Friendly Frugaleers Furtively Ferreting Away to Find Fabulous Savings

[Wolfcub]

New fred

cag I meant to say earlier, convenience food is the ideal compromise for you at the moment I'd have thought.

Unfortunately I have a nationwide current account with about 15p in it so can't switch to them. I must close it so in future years I can switch.

Crochet Lonely? . Are you a traitor to the knitting now?

I am still here Girlie, just do long work days wed /thurs /Friday so I fall off the thread a bit. I feel bad popping on if I haven’t got time to comment. I really can’t get over the fact that some people have time to mn at work, I frequently don’t have time to pee! That’s the nhs for you... even us managers

Hope dd has a lovely day tomorrow, is she turning 12?

Cag that sounds like a lot to take in. I really hope in time, DH can find alternative employment that suits his physical situation, and that some treatment helps. So glad you got your house and are at least secure there.

Em hope things with DH improve soon.

Is Happier okay?

Work work work... but they’ve finally sent my PO numbers so I can invoice now. If I do it over the weekend they say they’ll pay me next week - and then I can pay myself a salary for the first time since going back to work! I will try to use up as much of my lower rate tax allowance as possible as I’ll be on higher rate from April. Might bung some in my private pension too. Feeling
Mighty relieved tbh!

Dd keeps trying to get me to put her wee yellow shoes on instead of her snow boots (standard footwear atm) but they don’t fit her any more. Today when I picked her up from nursery she was wearing some posh shoes with a bit of sparkle. I took them off to put her boots on to leave and she screamed her head off. The nursery lady came to see what the commotion was and was genuinely perplexed that we were taking them off her.... apparently dd has brought them over to her and said ‘put on [own name] shoes please’ So they thought they were hers - cheeky cow! She obviously wants some naice shoes so I’ll probably take her to the big Mothercare with Clarks and soft play next Tuesday and let her choose some colourful shoes AND have her first ever go on a bouncy castle! I’m actually really looking forward to it . She is so chatty and cute right now, I love spending time with her 😍

Right, off out to 50th birthday party tonight. Going to put a posh frock on - I’ve even ironed it!

Sorry to hear about DH cag and annoying about missing the end of the film.

Also, glad your GP was helpful em.

When life gets busy/overwhelming here the ready meals come out cag. So quite often really then!

Hope your DP makes some progress with his pain reduction too lonely

Just packed DD1s bag for her night away tomorrow. I'm gonna miss her, but not looking forward to her return with loads of muddy clothes

DP has booked us a night away in one of the legoland hotels at half term as they have an offer on. The DDs will love it and I'm a bit excited too. The park isn't open but the hotel has a pool and activities for half term.

Are you wearing your tiara seacow 👸?

Love I was just looking at that offer!

Cag sorry it's not the best news but at least you can start moving forward now

Sea I can't think of anything worse than going out right now. The weather is horrendous so I'm under a blanket with dd who, for once, isn't being vile so I'm making the most of it.

Get some rest em.
Cag take time to absorb that news. Don't worry about convenience foods at all. I have a freezer full of short cut foods like frozen veg, rice, chips, chicken etc. It really helps.
Spendy day paying child care bills.
Pop along whenever girlie, just day hi.

Ah, love getting on the tube in a Friday night (not).

Not wearing my tiara Love 😂 but I am wearing my very expensive wedding earrings - huge pearl drop things. Does that ease the disappointment?

I agree cag it's better to plan a quick easy meal than to get take away/pop into the shop last minute.

Dd is saying she wants to move schools. There's only two other girls in her year (and five boys). They're friends but it's tricky a lot of the time.

Gutted now seacow

Yes I think that’s where I’m at now really, wanting to get enough easy food that it’s available when needed but also not so much that we are eating crap all the time.

It’s amazing how we have our biggest ever fridge freezer and yet the freezer feels too small now :o we use loads of frozen veg and then freeze stuff like bread as it seems to go off so quickly, so there’s not room for vast varieties of batch cooked stuff as well. But having say a sausage casserole and a spag bol (just the sauce frozen obviously) once a week each still helps.

