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.

£66 Lidl
£8.50 wilko on some stocking fillers

Meal plan:

Cottage pie (cauliflower mash for me)
Bacon carbonara (need pasta for me which I need to get from Aldi they do a soy bean one)
Pasta pesto with feta and broccoli (baked broccoli with pesto and feta for me with chicken skewers need pesto as Lidl were out)
Pizza (homemade one for me)
Burritos (no wrap for me!)
Nachos with chilli (nachos made from Edam slices for me)
Sausages with cauliflower cheese

Phew!

Beetroot and bean burgers with coleslaw and sweet potato fries for dinner.

Yum.

I am so tired. Having a g&t watching drag race uk then I’m off to bed. Dh has Dd.

I’m always absolutely astounded at how amazing drag queens look.

plan.

£173 to school today for disco, and school trip.

Been reading but not posting as it's all a bit crazy here.

Hugs to all who need and want them. X

Thanks all, trying not to worry. I think at 34 I would be so unlucky, and I’m trying to be optimistic!
DP took me to a nice country pub for a walk and glass of wine which was nice.
That’s our only spend today. Meal plan inspired by wreck!
Sat - Gnocchi with homemade tomato sauce and garlic bread
Sun lunch - Quiche and salad with leftover potatoes sauté
Sun dinner - Chicken with trimmings
Mon dinner - Lamb burgers (frozen from sains, so good!) with sweet potato fries and salad
Tues dinner -Chicken (from Sunday!) and mushroom risotto
Weds dinner - Veggie stir fry with noodles and beansprouts
Thurs dinner - Tuscan bean soup from freezer with crusty bread
Friday dinner - out for work do, DP coming too.
I found curtains cheap on eBay for £17.99 a pair and am looking into fleece blankets to line them, they already make a huge difference to our -freezing- cute country cottage.

Was going to come here tonight to complain about being an adult - car, boiler, downstairs loo and oven all meds repairing and £££ - but then I realise that plan, you are adulting and smashing it.

I'm so sorry that you're facing this uncertain health worry, and I hope you get an appointment quickly, but I adore your approach of a country pub, walk and wine.

Life is often tough and unfair, but it's how we deal with it that counts. I'm counting my blessings now and will look out for all the daily wonderful things over the weekend to remind myself of this.

madden that made me well up! Thanks so much. I’ve been on MN on and off for years and I do think we are great at supporting each other when things go wrong!
Hoping for an NSD today, DP is driving me
To the local library to sign up, we haven’t joined since we moved. I am hoping the one in the nearby large city will let me join even though I live outside the ring road.

Plan will keep my fingers firmly crossed for you. Libraries here work on a county (council) wide basis, so join one and you can use any, but you have one listed as your base as it were. Does that make sense?

Interesting morning. 1 hour on the phone getting a mortgage decision in principle and the rest battling through court forms to try and get as much of the detail needed for a financial order as possible. Annoyingly I can't find my life insurance policy so will need to order a copy

Really need to get on with Christmas shopping. It's always the same though, mine & dd's birthdays are second half of November so until hers is done I struggle to properly get on with things. Sewing is progressing though. I'll get a bit further and then post pics seacow. Keep meaning to ask, unescorted, how did you get on with the sari and batik fabrics?

Have a busy weekend planned, but good things. Today is football & then a wine tasting evening tonight, £10 each. Tomorrow I'm going with dd to a yoga flow session followed by afternoon tea. It's a joint birthday treat, £25 each. Dh & ds are going to football as their team is playing locally £15, their friend is driving & I've made sure they are fed to stop unnecessary food spends.

Hope it ends up being nothing to worry about placina

Hire car went back today and they couldn’t manage to add on the additional cost of me as an additional driver so we didn’t get charged the extra £105. Woohoo

Since then, I’ve spent that money saved on various Christmas presents. The amazon delivery driver is going to hate me tomorrow. £74 across Amazon, Lush and Boots

DD1 has just dropped the bowl of fruit for our Christmas cake all over the floor 😂

We've had a quiet day, chilled out this morning and then took the puppy for a long walk this afternoon.

I couldn't be arsed to cook tonight so treated us to a macdonalds £11.

Settling in for a night of strictly now!

Plancina, I am sure you’ll get seen in 2 weeks even with the new GP reg. It is more likely to be okay than not, but I imagine it’s hard to think straight till you know. Hoping for good news soon . And Madden is so right, we have to find our joy every day and appreciate what we have. I will try to remember that more.

