Festive Frugaleers gather round the (best value and carefully researched) Christmas Tree for support, advice and chat. All welcome.

[needastrongone]

New thread.

MOrning all. Interesting day yesterday. Called mortgage people. If (it is unlikely hence the if) the rest of the apartment owners decide to change our building to no kids no pets we will be in default on our mortgage. Because this is a fundamental change. So I told our manager as much. Hoping the majority decide not to otherwise we’ve got a fight on our hands.

Ds has his second lot of vaccinations - he smiled at the dr who did them. Made him feel guilty. Haha! He was a bit out of sorts yesterday afternoon but is ok.

Spends £39.05 petrol.

Today Ds and I are meeting my friend for coffee then we’re doing a post office trip and then are coming home and starting to organise ourselves. I must pull together a list of to do’s and actually do them.

Should be a minimal spend day today - coffee and I need to get the last of the Christmas gifts as I forgot a few bits. Bah.

lonely you must do an unsubtle plug on here in October time next year, as it appears I could do with a mini nativity

School Nativity today
Nsd planned
Ah em, you do have a smiler.
Take the sick day of you need it. There are no thanks for struggling through.

How did I miss those lovely creations lonely, they are fabulous

DS also didn't bother to mention that he's had 2 more uni offers, Edinburgh and Nottingham. That's 4 from 5 within a couple of weeks (waiting for one other) and really boosted his confidence which I'm so pleased about.

ALL recipes are very gratefully received please!

It's the dc' last day at school today. I'm going to go in to finish a few bits but then I'm going to ask my manager if I can go. Otherwise I have to ring this stupid company to call in sick

Should be a nsd anyway.

Also love new recipes
Well done to your ds need also em's ds he's a brave little boy and oh so very cute.
wreck I am usually a martyr for not taking sick days - I am entitled to be paid for a month at work so it's not a money thing but since dc I feel they need me to be well and if I'm very sick will take it. A few days 4.5 years ago and this year 9 days had full blown flu in January and vomiting bug in June - think it's an unavoidable peril of working very long hours, now and again my body just shuts down I hope you've decided to stay home today

cross posted wreck take care x

Other frugal win yesterday was £50 of vouchers as a thank you for being a first aider

Omg Edinburgh! Scottish university's have always had the edge. They had 2 university's years before us. We only had one for ages.

He keeps things close to his chest doesn't he?.

Did anyone see proposed plans to shorten bachelors degrees to 2 years? I've been saying you could do them in 2 years if the holidays got cut to 4 weeks a year like workers get.

Vegan brownies are good. I add nuts but ordinary peanuts toasted would work. Like a marathon bar.

Em How can they enforce no children? Surely they just need to enforce it for renters properly & not mess up again. Your ds sounds a proper little charmer. He'll be an advantage when your viewing houses, charming owners into knocking thousands off

Delurking to say “well done” to NeedDS - I studied at Edinburgh myself. Fantastic university.

I promise I will come back with a proper update soon. Life and non-sleeping children keep getting in the way, plus DH has decided we need to do a pre-Christmas declutter so there’s a skip outside waiting to be filled...ffs.

I also suggested to someone on the Money board who was wanting a low spend 2018 that she come check out this thread ... apparently we don’t seem to be very frugal... she must be reading a different thread to me! I shall post my 2018 frugal goals later.

Have a good day everyone!

Morning all. The day has started with dd3 being totally overwrought, she does not have school, and was micromanaging her big sister who does. Usually dd3 is still in her pants when it's gone time to leave, so this understandably pissed dd2 off.

So far I have asked her nicely to stop it, told her to lay off, explained why dd2 might be pissed off with her, told her to get a grip, threatened to only give her 2 presents, told her she'll ruin christmas, and then, my best, threatened to cut up her stocking. Oops.

Now I'm hiding downstairs while she calms down!

Ho ho ho, happy holidays! Ugh.

em that's batshit about your mortgage. Sell asap!!

Why @lilllollylandy because we also spend some money?

I did read a thread about two weeks ago about someone living in terribly cold conditions and really on the breadline but she knew her stuff and there was nothing we could suggest here that would improve her situation so I didn't suggest our thread

Yesterday dh spent €13.97 in smyths - he exchanged a big robot toy that was too expensive, too advanced and just too everything for ds and got a remote control dinosaur toy for ds and a drone for dgs and both will be happy

Today's list of jobs after work
buy sister card - dh's sister who was nc for 11 years and is now in contact for past 20 months sent us a lovely card & a gift too
write Christmas cards & pop in post
finish wrapping
talk to dc about what they want to get Daddy
sort clothes for going away

I make my own washing detergent & pay for loads of things with nectar points earned from surveys.

