Frugaleers chatting and saving in the April sunshine.

[SunnyLikeThursday]

Welcome to the new thread. This is a support thread for chatting and discussion of family budgeting.

Looks delish mammy smoked salmon is my weakness. Adore the stuff. Dh not keen. Sigh.

There were some scraps for sale on reduced a while ago in Waitrose (essential smoked salmon obvs) so I bought LOADS and bunged them in the freezer.

My fave is just on bread. But also lovely with pasta with cream cheese sauce and black pepper and lemon. Mm.

My Dahl recipe is: yellow split peas, red lentils (equal quantities), 4-6 cloves of garlic, chunk of ginger, and cumin seeds, black pepper, and curry powder. (Whole black pepper and cumin seeds dry roasted in a pan then smushed with pestle and mortar). Then chicken stock, frozen spinach. Mmm. And Home made flat breads (or toast).

Oh and onion. Slow cook the onion garlic and ginger until squishy.

Spends sofa today €12.55 on salad, potatoes, bread, buns and juice. Will go and book skiing for the kids shortly (this Center Parcs has indoor snow done)

Have ginger and chilli coming in grocery shopping tomorrow morning everything else I already have

If anybody is in a savings account frame of mind, this is a good time to check that we have all used our full ISA allowance for 2017-2018. The tax year rolls over the day after tomorrow, and we can currently put £20k in an ISA each year.

Yes to smoked salmon cream cheese pasta, love it. I used to mix in brocolli too when it was just me and the girls, very easy tea.

I have a grand total of £400 in my isa, for me this is an epic save! But I think it will have to be 3 matresses for my dd's as theirs are all knackered (buy cheap, buy twice). No spare 20k here, unfortunately.

Have done 3 hrs work, and sorted dd1's room. For a tiny single, there was 2 bin bags of rubbish, and 2 laundry baskets worth of washing in there (mostly socks). Quick bacon pasta for tea.

Still snowing.

That's great that you have £400 in your ISA for the mattresses. Well done saving that.

Afternoon all. Back from a weekend with family, drive home got decidedly horrid just south of Sheffield and took a lot longer than it should have I have unpacked and repacked my case ready for going away for work tomorrow and one load of washing is on.
Stopped off for some bits for tea in Tesco as no one fancied stopping in the way home and filled up with diesel. My car app tells me I’ve done 548 miles on the last tank which cost me just over £55.

Afternoon people. No snow here....it sounds as if it is on the other side of the Pennines wolf. Just lots of rain. Lots of rain. So I am having an indoor day and getting my sketching back up to speed. I frustate myself I do quite a bit & improve loads ( very low base point) and then don't do anything for ages, forget it all and have to start from the beginning again. I have a mental image of me whiling away hours sketching in my journal. The only problem is that if anyone took a look they would think I was looking after it for a blind person.

We have more people coming to tea today.... So at some point I will need to get up and do something for that. I think we can get away with things that we have in already so I don't have to go out in the rain. YaY!

Well that was expensive. £105 Matalan, £60 Sainsbury's, swimming didn't happen as leisure centre closed.

Oooh I just found something lovely dh bought at the shop. A cabbage/vraic loaf (which I think is a local thing - huge cob style loaf wrapped and cooked in cabbage leaves and some vraic (seaweed)) and some of the lovely president butter.

I’m currently watching the assassination of gianni Versace on iPlayer and am having a slice of bread and butter. Le yum. Ds is napping. Dh is napping. Catface is napping.

I’m drinking my Easter wine. To stop it going off.

Girlie Wilko are doing that lawn edging that keeps your borders tidy, the stuff you bang into the lawn with a mallet and mow over it. I’m going to try it out in the front garden first.

Fluffy we have that in the back. Replaced a low border edging fence with it. It’s great. Bloody hard work to bang in if you have shit soil though!

Ooh sounds promising. Dh always complains about doing the edging.

Afternoon all

semi-newbie here. Back to try and reign in the spends again. I've accumulated a £350 overdraft which I really want to try and get paid off so I'm going to come here and account for my spends if that's okay. The overdraft is an arranged one so no monthly fees incurred, just interest.

I'm buying far too many Kindle books (I must have 1,000 on there unread!) and I also buy too many clothes so I'm banning myself from buying any more.

I'm doing SW at the moment too and spending too much money on the more expensive types of foods so I want to try and budget better there. I'm up to 16lbs off in 7 weeks but still have 54lbs to go.

I know tackling my overdraft won't start straightaway as with it being a BH there's been no debits from bank account since Thursday except for cash withdrawals so I will brace myself for that tomorrow.

At the moment - spends account is
Highest overdraft figure: £350.40 (i.e the day before last payday)
Overdrawn: £275.08
DS1 owes me: £42.00
Total left before I go over the highest overdraft: £117.32
Still to debit
Credit card: £61.40 (tomorrow)
Road Tax: £10.06 (tomorrow)
Money remaining £45.86 (eek - I know there'll be debits to come out of this too)

Days left to payday: 12 (eek)

Money in food/petrol account: £193.78 (but £154 of this was money which I have not spent in previous months) so I actually only have £39.78 left out of this month's budget so I'm kicking myself for letting things slip meaning I have to put that little bit of savings into my current account because of my stupid spending. I put £26 in petrol on Friday but there's quite a lot of food in the freezers so I'll probably just have to buy fresh stuff if I am organised and stick to lists.

