Friendly frugaleers as the leaves fall our bank balances will rise, hopefully!

[lifelongfrugaleer]

Couldn't see one so took the liberty of starting a new thread.

Although we do still have to pay for the rest of Bibic (assessment centre we took the Caglets to) - £450. Going for the slowest option of £25 a month for now but hopefully DH will get his final pay from work (he’s owed an insane amount of holiday, plus they’ve said he gets a month’s notice?!) then we can ring up and pay the rest straight off.

Thanks to whoever suggested aiming for Low Spend Days

Since I last posted I've had 1 NSD, 1 LSD (£2 on sweets ) and 1 expensive day (£99 which was a trip to dentist and a top up food shop.)

Really pleased with myself

Hi all.
to all who are having a hard time x

I've not posted much, just so busy with work, and have parent conferences next week, so am preparing for that.

Spend wise, hasn't been bad really. Shopping was £65
McDonald's on Friday, for dinner, £14.36.
And a couple of bus journeys.
I think that's it.

Hope you are all well x

Great going on paying off the credit card Laputa that's fantastic.

Recycling done. Ds and I went on an adventure this morning to the recycling place. He loved it. Loves being a helper. 😂
Then we stopped for a coffee (in my keepy cup) and a hot milky at the seaside cafe - sat in the car. £1.30 coffee ds’ milky was free 😱😀

Then we went to Morrison’s and bought - gnocchi, dishwasher tablets, wonky onions, ginger and soy milk. £11.

Home now and need to set up recycling station in garage. We have new complicated rules and I need to get my head around what goes out when but wanted to start with a clean slate.

Also need to tidy.

Dh has spent the morning with dd. House is an absolute tip.

I'm on the train heading north! Going to be on the train for the next 6 hours 😱

I'm tired and feel hung over which is annoying given I don't drink, went to a friends bday party last night. Was good fun, lots of dancing and nice food.

Used a friend of dds to puppy sit, £10. Only spent £3 on drinks.

Spent £43 in Aldi Ystd, included a nice wooden toy for my nephew for Christmas. There's lots of nice wooden toys in there atm for any of you with littlies.

6 hours good grief. If you are coming up the North east mainline and get as far as a town beginning with D I will wave. And it's not Doncaster.

Top up today £3.70 breakfast after dive, £18 Tesco.

No life I'm heading up towards York on a cross country still got over two hours to go and have to make a change at some point as well 😩

Have been robbed of £5.20 on a cup of tea, a kitkat and bag of crisps.

Haven't been this far North in ages, I'm expecting it to be cold being that I'm a soft southerner!!

Ah we are 37 minutes further north. The X country trains take aaagggessss too.
York is lovely.

Urgh Girlie I'm heading down south on cross country tomorrow. Normally I do lner which is faster. Hope you have a fab time in York, I know it's a work thing but it's the most wonderful city

£6 food at local bonfire. I think that counts as a low spend day

My final destination is Harrogate which is meant to be lovely, not sure if I'll get to see much of it though.

Conference starts tomorrow and will be full on until I head back on Wednesday.

First time I'll have ever stayed in a hotel by myself! I love a nice hotel 😁

Harrogate is also fabulous. If you do get free time then you would love the rhs garden (you'll need a taxi or bus if you're staying in the centre but it's not far).

Hey everyone!

I've been absent for a few weeks so need to catch up on all posts!

I hope everyone is in a good place budget wise, this month will be a struggle for us, as it's a five week month, I've done two of the five weekly shops and have got £270 in my food/household account to last until 29th. Will have to be super frugal and keep away from Waitrose in the mornings on my way to work, also need to swerve the Christmas bargains thread - cannot buy anything no matter how bargainous it is

Going out to eat twice this month, to a pub on Friday and for lunch at the Toby Carvery nearer to the end of the month so I put a little bit by for that too.

School trips have wiped us out this month and we only got paid last Friday! Also had to fork out £190 for bus fares for the dc , I'd put it aside in a Monzo pot but it's still painful, my daily travel costs £17.90 including car parking and I've just found out they are reducing the frequency during rush hour on my section of the line from January. Gah.

Anyone made a start on Christmas yet? Both dds (12 & 14) have made lists, the rule is that they can put five things on it, none must cost more that £50 and once it's on the list it can't come off. Usually the stuff they ask for doesn't cost much which is good, dd2 has asked for a diary with lock and one of those spy pens, a lamp, yo-yo and a t-shirt from new look, both ds's (22 and 16) won't ask for anything so will probably get cash and some sweets!

Im off to read all the posts I've missed...

Rosie well done on cutting your spends.
Girlie Harrogate is lovely, enjoy.
Interesting hearing more opinions on Instant Pots. Still can't make up my mind about one.