I think the key will be having easy main ingredients, eg I made the most amazing wrap the other day using a crispy chicken fillet thing, and I added crunchy veg etc and it was just the kind of thing I’d crave from a fast food place but waaaay nicer and more veg in it.

Not gonna be up to batch cooking this weekend though, I am now full of sneeze and shivering, managed to doze off with the baby and haven’t been able to stand up yet. DH bought squash for me to have with honey. Really hard to find any brands without sucralose 😡

Cag that’s shit I’m sorry. Convenience food got me through a good chunk of last year, that’s what they are there for, use them

Love I have a colleague going to legoland next week and I’m sure he expects it to be open. Oh dear he will be in for a surprise!

Cag freezer stuff flat in freezer bags when you do manage to batch cook anything. We do wraps like that too. Do you like quesadillas? So easy and tasty my dc love them. The other day I did (ready made) bbq chicken with super noodles and broccoli the dc loved it. Sometimes you just do the best with what you have.

I’ve never understood how the bag thing works. Whenever I use freezer bags they all end up stuck together! Is there a trick to it?

I’m assuming there isn’t really a school DD can move to? Is it regular friendship issues (hard enough) or is she being bullied etc

Just regular stuff I think. The other two girls see each other out of school more regularly. Dds is such good friend with a girl in the year above but the friendship fizzles our when their classes are split every other year and of course she will leave a year before dd. The freezer bags you need to do one at a time really but they'll only take a few ours in the top of the freezer and can be kept in the fridge until ready to freeze.

Cag. The tip on the brexit thread is to freeze the bag flat on a baking tray then store like books in a library

Dh made pizza for dinner and we watched tomb raider (the new ish film) on Netflix. It was ok.

Tomorrow I’ve cancelled riding. 😪 but need to rest. Dh and ds are going to get up and walk to the farm shop (10 minutes from us) to see the baby jersey cows (Ds loves these) and to buy sausages for sausage Sammies.

I am going to put laundry away. That’s going to be the extent of my “busy”.

Ds just woke up crying. I ran upstairs and thought he’d coughed blood onto his sheets. Turns out Dh gave him calpol and he obviously didn’t finish it so spat some of it out. Scared the hell out of me. Also annoyed I can’t find his other sheet. So have put a blanket over it and will look for it in the morning. Fingers crossed for a sleepy night for him. He popped back to sleep fairly quickly and isn’t now snoring his head off again. 🙂

Food shopping today with a long list but no meal plan. £150 ish I reckon, maybe nearer £200.
£135 tutor fees
Maybe back to children's ward this afternoon's as DS not much better.

I'm going to take the dc to get their feet measured today so will need to pay for parking. Then it'll just be a day of washing and refereeing their arguments do other peoples dc constantly argue?

Hope ds gets sorted life
wreck I went to a small primary school & it is hard with only a small pool of potential friends. How old is she?
I'm off to a gym class shortly, then food shopping. Ds has cricket later & dd has a party. I will be making cakes for an event at the cricket club tomorrow. I need to buy ingredients but will take money back. Dh and I are having a night out on our own tonight.
Have a good weekend everyone.

She's 8.5 and in year 4 so only 2.5 years left before she goes into a school 100x the size!

My first post on this thread
Will post spends for yesterday & carry on from here then
€1 vacuuming car
€6.10 ds pocket money & icecream for me

Wreck some days but mostly they're good friends, myself and my dbs were always fighting

Life I need to do a list, think I'll shop tomo, I'm going to town today & through town tomo so either is fine. I now have 2 €10 off €50 spend vouchers so think I'm going to use both just to keep them current. I can stock up on household stuff. Hope your ds isn't very sick I missed that

My groupon of 50 toilet rolls arrived, they're much smaller rolls than previous brand I got. Less packaging though cos one packet instead of individual packs of 4.

Em what a fright to get
Ds just wet my bed & not on the mattress protector which I retrieved from his bed at 4am which he brutally arrived into my room by turning on all lights and asking to go downstairs

Thanks to everyone who was concerned about me I'm here now and catching up. Tough week emotionally, House has been valued and will go up for sale. This is what I wanted but still tough.
Got good news though mortgage company will allow me to keep my tracker rate +1% which is amazing. And h has agreed to waive his share of it so I can have it too he won't be getting a new mortgage so it makes sense. But he's not a sensible man so it's great.

