Spending sparingly in early Spring - frugal friendly folk gather round.

[Justanothermile]

New 'fred

No such thing as a stupid question sneaks x

Today’s spends
£5 gel heel supports for DD2
£2.50 coffee
£2 donation for cyclone disaster appeal.
£1.30 on chocolate

YY to just using one and a stain spray of you need to target areas.
Have you considered power as it's usually cheaper per wash?

No fee hospital parking so bonus. Ignores the £10 with of fuel to get here. Daughter in law points - tick

Or liquid £5 for a bottle of Ariel gel which says it does 32 washes but I always use less so probably does 40 or more

I only use powder as it doesn't gunk up the machine so easily and the powder goes further I think. I use Aldi one and it seems fine.

Will look into it! When I've used powder before my skin gets a bit flared, I don't know why - although I could always add an extra rinse if I can work out the 526 options on the machine

I wing it with measurements really. Just shove the powder in and hope for the best!

Spends today £10.10 on two toasted wraps and a Fanta for lunch (dh joined me!).

Payrise as of 1 April which is lovely. It’s “only” £1500 more a year. But every little helps. Just need my tax rate to drop right down...

Midwife apt this evening all good. Babygirl is behaving herself. 😊

Now at dparents. Dsis picked me up from appointment to save me walking and then we bumped into dparents as they were leaving to pick dgodmother up from airport. Today is her birthday so Dm has done a “picky tea” In the kitchen is a plate of prawns langoustines smoked salmon, another of cold meats cold sausages and stuffing, two quiches, salad, a cheese board, crisps and dips. They have left me home alone. With all that food. I am starving. 😭

North I start on the 23rd of April, I've a weeks annual leave before that which is good.

Busy day at work, spent £1.50 on milk, have also paid £70 😲 childcare over Easter.

Pilates tonight.

Funny how you get a flare up with prefer but not tabs. Email the company and ask for samples

Gosh, you do a lot of washing for a single guy Sneaky! Or possibly I just have low standards . When I used bobbles I just used one, with a bit of fairy liquid on stains. Powder here now though.

for Adora too. And Born you’re right, the bright days can seem harder somehow. I hope after this year I won’t always be thinking back throughout spring... apart from anything else I’d rather remember my ‘normal’ dad and not his decline, which was so hard to witness. But not all memories make me sad. Not long before he died dad said he was a bit sorry he’d never know how Brexit panned out. I was saying to mum yesterday that he’d have had some choice words to say about this week’s performance! (He was ace ❤️)

I’d planned to cook a chicken thing tonight but we don’t have any sweet chilli sauce (essential!) so I’ve delved in the freezer and found some chilli. Rice cooker was already on. I’m quite glad of the short cut as I have to work this evening. I’d rather be knitting (Lonely ! Change your name back!) but hey ho. Out tomorrow at a PTA quiz, knitting will have to wait till Saturday night. Unless I sneak an hour in tomorrow afternoon after working as ds has a later finish due to a club.

Frugal thing this weekend - mend work trousers as the hem has come down on one leg.

Not frugal thing - make an appointment for someone to come and look at rebuilding our conservatory as a ‘room’. And look at kitchens in magazines. I need to get inspired and get on with the house projects.

I have to wear clean clothes every day for both fucked up mental stuff and my cskin being a drama queen bedding gets done every four/five days or the blood gets hard to wash out

£6.90 spinning.

Sneaks try the Aldi non bio powder (not the 2 in one fragrant ones)It is the only one dd doesn't flare with. We use about half the recommended amount and we don't look too scruffy. It is £3 ish for a box and lasts us all month. For blood stains use salt - make a paste and blob it on. Leave over night and then wash without letting it dry. You can get uber cheap bags of salt from Tesco. They keep it on the bottom shelf to prevent you seeing it easily. Grease stains - a dab of washing up liquid smooshed in. I suspect I have found my specialist subject for Mastermind.

Hugs and love to all of those who are having a hard time.

