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

[needastrongone]

New thread.

I think being tired is a small price to pay for clearing a loan. Assuming you can cope with it.

That's rubbish of Amazon. How can they be excellent one day and rubbish the next?

Lots of vouchers here to spend but cba with the sales. Have priced up my blinds. Just need to decide on recess or exact. Most likely exact for Roman and Recess for roller

Nsd! Three on the bounce. We will need milk tomorrow.

Made a tasty tea of turkey, bacon and sweet potato in a creamy sauce-pasta. A whole breast, probably 500g leg meat and a seperate portion of breast bits into the freezer and the turkey is sorted. And a pot full of sausages and pigs in blankets frozen too. The yule log needs finishing today as it's got cream in, but thats all, everything else we can eat gradually.

Dp and I felted the shed roof, as the day was clear and crisp. It is done! I had to come in at 3 as my hands were so cold they stopped working. We used up two 5l tins of felt adhedive, which appeared to be crude oil. The smell transported me back 20 years, when I worked on oil tankers. Felt so nostalgic, and a bit bereft for my "lost life" ifswim.

I'm going to do some knitting now, happy holidays!

Happy Holidays Lonely
Knitting and drinking tea here =bliss

Sounds like a productive day lonely

I also spent €18 in Tesco on three toothbrushes, kids toothpaste, deodorant, OJ, 2 packs of Pringles and a gigantic dairy milk. Ds wanted a battery operated Spider-Man one for €10.95, he got a Tesco one with a shark cover for €1.24

I found some boots I liked and they were in the sale so I've ordered them. £60 delivered hopefully I'll like them.

Sounds good wreck

Saw a thread for a No Spend January, thinking I could do this as only spending vouchers I do have a wedding though on January 5th so will need to spend at that, it's preplanned so I guess could rule those days out.

Yesterday I ordered cot mattress protectors from amazon £15 for 2. Other than that no spends.

mammy I’ll be impressed if you can do a no spend January.

Town today I think.

We spent years of doing no spends whatsoever on anything because we had no money, but then when we did have more money it meant that we had to spend a lot of money replacing things that had been totally broken for a long time.

At one point the only vacuum cleaner we had was one we got from the dump, which hoovered up big stuff but let the fine dust whoosh right through into the air. And that was in our 30s (I'm now 42).

I keep thinking about try to rein in spends, but then I think we might just go back to having broken stuff everywhere and inevitably have to spend the money eventually. It's a weirdly tricky balance, given that we don't really know how much money we need to save up for retirement.

I’ve looked at the no spend January thread. I’m doing no frivolous spends in January (unless with gift vouchers) so will be doing my frivolous spending between now and jan 1

It's snowing! Well we have a dusting. The power keeps flickering.

It's heavy rain and windy here. It feels like proper winter weather.

Em obviously we'd need groceries etc but out of my own wages I mean, could make a bumper payment to credit cards then. Tried to lodge a cheque yesterday but the branch had no letterbox!

Sunny I see your point too

Wreck how's ds?

He's ok temperature is not as high as it was. Have got abx now so hopefully better soon!

Mammy I think if you have debts then you're absolutely right to do no-spends until it's all paid off. The reason we lived with no stuff for years was because we didn't want to be in debt.

I think once debt is all cleared it probably makes sense to make some judgement call about what level of life to live and then buy things as cheaply as possible when we see the chance. And then crucially, to look after our possessions so they do not need to be replaced. I'm not great at that second part.

I wish I knew how to make the judgement call on what level of life to aim for. I have no idea really how much money we'll need in retirement and everything else is so dependent on that.

I paid the last 20K off mortgage in 2 years by doing Needs vs Wants rather than no spends.
Everything was considered need vs want ?? and I read all my books,used all smellies and it wasnt that hard.
It got round the issue of things breaking etc
Im doing that again this year -have Christmas money and vouchers to spend then back on it.

I'm off to look at that no spends thread. I have some Xmas money and vouchers which I'll use to buy some new clothes before I go back to work but other than that we can't afford frivolity!

Pink That's more or less what I do too, and I really find it works well.

Caveat is that I don't buy a lot of things that we probably do need (like slightly more fashionable clothes) and I do buy perhaps more expensive food than we absolutely need. Again, that's a bit of a judgement call.

The other thing I find is a huge judgement call is when I spend money to effectively outsource something that I could be doing myself. It seems to be a choice between outsourcing, which is good for my health, or doing the work myself, which is good for saving money.

If I'm honest, I should probably outsource more, and take more weight off my own shoulders, but figuring what to do and how to do it is tricky. Complicated stuff really.

Great news wreck
Sunny it's a priority, I managed to contribute €2300 to my pension fund this year because it comes out of my wages at source, if I'd done same with credit cards they'd be clear now.
I do have €2200 lined up to pay against debt currently though so but balances are at about three times that I think, will call and get current balances for all cards this week and make a plan. Must total what's Christmas debt also & transfer from savings too

I’m definitely back on the no spending wagon in January!

In past years we’ve paid off between 5-10k a year off our mortgage. But this years DH took a considerable drop in income (it’s a means to an end, there is logic in the decision!) and we struggled to get used to managing our finances in a new way. We’ve tweaked things a bit and should be more comfortably off now.

But if we can start making bigger dents in the mortgage I’d be really pleased. We’ve only got about 3 and a half years to go on it anyway, it’d be nice to get it done sooner. No debts other than that.

The only big spend I’ve got in January is my gym membership renewal. I get 12months for the price of 10 if I pay for it all in one go.

I think we all have our priorities Sunny
I could save £££ if I lived on beans and cheap carbs but I would be utterly miserable and depressed.
I compromise by only having high quality local meat a few times a month and strict meal planning/reducing waste/local market for fruit and veg.
Likewise there are 3-5 adults ,depending on who is at Uni/home , so I divide chores/cleaning x number of adults rather than outsourcing .

Not caught up yet but just had to sneak in a photo as I finally caught Cagletini smiling!

Pink Do you find the market cheaper then? Our food bill is bonkers so I'd be glad to know if you've found cheaper good options.

That's a good idea about sharing the cleaning among you. I've pondered getting a cleaner too, but it never makes any sense for us. We've got a good system among us now.

My outsourcing is mostly educational materials bought rather than made for ds and professional advice on all sorts of things rather than figuring stuff out from scratch myself. I never though in the past about outsourcing the hard thinking, but it works a treat.

We have a lot of sort of wet snow here. It's properly wintery looking out there.

Excellent smile Cag.

cag she's a real cutie!

A money resolution thread is running, another poster berating us for spending money! I dunno, I don't think this is a thread you can dip in and read a page of out on context! I nearly replied but didn't want a bun fight. I like our cosy corner of mn.

So far not a lot accomplished. Will make some food (pancakes or waffles as no more bread left) then we are going for a compulsary jolly walk. I'll have to pop to the village for milk and bread, and drop dd1 at Grandmas, but thats about it I think.