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

[needastrongone]

New thread.

just Seen my old manager for coffee. She had some gifts for ds. Some lovely tshirts she’d bought in France “super hero de MAMAN” and “charmant comme papa” the maman one is important. Cue passive aggressive Facebook photo post of tshirts (aimed at MIL) “MUMMY’s super hero” “handsome like dad”

DH is going into work. He took the morning off. Now wants a lift in. Sigh.

Also have to go to the shop to grab bread milk etc for Dm and df. They’re coming back from the uk today and we’re picking then up from the airport later. Dm always gets us the basics when we come back from trips and does all my laundry so it’s nice to repay the favour.

Bit of a fail of a first day for me as I was so unorganised. Had nothing in the house to make packed lunches with so had to spend £2.30 on school dinners for DD, and then DH got us pasties for £9. Bad start
Have spent £3.49 in Iceland on bread and bits so shouldn't need to buy anything else today. I need to plan the week's shop but I've been trying to take advantage of it still being term time to do all the wrapping, posting, cleaning up etc. Mine break up for Christmas at lunchtime on Friday. Waaaay to early!

Your boy is gorgeous Em. My little one snored like a trooper too but I found it really reassuring. I never had to check on her as we could hear her all over the house!

Please may I join in? I’m fed up with running out of money. I have to stop spending!

It takes time Little, it's not an overnight thing & there's a definite lag between being frugal & seeing results.

So far;
Fell out with the "we love media" app people. £15 Amazon voucher paid out.
Topcashback not coming to the party about my car insurance cashback 🙄. I've got their CEOs email address.
Christmas shop order done & tweaked. Still not finished. 3 week meal plan plus treats for Dh.

£30 in free Amazon vouchers spent on cat food, coming tm.
450 nectar points earned.

Need Has your water board got back to you?.

Welcome Littlechoc. Look at my post 19.38 last night, it's got loads of useful posts from years ago.

Fantastic, thank you both

DH was telling me that there's a chance he could be getting a company car next year. That would mean a big saving for us - no diesel costs, no car insurance, no car maintenance, no new tyres, no NCT etc. He'd have to pay benefit in kind tax but we'd still be saving overall. Fingers crossed......

I spent approx. €9 on a top up shop. Also €3.99 on the RTÉ Christmas Guide. Once dinner is out of the way, I'm going to sit down with a pen and mark out all the programmes and movies I want to watch and record over the Christmas and New Year period. It usually keeps me going for a few months.

It's a miserable day here - cold and rainy. Actually, the rain has just turned to sleet. DD and I are planning to watch a Christmas movie on Netflix later.

Welcome Dorritt and Littlechoc. I find it very useful to have a place to talk about money matters because people tend not to talk about money in real life. Although we talk about lots of other things too. And if you have a spendy day, just pick yourself up and get back on the frugal wagon a.s.a.p. Do you need advice about anything in particular?

em really cute photo - I love his little tufts of hair

Lonely you did really well with your Christmas crafts. What were your best sellers?

Wreck what happened at Waterloo?

Tayto- I’m not sure yet. I just can’t seem to get from month to month so I suppose looking at why.

I looked at the links and may start with ppi although worry as I’ve changed my name and moved. I had accounts with very, next and vertabaut (sp?).

Had a frugal trip to Sainsbury's. Used my nectar points to buy ingredients for the batch cooking. Chopped tomatoes, tinned veg, stoc cubes etc. Then went to Lidl and bought some Christmas essentials. Stocking up a little at a time. Paid early in December so January will be a long month. Hopefully won't be too difficult with careful planning.

Welcome @dorrrit and @littlechoc

Have to have the radio Times at xmas @Ray to

@fluffy envious of your being able to fight your case. TCB hadn't tracked me for something but I'm not brave enough to dispute then

Tayto there was a fire on one of the lines just outside in the morning and it caused carnage it was utterly horrendous and ruined our trip really.

£1.99 on a sausage roll.

£35 coming my way from quidco.

Hi littlechocola I miss vertbaudet! My girls are too big now, and ds has got by on hand me ons and supermarket clothes.

tayto this year it's just my usual fare, mini pigs, tiny cats etc, I have sold one nativity camel, but didn't list extra stuff this year. When I'm organised I have bespoke nativity sets, baubles, finger puppets, donkeys, sheep and camels, and I make a fabulous elf on the shelf type toy if I do say so myself christmas fairies too but I'm rarely organised

I have half painted the living room ceiling. Found a tub of white, and put a blob of pale turquoise in it, to take the edge off the whiteness.

Just about £10 in the post office, posting and sweets, oh, and finally sellotape. Can start wrapping tomorrow. 2 dc break up tuesday, two wednesday lunchtime here, so everything needs to be wrapped by then, or I'm in real trouble.

Littlechoc I'd start by working out your income and then your outgoings. I do it on a monthly basis because DH is paid monthly (I'm paid fortnightly) and our Direct Debits all go out each month. Our income is DH's salary, my salary and our Child Benefit. Our outgoings are all our direct debits (mortgage and bills), childcare payments and diesel. The difference between our income and our outgoings is our disposable income. Everything else (including food) has to come out of our disposable income. I've set up a spreadsheet on Excel with the dates and amounts of each payment/DD. I update it each month around pay day and then I can check the balance at any given time during the month.

