New year frugalling commences. Save those pennies for January

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New Fred.

Since we're talking about decluttering I've got a lot of stuff that I've been trying to sell for a while but have had almost 0 interest and haven't managed to sell a single thing. I've posted in local facebook groups and on wallapop but no one is interested. I'm selling a lot of baby stuff and jewellrey still in the packaging but can't shift it. Does anyone have any tips on selling stuff online? Or is there just not a market for these things?

I haven't listed on ebay as I didn't want the faff of doing the postage but if anyone more knowledgable then me thinks thats the best place to sell I'll give it a go.

@TheresNeverEnoughCheese does anyone near you run a monthly or bi monthly baby and children’s market? I hired a table at one with a friend and got rid of soooo much stuff.

DS2 has been invited to the park with his friend. So just me and DS1 heading out to get him new trainers. Although DS2 clearly has FOMO as when he was getting ready he was all ‘ooh my trainers feel tight’. Funny, they’ve been fine till right now!

Em grrr for you. How annoying

Cook books dropped off. Bottles to bottle bank and presents bought and wrapped for less than £17 so with postage (probably £5) I will be under my target spend.

Cleaned my cookbook shelf and reorganised so now down to one shelf rather than one and a bit. Have found some old school photos of ds for h and chucked an ornament he bought me that I no longer care for.

Ds is being a total ass at very high volume so the entire street have heard me called all sorts. Grrrr.

I am long time lurker and would like to join. My house is in chaos plus I have no idea about my finances. Its sad to say, but still getting used to doing it all on my own. I aim to follow Flylady again, want to go more zero waste and look into the FIRE movement. Don't know much about investing but plan to put at least 25 pounds a month towards it by not buying unnecesssary snacks & drinks from poundland and Greggs!

wolf I get the withering looks from DD. It is hard not to take it personally. My internal monologs have a lot of Fuck Yous in. I can bet you that the rest of the street have been there or will be shortly.

Yellow - It was a fine day for my finances & waistline when the Poundland below my office closed.

Just been out for a walk. 7km. Dd came too. She napped all the way in her pram. Annoyingly I forgot to make her bottle before we left. So now have had to do a rapid rapid cool down.

Joining for the new year if that’s okay.

We have a good income but a huge CC that I want to pay off before we remortgage in October.

£27 spent on new nails and an Americano. Support your local high street and all that

Also called into card factory and bought all cards for Jan and Feb which came to £13.

Hoping this strategy will prevent me opting to do the weekly shop at Tesco rather than Aldi cos I need cards - always ends up costing a small fortune!

Proud. Went to IKEA, spend only £20 on a few frames and lightbulbs. Which we need. No frivolous buys. Well done me.

Treated myself and the kids to meatballs though

£55 amazon on ladder bookshelf. Hopefully it arrives. Sometimes things like that can’t be delivered here.

My theory is that we can get rid of actual bookcase into dds room once I’ve gotten rid of the double bed in there.

My books can go on the top shelves so ds can’t get his grubby mits on them.

Sat with dd who is fighting a nap. She is taking a dummy now though. So that’s good.

She’s also got a toof.

Please can I join in. I've had to leave my job and am now permantly disabled and use a wheelchair. I have good days and bad days. I am in receipt of PIP but our family income has dropped by about a £1k a month so I need to find a way of making that up as much as possible at home when I feel I can by doing things online, though what I haven't a clue.

This year we have started an ISA for a deposit for a mortgage which I want to grow as quick as possible. I also need to save money for a long weekend away with the in laws to celebrate my FILs significant birthday. We have CC debt of of £6k to pay off. £4k is on 0% for 15 months. I'm also nearly finished paying off a Credit Union debt, February will be the last payment.

We also need to replace the fridge and freezer, so I'll trawl the local FB pages for those. We also need a new bathroom cupboard. Will need to change the oven over to gas as well so will need to find the money for it to be plumbed in. We also need a new mattress but I think we will spend our Christmas present money on that.