So - plan - to try and not be overdrawn by any more than £350.40 by the time I get paid on 13th April although I can 'cheat' this by transferring my grocery surplus back in.

Well done if you got this far.

Scarlet I know what you mean about good food being expensive. I eat very well and am bang on the right weight, but it does cost a lot. Have you looked at cheaper ways of getting really good food? e.g. tinned sardines rather than steak, and potatoes with meat rather than processed stuff.

I am also drinking my Easter wine. Because dh has gone down in my expectation. Mil is insisting on being known as “momon“ (or maman) but as I’ve said before it means “whore fanny” in the local French dialect. But when she writes it it’s spelled as “Mummy” dh is enabling it.

I’ve passive aggressively said it’s fine. I’ll be calling her “grandma” because I think it’s insukting to call his mother a whore fanny.

And am happy to tell her this. 😉

Tell her. She’s encouraging a baby to use obscene language. I thought she was trying to get your ds to call her mummy.

scarlett There’s some grocery coupons for milk in mse. If you run out of washing powder grate some soap up or use Tesco smartprice shampoo. Cleans well.

She was. That’s what’ve she thinks it means...

I have to finish the before the diet starts gaian ( 12weeks to hols) ..it would be so unfrugal to pour it away..
Have also just made a Fakeaway Chinese mixed rice..
I really wanted to go and get spare ribs and Singapore noodles though..

it has to be back to diet tomorrow though..

em your MIL is just batty. I am a gran, No way would I want my DGcs to call me any name which sounded like mummy..

€1 for garlic.

Scarlett have you looked at Bookbub for free e-books? Not sure what you like to read (I love mind numbing trash ), it is mainly for kindle, but also some apple and kobo

AuditAngel - yes I'm a member of Bookhub and get e-mails from them - I just like buying "stuff" and it needs to stop. I don't need any more books it's so easy just pressing "buy now" as no one sees them magic themselves to my kindle, it'd be different if they were on a proper bookshelf!

Sunny - yes, this is what I mean - I need to try and stick to the cheaper items - I've just been wandering around the supermarket buying things I like, instead of palatable and cheap plan friendly food.

Fluffy - I'll be okay for washing powder (will probably need some out of next month's budget) and unfortunately Tesco is the supermarket farthest away. I have a Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl and Asda within a 5 minute drive though :-D

PS - this month has also been a bit tight as I have bought DS2 and my football season tickets which were £290 out of last month's wage so now I have remembered that, I think I'm doing really well :-)

Still want shot of that overdraft though.

That Momon thing is weird. Good job she’s on the other side of the planet most of the time.

Welcome back Scarlet, I think I recognise your style

Can’t believe the snow up north

It’s been a weird weekend here. We’ve not been out much because it’s been raining hard and DS can’t cope with wet clothes (or busy indoor attractions) so I’m feeling a bit cabin feverish. I’m glad we’re away next weekend because at least we will feel as though we’ve done something with the holidays.

My family came to visit yesterday. Ddad did really well and managed to stay for 90 mins and to hold DD for a little bit. However, he said it would be best if we went to them in future as the journey (80 mins in car) was a bit much for him. So he’ll never be here at my house again. That feels so weird as, for various reasons, my family always meets here rather than at my parents’ place. So it’s sort of the family home . He was able to chat normally but was looking very thin and is on morphine. He was talking openly about what he wants (e.g. hospice, and for his girls to wear bright frocks to his funeral). All felt a bit surreal. But no one cried so it wasn’t too intense, almost normal even (I cried once they were all gone though). I really appreciate everyone’s kind wishes over the last week or so and will try not to bang on about it

Today I’ve been sorting dcs’ clothes and cleaning. Very therapeutic. NSD yesterday and so far today except that I’m about to order myself some jeans from Tu on 25% off. And some lawn treatment from Amazon as ours is looking a bit sad.

I’ve just dumped lots of money in my cash isa to use up my allowance. I’ve had oodles of cash in my current account because I got a big payment from the wind-up of my old company (from when I was self-employed) and it’s what I’m living off now while not working. However, I don’t really like having oodles of money in my current account but i can’t put it out of reach as I will owe quite a hefty amount of tax on it next January, and also am still living on it so gradually eroding it. But at least if I don’t quite use it all it will be in an ISA.

Next frugal job is to apply for Carers’ allowance. I should be eligible because of DS receiving DLA and my maternity allowance having finished. It feels cheeky but actually he IS the reason I can’t work at the moment. And if I can’t find an affordable childcare solution, I may not be able to for the foreseeable future . Heaven help us if that’s the case.

It’s nuts. But hey ho. If dh is happy for me to refer to his mum as “fanny” so be it. I’ve asked him if this is ok, given that he knows I know what it means and knows we don’t have the best relationship.

He’s said he can’t win. Either he knows I effectively refer to his mum by a derogatory term. Or I call her grandma (which is against her wishes and upsets her). To be fair I can’t win either. But I’ll go with whatever dh wants. because I’m trying to put other people’s feelings before mine and don’t want to cause any fuss between dh and I before her impending visit