May Making Money Go Frugally Further

[Wolfcub]

New thread

I did veggy fried rice, with the last of the basmati (I don't think I have ever run out of rice before) and an aldi pouch of rice with quinoa in, three sad slices of salami, and 3 meatballs I found in the freezer! Fried eggs on top.

As an apology for an odd tea, I made microwave chocolate puddings. Wonderfully stodgy.

fluffy you rock. Just saying.

Holiday price has dropped another £70. I feel like I am playing chicken between availability (it’s less than 8 weeks until departure) and price. Any advice frugaleers?

Is there cashback on that?.

Fluffy How do I find a contact for the CEO? I actually work in a similar industry so I know what buzz words to use to get things looked at quicker (basically all the stuff you already know anyway - I work defending a large retail client so it is usually me who is responding to customers like me!), I already used them all with the online complaints system and again on Twitter but still no joy. Have tweeted the CEO too.

Just all stress that we don't need right now. It is TSB's fault completely but I can't believe how unreasonable the landlord is being as well.We are also going to ask the Letting Agents tomorrow if we can just pay what is owed to the landlord because that will be less than our monthly rent as presumably some of the money is the Lettings Agents' fee so maybe they would let us at least pay their cut in a couple of weeks time. It's worth asking I think.

Also I do want to switch banks as they've been awful recently but I can't atm because I still have an interest-and-fee-free overdraft until July I think as it's a graduate account and if I switched I would lose that. Once that has expired I will certainly be switching!

Thanks for listening to me stress out, I don't want to tell my parents unless I absolutely have to because my DM will just worry and stress me out more, and my DF doesn't live in the real world and will get angry with me and say "you're a lawyer you should be able to sort it out" (I'm not actually a lawyer, just to be clear, I just have a law degree), which is also not helpful...

Good point Fluffy I will check quidco. I can’t use my BlueLightCard discount and I lost the discount vouchers I had through cancelling the other booking but it does have a £200 standard discount on it

£25 cashback fluffy. Good call!

Wolf, check topcashback. Their often higher and payouts more reliable.

Meadow www.ceoemail.com/s.php?id=ceo-80161

Oh meadow that’s awful!!! Absolutely do what fluffy said!

Mil was here when I got home.

We had dinner. Salmon broccoli in cheese sauce pasta bake. Mmm. Mil chose serving up time to announce she doesn’t eat fish. Despite dh asking “salmon is ok isn’t it”

Over dinner she asked about my payrise and had I spent my bonus on anything nice. Bonus and payrise letter in my pile of paperwork. Dh just raised an eyebrow.

We’ve just dropped her back. In the car dh asked how she knew. Because he was supposed id mentioned that to her. He now knows.

🙄

Has she not seen the price of cocaine and Perrier jouet?. It’s a sellers market.

Christmas yes it really got good about half way through last time and we went to Evensong and Sung Eucharist at the Cathedral and ds discovered that the living room was bigger than ours and great for dancing.

So we decided to come again. It's odd, but just being in a different house that is not all full of stuff really seems to help to decompress the brain.

You're right though, it did cost money. It was £350 for three nights and we missed the first night because of the remains of the lurgy so it was a bit pricey (understatement). Nice though

I just went and honked the clarinet in a park and it was very nice to be in such a big wide space and not sitting in Cambridge feeling bad about not having any degrees at all from any Oxbridge Universities. Not one, not even a little one.

@ememem84 score!! She's a hell of a piece of work!!!

Gosh Sunny, why would you feel bad about not having an oxbridge degree?
I also hope I didn’t sound critical about your holiday - I was just impressed that after not going away for aeons you are going twice this year! If you enjoy it it’s defjnitely a good idea. I also love being away without my ‘stuff’ - somehow just cooking and tidying up doesn’t feel like half as much work in a place with no clutter or other jobs to do.

Meadow that is very stressful. I too wouldn’t waste anger on the landlord - it is the bank that has caused the situation and needs to put it right. I am astounded at their arrogance in assuming it’s okay for people to wait weeks to get £600 back. I would do exactly as Fluffy says and email the CEO, pointing out quite forcefully that not having access to YOUR money for that long is the difference between being fine and being evicted, at almost 9 months pregnant. FirstDirect is the bee’s knees, when you are in a position to change!