While writing this my DH has just informed me that the car is on it's way out.He'll nurse it for as long as he can but it will need replacing. He's just started a new job that means he can cycle to work so it's not going to be too bad but we do need it for the supermarket and for DC's and to get me to hospital appointments etc.Also for getting up country to visit elderly relatives. Sooooooo we have decided to carry on paying the CU loan and extending it to £1k again and just leave the SO running as it is at £30 (£25 towards loan and £5 for savings). Not ideal as we were hoping that we could leave it running at £30 into savings. We've said that if we can get something cheaper then we will and pay the amount back.

I've done a price comparison on our utilities and reduced the gas/electric from £175 to £112 and month.

I've started a declutter and have a bookcase full of books that I will need to get rid of (we needed to get rid of one our many bookcases so did a cull through them all).So they will need to go up online to see if I can get rid of them. I'm going through my wardrobe once I've got rid of some books.

I need to work out what I can do online for an hour or so a day to get some cash coming in.

Sorry for the long post and congratulations if you got to the end of it.

So next is working out how I can earn some cash

€135 on birthday present for boyfriend, that's him done now until next Christmas I'm not a Valentine's person

Good news too house sale is going ahead

Welcome Slattern will some of your expenses go down if you're at home instead of at work?

Em look forward to seeing pics of bookcase tiered according to age appropriateness

I just found 9 line & colour drawings of Paris, I'll definitely frame some for new house but 9, what was I thinking?

Said to ex to come & take stuff from kitchen like cookware, breadmaker etc because I want to declutter & minimise what I'm moving.

Allmyarse Cards bought individually are so expensive aren't they, aside from switching where you grocery shop

Beautiful walk em
*
Yellow* hi, there's a refill shop for cleaning supplies opening in my local town, I'm going to try the stuff out when I run down what I have now.

Wolf has ds's attitude improved?

happier yeah - ds seems to like getting into my books. I have sets of Harry Potter, lord of the rings, narnia and some other faves. But he rips them. So I’m sick of telling him no. #lazy

Tomorrow I’m getting plants from garden centre. I want some for bathroom. And some new orchids.

@Happierwithouthim, thank you for the welcome. I am afraid that my expenses won't drop as I walked to work and wore a uniform and usually took my own food in to eat.

My DH is going to start taking his coffee cup and water bottle in with him as well as lunches. We are going to monitor food spending this month and then set a budget from February with an aim to reducing it. We need to look at all the kids activities in the evenings and weekends and work out ways to work meals around things and timings etc. as I can't cook at the moment so DH is going to have to take it all on.

Slattern that is a tough change. re the car - in essence you need it once a month to shop and similar to visit the elderly relatives Plus your hospital appointments. Have you thought of community transport for the appointments ( we book ours through our Local Auth / hospital), online shop and hire a car to visit the rellies. It may work out cheaper than buying and running a car. I appreciate it isn't as convenient … and cycling in the snow / autumn gales can be a bit character forming, but it might give you a bit of time to save for the car / pay down the debt.

Slattern £1000 a month less is a lot - did you have a good bit of wriggle room before?

Welcome to more new people, I am struggling to keep up but will get to know you all soon!

Been trying to streamline the kids’ toys today and weed out the outgrown stuff. Never again will I do that while DD is in the house .

Spent around £10 for some sample bathroom tiles from an online retailer. That includes £4 for speedy delivery as I need to get a move on with choosing. I hope I don’t only like the expensive ones . Unfortunately I have a definite idea of what I want so am now a little fixated on finding exactly the right thing!

Have found a nice fake Christmas tree at 50% off. I’ll probably order it tonight - after taking our real one down and dealing with all the mess I imagine my resolve will be strengthened!

£110 Ocado and also £14 on fruit and bread locally. Quite a big shop but we’ve been away do the fridge was totally empty. I never seem to spend less than £100 now. And I still need salmon and a chicken, which Ocado had completely run out of .

