Scrimping through the remains of September, Austere Autumn approaching, frugal friendly 'Fred

[Justanothermile]

Thought I'd make a new thread, I'll post on the old one and alert to its presence.

All are welcome, we are friendly folk.

Have a good day all!!!

Ds is full of stinky farts today.

Enjoy wreck
Em hopefully he'll have that horrible nappy that's coming while you're at riding

mammy yep one account, I have two separate saving accounts though. One is an isa for general savings and one is specifically for the car.

wreck Halloween costumes come up quite frequently on the fb buy and sell pages round here, might be worth keeping an eye out. Enjoy your child free day!!

Hope so mammy!! Haha

I’ve just been super productive. Have sorted all our paperwork. A pack for lawyers (forms and due diligence) a pack re the mortgage, a pack of payslips, a pack of ds’ stuff.

My pin for my new account has arrived. Yay. So now I can use the card if I want. Probably won’t. But it’s there in case. Just waiting for online banking authorisation to be sent through and I can get myself organised.

I have done some thinking and number crunching this morning. I have decided to “pay myself” more each month so that, as well as making sure there is enough money for annual expenses that I am also starting to build up a pot for household emergencies and some fun/holiday money so perhaps we can have a weekend away next year. I have no savings to speak of other than the annual expenses I’ve been putting away since the split and I’m carrying all of our debt so this is a difficult choice as it means things will be tight in order to save but I think that’s the right decision.

Also if we get into the situation where h can’t pay maintenance then at least I know I’ll have a little bit put by for emergencies if I have to cope on one wage without any maintenance

Haven't seen any yet girlie also, being rural, you end up having to travel half an hour to pick something up and it ends up costing more in time and fuel than the item is worth 🤔

Wolf you're an incredible lady

Girlie I've got two savings accounts going at the moment, one for Christmas, one for birthdays/dds communion not much money in either.
Previous years I'd an account with savings for Christmas/wood pellets/property tax etc etc and did a weekly standing order to it.

Good idea wolf. It might take longer to pay back debt but maybe that can be managed through lower /0% interest rates. Then your are not getting into more debt if things come up. .
Good luck today.

Sounds sensible Wolf
Getting that £1000 Dave Ramsay recommends was a game changer for me.
Martin Lewis and others dont recommend saving if you have debts but it made me rethink everything and got me out of the pay a bit off CC,use CC in emergency cycle which was miserable.

All my food/daily expenses are cash and my personal spends/savings fixed.

Ive got mine sat in a second account which has a current account (personal spends) and a savings pot (£1200 currently)
I just leave it there and dont think about it.
I am a reformed character as in the past this would be burning a hole in my pocket 😇
Long term savings in premium bonds which I add to monthly.
Is it worth investigating if you would be entitled to anything in the event H cant/wont pay?
Off out for the day .Involves horses and fields and walking with a picnic and flasks Sunny but chilly so boots and down jacket out for the first time .
Have a lovely day Frugaleers !
Have bagsied first dibs on a bath when we get back
Fish and chips and Strictly later

It is hard to save but so important incase of unexpected emergencies of which there have been quite a few in the last couple of years (vet bills, car died, new washing machine etc) if it wasn't for savings I'd end up in debt.

I save £200 a month, £50 car fund and £150 everything else. It builds up surprisingly quickly and I've gone from £0 to just over two grand in little over a year. I'd like £5000 as a minimum and it will take a few years but I'll get there...

wolf and mammy you are both amazing.

Can I just update quickly on the JD saga?

Issue resolved, we will send your parcel today. Received this morning. My dispute was I’d paid for 2 pairs of jogging bottoms and only received 1. So all I wanted was the 1 that was missing. They’ve only gone and sent me 2 pairs!

Do I tell them? Or do I think well I have spent hours on the phone and email trying to sort this out so I’ve kind of earnt them? And if they cannot be bothered to read my dispute which clearly stated I already received one pair and just wanted one more, that’s their problem?

In all honesty they’ve fucked up so much I probably wouldn’t bother telling them 😳🤫

I’m wanting aaaaall the carbs today, finally got a proper (heavy) period after 11 months post birth. Feel. Like. Death. 🤢😴

Score Curls !
This happened to me with gardening equipment .
I told them and they said they would collect but never did

Girlie stopping all the top ups which equalled £20-30 here and there was the key.
Strict meal plan and empty the fridge before going again... with a list.
Much less waste also

I would email them, tell them but say if they want them back they have to arrange it with no expense or inconvenience to you. They can't then accuse your of anything like knowingly keeping one pair.
Chances are they won't be arsed.

