We’ve had our Merry Thriftmas, now bring on the Happy Fru Year! All welcome as we Frugaleer our way into January 2018.

[Cagliostro]

A new thread in case we are too tipsy (or in my case, asleep on the sofa) to remember later.

This is a friendly group where we chat all things money related and all things everything else related. Everyone welcome so settle in and let’s make 2018 the year we save money!

The post arrived with a couple of insurance renewals adding a good £10 onto my monthly expenditure 😡hopefully the postie stays away tomorrow. We have struggled in the past to get house insurance as we have a watercourse nearby - even though we have no history of flooding and are above the water course after the floods in Hull we found no-one wanted to touch us even though we are nowhere near hull so shopping around isn’t an option. Will need diesel today so that’ll be £56 at least and we are thinking of getting out of the house and away from all the lurking germs. We are fed up of being indoors, if we do go out dh has some vouchers he wants to spend and I promised ds a cone of chips. I need some face powder so will try and limit spends to that

The odd coffee is allowed every now and then rebecca

£29 in Tesco. Mainly on fruit and veg as eating things up in the freezer and a pie to finish off the custard with.

Must remember to do mash for my shepherds pie tomorrow that I got out of the freezer as it is missing it.

fluffy and anyone else who signed up to the £1 radio times subscription thing-remember you need to cancel soon! Did mine earlier.

Grim and drizzly here but fortunately started after the school run. DD2 was unusually well behaved and didn’t demand to be carried

Rebecca why not eat lunch then go for a walk? If you're not hungry it's less tempting to buy stuff.

Girlie I would suggest the school nurse. Does her school have a school nurse drop in? They are excellent at basic emotional support and are able to access further support if needed.

Weather is shit here. Frugal win! The dc's feet haven't grown phew. £1 parking £10 Tesco on cat food, bread massive box of jacobs crackers reduced to £2 and some cheese to go with it.

£11 on milk for break time for the dc for the next half term. Anyone else have to pay for this?!

I never bothered with the milk Wreck dd isn't a big milk fan anyway!! Thanks for the advice on the school nurse, will email the yr head and ask for her/his email address as well.

Spendy morning from the comfort of the sofa!
£40 to dds school (£30 towards school trip, £10 school dinner account.)
£49 to dds drama group includes a panto ticket for next week.
£24 for the trampoline place tomos.

Have worked out that am left with around £100 a week to live on which is do'able as in theory no more big spends. Am going to use the CB money for dds birthday.

Hello :)

I've just downloads YNAB to have a look at etc - when you set budgets for each thing, does anything not used up rollover to the next month?

Going to try hard this year to stop incidental spending on 'stuff', and save up more.... that's the plan anyway!

I'm feeling very stressed money wise today. Ex hasn't yet put money in (for newbies he is an untraceable expat, we have 3dd's he hasn't seen for almost 7 yrs, and gets very abusive if I ask for money), I'm fine, in my overdraft, but panicking in case he just doesn't. If he decides (again) that I'm a greedy bitch, there isn't a great deal I can do about it.

Cheese on toast for lunch, and only need milk. Will stop off at the coop so I don't wander into tescos.

Re Amazon, yes it's convenient. My dp is just winding up his business (service repair shop) as we cannot compete. People not shopping locally and (worse imo) thinking we are ripping them off as we cannot price match the internet (literally pay more for parts from distributors than you can buy online) has sent us bust. So tying up all the loose ends is a terrible worry too, as we honestly have no money left. Luckily we have seperate finances, and the house is in my sole name as I bought it before I met dp.

Dentist €50
Animal Feed €15.38
€8.65 at local centra for dc's breakfast/lunch €2 of which dd has already paid me back as she got a pretty notebook, bless her she wanted to give me €4 because it's always me paying!

Transferred €120 to one credit card & €150 to another one, remaining one will come out by standing order early next week.
Set up weekly payment to one credit card & to electricity provider of €20 each

Got electricity bill and first bill is cleared & I'm €47 in credit on next one thanks to €175 credit for switching it was an estimate so I'll enter Meter reading & work out how much it's going to be bimonthly.