Plus other good financial news - someone used my ynab referral so it pushed out my renewal for another month. That's 3 free months I've gotten

I'm thinking I might take dm up on offer for some money to clear one of my credit cards so that I can eliminate credit card debt for the mortgage application. Will talk to her at midterm.

Seacow delighted you can finally get paid for your work, ahead of your wedding break too

My bank are no longer free fees so that'll be €18 per quarter for my personal current account and joint one, at least the end is near on the joint one. I'll hunt around after all that's done to see if there's any free ones out there. I like ptsb though. Anyone know about any offers in ROI, tayto think you're ptsb too.

Adora good to see you
Lonely can't wait to see pic of stairs when you're finished

Happy birthday girliedd
Em sorry to read you're not well, good that you're signed off

Sneaky that's a well stocked & organised cupboard there

My lo-dough arrived so I'm going to be having 🍕

Your h wants the best of stuff em with wardrobe but doesn't realise that's just putting more work on an already stressed mum & mum to be.
Wasn't the whole idea of using his Amex for the rewards?

Meadow it depends on how early you go to work I guess. I only ever dressed mine & they had breakfast at childcare. Don't overthink it you'll find your routine as you go along

Life I’ve got to make a chicken pie and some Lonely flapjack for a friend who’s moving house this weekend later. I’ll wear my wedding tiara for that, would that help? I hope your DS is better soon, that sounds a bit worrying.

Wreck that is a very small school! I went to one for a couple of years that was two year groups in one class but there were still a few more of us than that. It can be a bit tricky.

I had a good time last night as I met up with lots of people I haven’t seen for ages and the venue was great - a really atmospheric little private members’ club that my friend had hired out. I had a couple of G&Ts and bought for friends too - think it was about £30ish. I was knackered at the end and some tube lines had already stopped so I was tempted to Uber home but there was a 90 min wait. Instead I walked 25 mins back to my tube line which runs all night, and then tubed home. Much more frugal. It was 2am by the time I got back though and I am knackered now! DH has brought me tea in bed, though I need to get up soon to make flapjack etc. I have soooo much to do today as we want a family day out tomorrow and I don’t want to have to work tomorrow evening (my birthday) so I need to do a few hours this evening instead.

Haircut at lunch time, long overdue so I’m looking forward to it but it’s a new hairdresser so im a little apprehensive. I want to get lots lopped off if I’m brave enough.

Also need to make myself a birthday cake, and do some other cooking for us, and also need to put away the Ocado shop containing some Brexit stash. Not loads but we don’t have much cupboard space so it’ll have to go in the garage - also a mess. Sigh.

I think we’re going to try the RAF museum tomorrow. DS finds museums incredibly stressful so we normally avoid but this is a big site (hangars and whatnot) and is usually fairly quiet, I gather. And he says he’d like to see some aeroplanes, so we’ll try it but I will be a bit sad if he goes to pieces so it’s a gamble 😕

wreck yes. Constantly. It's the age your dc are at. Dd2 and 3 fought constantly while aged 6-9ish. Now they are almost 11 and 12.5 they fight only most of the time. Ds now fights with dd3 most of the time! It is exhausting. Oh, and when they aren't fighting, they are best friends, and band together against the rest of us.

I coined the phrase "no fighting, no biting". And generally don't referee unless there are nasty personal insults of a real threat of blood.

em hope your boy slept well. We always tell each other when we dispense medicine. Plus I put the calpol/nurofen on a sheet of paper which I write who's had what on when. It helps when you have multiple dc as well.

Just introduced my dc to Lucky Charm cereal! I got a box in b&m (was still £2!) the marshmallow bits are as yummy as I remember. We have termed in a saturday cereal!

Staying in bed for the forseeable. It is blowing a gale and I don't have to go out until after lunch.

Hey Happier, glad you’ve got through a tough week, I was a little concerned. Do you mean DH is letting you keep all the value in the house? That’s amazing if so! Will it make your dream of buying a little place on your own a reality? Does it give you more options?

Happy birthday GirlieDD!