Friendly Frugaleers- Accounting Accurately All April

[Wolfcub]

New fred

Bargain Mrs!

Amazing bargain Mrs

Blimey Mrs that is a good saving.

I have just been reading the thread about the person in her 30's not knowing how to cook. I must put some time aside to teach DD how to make her favourite meals before the end of the summer.

My DM is buying me an Ooni pizza oven for my B'day..... I am beyond excited. Normally she gives me money which is then spent by everyone else. Now I just have to order up a summer.

Love also meat, bargain.
Ok pizza oven. Me wants for new house

We went to a party today with the dc. So so lovely to see friends properly. The dc had a blast on the bouncy castle. 😂😂

£35 riding £39 petrol £3 sticky tape for birthday present.

Oh I would love a pizza oven!

Hiya I’m so tired today. It was DD’s first time in her own bed/room last night. Her bed is a low bunk bed (we built 2 bunk beds with storage when I was pregnant with DS so they could move straight in when big enough rather than having to build when they were already sleeping in it) and she has a bed guard up so can’t fall out but I was tossing and turning all night. She loved it and had a great time, she went to bed early tonight😂. The weathers been awful today, it’s just been grey and wet. We ventured out to the park to visit DF who had popped down with some clothes for the DC, but then spent most of the day in the boat. I’m really starting to get restless, I feel like I’ve done everything there is to do and been to every park you can go to.

wolf I love hearing about the birds you spot. My grandad is an avid bird watcher, he usually goes on weekend trips but hasn’t been able to lately but he likes to report his findings from his walks to the park.

Mrs what a brilliant bargain!

unescorted I wish I had been taught to cook, I went to university very unprepared!

em I’m glad your DC had a good time at the party how lovely for them!

NSD

Hello, you seem a really friendly bunch, may I join?

We are actually now better off as a family than we’ve ever been, after living very frugally when the kids were small. I work FT, DP works PT and income between us is around 57,000 so I feel like we really should have plenty to manage on. However with three teenagers I find I still need to keep a good eye on how we manage money. In particular I’ve only just begun to save towards a holiday abroad (next year rather than this! and I struggle to rein myself in with the food shopping. So if anyone wants to exchange tips about how they manage food bills that would be much appreciated! Hope you are all having a good Sunday...anyone else got snow?

marthasmum you're welcome here, we're a friendly bunch. Massive range of incomes within the group and in a sense that's irrelevant, we all support each other whatever the circumstances. Meal planning is key for me, but with teens it's not just about main meals but making sure you are stocked with snack options too.
No snow here but just had a pic from one of my team who lives about 25 miles away who is snowed in!

Hi Martha. You are right is is super friendly here and everyone is welcome.

Reducing food shop depends on how close you want to cut it. As a first step keep your shopping receipts for a month to see what you are spending money on. Keep an eye on waste too. This will give you an idea on where you can cut things out. I am terrible for buying bags of salads and letting them turn into a fridge swamp. Do you scrape loads off the plates before putting them in the dishwasher.

If you spend loads on a particular thing try to understand why that is. Takeaways and ready meals are the 2 most common. Look at ways to replace them in a sustainable way - batch cook and freeze, have a couple of I can't be arsed meals, get more help from the family or use a slow cooker. I find having spice mixes ready made up makes it easier - they are expensive to buy but cheap to make if you are near a Asian supermarket.

Cook seasonally and local / use the super 6 / supermarket's loss leaders as the basis of your meals. This week we are having lemon based things (and I will make the skins into preserved lemons).

Many of the "posh treats" are really simple to make / grow, but they just travel really badly.

We have snow and it is really sunny - I will need to dust off my sunglasses when I go walking later.

Morning! I'm not doing well with the daily posting ! But I am feeling frugally motivated and have just signed up to the 34 day free trial of YNAB... but now I need to watch ALL the tutorials as I'm not sure I get it?!!

Marthasmum I've been on and off these threads for years and I feel in a similar position to you... I'm actually quite good at being frugal and therefore don't have debt and do have savings but I still have no idea about budgeting. This has become really apparent after just moving house. We don't need to do loads but there are lots of things we'd like to do. For example, we want to paint and buy some furniture for our bedroom. We could pay for this from savings or use our credit card and pay off monthly but I actually have no idea about how much we have to spare monthly. I'd like to actually plan our house spends over the next 12 months but to do that INAB 😂

Do any other frugaleers use YNAB? Any tips?

Yes North the well stocked snack cupboard and fish fingers in the freezer.

unescorted I've been eyeing an Ooni oven, they look great. I completely hear what you're saying about your parents. I'm guessing they're similar ages to mine & I'm finding they are needing me more. It doesn't help that they have always had a fairly unhappy relationship so mum leans on me more as a result.
unescorted & wolf I'm looking forward to Bridgewater opening too
Mrs I'm starting to be more involved in my parents finances, as they asked me too & I'm encouraging them to spend more as I'd rather they had a better quality of life now than worrying about passing it on to me when they go. I cannot understand people fleecing their own family.

Well I ended up being more frugal than anticipated with the Gousto meal order. It cost £23 for 4 meals for 4 of us (50% discount) but because a couple of days earlier I had looked at Gousto through topcashback a couple of days earlier, it has tracked my order and I have £21.75 cash back showing. It seems like a win win.
Interesting to hear how you're all feeling about the opening up. We are going to our favourite pub for tea with friends tomorrow which will be fine, but nothing else planned yet. I have enjoyed life being less hectic, but yesterday was back to the usual madness, ds had cricket, Dd was working to prep at the rugby club ready for them opening tomorrow, then cricket scoring. Today she has rugby training and then a staff meeting. I need to make sure I fit in time for the things I've enjoyed doing in the spare time. My aunty and my cousin are coming round for brunch in the garden later which will be lovely.