Generally doing well spends wise here, but I think it's going to be a struggle getting the Thomas Cook flight money back. We can't automatically get our money back through our CC as we bought the flights through a third party, Opodo. Section 75 doesn't apply. So for trying to get the best price on flights, we could lose out big time. Nationwide can still try to get the money back through charge back, but chances don't sound great. We also have insurance which may bail us out in the end, but we have to exhaust all other options first.

So far I’ve bought the following for Christmas:

Overnight hotel stay for dparents (halfsies with dsis)
Aftershave for dh
Perfume for dsis (2 bottles - it was half price and a good deal so will either give her both or will save one for her birthday)
Soap n glory clean on me shower gels x 4 for dsis (her fave and she refuses to buy it for herself)
Pop up pirate - for ds
Fireman Sam advent calendar - ds
Anton berg boozy chocolates for ddad.

Christmas wise we’ve got a couple of bits we’ve picked up, I’m collecting more wooden animals as they come up on FB. I also just started collecting books, I’m putting together a box of board books for Cagletini but want to do all of them second hand.

I need to order DD1’s soon though as she is aaaaaall about the Kpop so all the hoodies and merch are from eBay overseas.

Hi Camden and Curvy, nice to see you!

I am working late, just having a wee break. I had a chunky document to rewrite over the weekend and inevitably didn’t get it finished earlier. I just don’t have 7 hours spare over a weekend so inevitably I end up staying up till 3am on Monday. Knackered already and not excited about starting my week on this tired footing. It’s going to be a helluva week too.

Will catch up properly tomorrow. In the meantime, off to google Kpop

Urgh Sea that sounds horrendous, I hope you managed to get some sleep

I have done no Christmas shopping other than cards and a few nice decorations. I need to get on it really but don't know what to get anyone

Harrogate is lovely and the HIC is right in the centre. DH is there next week at a conference.

I'm still undecided about the instant pot. I think I need to borrow one first.
Rubbish news about the flights.

In ok with Christmas. Wrote a list last night and have lots of easy ones done. Now just the ones I can't think what to get and also the DC.

Nsd planned today

I have a few Christmas bits but don't have any money for anymore so not sure what we will do tbh. It's the stockings I haven't done which is obviously the bit I can't get away with saying we can't afford.

wreck - how old are your dc, do you already have the actual Stockings ready to fill? When I was little my mum was a single parent and we were really hard up, if things were particularly tight she would either put fruit(banana, apple and satsuma) and a Christmas cracker in our stocking to bulk them out or use a sock instead so she didn't need to spend too much to fill them. Just some chocolate coins and a few pencils or a bouncy ball, my family are Scandinavian and they always use a sock there, my younger sisters would try and find the biggest one they could to leave at the end of the bed

That have sacks. Not massive ones though. I can do it cheaply I just don't have the money to do it a trip to primark and tiger would do. Unfortunately they're too old to be fobbed off but n out old enough to not believe. They think it's ok that mummy and daddy haven't got much money because at lease Father Christmas will bring them presents I'll just have to borrow some money from my dad or something.

Sea :o Korean pop is her obsession. She lives and breathes it. Still as far as obsessions go it could be worse :o the music is very catchy. She shares it with DSD (the one who is living with us currently) which is so lovely, they’re always giggling over YouTube together.

I am sort of wondering if I should leave some money aside for their gift for now in case someone else announces a tour before Christmas she’s very lucky to have seen BTS as a friend had a spare ticket going to waste so we gave them some money towards it, and DSD treated her to Got7 (cheaper!) but it’s not the sort of thing we could justify just paying for randomly! It would need to be a main gift.

Stockings are mostly essentials here - socks (used to do undies too but DD was mortified 🙈 so we stopped 😂) hair ties pens etc maybe cheap dvd etc

Hi everyone, haven’t been around much lately as MIL is still in hospital and we’ve been visiting daily. We got very bad news last week that she has lung cancer that they won’t be able to cure but will just try to manage her symptoms. It’s heart breaking for many reasons but especially sad as she is still a bit mixed up so she doesn’t remember that she has it . She has more investigations this week to find out the extent of it, but it doesn’t look good.

From a frugal point of view it’s not been too bad. Being time poor has made for some takeaways but food shops have been lower as have no inclination to be imaginative with the meal planning.

With regards to the instapot, I have the cheaper version and absolute love it. I use it loads for stews and curries, but if you enjoy cooking it’s possibly not for you. I love being able to throw everything in it and walk away as I hate standing over the cooker stirring but for some people that’s an essential part of the experience and they like to taste and adjust as they cook. With an instapot you obviously don’t have that.

born that’s what I don’t like about instant pot - that I can’t actually do the cooking. On the flip side though, it’s ace because I have more time and it just does it itself. Swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Ds has had his flu vaccination. He was so good.

Next on the list today is acupuncture for my hands. Then the gym later.

Dd is napping. Ds is resisting a nap.