The Friendly Frugaleers - Furtively planning Christmas, as August arrives

[StoogingOn]

Welcome one and all!

We’ve done as much as we can be arsed to do mammy

We’ve got Friday off. So will hit ds’ room then, will take majority of our things to dparents on Sunday and will go from there.

Removals are coming on Thursday morning.

Much cooler here, hooray. My feet got cold in my flip flops earlier.

We spent over £200 in ikea 2 kallax, plus baskets and cupboard inserts. Plus the other bits that made it into the trolley. Eeeek.

Quiet day here really, spent £10 on brunch this morning, cost double what I normally spend as had dd with me!!

£1 nail polish remover.

£60 osteopath, mum will pay that though. He was good, a few things went creak/crack which made me cringe but my shoulder does feel better for it! Had a headache all day though 😕 the osteopath reckoned a herbalist would be good for headaches but I feel that's stepping too far into woo territory 😂

Need to start sorting out for our holiday tomos, we are off to sunny Devon on sat and haven't even thought about it yet!

Brr.... I'm just in from watering the plants and it's quite chilly out. Getting dark earlier too. Autumn is making its presence felt.

NSD today. I stopped off to buy bread this evening but the bread shelves were completely empty. Odd - it was like the Beast from the East was back. Anyway, I've probably enough until tomorrow.

Yesterday I brought DD to Dublin to get some school stuff.

Spends

Bus fare €12.50
McDonalds €13.60
School shirts x 4 €35
Cinema (Mamma Mia 2) €9 + €7.50
Sweets in newsagents for cinema €5 approx.
Book €1 (should have been €9.80 but I used my loyalty card and got €8.80 off)

Total spends €83.60

It's been a long summer here as DD has been off since early June. Only another 3 weeks or so left until she goes back to school.

Good luck with the osteopath Girlie

Happy Birthday Sunny - have you name changed? Sounds like they still haven't got to the bottom of your mystery illness. I don't have a chatty relationship with my GP but then again, I don't go very often. Each visit costs €50 so the less I see of them (husband and wife team) the better for my finances. And I'm always conscious that there's a waiting room full of patients outside so I don't delay. I wouldn't expect to be told the reason if they were sick. Likewise, I wouldn't give out any information about my colleagues if a member of the public were to ring up and ask about them. Or even if other colleagues make enquiries (I file the sick certs.). I just confirm that 'Mary' is out sick and I'm not sure when they'll be back. It's kind of a need to know basis and some illnesses are more private than others. If a member of staff has cancer and is likely to be out for 6 months while undergoing treatment, he/she would probably let the other staff know, as it will be long absence and we may need to hire a temp to cover their absence. But we/they would never share this information with the public. Sadly, there's still a stigma about mental health illnesses and someone seeing their doctor for anxiety or depression is unlikely to want to let anyone else know, except their immediate supervisor.

Snuggly we were getting the bus to Dublin one Saturday when DD was small and DD was delighted when she spotted her teacher at the bus stop. DD gave her a big hug and we chatted briefly until the bus arrived. But I made sure we didn't sit anywhere near her on the bus. Otherwise it would have been like a busman's holiday for the poor teacher .

Fluffy excellent work on the Boden return.

Cag so happy to hear that your new surroundings are inspiring you to tackle things rather than get overwhelmed. Another positive . Oh, I was wondering if you've met any of your new neighbours yet and if any of them have kids etc.

Scandi that sounds like a great price for Legoland, especially as you have unlimited access until the end of the year.

Glad you got on ok at the dentist Curls

life so pleased to hear about the refund

em I was giggling when I read about DS and catface robbing food from each other

Sorry to hear about the washing machine and dryer Flappy

Evening. I'm so knackered! Up at 6 baking, day at work, then the time trial. Home just 30 mins ago.

Spends: £7 co-op 2 meal deals for me and dp for tea. £15 diesel and sweets. Courtesy car going back tomorrow so thought I'd better top it up. Renault twingo, quite nice actually. Never driven a renault before.

I rang the bank. Got an appointment on saturday my birthday the guy I spoke to couldn't quite keep the "you haven't got a hope in hell" tone out of his voice when I said what I needed. Lots of things to print out before I go in. Might be pointless certainly but I have to try.

I just have a feeling my creditors won't go for a dmp. Because I never miss payments, and always pay (usually £50-£100) over each minimum payment. So why would any of them agree to an interest freeze and reduced payment? Say if the min £ is £90 and I pay off £150 without fail each month, why would they agree to take £65/m instead??