Sea step away from the glossy kitchen magazines. That way lies financial ruin. But feel free to share your ideas so we can all live vicariously.

I am back on the bike after the rubbish weather forced me on to the bus. I now ride both ways in the light.

I switched back to powder earlier this year.

Relieved as I took a risk washing our floor mat from under the high chair rather than just wiping/spraying etc, seems to be fine phew! No idea how we will manage while away though

A couple of my friends are also taking up the upfront membership offer it seems. So, while I am totally happy going alone (I swam further and quicker alone today as not chatting between lengths!) I will also have the option of company! Yay!

But I have told them we are at no point EVER using the phrase “gym bunnies” we have settled on gym armadillos instead.

@northender hi nice to meet you?

@MeadowHay how old is dd? Could be colic type pain, could be teething, could be blocked sinus, could be earache.
Hope you have a better night. 🤗

Nsd today
Did Easter Egg shop yesterday though. £25 for 6 large and few tiny ones.

Unescorted I’ll be financially ruined but at least I’ll be sitting in a nice kitchen . Seriously, ours is falling apart and we have a decent home improvement budget available thanks to my Granny’s legacy. I don’t want to over-spec it in case we have to move in a few years for DS’s school but we’d have to do something fairly drastic with the kitchen before selling this place anyway, it’s pretty bad.

Still working, hopefully no more than an hour left to do!

Another one here for Aldi non bio powder, it's fab & very frugal.
Can't sleep and feeling slightly overwhelmed by everything at the moment (which isn't helping me to sleep). So planning & making lists to get me through to Monday!

Been up all night with food poisoning

Will check out Aldi powder!

So Ive crunched the numbers as planned and, despite stopping paying for some things my monthly expenditure is now £25 more than my wage. Hopefully with the tax shift next month that might right itself.

I appreciate that on top of my wage I get a maintenance payment for ds so in reality that’s not a drastic circumstance but as I’m not sure I will always be able to rely on this due to the uncertain situation we are in I make my calculations based on what I can cover on my own. Just shows what a difference a few small bill increase can make cumulatively though.

That's shit wolf and sneaky!

I've worked out with my wages I can pay everything I need to but have nothing left over at all. Will have to see what my incremental raise does to my wages in mays pay packet, hopefully it'll help. Also once I've paid my next account and hoover off I'll have £100 a month so all is not lost.

Just about to go food shopping yawn.

Hopefully the tax shift/imcremental raise will be helpful @wolf and @wreck; that's a stress.

Spends yesterday:
£27 diesel and a pot of soup (left my lunch at home in the fridge .
£23 Primark including two sports bras for size so at least one will go back.
£6 new charger for iPhone and Kindle

Oh no Sneaky, do you know what caused it?

Eek, that is tight Wreck and Wolf. I think you are right to want to be able to manage on what you earn if you are not sure child support will always be forthcoming.

Very tired today. WFH and have a webinar at 10. Might have a wee nap after that, just taking back some time from last night! I got my paper in okay this morning though, phew.

Girlie (and others to whom this may apply) there’s a discussion on a woman’s hour podcast this week about children (especially girls) who have difficulty making friends. Someone has written a book about it and has some advice. I was only listening with one ear but it sounded interesting. If you go to the podcast app or the R4 website and look for the Woman’s Hour parenting podcast, it’s there. Might be worth a listen, it’s just 10 mins.

£63 Aldi
£14 Tesco including a muffin tray
£30 fuel
£2.70 coffee in Tesco with a friend
£5.50 car wash

Off to Nando's in a bit with a friend. At least I get nhs discount there and it's budgeted for.

Mmmm nandos. I had thought we might go after air arena on Monday, but then a friend mentioned Taco Bell :o

Hope you feel better sneaks

That royally sucks wreck and wolf :( hopefully the maintenance will continue

We have a fuck load of stuff to do by Monday.

Cag that is literally where I am right now! They've got a big arcade in the bowling place as well now.