Fantabulous February with the Friendly Frugaleers!

[Cagliostro]

Hello everyone, new thread time yet again!

cag he has moved abroad. I had to find him on facebook. But, afaik he works for a british company (small, specialised, but global), if he does then csa should be able to collect. But he is very smart and I don't think he'd make it easy. They refused cos if the nrp is abroad they're apparently not able to find them, even if I could give all the details they'd need.

I'm much less of a wimp these days, and getting much better at not taking no for an answer!

Very cute pic. They don't stay small for long.

Marking my place on the new thread.
My broadband is down and my TiVo box isn't workingI've got an engineer coming on Friday and there going to put a credit on my account.
What they don't realise is i have a teenager. I mean she'll be missing out on face timing her friends while they watch tv
I just keep wondering what next is going to go wrong.

Ooo great ideas thanks, going to have a look in Boots tomos will def get something for the mum to be as well, she is such a lovely person - will make a fab mum.

My Morrisons delivery has turned up £68 a big shop but have got lots for that including extras for dds party, the receipt tells me I made £17 worth of savings by buying things on offer so am taking comfort in that!

Aha here you are. Was meant to be a NSD but had a rubbish day so spent £6 on chocolate!

Trying to catch up on all the old posts and get the hang of everyone's names... Will get there eventually

wreck thanks for the recipe. Will defn be trying that one one day
I usually stick to my list in ikea cag think it's also because it's very close to us, so we can easily drop by when needed something.

manmy child benefit is it from the state? Or? And how much do you get? (You don't have to answer if you don't want) ours get paid every quarter on the 20th. We have a system, 1/3 to child saving, 1/3 to normal saving and 1/3 for whatever they need at that time.

Thanks for the new thread, Cag And fluffy baby

Problem is I've meself all broody looking at baby photos now! :o

Busy day tomorrow. Shouldn't be spendy. Which is good as I need to add another £19 to my pocket money spends!

I'll get the over-door storage things from Wilkos soon - worth a try at that price - but not tomorrow because we're off to a friend's and have heaps to carry already (books etc for new learning co-op we've set up, and board games for after, and tap shoes for DD's lesson after that!).

Also need to phone the rental agency for DSD's 2nd year housing. She's asked us to be guarantors, but we need to just clarify it's just for HER portion of the rent, rather than all of it i.e. her housemates... pretty sure it's the former but if the latter then no way. Not entirely sure how it works though, surely you have to be vaguely financially stable to be a guarantor anyway? Any thoughts?

Hmmm Google says guarantors are liable for the FULL rent even if people are sharing. Which is more than our rent, in fact it's probably higher than our monthly income :o So probably a non-starter anyway! But I will phone up tomorrow.

girlie That's interesting to know.

I'm really confused about this because whenever we've had bugs like this, if we see the GP they always say "don't bother a GP unless it's gone on for more than 14 days".

However, now I have a warning email from the welfare officer saying that ds can have a maximum of 48 hours off after the end of actual d&v symptoms and then he has to come back to school even if he is still not well.

It seems to me that people are getting confused about the government rule that 48 hours is the minimum that we need to stay off, and thinking it is the maximum that we are allowed to stay off.

Anyway, the GP says we've to go and see him if ds not back on Wednesday. This would all be so much easier if I didn't feel like roadkill myself.

Italian child benefit is from the state yes it's €140 per child for the first two then there's an increase & for twins you get 1.5 times that per child. I got my week wrong though it's paid on first tues of every month

That's a good system with the thirds.

Girlie teetha granules & karvol capsules(these aren't made anymore maybe olbas?) are something I included with baby first aid boxes I made for my friends one time

I prepped everything last night my lunch & dc's & even my bowl of porridge 🍚 is soaking overnight. Feel much more at ease getting up now, just need to shower & put on a wash.
I was late for work yesterday, I'm never really late

Ook if you're replying on app you can close out of your reply to go back on thread I love this feature ❤️

Knitting what a horrible parent he is, so frustrating for you & downright impossible too financially.
And there's me getting cross cos dh still hasn't transferred his share to joint account since getting paid on Friday but I could log into his account & do it myself if we were stuck for it.

Need a few bits of fruit today. Probably less than a tenner.

Made puy lentil & feta salad last night but au pair had used whole packet of feta last pack lasted a fortnight previous one a month, this one a day.Asked dh to buy some today, shops near me only local shops so wouldn't have it!

TheMonkeys

Please don't worry about keeping up, that's optional. The important bit is the frugality.

To turn yourself around from £800 overdrawn to £25 in credit AND put some into savings in January of all months is brilliant.

Hello :-)

Does anybody have any healing magic that they can send me? This is a horrid bug. I haven't been able to eat since Sunday and still can't. It's never been this long before, and now I have the school on my back about ds. Am sipping water and trooping on.

Spent and arm and leg on sticker books and activities from Amazon prime to keep ds happy.

Are you sure it's a viral bug and not food poisening? I had campylobacter once and it went on for three weeks until I went to the GP for flucloxacillin.

Dh is immunosuppressed and Noro lasts weeks in him, the initial vomiting etc takes 4 days but he's unwell for another 3. I'm back to normal after a week.

Hi all... mind if I pull up a chair and join the ranks? We've spent the last couple of weeks having some "big" conversations. As a result we've decided to stop being so wasteful and to really try and pay down as much of our mortgage as possible, with the aim to be mortgage free ASAP. (At a push and if there were no "blips" we could do it in 5 yrs, but realistically 7). A few things have prompted this, but net result is going to be some changes in our lifestyle. I'm about to head back to work after an expensive year off on maternity leave (only 16 weeks of stat pay here in NZ). We saved up, so will go back not in debt- but with very little in the way of savings. Plan is to get an international student lodger to make use of the spare room and to save all $ from that plus DH's wage (he works 2 night shifts a week so that between us we have all childcare covered for our 2DC) then use this to overpay the mortgage more. Will be different having a lodger but hopefully we'll get something other than just $ out of the experience.
We've already gone down to one car, planted a vegetable garden, got rid of sky and gone to cheap non contract phone stuff. I find it hard to save as little bits feel a bit pointless, so I want to join to make myself accountable. Just writing it down makes it more "real". I'm hoping having a goal will help things too.

Good for you. Mortgage free is my dream too.

I'm here. Did you miss me?

Just taking dogs for a walk and I'll be back.

peeks around the door - hi! I'm all a bit new to this and would love for us to be able to save up for our own home. Needing some helpful tips into making 2017 the year we start saving and not splurging.

Welcome Aradias. What's your goal?

Oh, have you been away need? I never noticed

LED light bulbs are coming up on offer two for £3 in lidl soon, they've got both types of spotlights in the offer, GU10 and MR16.

Thanks for thread, will catch up

Welcome chur and aradias

Thanks for tipoff on led bulbs fluffy will put some money into my household expenses category to cover them

Fluffy thanks, I think it's definitely a virus as I got it 24 hours after ds. I'm sorry to hear that your dh also gets these things for a long time. That must be truly rubbish for him. I don't usually have it this long. This really is a howler.

Welcome back need.

Welcome to aradias and chur.

Girlie another useful thing someone gave me for DD was baby emery boards, filing little nails was much less scary than cutting them! They sell them in Boots.

Going to start my nappy stash today. First lot of baby stuff all washed and put away. Today it's blankets and sheets. Also supermarket shop, I have quite a long list!

Who mentioned feta? I am obsessed with it at the moment, on toast with avocado and chilli sauce. I could easily eat a whole packet in one go!

Ah that's rubbish. Think I'd rather have food poisening