends, 57p for soap (DH has to get sensitive one from Waitrose as he has bad skin), £2.50 for fake mozzerella cheese and £5 for a whitening toothpaste from Holland and Barret that was REALLY GOOD! I've only used it once and it's made a massive diference.
Also £13.35 for weekly bus pass.

Dinner was slow cooked veggie sausages with green lentils but I put too much turmeric in it and it wasn't very nice. One of my clients brought in some vegan cupcakes and we sat after class munching on them.

Do you have a slow cooker cag ?? That's my go too as I don't have much time to cook and get home late so need food straight away, mine has a low setting so you can get it so it doesn't go all mushy and you can even put frozen stuff in it so if I'm really lazy I just pour frozen veg a tin of tomatoes some curry paste and some quorn pieces (but you could do chicken) it takes five minutes to prepare.

Sorry Em but couldn't help laughing. You deserved your nice pizza though.
Welcome returners and newbies.
£6 today on lunch with friends. Can't really afford it but it is a sort of communal thing every few weeks so don't like to refuse.
Oh and £56 on diesel which has gone up 😥😥

Need sorry I didn't get back to explaining what photos meant yet

Movie was good 5 out of 7 of us loved it, 2 others it wasn't their thing. Ending was rushed I felt

Ynab is you need a budget, it's a budgeting app available online & on your smartphone. It's based on the envelope system where every £ has a job & you can't budget the same £ twice. I love it I've never gone overdrawn since I got it.

Cinema spends €5 ticket, €4.80 kids deal

Welcome newbies. We will help you as much as we can.
Em, sorry you had a shit day. Unfollow her on fb
Cag, in the same with processed food. We had fish fingers yesterday and I felt grim all night.
Skirt arrived and it's not my usual style but it's lovely. I also really like the outfit inside the leaflet cover, which is my usual style, but not at that price.
Sorry about your bad day monkey, can you put DD on a reserve list?
£209 dance fees yesterday.

It's going to be a better day today. I have a meeting with our hr person to discuss yesterday (it helps that we're a very small office so all the directors sit in with us so see/hear everything in these situations it helps anyway) and have sent the person who I don't think is pulling their weight A bunch of stuff to do (I'm allowed to do this as she's just "General admin" not client facing so she can do my cover letters payments file reviews and basic bokkkeeping etc).

Have been awake since 545. Cat fed and have done some mindfulness meditation stuff. #chill

cag if you've got a slow cooker I'd recommend it too. Also buy all the frozen veg. I've worked out that any meal can be made healthier if you chuck in frozen veggies. The other day I had pasta and cheese. With less sweetcorn frozen carrots and beans and some spinach. Slightly less unhealthy (still lashings of cheese though).

Payday on Friday. The balances look like this:

£251.48 joint ac
£126 my ac
£5.85 penny ac
£679.75 cc

Nsd today.

Classic day Em. Sorry to hear that. About your pg friend - don't worry, the baby will destroy her totally when it is born. That happened to me and all my friends. It's like a divine intervention.

MeadowHay YNAB is a home budgeting computer programme called You Need a Budget. I don't use it, I use Excel, but the tutorials on YNAB are great. A lot of people on this list start with them and never look back.

Oh I've no doubt cath

I should add I feel like such a mean person. She is, I'm sure, lovely. Just so annoying on fb. When we got married she was posting "congrats but obviously I'll never find a man" then at least twice a year "woe still no man. Forever alone. Why does no one want me blah blah blah" and a lot of those cryptic attention seeking "can't believe some people so angry" statuses which inevitable lead to "what's up Hun?" And the even more inevitable "I don't want to discuss it on fb hun I'll pm you" I should really ditch her.

But she was my yardstick. As long as my life was better I was doing ok. mean mean mean

Still. She's happy. And we do need a bit of happiness in the world so...

I hadn't realised the envelope system was a thing. It's the method I used to to use in the dark ages when my clients paid me in cash and I used to have what was known as 'money drawer', I had envelopes for different things and put my money in them. I've got something similar with my online banking now but it's more difficult online as you run out of accounts so I'm going to download that now, thanks guys!

Em cat food is revolting, you poor thing! I think I'd still be retching if I'd done that!
wreck I have Amazon Prime but didn't know about Amazon music, is it free? How does it work?
Welcome newcomers, we'll help you as much as we can, some really knowledgeable people here.

I'm feeling a bit better about our financial situation since I've realised that DD will get her free nursery hours from April which will cover about half the time she's there and we'll finish paying off our bathroom in the summer which will save about £100 a month. That will make a big difference to us while I'm on mat pay. We've definitely decided to leave VT the car until after the babies are here and we've got ourselves into some sort of routine. In the meantime we'll have to get a bigger car but it will be useful to have two for a while so that DH can do nursery drop offs etc.

I've had about 4 hours sleep due to various cramp, heartburn etc then DD woke up coughing at 5. She sounds dreadful and has said she doesn't want to go out today which isn't like her. TV in the warm today I think, my mum has offered to get us some shopping.
Cag as well as frozen veg Asda do soup packs of ready chopped fresh veg organised into bags for different types of soup. I would think they'd work in a casserole or curry etc to and would save you a lot of chopping. Do you have a food processor? That definitely saves a lot of chopping! Some of the supermarkets sell inexpensive ones.

Gosh, I wouldn't say DS destroyed me! Though it's fair to say my pelvic floor is not what it was. No trampolining or walking and sneezing at the same time for me.

Yesterday wasn't too spendy. I managed to escape from big John Lewis haberdashery dept with just what I went in for - 2 buttons and a circular knitting needle. NO YARN. DH asked me if I was feeling quite well .

Slightly spoilt it with £25 for lunch but it was ace. Spent hours chatting to my lovely friend (she has a daughter my age but we have been great friends since working together many years ago). Shame she doesn't live nearer!

Out for lunch again today but should be cheap and cheerful. I am trying to get out to meet people because I have been feeling a bit isolated but it does encourage spending!

monkey I was wondering about a reserve list too?

Snuggly I have a lot of sympathy for the crap sleep. Last night was the first night I have slept through in ages. Helped by the fact that DS didn't wake up (he's had a spate of bad dreams recently). Definitely take it easy. I am off for a nap shortly as DS is at nursery! Then I shall clean toilets. So glamorous.

I have amazon prime and only really discovered Amazon music when George Michael died and I urgently needed to listen to Wham Make it Big. It is totally free if you have prime - you just download the app, put in your prime details and it lets you stream almost anything. Excellent for revisiting the 80s .

Ooh, my new filing cabinet has just been delivered. I tried not to be embarrassed by the state of my junk room study. I am far too excited by this development.

Yes snuggly just download the app. It's really good. I used to just listen to the radio but now I can have music with no ads.

My dc didn't destroy me either. I think they made me and they enabled me to make new friends (not many but some!). I also struggle on a trampoline though

Today should be a nsd. I have a school mum friend coming round so I'm making cookies. Have already got a wash on. It's really cold here today.

Today's smoothie was spinach, banana, blueberries, cucumber, water and chia seeds. I would say yum but I would be lying.