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!

How's your Dd today life?

lonely is there any way you can manage without money from the ex?

Just so that you don’t have to give him the satisfaction of you asking for money.

Grocery delivery today, £98. I didn’t need one last week.

We should be sticking broadband this week. Been with BT for far too bloody long.

Creme I'm so glad your still posting. I was thinking about you New Year's Day. I miss your cheery "have a good weekend".

Love Done.

Spends.
£30 petrol.
£1.59 potatoes. Need a big sack off the farm shop again.

Anything like sky, Netflix etc cancel & see if they offer you a better rate. If they do then great. If they don't you can always join again. Put bills in the name of the person most likely to switch providers.

More obscure money saves. Credit expert fee re-claims, see mse but basically we had most of our fees back a few years when mse wanted people to test out reclaiming the fees due to mis-selling.

Free water saving devices off the water board websites. Google free water saving devices.

Re-claim surface water charges if your house has a soakaway. If it's new build it quite likely does because building regs state surface water should enter drains as a last resort because of flooding. Ours was under the drive. There will be a form on the water providers website. They already know if you've got one as the house builder will have told them. They just don't set up accounts properly.

Re-claim packaged bank account fees if you've had them.

LED light bulbs. Cheap as in Aldi & the savings rack up quickly. More so than you'd believe. I've even got one in the fridge from eBay. I fitted two candle shaped ones in the cooker hood instead of Pygmy bulbs.

Citric acid as washing machine cleaner. Half a 99p pack in home bargains sends the water a satisfying grey colour if you live in a hard water area. Soda crystals for the dishwasher. Much cheaper than proprietary appliance cleaners.

Switching things off. Right now the only things on in this house is the fridge, the freezer, the alarm system & central heating control panel that I switched the led backlight off. Even the door bell is switched off at the wall. Heating goes on half hour, off half hour while I'm in. You don't notice the off half hour until right at the end.

Grocery apps;

Green Jinn
Checkout smart
Shopitize if it's still running
Quidco clicksnap
Shopmium.

If you have a partner you can sign them up too, keep one account running on your phone & there account on the iPad etc. Some of them track redemptions & will think your up to no good if you use two accounts on one phone.

Tracking apps that pay out in Amazon vouchers;
Media cell. Just google it & download. £130 a year
Mobile xpressions. About £30 a year.
Gfk internet monitoring. About £20 a year.

Spin dryers second hand off eBay. Little work horses that will cut the time your tumble dryer needs to run. Very cheap to run but noisy if you don't fill them up. Things dry on the airer overnight here in an in-heated room.

E-Rewards surveys. Log into the nectar desktop & enter it into the search bar. Surveys earn 100-300 points and pay out at 1000 points.

£34 amazon on brushed cotton sheets for spare bed and white pillow cases. Somehow my pillowcases seem to be disappearing.

Still have to go to the coop. Aiming to spend £30. Ds is napping in his car seat. I don’t particularly like him napping in there but he fell asleep in the car and he hasn’t been day napping much. So I’m not waking him up - learned the “don’t wake a sleeping baby” lesson a long time ago...!!

Prezzo 2 for £25 three courses and a glass of wine

www.buyagift.co.uk/Basket

need she is better today. The egg has gone down but she is complaining the bump hurts. The headache had gone though. Thanks for asking

Been out. £39.89 in the feed shop, hope this lasts ages! £1.30 something postage, went as a large letter, was expecting £2.90. And £6 in aldi. At least it wasn't tescos. Just got the 4 things we needed most.

adora sadly not. If I didn't have my cc debt, yes easily. But I needed my cc's when he didn't pay, and it spiralled from there. Even if I found a ft job, I'd only ever be on minimum wage, and my books would be roughly the same as now, plus I'd need after school clubs for sure. He gives me way way under what he should (expat, living in the far east is not on 50k a year, no way), but as I said, theres fa I can do about it.

Spagetti and tomato sauce for tea, old family favourite recipie. All store cupboard and I've some parmesan in the freezer somewhere

Just got two packages in the post which are late deliveries for Christmas. Funny how stuff that was so urgent and necessary a week ago is now just more clutter and junk. It makes me realize how much perceptions guide my spending.
I need to get milk this evening but other than that I think we can get by with what we have. I’m hoping to get to the end of the week without spending.
Keeping out of the shops is key for me; I always come out with more than I went in for. And it’s worse during the school holidays and I have to bring the magpies DC with me. I’m trying to decide if getting milk delivered which costs a lot more than buying it in aldi would be worthwhile if it keeps me out of the store, and cuts my petrol bill back. I’ve considered it before and then balked at the cost. But I’m not sure if it’s a false economy not to. I think I’ll try it for January and see.

DH went back to work today so I was able to turn the heating down. I don’t mind wearing an extra layer and the dc never seem to notice. I’m busier when DH isn’t around to be lazy with so I don’t notice the cold anyway.

Yeah I think that's it need although tbf she has always felt emotions quite strongly. I will see what the school say, am hoping next term she will find a new group of pals...

Milk freezes really well.

Cag - re Amazon marketplace, it MAY be better than direct from Amazon, but who knows what Mephistophelan deal they have to do with the Big A to be accepted as traders? Do they pay VAT or not? Some of Amazons amazing pricing may be due to fancy footwork around VAT, which is20% of retail items prices. So you may not be getting good deals but rather enabling tax evasion.
I use ebay as it is more or less direct between buyers and sellers, tho ebay takes its cut and pulls some similar stunts as Amazon re taxes
and domiciles.
Lonely so sorry to hear of your situation & how your partner has been screwed by on line competition
Need my business isn’t retail either but I do have to charge VAT, pay employee taxes, Corp taxes, etc & it’s enraging when multi-billion pound companies pay so little.
I did spend today £4.50 on hair dye to save £60+ on salon colouring, milk, bread and a newspaper.
I thought I had to buy a tyre as recent service at Fiat dealer told me tread was dangerously worn. Tyre dealer checked it out & said it had plenty of tread left. Scammers! Back to my local family owned garage for servicing from now on.