Haha unescorted so fish fingers aren't just a teen thing here then?! We could buy shares

Aw thank you for the lovely welcome and responses already! Thanks also for the reassurance re range of income - I think one thing about it is that having had less, I wonder how what we have now is getting swallowed up so
easily. But older kids are so much more expensive for one thing and I think there is an element of ‘catching up’ as we’ve not had spare for treats for a long time and a lot of older stuff around the house etc needs replacing.
Northender and unescorted you are absolutely right - I need to have more of an eye as to where the food money goes, but I think a lot of it is on snacks. I think one issue is I like to have lots in and never be out of ingredients, so probably overspend. And fall into Costco when I’ve just popped in for petrol

Would somebody mind telling me how to bold someone’s name when replying (my kids mock me for my lack of online expertise...)
Kids by the way are DD nearly 17, DS 15 and DS 12. So uni expenses potentially on the horizon too.

Madden - I probably only got my head round budgeting properly in the last few years. I know what you mean about not really knowing how much is spare

That's an excellent win on the Houston box North

Welcome Martha. A bit like Unescorted I try and base meals around deals when I can do for example a 3 for £10 fish an meat deal, although Ocado's offering has gone right off lately with less "fresh" meat and more marinaded and breaded stuff which isn't helpful. Cook once eat twice is also helpful so that you've got meals in the freezer. There's also nothing wrong with a pasta dinner, a combination of tins or something on toast. I am still not as good at this as I should be, swampy salad and tangerines that puff green yack into the air are common and we do still have takeaways or ready made pie or something.

My top tip on saving is to make sure every penny has a job, you should know what your monthly expenses are but also your annual expenses and a 12th of these should be put away at the start of every month. The same with savings, put money into savings the day you are paid and then make every effort not to touch it except in an emergency

North another for a Bridgewater trip, excellent. Bookings open on the 19th of this month I think

Just lost a really long post

Welcome Martha. To bold a name you need to out a * before and after the name with no spaces.

I also need to rein in the food shopping as we have been buying posher stuff to cheer ourselves up in lockdown. I have also realised that dh and I need to make things easier for ourselves sometimes. We both like cooking and cook from scratch for nearly every meal. We exhaust ourselves with the planning, shopping, cooking and clearing up. I think we need to have a few more easy things in for when the dcs have after school activities for instance.

You aren't alone Snuggly - just buying one click up makes a huge difference to the cost really quickly.

Martha uni costs caused a sharp intake of breath here. Ours are 3 years apart so we will only have one in uni at any given time - unless DD does the master's she it threatening to do (The RA is on her mission list apparently ).

We have 3 nights a week where the girls eat at childminders and we're in late from work so we try to eat quickly and cheaply. Wednesday is always soup (intend for it to be homemade but inevitably tinned!), Thursday is beige freezer or using up leftovers and Friday is either something slow-cooked or batch-cooked.

Thanks snuggly hopefully this has worked and like most IT things, easy when you know how!
Unescortedd YY to costs being scary esp as I may in theory have two there at the same time (though based on the amount of work DS1 currently does at school, maybe not...) DD is now feeling she has made the wrong A level choice for what she wants to do at Uni and is considering a foundation year so even more cost.
Thank you so much for all the tips, it’s making me realise I could do better. Like you snuggly I try to cook from scratch but could do with introducing cheaper easier options like wolf says.
unescorted I think your daughter is the very talented artist, is that right? I have been lurking a while getting up courage to post
Hats off to all the teachers and NHS staff on jerker who have no doubt had a very tough year

Oops here not jerker

ships I am fascinated by your accommodation circumstances. It sounds fabulous.

Welcome Martha. I too have a decent household income but money seems to flow through my fingers like water. Being on here makes me more accountable and I always make sure I try and save some money each month. I transfer money into savings as soon as I'm paid even if I know there's a good chance I might need to transfer some of it back later in the month. I try and use cashback for all my online purchases as it really mounts up.

The weather is very mixed here. Lovely and sunny but then cold with sprinkles of snow.

Yay Martha it worked! I think also because of lockdown and dh wfh he has cooked properly almost every night. We need to get back in the mindset we had when we were both out at work and do more batch-cooking. We are going to start this week by making Jamie's 7 veg sauce as that is really useful to have portioned-up in the freezer and the recipe makes loads. We already have the ingredients too, I just need to buy a couple.of courgettes.

Dh has spoiled us all so much with his delicious homemade pizzas that I don't think we would enjoy bog standard frozen ones anymore but maybe he could make some dough or even bases to freeze and then it's just a quick assembly job.

I have also been whizzing up pesto to order bit again, that freezes well and I used to make a load and freeze in portions. Will get back to that too.

Just read about your satsumas Wolf. Dh and dd made a whole load of tired satsumas (although not mouldy, just past their best!) into muffins earlier. They look delish!

Good point actually snuggly about the batch cooking. Pre COVID I worked long hours outside the home so I was batch cooking and meal planning like a demon, but have lapsed into buying the kids lots of crap and buying what I fancy. Hmm starting to see where I’m going wrong . It’s been very nice to have less pressure around mealtimes though.