Wolf doesn’t sound like a fun day for you but hopefully you are making progress with the complicated life stuff. Have a good evening!

I am shattered! Cooked for friend last night, she stayed over so it was a bit of a late one. Up early today with kids, out to ballet with DD at 8.30am and then straight to a birthday party for her friend (was okay, but thee was a very loud entertainer in a small and overcrowded house with people I didn’t know - I was counting down the minutes!). Then brought DD home - 4.5 hours after we’d left - and got her to sleep, before measuring both bathrooms and heading onto the Hideous North Circular to tile and bathroom shops. Found some I liked in each of two shops so I brought samples home to look at in the light. Then as I was next to Dreams and we’ve been needing to buy a new mattress I went in and bought one. I’ve been in. A couple of times and nearly done it but today I was feeling decisive.

£7 on sample tiles. £980 on mattress and an orthopaedic pillow. It’s been a long time coming though.

Finally sat down at 6.30pm. I am sooooo tired now! Getting kids to bed and then getting fish n chips takeaway. And I’m not even sorry .

Messed up the Ocado shop though. I meant to move the delivery as I hadn’t finished it but I forgot. So I’ve general stuff coming tomorrow but not actual meal ingredients . I’ll Have to go to a shop, grrr.

Hope you are seen quickly Plan. Fingers crossed that it’s nothing to worry about.

Take care life. Hope you aren’t too harassed.

Need to do a big Tesco shop for tomorrow as running out of everything. Hate, hate, hate the bagless deliveries as it’s such a faff having to take everything out of the crates individually it really puts me off.

Finally sorted my one click print order, have ordered 3 canvas pics and some photos prints all for various Christmas presents. Would have liked to do a photo book and got a few more photos as well it was so slow to upload I lost the will!

Cost £40, the delivery costs are ridiculous for these companies.

£8 swim registration, £10 ish. On raffle which I won 2 prizes, sweets and treats.
Proud mam day. £17 takeout for tea.

Today is gym, football, missing dive as DS is tired. DH going shopping with his mam.

Been hectic last few days, might get chance to catch up today. Will just post spends for now.
Pizza fri night €7, my cuz & her friend bought me a drink each because I was driving so no spends in the pub.

Yesterday had to call out tyre man to change my tyre that got cut with a piece of steel don't know cost yet
€15.96 on balloons/banners & 4 pk of 250 ml cans of monster in mr price
€3.95 card for ds - my baby's now 6!!!
€4 Breakfast roll
€140 party entertainment & shock horror h has given me half of his share of cost of party & rest promised for next week! Total cost €230. It went incredibly well & I'm glad I had it at home. Three hours & not a cross word between ten children
Today €80 on Christmas photo session, looking forward to it.

Cake with a difference & everyone loved it & best of all no leftovers

Those biscuits are from last Christmas #frugal

Way too much food, lesson learned

Happy birthday mini-Happier

Ha ha, I never under-cater Happier! Happy birthday to DS.

I’ve slept for over 10 hours - this probably only happens once or twice a year. I feel like a new woman. Also it’s not raining here (!) so that’s lifted my mood too. Might take DC for a walk in the forest.

I’m going to make @LonelyOversharer ‘s flapjacks today. Wish she was still here!

Hi , is this a budgeting support thread? Can I join please?

I've got a budget spreadsheet, made some really good headway on debts this year, just need to focus on the day to day spending now.

Curse welcome. Yes we are a budgeting support group and a bit of lovely friendship too. This is one of the most supportive corners of MN, we are all in different financial positions but all of us aim to spend wisely and keep a weather eye on our finances through good budgeting.

I need to do more paperwork hunting/filling in today. Not looking forward to it , it's quite depressing and I had a fall yesterday and am a bit sore so sitting on the office floor is not attractive.

Ordered some aftershave for ds for Xmas

Spent a fortune ordering things for Xmas but have set the money aside so it won’t hit cash flow. Getting DP a nice new wash bag with his name on and a razor which takes those old fashioned safety blades, it looks lovely and will cost nothing going forward as the blades are very cheap. I also found the aftershave he likes which is £££ on eBay, a guy selling one brand new in a box which his ex had given him, for half the price.
We had booked to go to Rome over Christmas and I had thought about cancelling it when he lost
His job but we would lose all the money as it was a non-refundable last minute booking. So we are going 22-27th and I can’t wait!

It was H's fault he insisted on cocktail sausages when I'd plenty of pizza & chicken goujons as well & he defrosted two bags of them so they had to be cooked & went off & left me with all of them