Transferred €400 from Christmas savings to pay against a credit card, will look at % rates & pay down most expensive first.

Girlie I'm sorry to hear your dd is having a tough time at school

My lunch was frugal leftovers and a fried egg and toasted a tablespoon of seeds that was the end of a packet to have on top. It was yummy & filling

Macarena good work!

Lydia you've already promised to take her & her friends out & you've bought her presents too and you're cooking her favourite meals - that's plenty

Cinema deal sounds really good

Spent £1 today on loaf from corner shop, only a quid but annoying as know if i went aldi i could get two for that! But its raining and ive twisted my ankle

Weekly spend so far £11.01

Oh no girlie I’m sorry, is she getting worried about going back to school? DD used to get like that at the end of the holidays. It’s good she is talking to you though and it is most likely just settling in to a whole new big school. I know you’ve said in the past that she’s quite sensitive so it’s just taking her a little longer

Sermon duly noted moan I used Amazon much more this year (baby born late October and wasn’t up to sorting anything else) but it would be good to aim for less use of it from now on. :) There are a few particular shops we use, especially our much loved local game shop in the next town over. Is buying from marketplace sellers slightly better than buying direct from Amazon?

DH and I have decided to try and save cash from teaching. We do need some cash through the week so it’s useful for that, but to reduce frittering we will stick some in a box. We will hopefully have a holiday in June so will save cash for that first, then for Christmas. Not sure how much we will try and save - those who pay cash aren’t always regular for sports club (others prebook via PayPal for a discount) so not sure we can save a set amount. With my tutoring, it’s spread throughout the week, but pretty flexible as that’s the home ed way. Maybe it would be better to have a maximum amount of ‘petty cash’ between us and then anything above that gets saved? I am probably overthinking...

DH loves his Contigo flask so big thank you for the recommendations. He has constant access to hot tea at work now so all is right with the world. :o

So spends today, I escaped to town for a bit first thing as I just felt a bit stir crazy and grumpy.
£4.90 bus pass, DH has taken it now to get to work and back rather than walking.
£3 Mothercare - the shop is virtually empty now, just a couple of racks of clothes left! Wish I’d been in when they further reduced everything after Christmas, as there were definitely other items in there I wanted, but they are all wants not needs anyway. I just got a tshirt and dress in bigger sizes from the Little Bird range, super cute.
£7.66 Hotel Chocolat on two reduced Christmas things. I was much more careful this time and chose tastes that only appear at Christmas rather than regular chocolate in festive shapes IYSWIM.
£2.65 hot chocolate, sat in Costa to feed baby. I’m hoping to make less of a habit of this really especially as I’m in town with the Caglets frequently between activities, but today it was part of the reason I went to town in the first place just to get a moment to myself!
£70.05 Tesco delivery, some household stuff in that. I’m planning quite boring food this week and I want to really get a handle on what is left in the cupboards and freezer too.

Frugal win, we have visitors for lunch tomorrow and normally I’d get shedloads of buffet stuff, but instead we are doing jacket spuds with a choice of fillings, and a big salad. Much cheaper and tasty too I hope. It’s habits like this I really need to tackle.

Can anyone recommend a budget tracking app, I don’t mean something like YNAB linked to bank balance etc I literally just want to be able to input date, item (possibly categories too like food, transport etc) and cost. I have done spreadsheets before and although I discovered that the iPad has an Excel type program installed, I’m finding it a bit fiddly.

I think I need to get a new nursing bra. I have two, one is really thick material that is really awkward to undo (fine at home but awkward when out and about and I’m trying not to flash people!) but the other one doesn’t fit well enough to justify ordering a duplicate. Ugh I don’t want to schlep all the way to Bravissimo.

Frazzled yes it rolls over

cag hated hated hated feeding bras. By ds (he's my 4th, last) I just wore stretchy underwired normal v.cheap bras and scooped myself out. Not helpful for you cag as I know you are much better endowed than me! Another decent fitting bra is a must for you, sorry! Especially as cagletini will be feeding for a good long while! Can you check ebay? You might get lucky size wise, and if not a perfect fit, not much lost. So many people buy loads of bras and don't feed for long.