I'm like a fricking yo-yo. Sad and worried about it last week, upbeat about eventually paying it off this week. Go figure.

Found some stuff under the argos sale only to find out at check out that they don't deliver to Denmark

Tayto thanks, yes I've namechanged. I was blathering too much.

I'm doing a fantastic birthday building project here and loving it. I bought a very secondhand musical instrument from ebay for my birthday and it is now all in pieces and ready to be given a good polishing. I'm chuffed because it was £200 to buy but would normally be more like £1500 in good condition. I didn't think I would have been able to afford on of these, but this means that I can.

It's still worth a shot lonely. Would you consider defaulting on payments if your credit rating will be shit anyway. Clearly not frugal and has other implications. ?

Work today. Feel like the shittest parent as dd didn't want to go to Grandma's. I planned being teen time only now but then I got a new job. FFS.

Nothing much planned for today so hopping for a nsd. - yesterday’s spends were £6 M&S cafe, £11 Greggs and £9 local shop.It’s £1.59 for the bread we like in our local shop, but figured it was cheaper than driving to Morrisons where I would end up spending too much.

I am very confused with the name change as all the highlighted OP posts have changed name. I have never seen that happen before and now you’ve change name again - I can’t keep up 🙈

LOL! Born sorry about that. I try to namechange fairly regularly as I do tend to blather a bit too much. If you want to just forget who I was that's okay.

We're due loads of rain today. Hallelujah!

No problem Breathe and glad you got something nice for your birthday.

It's raining here. I'm working in the shop and fil is coming over to watch the dc.

I wondered if there was a name change glitch too breathe as I thought everything posted before the nc stayed with your old name, and just the new posts should have the new name.

Got the name change Breath.

DH and I have started planning what storage we need with a trip to Ikea in the pipeline. Kallax all the way! I reckon we can squeeze two more drawers into our wardrobe too. It would help if I listed the whole drawer full of stuff on Ebay instead of just complaining about it taking up a drawer!

Ds has started climbing. He's driving experience mad! I ache from lifting him down from precarious positions. Might take them all to soft play today and he can practise in safety.

I'm also sick to death of cleaning the kitchen floor after every single meal. And sometimes the wall. They can just live off toast and apples right?

I stayed in bed a bit extra this morning, but simply listened to my alarm going off downstairs as I forgot to change it on my phone. Doh.

Last night I made an excel spreadsheet and put in all my actual figures from march to july. Although I constantly feel so poor, things are not that bad. And July's numbers are epic with the extra money from my work in there. (*epic for me, it's still minimum wage, but 3x better than part time).

All food/supermarket/pet food spends are under £600/month. Thats 6 people, 2 dogs, cat, 4x ferrets and about 10 chickens. The direct debits are also around £600/month, but the council tax and water split over 10 months. And my car is paid off in 6 months. There is extra spending of course, like school stuff, clothes, storage unit (emptying and keys back this month), and fuel (£250/month but dp and I split this). If I didn't have my stupid debt things would be peachy.

We have a chilly clear blue sky here. Should get my wee car back today (will keep paying the garage weekly with my new wages until I'm up to date - they are brilliant with us).

Snuggly I remember that stage well, the endless clean up after meals.

Breathe you’re lucky you have a specific GP you usually get to see. I’ve never had a GP surgery like that - in mine you’re just lucky to get an appointment at all so I would take it with whoever is free next. Don’t have any long term conditions though and am hardly ever there tbh so I don’t mind but if you need to see your GP a lot I can see why it’s better to see the same one. My actual named GP pissed me off last time I saw him so I’ll be avoiding him in the future 😬 I went in as was concerned it was taking a long time TTC and he basically gave off a “you already have one so be thankful for that” vibe and told me the “funny story” that he had the opposite problem and had a really small age gap between his two! Helpful 🙄

Frugal day went as planned yesterday. I spent £1.90 on parking at the hospital. Also £6 on a round of soft drinks at the pub. DH did spend around £40 on garden stuff but it was a planned & budgeted spend before our big party/BBQ next weekend.

Today our Tesco delivery is coming and I will also need to nip to Lidl to pick up cola for DH (Tesco don’t seem to do own brand full sugar cola anymore, just diet) and also own brand weetabix which I forgot to order. We will be slightly over my £50 a week budget as needed loads of household stuff like toilet roll, bin bags, cat litter etc, but we should be able to make it up with a small shop next week.