Hi All

Am a lurker who needs to cut back on spending so have been reading this thread with interest for any tips and hints

Had a NSD yesterday and spent £5.40 on my weekly lunch supplies for work in Tesco today. Plan to spend this evening seeing exactly what is in the cupboard and freezer and meal plan accordingly till weekend. Trying to cut a bit off the food bill each week and my odds and ends during the week so I can increase my CC repayments to try and bring the balance down

Waiting impatiently for my shopping to be delivered because I'm hangry

Had to hoover up crumbs & my hoover smells of smoke I bought it 12 months ago tomo so guess where I'm going tomo!!

Well done tinks on that lunch shop that's what some people spend daily!

Freezing milk & bread has eliminated top up shops for us, however can't get dh to wait until shopping day to buy something if we run out

I had access to sky at my parents last fri night & there was nothing I wanted to watch, I missed my Netflix and tv3 player

14 items listed on eBay hopefully I'll make some money!

We have milk delivered to stop the top up shopping, it’s very effective in that regard. I probably spend 1.50 more per week having it delivered than I would buying it in the shop but I save £20 per top up trip plus diesel costs so it’s worth it. I don’t have freezer room for milk and our online shopping doesn’t come on a regular schedule so this works best for us

Aw, thanks everyone for the lovely and kind words. It's good to be back! 😀

£14.44 on a top-up shop in Asda. Apart from that, I've spent less than a tenner on food, since the Christmas food came on the 22nd.

Lonely, here's my meal plan, seeing as you missed it!
Today: veggie burgers, oven chips and salad.
Tomorrow: veggie chilli, rice, tortillas and sour cream.
Thursday: same.
Friday: Quorn and veggie stirfry with noodles.
Saturday: probably veggie hotdogs, as we are going to York for the day, so will have our main meal there.
Sunday: Quorn roast, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, broccoli, stuffing and gravy. There should be enough leftover for Monday too, which is very handy as I do Pilates on Monday evenings, so it's great to have it to come home to at 8 p.m. when I'm starving. I've got into the habit of doing that every time we've had a Sunday dinner this Autumn and Winter.

I'll read through and catch up on everyone's news and stories soon.

I pay £44 a month for sky. Just a tv package, as dp pays the bt broadboand, home phone + 2 contract mobiles, which is fine by me! I watch v little sky, but nick jr etc are always on. I generally watch on catch up later on if I really want to. Usually watch the beeb or ch4. All upstairs tellys use freeview, but only get a very limited amount of channels, my mum and dad (10 miles away) have 4 x as many.

Audit of the tall freezer is done. Lots of very old bread out for the chickens, draws tipped out (satisying), and some frost damaged (unwrapped) chicken breasts and salmon binned only, they were v old. Now I need to clear the top of the (half size) chest freezer and see whats in there.

Finally took the decorations down today.

Thanks moan that makes sense. I actually have almost £120 in my Amazon gift card account thanks to presents and last year's cashback. But I am definitely going to aim to do better. I do shop for convenience (health conditions mean that energy saving is important and I don't drive) but I could do better by being more organised. Also hopefully the fact I'm being more mindful about spending less anyway will help. Christmas will be the tricky one.

I feel all bleary after a nap ugh. Grumpy and disoriented. Neighbour's back from SA so their DD has been round all day, thankfully they just played upstairs.

Frugal win - this sort of day is normally takeaway territory. DD even assumed we might have one! But nope. I ordered oven pizza with Tesco and that's what we are having.

creme great to see you. I have been following you around boards. You give good advice. I find myself nodding sagely in agreement.
Girlie most schools have a pastoral person. I know my dd had a bit of a torrid time in the few terms at high school. I think they are all trying to find their place in the social packing order. It can be brutal but seems to settle down.
Waves at MissA
Demented good tip on the cinema tickets.
Check you can save a fortune on flowers by buying a couple of cheap bunches. Mix them together in a vaguely artistic fashion. Tie them closely under the flower heads, chop off the long stem. Rewrap in brown paper (if I can I slot them back into one of the cellophane sleaves). Tie with garden string and hey presto you have a very expensive hipster style bunch of flowers. Roses or Berbera work well. Or anything a bit unusual.

The Drs had been trying to get hold of me. They still had an old number for me. So I got an appointment today... It is a lump 1.6cm (I still can't feel it). So it is off to the breast clinic for a biopsy and another referal to the under carriage rummage clinic because of something in my blood and belly grope test. I suspect I may have to get up to speed on the medical terminology. So I am doing my best ostrich position and ignoring it (mostly) until / if they find something to lose sleep over.

Chevron= chocco.

And chevron= check. The spell check has a mind of its own.

Unescorted

It could well be benign so don't panic. Isn't it great that they picked it up before you could have even felt it during a breast check at home?

Amazing especially as even though I know it is there, I still can't feel it.

Creme wow at your low spends on food, I too missed your menu plans!
Mine is very simple this week
Today - freezer food if shopping ever arrives it's now 25 mins late
Tomorrow- Steak, onions & chips
Thurs - pasta dish I think at my parents
Fri - wedding
Sat - dinner at my db's
Sun - Roast chicken dinner I think

Unescorted you've got the right attitude, wait & see