May Making Money Go Frugally Further

[Wolfcub]

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Seacow I'm going to take the dc to London on Monday. We're getting in to Victoria and I want to take them on the cable cars and then go to tumbling bay playground. Is that the correct order to do it in? Anything else round there they'll like?

4 big bags of baby things dropped at the charity shop. Empty wheelie bin now full. Just grabbing myself a chicken pad Thai for lunch £4.95 as I won’t get time for dinner this evening

Wow wolf can you come declutter my baby stuff?! I've got piles of it in our bedroom and it's driving DH mad.

Hang in there Em!

Does anyone here have an Instant Pot or other multi function cooker thing? The ceramic in my slow cooker is starting to crack so it's time to replace it - thinking about upgrading but don't know what to get!

Instant pots get very good reviews, the pressure cooker feature would sell it for me.

Wreck do you mean the tumbling bay playground at the Olympic Park in Stratford? Or is there another one? And do you want to go both ways over the Thames or will one way do?

I’d get the tube from Victoria to NorthGreenwich and then go over the Thames on the cablecar, then DLR to Stratford (assuming that’s the stumbling Bay you mean).

The emirates cable car thingy has an ‘aviation experience’ Multimedia thing about flying, which I’ve heard is quite good (never been as DS doesn’t do ‘inside’ attractions). Apparently you can get a suitcase-eye view of getting off a plane and ending up on a luggage carousel .

I also think there’s some sort of animated dinosaur exhibition on at North Greenwich, I saw signs when I was there, I’ll try to find out what that was.

At Stratford there’s a nice cafe at Tumbling Bay (though you will of course take a picnic ). Elsewhere in the Stratford site there’s one of those pavement fountain things where jets of water shoot up firm the pavement and children run about and get wet. It’s really fun on a hot day.

Also invrhst neck of the woods (coming back into London onbthe central line) is the museum of childhood at Bethnal Green. That’s lovely and nostalgic for adults too! I think it’s free... you may not fit that in too though!

Back in a mo, have to change a smelly nappy...

Wolf you're a genius! I have some tent tape in one of our many camping boxes. DH can have a look for it later as I can't reach a lot of the stuff.

Yes that's the one! Thanks that's really helpful. Don't think we will do the aviation experience, it's looking like a nice day so will try to keep outside. We usually go up on the Waterloo line and end up at south bank but it's cheaper to go up on the Victoria line (plus no engineering) so will be nice to do something different. I'm totally not taking a picnic can't be doing with carrying things on the tube etc.

Yes I know in theory to expect the unexpected with large expenses, would love to be in a position where when things crop up its not a massive stress working out where the money is going to come from!! I do save £200 a month, £50 of that is just for car expenses and the rest is for everything else. The problem is I don't want to keep dipping into the savings pot as ideally would like £5000 in my savings account, have got quite a way to go before that happens!!!

Any ho todays spends,
£29 in Poundland, got lots of bits including toiletries, bird seed, solar lights for the garden and food.
£4.40 in Morrisons
£13 Asda, have treated us to The Greatest Showman dvd!!
£15 Aldi on stones for the garden

£30 to a friend that I owed money to for a spa evening.
£10 window cleaner.

I have had a major parenting fail here, managed to get the date wrong for dds hearing aid appointment it was yesterday!!! So embarrassing, not sure how I managed to get that wrong, I was convinced it was today. They were very shitty when I rang up to apologise and rearrange, it is the first time in 10 years worth of ENT appointment (at least two a year) that i have got the date wrong. Anyway its rearranged for July.

Didn't they text you?.

Its not easy at all Girlieparticularly when you have DC /CC bills etc.
I have 3 different savings accounts
Premium bonds -Longterm
Instant access -Christmas/Holiday/days out
Instant Access-Rainy Day Fund
That way I dont feel demoralised if I need go dip into the last 2 as thats what they are for !
There is also room in the monthly budget after everything bills, food,savings,personal spends ,up to about £250-350 and this often is used for stuff like dental bills,glasses repairs etc

Quite that’s what I’m aiming for too. We’ve never had savings since we bought this house. This month despite dropping down to one income I’ve put 100 away for annual expenses. I’m not saying it’s been easy but I feel somewhat proud that I’ve achieved it (although there is still nearly a week until payday)

We keep dipping into our savings to cover childcare and bills at the moment. Not good. I've pointed out to dh that our small amount of savings is not a bottomless fund. We are struggling to cut down any more though.