Will probably chill at home/in the garden or walk to the park with little monkey so no other anticipated spending. Will catch up with YNAB tonight and do my work invoice.

Finally tallied my spends from last Monday
I had a SuperValu Gift Card €14, they gave me this sometime they forgot to apply my discount code the previous week - €10 on disney tumblers for dc, tokens collected plus €5 each. Balance of €4.01 came off our grocery bill
Groceries
Dunnes : Cereals €6.55
Mr Price : Bag of Coffee & protein bar €3.48
Aldi: €70.88
SuperValu: €86.29-€4.01 gift card - €11 real reward disc = €71.27
Grocery Budget is €150 Total Spent: €152.18 and those cereals in Dunnes are bought very rarely.
Frugal discovery spending €1.49 on slim bagels, regular bagels in aldi are 65c so now I'm just having half a regular bagel instead so 10 portions per pack for half the price of 5 portions of slim bagels

School Expenses
Dunnes: Shoes & trousers for dd and markers and crayons for both dc €54.46
Mr Price: School bag & lunchbox for dd €39.98
Debenhams: 2 pack of trousers for ds €11.20 (had 20% off )
Will tally all school spends mid September, actually scrap that I'm going to have to do it next week as have to do a 12 month budget for mediation
Debenhams: Pumps for dd to go with dress €25, wrong time of year for buying stuff like this
Tesco: €8.50 on lunch for myself and dd, for some reason one meal deal didn't go through as deal so cost me an extra €1.50, I didn't notice as I met an acquaintance while I was checking out who I hadn't seen in 12 months, I didn't pay attention to total

Got paid today with overtime less christmas club, tax and pension deductions €716.73
balance on current acc was €8.68 = €725.41 and purse has €7.21 so total to budget this week is €732.62
Joint account €400
Credit Card €120, plus set up standing order for €125 going forward
Hairdressers €35? Eyebrows €7 call it €50
Car Loan €70
Savings for dd €5
Direct Debit for mobile phone bill €41.03
Balance €46.59 for spends this weekend and at a gig I'm going to on Wednesday night. Possibly could grab some cash off my mother for Wed night and give back on Thurs if necessary. Will see how I go. Need to put money into a card for Christening too, this will come from joint money for now.

Placemarking to catch up later. We are having a day in. I'm going to be tidying and sorting out today so should be a nsd.

Nsd so far.

I’m going to visit another estate agent at lunchtime. I’ve registered with all 20 (!) firms here and figured it can do no harm to pop in to the ones local to work and show my face and advise my situation.

Have left over risotto and chicken for lunch.

I’ve spent the morning updating a spreadsheet with invoices trying to work out how much vat we could reclaim in Spain. Turns out....rather a lot. 5 figures potentially. Eeeek.

It’s the battle of flowers here today so parade and carnival this afternoon. It’s pouring with rain. Has been all night.

But hopefully it brightens up this afternoon. It’s usually dry for the parade. So fingers crossed. We won’t see it from the office.

Usually we get a half day but they’ve given us the full day for Christmas eve instead of the two half days (battle of flowers and Battle of Britain air display).

Don't understand the spain thing?

www.dunelm.com/category/home-and-furniture/utility-and-laundry/kitchen-cleaning/kitchen-bins?sku_id=30158236&cm_mmc=pla_google--PLA%20-%20GS%20-%20Utility--Kitchen%20Bins%20And%20Bin%20Bags%20-%20New-_-keyword&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2eO7leff3AIViYjVCh2zZANoEAQYAyABEgIq-fD_BwE

Cag If you drink tea these bins are great for tea bags. The lacquer comes off in the dishwasher but I don't care because it goes through so often.

tattoo is on my wrist - Em should have followed your advice, what I actually did was come home have a big glass of wine and then go for a lie down. Horsey is indeed on the naughty step - a very large naughty step. only spend today tesco - £42

Just realised they're closing 100 miles of road round our way at the end of September for a bloody bike ride I do hope that no one decides to have a heart attack or anything as there'll be no way for emergency services to get through

fluffy essentially we paid Spanish invoices (or rather another company we own did) but could have reclaimed Spanish vat. Turns out they didn’t. So we’re owed (I think) around €90k.

Been for lunch. Still nsd. Woohoo. But am having a nightmare cancelling my electric landline and broadband. I filled in the forms online and have had emails back from my phone provider saying they’ll happily move the services for me to the new place next Friday for a cost of £70. I want to cancel!!!!

I’m going to have to go into the shop and explain it...