Lonely can you get some shopping in tomorrow? Fried rice sounds lovely though, I actually made that for dd tonight. She chucked it on the floor though, I don’t think she even tried it

Em how did DH react?

Wolf I’d say it depends whether you think you’ve got other good options if you miss the boat on this. If you are especially keen on this holiday and think it’s decent value at the current price I’d probably not chance it much longer.

I think I might be getting DD’s lurgy - I’ve got a sore throat and a rotten headache. Just what I don’t need for this week of funerals

Brilliant Em!

Lonely I got one of those from Farmfoods today too. I have used them before and the fruit/veg was fine plus they have brands like Bird's Eye and Youngs cheap. Unfortunately we don't have one local enough to make it worthwhile and they always seem to send the vouchers out when our freezer is already full!

Today's frugal meals were sandwiches with cucumber, tomatoes and crisps for lunch and veggie shepherds pie with broccoli and peas for tea.

FFS so the cotbed arrived without any screws! They are sending a replacement (the entire bed) on Friday so we can take the screws and then they’ll collect the bed again. 🙄 They are refunding the delivery fee from today. I should think so too.

Annoyingly I think they must have fallen out on the yodel truck but customer service is closed and there was no mobile number on the tracking email so I can’t ask them to look.

We were all going to see the greatest showman on Friday as well :( but a lovely friend is coming instead :)

Also I need to buy a stair gate. Like yesterday. Baby’s getting FAST. And pulling herself up on the stairs (which go into the living room). I would attach a rather cute photo but you don’t need to see our manky carpet!

Cag the best thing I did was teach the dc to go up and down the stairs as soon as they could crawl. Obviously we still had gates as they needed supervising but I felt better knowing they should be ok if we went to my parents or something

Dh “sigh. Ill talk to her” he’s not happy.

My mouth ulcers have decided to “breed” now they’re on the tip of my tongue and the top. 😭

Oh no em I hate ulcers! Glad you caught mil out. Hard for DH though. But necessary.

Em, if he says something will she have a go at him & cause trouble between you?.

Could he manage her better instead ie no staying in your home unattended. I hope she wasn’t in charge of the baby when all this went on because you can’t snoop and watch a child.

It’s obvious why you’ve got mouth ulcers isn’t it?.

Tescos are doing jersey royals for 49p a bag.

Oh Em that’ll be the MiL stress causing the ulcers probably. Make sure you are getting enough vitamins etc to support you.
Cag what a bugger on th cotbed. Can you barricade the stairs with something in the interim?
Sea take it easy with your back, it’s an emotionally tough time for you try to look after yourself physically

Em she is not very intelligent is she?

Hi All, struggling at the moment to stay motivated with everything. It all seems like too much effort. Big project on at work, taking longer than I would like.

Spends today £4.60 for jacket with chilli and cheese for lunch. Dinner was risotto.

Booked our holiday on Monday, shorter than usual, couldn't justify the additional cost to take the kids on Saturday instead of Monday.

Need to book parking for weekend away next month, and for abet in London in 10 days time.

laska nope.

fluffy yep she was. But that’s another conversation. I so want to say no unsupervised access to ds. But can’t do it. She loves him. That I can see. And dh is happy (ish) she’s here. End of the day it’s his mum y’know...? And it’s concentrated time with ds. She won’t see him again for a couple of years. So I’m torn

And today dh needed to go to his appointment.

She’s offered to have ds on Saturday night so we can go out. I can barely eat anything without wincing so have said thanks but maybe another time. Not thanks but no thanks. Dh can see the ulcers and knows I’m not faking anything. So he understands

Aside from vitamins (of which I’m taking all of them - multivitamin with probiotic, vitamin d, c and b12 - the extras I take when I’m feeling super run down!) and salt water mouth swooshing is there anything else I can do?

I’m buying corsodyl mouthwash tomorrow.

I’ve had similar previously during a time of stress and business and then feeling run down sore throaty and mouth ulcery (as now...) and it turned out the ulcers were in my throat too. Although that time they weren’t on my tongue. I ended up at the dr and was prescribed some tablets for acne which helped.

Dilute the corsodyl at first em if you’re getting the ‘proper’ (as opposed to the daily) one - stings like hell!