It is very hard to save, sometimes. DH and I were talking about this earlier. On paper we both earn good salaries, yet at the end of every month, my account is empty and his has a few quid in it. I think it's the fixed costs that are killing us. 2 lots of FT childcare plus wrap around care for the eldest, along with capital repayment mortgage, utilities, food, broadband and phones. We were trying to work out what we could cut back on - the only things we can come up with are:

Reduce food spends
Reduce beer spends
Downgrade mobile packages (I've just done this now I'm out of contract, am now paying £20 a month - DH is still locked into his)
Line dry everything now the weather is better
Downgrade tv & broadband package

That's pretty much all we can think of at the moment...if we can make savings in those areas then we should be able to save £300 a month. I honestly can't wait for the two littlest DC to start school, and then I feel so guilty for wishing the time away

Any other ideas for cost cutting?

Em good luck this evening! Hope you've a large bottle of gin stashed at home somewhere!

I’ll be dipping into savings this weekend. Or dh will.

£500 or so at pub for christening food.
£100 cake - I could have made a cake myself but haven’t got the time.

did say to dh the other day we should have had another one and then just done the christening on a twofa

I was in the very fortunate position where I could save a lot (at least £2k per month). VERY fortunate in the circumstances as I have had to take this career break and those savings have been supplementing our living costs for 2 years so far. And paying for DS’s therapy. After this break I’m not sure I’ll be able to earn as much in the future and our childcare costs are going to be horrendous, so it remains to be seen whether we can even stay in our house. You never can tell what life will bring.

Wreck I don’t think the aviation experience takes long and I think it might be included in the price, not sure. But anyway, the emirates cable car and Stratford will be quite a bit for the day, with travelling.

This is the best map of the park that I could find. Timber lodge is the naice cafe next to Tumbling Bay. It’s not cheap but there is also a massive M&S food hall just inside the Westfield shopping Centre at the entrance by the tube stations . Lower ground floor. The fountains that you can walk through /play in are number 6 on here,
and there is another play area nearby, number 7 ‘outdoor rooms.

www.queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk/~/media/qeop/files/public/qeop%20maps/queen%20elizabeth%20olympic%20park%20map.pdf

I’m tempted to head to the fountains myself!

You could homebrew beer. Beers cheap to make it's the duty we pay that makes it pricey. Could you go lower on phones? My sims £4 a month.

I'd definitely scrap the tv package.

Sea thanks so much! That's brilliant and really helpful. Yes I think those two will be enough plus lunch, ice cream and evening food probably at the station on the way home. The dc can usually make it to about 7 before they can take no more let me know if you do end up there I'll be the one instagramming perfect photos whilst in reality looking very ragged and shouting at my feral dc

Ffs. I'm going demented. I use my tablet, and the keyboard drops down sometimes mid type, thus pressing some of the "this may interest you" drivel at the bottom of the page. Thus losing my post. Aaah.

em I guess she's here, roll on bedtime and you can tick off day 1.

wolf well done on getting rid of some baby stuff. Wierdly for a hoarder, the baby stuff I found easy to part with/hand on. I think this is because I have had a lot of babies, and for both 3 and 4 I was "yep, done".

Went to the gp. Dental abcess, even though the tooth is fine. It's up by my cheekbone (my face is visibly swollen), and I think the infection hasn't fully gone away since the ruddy thing went wrong last year. Amoxicillin dispensed and started.

£2.85 on drinks for the dc's while we were waiting at the doctors. Dd1 went off to the spar! I know she's heading for 16, but I still twitch when she does something really normal, like popping to the shop!