Have had the heel of bread with marmalade on, and feel a bit better. Until we get some money in I'm going to "go on a diet". I have laid the groundwork by wingeing to dp that I've put a stone on, so he won't query it.

I got panache ones from bra stop. So comfy and pretty

Thanks for the replies re: pocket money. Will chat to DH about what approach we take. Think it should be linked to some household jobs like putting her laundry in the basket and making bed etc.

cag - I'm quite ample of norkage and liked the panache feedings bras from bravissimo, although as wreck says Brastop (or Figleaves) may be more bargainous.

Cancelled my Financial Times subscription today - although it's useful for work, I just can't justify £30 per month on it.

Couple of direct debits have left my account today - gym and sky. Made me think about whether we need sky. We've got Netflix and Prime in terms of TV content so may just need to research broadband providers.

Also need to work out what to do with my gym membership. Signed up to the 1000km in 2018 thread as I really want to be more active, but it's just so tricky to actually get the the gym given the epic commute 🤔

Other than the above, it's looking like a NSD.

@shoopshoop I cancelled sky tv and kept unlimited broadband and phone free evening and weekends. This got my bill down to £16 pm instead of £127.

I then bought Now tv sky entertainment and sky movie passes which cost £50 for 6 months. I'm realising how little sky tv I actually watch and so glad I've cancelled.

If you call sky to cancel they offer you reduced prices etc. Once I'd cancelled I was getting emails to take any package at 40% off.

Also if sky is in your name only you could cancel and if you have a dp they could sign up as a new customer and get whatever freebie and reduced prices are on offer.

Ooooh thanks chocco. Think we're paying around £80pm so £16 sounds much better.

I'll investigate and report back....

Yes we are paying a big wodge for virgin, it includes Netflix, broadband and landline but DH is looking into how to cut that right down.

SPends so far £5.99 on a new bowl for catface. I dropped hers while I was washing it and it cracked. Bah.

Still have to go to the coop for veggies.

Didn’t make breakfast as flights not in until later - we were picking up my godmother at 830 and breakfast then delivering her to my parents.

However she didn’t make it in until 11. I’ve picked up my post office things and dropped off some charity shop stuff though. Lunch with dparents. Now Home and am cleaning the cupboard under the sink. Sigh.

We got rid of sky and now just have now tv and amazon. Oh and Netflix but we don't pay for that thanks to mil's log in.

You new folk have given me extra impetus to reexamine every aspect of my life.

I cancelled 2 subscriptions to magazines yesterday, they were pretty cheap but still, I think after a year the articles get a bit 'samey'.

Lovely to hear from you Creme, I was hoping that you were okay. xxx

And you MissA, I was on the thread when you were so I guess that makes me a long standing member. DH is the same as yours I think, from what you have said.

Girlie - pastoral care. I would be surprised that a high school don't have a dedicated support worker or even team. DD once had a chat with hers when she was having friendship issues. I'm sorry that yours is. I found any emotion that DD experienced at Y7/8 (when the hormones were raging) seemed to be magnified at that age. So anger was rage, upset was devastation etc. I found it much trickier than easily the last 2/3 years when everything settled down. She's her usual calm self now.

Spends
£19.99 on a new Sear and Stew slow cooker. The non stick on my old one has all been peeling off for ages and I use it tons.
£20 Sainsbury's, but included milk and batteries for work.

Moanranger Another fellow business owner here, but not in direct competition with Amazon. We are industrial. It's DH's baby in the main, although I work there. 15 years trading this year so well established.

Woah lonely don't not feed yourself, unless I read your post wrong. Arse ex he is.

Cag can you do the bra intervention as see if there are any sale bargains or eBay as lonely said.

£25 on trampoline. Listed loads of stuff on Facebook this morning and sold 2 things already £8. Better than nothing

Cag I wore these Bravado bras when BF:
www.bravadodesigns.com/uk/

I wear an F/G cup and found them to be super wonderful and comfy, as well as supportive - I kept wearing them for a while after I stopped BF too as they were so comfy.