Was supposed to start the healthy eating today but have lapsed already - I find that until the Christmas decorations come down I don’t have the ‘new start’ feeling, so that’s got to happen tonight. There’s also too much crap still
In the house. I’m going to ruthlessly chuck some half-eaten fridge stuff and send the non-fridge stuff to work with DH. MUST buy less chocolate, crisps and nuts next year. I bought a sensible amount but then replaced it as I ate it!

I am very tired again today after another bad sleep - still Coughing and bunged up. I think I’m going to finish this holiday more tired than I started it, and that’s saying something!

So I realised why we have more.money than I thought - we haven't paid after school club yet! Oops. Good job I didn't go crazy and spend it all.

I'm worried about dd1. She seems really down in the dumps. She has been out of sorts since the end of term which I put down to tiredness and excitement but this week has been awful. She's sullen, tearful, not eating much. She says she feels well and that nothing is worrying her. I can't think what's up. Maybe she just needs to get back to school and back to normal.

Official day 1 of retirement (I am counting last three weeks as a holiday)
Turned out spendy.. Lunch with Ds and clothes and shoesbuying because he starts new job next week. But yahoo, its finally time to permanent one in IT support . But also spendy in that things that I bought in Toast sale arrived and I am keeping it all !
But left overs for dinner and we don't need to buy anything more till next week
So spends over £200 and a tank of diesel.
Tomorrow I'm not going anywhere or spending anything

Blimey you lot have been chatty!!

Welcome newbies ☺️

Nocuts my dd really struggled with her body changing and the fact that she was growing up. I tried not to make a big deal of it and reassured her that she was still little enough to play etc if she wanted to.

My aim for January is to do one frugal thing a day 😬

So far;

• I've used up some apples that were passed their best in a apple crumble.

• I've cut up last years Christmas cards to make labels for next Christmas.

• I've taken lunch to work today.

£42 coop. Hardly anything there Because the boats haven’t come in but picked up what I could. Sigh. #islandlife

Managed 14768 steps today.

Thanks for the new thread em

I’m mid writing an assignment again. My frugal aim is not to give up and not bother! I’ve seen a couple of job adverts which wanted this end bit of the qualification, so must keep going and power through. It’s boring as though!

I need to declutter and sort stuff out too.

Welcome to all the newbies.

I looked more into the figures of paying off the mortgage in 10 years and it’d have to be very frugal to do it. So, with getting a bit more nice things out of life, 13 years is more realistic. But still a good aim.

I made my DDs eat the last piece of shortbread so I could use the tin to put the new extra Christmas decorations away in. The amount of chocolate left in this house is horrifying will keep us going until Easter . Not sure how I will lose the weight I need to with it still around.

#islandlife -happens here also ! Co op was pretty sparse today here also em hence we have full freezer always..

£1.50 milk
£1 bag of new sweets to try (saving them for next movie night)
£6.36 very late lunch as no time between yoga and appt

Also a load of direct debits came out today.

£6.71 on lunch stuff and some bits I'd forgotten to get for dinner.

Did Yoga at the gym and avoided the cafe after. Healthy lunch at home!

Inspired by girlie & dm's shock that I was contemplating throwing out a bunch of bananas (I'm known for my thriftiness!) I made two loaves of banana bread used ends of pack of chocolate orange fudge chunks, Irish dairy cream fudge chunks & choc chips in the mix too.

Made some progress in playroom - one bin bag full, one recycling bag full but room is still a wreck

Feel like whole house is at the moment, but staying on top of laundry & dishwashing

Love sounds like a much nicer goal for mortgage without being miserable

Laska that's brilliant for your ds, I remember him struggling a few years ago, how's your grandson doing?

Snuggly your poor dd

I forgot you were also island living @Laska2Meryls

I forgot to buy formula at the shop. Ffs. So now I’ll have to go tomorrow and get some. We have enough but I like to have at least 2 boxes in the cupboard. In case boats don’t come in...every shop I tell dh to pick up a box.

Dd ate a rusk earlier. Dh gave it to her. I was a bit 😱 but she is 5 months now. And they apparently are from 4-6m. I can’t remember when we gave them to ds to hold and sort of suck on. But was probably around the same time.