If you find that your disposable income isn't enough for the month, you need to look very carefully at your spending and maybe track it (get a notebook and record every single purchase/item) to see what you're spending money on, and where you can make cuts by reducing unneccessary spending. Example of these are buying take away coffees on your way to work (when you could make a mug of instant coffee for a fraction of the price), buying lunch instead of taking a packed lunch, buying takeaways instead of cooking a meal, buying a top because it caught your eye when your wardrobe is bursting at the seams and you've a million tops already etc. etc. We all have our own weaknesses. Also, check your direct debits and make sure they're all necessary bills. Sometimes people are surprised to find that they're still paying subscriptions for things/services when they thought they'd cancelled them.

Another tip is to make a meal plan and do a weekly shop from a shopping list, instead of doing lots of small (but expensive) top up shops.

Oh and you could look at your utility bills and consider changing suppliers. Lots of suppliers offer reductions if you switch. I don't think this works as well for me because I'm in Ireland and it's a smaller country and there aren't as many suppliers here. But might be something for you to consider? When you get your car or house insurance quote, phone around and see if you can a reduction with another insurance company.

These are just a few suggestions. I'm probably missing lots of things.

Great post tayto, sound advice. This is exactly what we do, I’m not even technical like you, it’s all written down, but it works, it really does.

Welcome littlechoc and dorritt.

fluffy, no record of my form... I’ve sent another but been too busy to chase it up to be honest.

girlie, I used to help out my DD if she forgot something but it was massively the exception if she did forget something, so slightly different.

Hope you feel better soon born.

Spends today
£22 Aldi.
£25 on this delivery of fresh fruit, salad and veg from the local market. Photo doesn’t do justice to how much stuff there is, and far less packaging. Really impressed as it’s very fresh.

Oops

Wow that all looks lovely need I have pomegranate envy! :o

Welcome to newbies it's lovely to have more people here! Christmas can really be a scary time financially.

I think we can still finish the year in the black for the first time since...??? - I mean, we definitely can as last resort I'd just borrow from savings but I don't think we need to as long as I am careful. Christmas is proving pricey despite cutting back and considering we have also replaced things like a bed and washing machine I feel we have managed quite well. Having the money to do this without using more credit is a novelty and it's made me more determined to stay that way. We have less than 3k on 0% now and 900 saved (I know normally paying off debt comes first BUT since we will be moving we need plenty more put aside.

I think my main resolution has to be to get more organized. It is always lack of planning that causes me expense, mainly food but also stuff like taxis when I've not planned journeys well, replacing things I've lost and things like procrastinating and missing discounts. Plus my house is a mess! So it's got to be a priority all round.

Spends £1.20 parking, £15 in wilkos -got loads for that, £5 primark on a gift, £2 card warehouse and £33 in lidls.

I had a complete frugal fail as forgot to use my £5 off voucher in lidls I swore a lot on the way home when I remembered!

We had jacket spuds with beans and cheese tonight, cheap and delicious!

Tayto, move in with me please? That’s fantastic!
I shall sit down tomorrow and write everything down.

Forgot-
Today’s spends- £5.60 in co-op.
DP made a beautiful soup for dinner with spinach, butternut squash, garlic, onion, chickpeas, tomatoes and coconut milk. All of which we had apart from the chickpeas. Yummy

I wonder if now would be a good time to post our 2018 financial goals?

Mine is to simply save, save, save!!! It frightens me not having much in the saving pot, I reckon if I'm super careful I could save £1500 next year...

Cagliostro Dave Ramsey's method has the emergency savings fund first, before paying off the debt, as there will always be an emergency at some point. So he would approve of your way!

That looks lovely Need. I try to use our fruit and veg market where I can but the stuff they sell is always nearly on the turn and needs using immediately.

Girlie my goals for 2018 are to start savings pots for all my non-essential expenses (and not raid them!). So school holidays, school uniform fund, birthdays, Christmas, clothes etc. I would love to get away from that desperate feeling when you realise the children have grown and barely fit their school shoes anymore. How much nicer to already have a little fund for it put by. I'm so bad with money that I'm now bankrupt, so that will be something really extraordinary for me.

I have a ton of things to get done/pay for between now and going back to work (May).

• ds’ passport
• ds’ Nursery application
• ds’ bank account

-ds on dh’s health insurance

• venue for christening reception
• invitations etc

To organise myself I bought a naice moleskin notebook. And dug our my naice old Parker ballpoint pen.

Dparents cane Home from seeing dgrandma. They brought gifts. Some for Christmas. Some for now. Including a bottle of holy water from Jerusalem for ds’ christening. Whether we use it or not is a different matter. We may just keep it in ds’ christening/Special box.

So, £15 fuel paid on the nectar card so free & the cat food earlier. Also free from surveys.

Need Oh ffs that's so useless of them.

Oh, and sains basics chocolate. Nice. Try it.

I'm gonna bake cookies with it. Or attempt it and hope they taste like cookies.

Sold items on Vinted so have just moved £23 to my bank account! For clothes that I no longer wear.