Although any new ideas are welcome.

I have no idea mammy and fluffy, maybe she was after some extreme low spend ideas and didn’t think we were extreme enough. Personally any time I’ve tried to be extreme I’ve ended up having a complete blow out after a while, so I find the frugaleering approach far more sensible!

You've got to have some treats in life. That's why I do the surveys, free treats.

I've got my long awaited led face mask coming later, paid for with cashback & vouchers plus a neck exerciser. Also free.

To me, from me.

Cancelled my free prime trial. I've had 7 orders next day delivery with dhs stuff too.

Well we are frugal, but this thread works differently to a "only eat 20p lentils" thread, we are like a little community. Yes, we post about offers and good ideas, but for me, it's the encouragement, and owning up to spends that has kept me straight this past year.

I'm ramping up for 2018, going full on frugal, but I'm still going to post about my day to day, as for me everything is linked up.

I pay for prime, I use the tv everyday, the delivery is brilliant as I never plan properly. The balance for me is I don't buy cosmetics, or go to the hairdressers, so I spend the same money, just on a different thing.

Dp got in a muddle with paypal, he forgot he needed to pay ebay fees, and we have a claim going for an undelivered parcel. So I have shuffled £200 to him to cover this. This time last year I had nothing, could not have helped. I was at the end of my (quite large) overdraft, and fully maxed on all my credit cards. Thanks to this thread, this year I can shuffle money, and I'm not even in my overdraft.

Hi all, I'm ready to rejoin you all as I've started to feel sick when I check my bank balance!

I'm on mat leave and was on this thread for a couple of years while I saved for my house and got out of awful debt. You were all mega supportive then and I learnt a lot.

I have four more Christmas gifts to buy and the food shop, then I'm done and going to be frugal with my gifts this year too!

She probably read one of my posts!! But I think frugalleering is avout making the best of what money we have and being canny .. we all have diffrent incomesand priorities and debts .
BTW food snob or not iam afraidi wont be going back to Iceland.. those pigs were so fatty they almost shrank away to nothing on cooking and really salty also .. nowhere as good quality as Lidl stuff ... I should have gone there for a budget option ..

It's Christmas time so we are going to be spending a bit more than usual!

Got a home ed Christmas party today so will buy some food for it and the bus fare. I suppose I should get ready instead of mumsnetting!

fluffy they can’t. Or can’t unless they add a compulsory purchase clause in (which funnily enough no one wants to add - there are only 13 apartments if we sold because we had to 12 others would have to stump up circa £30k each...)

The way it works changes can be made and approved by majority. However. They need to be approved by all to register the changes in court. Ie all owners would have to sign a letter. I’ve said we won’t sign. Have said that if they do it we will be taking legal action re default on mortgage.

The manager sent me an email saying I was being childish and selfish. Which I forwarded onto everyone. Because my email that she replied to listed all of my concerns. All nicely written out and justified. And all valid concerns.

Spends. £27 boots on muslins - I keep losing them, and a gift for Bil. £11 in WHSmith for magazine for Dm and gift wrap and tape £7 coffee shop for actual ground coffee.

Had a look in our new next store. A huge kids section - wanted to buy everything so immediately left.

Friend is buying coffee. Hooray. And she has given me a huge bag from joules with some beautiful things in it for ds. So generous. He is one spoiled boy.

I CBA with anything today! Any chance I could just sleep till Christmas day? Would reduce spends at least. :o

That manager sounds USELESS em. It's using a sledgehammer to crack a nut situation. Fancy calling someone you effectively work for selfish & childish

I spotted the perfect Christmas card for my mum this morning but a) it was £5 and b) I've already sent her a card, so I sat on my hands and resisted. Little wins!
I also got my first Default letter from the credit card companies I don't have to action it because of the bankruptcy but it still gave me a horrid feeling in the pit of my stomach.

its a ridiculous situation fluffy toys have been well and truly thrown out of the pram on this one. and not by me. I have remained to the point, calm and have said openly (at the meeting) and also in an email to all other co-owners that we will not be signing anything to register the changes. to register they need a majority of people to vote yes to even get things drafted, but can't register anything in court unless all co-owners sign. I've said that if we find out this goes through anyway we will be taking the association to court.

she is now ignoring me. we have effectively moved to pariah town along with our downstairs neighbours who said no to her about 4 years ago. we will now not be included in any email correspondence to all co-owners and will be ignored in communal areas.

hey ho.

in other news... i've been selected to product test lidl nappies! woohoo! Free nappies. i've heard that these are the best. but sadly we don't have a lidl on island, so entered the draw just so i could see what all the fuss was about. Obviously if they are any good I will be annoyed because i can't buy them....