Yeah they did fluffy 😶 I was so convinced it was today I didn't read it properly! !

Ha ha Wreck, if we went I’d be the fat one looking frizzy and harassed while her (very handsome ) son has meltdown about having got his trousers wet.

I’m struggling to keep up!

Sunny I read your response with interest. I was a PhD student at Oxford in a science discipline. Looking back there was a chap in my lab with definite Aspergers (undiagnosed as far as I know) and I can think of many more people of my acquaintance who had definite traits (arts and science subjects) but I don’t think we ever talked about it. In fact if go as far as to say that I never heard the words ‘autistic’ or ‘Aspergers’ the whole 7 years I was there, in spite of it clearly being fairly common in that environment. Though definitely not most people. And probably mostly undiagnosed too.

I’ve ‘saved’ £100 today because the nanny let me down - she’s got a vomiting bug . So I’ve been in my own with the kids today. No major problems with my back but I’m pretty achy and the last hour or two have been hard as dd is tired and whiney and wants to be held. I am counting the minutes till DH is home. NSD though 👏🏻

Snuggly I hope you get to recharge your batteries over half term. You are doing a grand job, a bit of short-temperedness is inevitable.

Em I hope MIL’s visit goes okay, as much for your DH as anything. We can’t choose our mums and however awful they are it must be hard to give up on them.

I’m writing very slowly today with millions of interruptions so bet I’ve cross posted with lots of people.

Meadow are you done with work now?

Well these things happen girlie. Write it off. They probably caught up in that gap and had a coffee with a digestive covered in crumbs.

Free longlife milk on shopmium. Also chicken sausages 😋

We both have colds and we wanted to go out tomorrow night as last weeks meal was free. I’ll do a chicken tikka masala instead.

Christmas Yes that's the same as I saw here. I think it's only discussed by the computer scientists. I used to hang out with compscis and it was very openly discussed there. We once graded ourselves on a curve in the pub to show who was more asd and who was less. It was fantastically helpful in understanding how the marriages of the various people progressed over the following 15-20 years.

I used to make home brew. Unfortunately the room we used is now full of sleeping babies and I reckon all the bubbling would disturb them. There isn't anywhere else suitable and safe from little investigators in our house! It is easy to do though. You can get all the kit in Wilkos.

Seacow Yes, I am done with work! I had been looking forward to it for weeks and then got really anxious as I was leaving and felt like I was going to cry because it suddenly felt real and scary. But now I'm ok again and just going to enjoy my free time while I can .

Spends today £1.35 on my final subsidised Costa coffee at work. The machine is being decomissioned after today.

Started application for DH's uni hardship fund. So long and we need to print like 3 million pieces of evidence for it. The deadline is Friday eek so really needs sorting asap and DH has an exam on Tuesday which he is busy revising for and then he's in uni all the rest of the week anyway so somehow we have to sort it this weekend really. I have started it but need him to fill in a lot of it.

Also got a letter with my PIP tribunal date, does anyone remember that?! It's 20th June - two days after my due date. So...not sure if I will even be able to go...not sure what to do about it . Need to get DH to call my rep next week to discuss with them .

Fluffy We had Quorn tikka masala tonight...but from a jar .

Lonely Hope your teeth are better soon! I need to go to the dentist ASAP too . But I can't call to make an appointment cos of my anxiety and I'm loathe to harass DH until his exam is over as he's very stressed at the moment.

Crazy news too, DH's granddad is dying of cancer, I think I mentioned it once or twice before, we found out probably about 2 months ago now - he was finally given a prognosis of 6-12 months the other day, not that it was a shock for us but I think perhaps he didn't realise the seriousness of it himself - but anyway DH's dad who has refused to speak to him in about 5 years ever since we got engaged has now called him and wants to get back in contact now that his dad is dying and our baby is about to be born. Unsure if it's just because his dying dad has asked him to though. DH doesn't even want contact with him now but then his dying grandad is asking him to make contact with this dad and he doesn't want to upset him so...and all this while he's got exams! I am so angry at his dad doing this to him .