Frugal Halloween costume sorted for DD1. The Caglets have been wanting a new costume - TBF they’ve made do with the same stuff for several years, but we can’t spare the money ATM for new costumes.

So she found a tatty old top that has been in the charity shop for ages... she’s going to rip it/stain it etc to be a zombie or whatever. Quite amused as it’s the blazer for the secondary she would’ve been placed in before we moved :o

Up until about a month ago I had about a gazillion savings accounts. With minuscule balances. I closed most of them and transferred everything into the account which paid the most interest (0.2% whoopdedoo).

I’m saving (if I can but this will probably change once new mortgage kicks in)

£250 into a regular saver which pays out 5% after 12 months and I can’t touch it

£50 into my Christmas fund

£300 into my savings account.

£250 goes from our joint account for house savings (rates insurances car service etc).

I’m starting to build it all up again.

I’ve got £100 in a premium bonds account

And £150 in my Lloyd’s saver (or will once I can transfer across. The aim is not to touch this)

I’ve just opened two more saving accounts linked to my main bank account so I have one for emergencies and one for holiday. This will avoid them getting mixed up with annual expenses and it’ll be clear what I’ve saved and can afford. I’ve been doing some reading around this piggybanking technique this morning and I think it’s the right way to go for me at the moment although I accept it means less interest

£15 breakfast
£35 petrol - car is full, hopefully it will last most of the month. I have £100 budget for petrol per month so hoping I can bank any savings here

Riding done.

Pony smacked me in the face with her face. Ouch!

Sounds very sensible wolf

£15 garden centre on winter flowers and bulbs. Garden all done now so no more garden spends til next spring.

Dd had a good riding lesson, did some cantering and jumps. She was on a pony who is very quick but handled him really well.

Really hot here again, have been enjoying the sun 😊

Different approach's work for different people wolf.

£31 shoes. I've waited about a year to buy them at the right price. 10% cashback.

It’s intereating to see how everyone works their money. Same goals different methods.

I read something earlier about someone who had 10 different savings accounts for different things. I’d get confused with all those so I need to keep it simple. But I can see how it’d work for some people (more organised than me)

Aside from ynab, are there any tracker apps (free ones...)

I’m not sure I could cope with 10 Em. This will make four plus one long term locked saver that has a small amount of money in that was given as a gift and can’t be withdrawn from during the investment period.

I’m not quite keeping up, sorry! I hope I haven’t missed anything critical. I might get to read back tomorrow when I get my lie-in - yay!

I’ve been ‘skipping out’ my wardrobe, as Lonely would say (are you there Lonely? you’ve been rather quiet!). I have a huge built-in double wardrobe which runs the whole length of one wall but is basically just an 8 ft rail. No shelf /drawer space. I tidied up one half of it a few weeks back but hadn’t got round to the other - however, my focus has been sharpened by going back to work next week and needing to find work clothes! So I’ve gone through it all, hoovered the bottom and put the Kallax in. I’ve sorted stuff into:

• thin summer
• fat summer (and both lots of summer clothes now put away)
• fat winter stuff - hanging / in teeny chest of drawers, so can be used
• thin winter stuff - also organised into Kallax cubes and awaiting miraculous weight loss .

Thin winter smart work suits are still hanging up, taunting me. One day...

Anyway, I have an entire black bag of surplus hangers which I will stick on freecycle and then take to the tip if no one wants them.

I also have a huge pile of so-far ‘homeless’ stuff. A big pile of too-small bras that I can dip into as I lose weight, shoes that need sorting into what still fits and what must go, and random crap like my old uni mortarboard! I hope I can get into bed tonight.

All in all it’s quite an horrific amount of stuff. I can see how much I’ve panic-bought over the years - that’s what I do when I don’t think I’ve got anything suitable to wear for a particular circumstance /event. Some of it is down to being unhappy with my weight. A lot is also down to having lost a lot of weight 3 years ago and so having a spectrum of clothes in 4 dress sizes ! I really hope I can get to a weight that feels good and where I can ‘stick’ so I can get rid of all the rest of the stuff that’s weighing me down. I’m getting realistic about selling stuff as well and just sending it to the charity shop. It feels like s weight is lifting!

Once I have done this I will tackle the baby gear in the spare room. Phew!

Hope you are all enjoying the sunshine - I sent DH and the kids out so I could listen to the Archers podcast tidy up in peace