Summer savings support - be frugal

[ememem84]

Running out of space on the old thread so here’s the new one. Everyone welcome.

for background this is a slice to share your No spend days, your big spend days your savings your situation. We all help each other out with advice and tips etc. but it’s mostly for friendly accountability.

Leeds is home city martha, so happy to answer any questions. We love it, it's changed a lot in the last few years. Neither of mine went to uni there though, so can't answer any specifics!!

Hoping hospital parking will be my only expense.

We've another veggie shepherds pie to eat tonight, with steamed broccoli and some rather past their best green beans I found at the hidden under some tomatoes at the back of the fridge. This is what happens when others unpack the shopping!!

You okay life?

Oh that's annoying Martha
Namechange fuel price is crazy. We are off to Devon next weekend & will be being as fuel efficient as we can with the drive
Did more work on the quilt I'm making for ds. I didn't calculate one of the fabrics properly & was 3 squares short so, rather than buy more, I made the squares by stitching smaller pieces of fabric together. It looks fine & ds will never notice!

Monday blues life?

Sounds clever north.

In good news, DD has just received her degree result and has got a first!!

Great news mines

yah Monday blues I think

Payday finally here. I've had to dip into my savings last month as had a lot of birthdays and spendy meals out, a holiday and a tax return. Hopefully I'll be able to tighten my belt more this month.

Transferred money straight out for bills and into savings. I'm on £4k out of the £6.5k I want to save for maternity leave, if I can maintain that and not dip into it before the next payday I'll be happy. Then £500 a month for the next 5 months till my mat leave.

I'm thinking of handing my car back in December/January and doing without one through my mat leave. Its on finance agreement at the moment. That would save me £190 a month and all the insurance/maintenance/fuel that comes with it. I can share my DPs car or use the milk float (we run a milk round) for nipping about once it's back in the morning. I can save the difference to buy a second hand car when I'm back to work.

Went charity shop hunting on Sunday - I got a like-new baby bath support for £2 that's retailing at £18 on Amazon, and a couple of baggy office-appropriate tops to see me through for a while.

Fantastic news mines

life hugs

north bloody hell! Those are some stats. Good luck with it all.

we are due to fly this day next week on our honeymoon so spendy weekend on new rucksacks for plane, sandals, sun cream etc. I got three pairs of shorts on Vinted for £5 each, all in great condition.
tried fake tan for first time ever (am 37 lol) and it looks ok where it’s taken but is patchy where I’ve missed bits. How can I make sure NOT to miss bits?!
The chaos at airports has worried me so we have bought 30L rucksacks each for plane and plan to take sandals, shorts, swimwear and undies in there so if the bags get lost we can begin the holiday. That’s if the flight isn’t cancelled 😱😅

@Gensola
Have a wonderful honeymoon, where are you off to?
Congratulations to your daughter @northender
@lifelongfrugaleer hope you feel brighter as the day goes on.

Payday here, was paid slightly more than I was expecting too so that's allowed me to use one of the pots in my bank account to get a month ahead on bills which is exciting. I have 52 weeks of X amount disposable income that I have saved when I get my first maternity allowance payment on Friday the amounts will allow me to scrape 4x the amount, so I can put some money towards my goal.

I haven't a clue how expensive first few weeks and months with my baby will be so we will see. No doubt although we have been organised there is something glaringly obvious we've missed.

@namechangeanonymous we are going island hopping in Greece - I teach Ancient Greek literature and language so it’s a place very close to my heart. DH isn’t quite fully aware that he will be dragged around every archaeology site I can find hahaha!

you sound super organised with your savings. We wiped ours out for IVF, but hoping to be able to start saving properly from September this year once the last of the IVF debt is paid off.

Oooh I love Greece, admittedly I've never done more than 'tourist land' been to Kos for the day from Turkey and Corfu a bunch of times but seen a (limited) amount of history etc would love to see more. You teach ancient Greek language, wow?! Are you native Greek or anything, I imagine that's a really hard skill to learn!!

I'm sorry your having to go through IVF - I was trying for 7 years for this baby, but no way I could have gone through IVF physically or mentally I'm mid 30s and got to the point of accepting it wasn't going to happen - when it did, I call her my one in a million rainbow.

gensola that sounds a wonderful honeymoon and what an interesting subject to teach!

mines congratulations to your daughter! You said about hospital parking and I think you mentioned your husband is ill, have you got a blue badge for him to help with parking costs?

twobullets that sounds like some fab bargain hunting! Loving the image of you rocking up to the Asda carpark or something in a milk float. We have a milkman and it's great to support a local business but it costs 50p more each bottle than the supermarket which is becoming a bit hard to justify when we get 2 bottles a day. But we will support them as long as we can it's a local dairy still with the old fashioned floats and there's just something about it that lifts my heart hearing the milk come around 5am when all is quiet. I like little things like that! Also it's so convenient and we get eggs bread and juice from them.aswell. they also do yogurts cheese potatoes etc. Plus the milk tastes so much better than supermarket milk! Have you noticed any difference in business with the cost of living crisis?

This is becoming an essay sorry all!

Have already spent £25 this morning 🙄 £20 on Amazon on those vacuum bags to pack away winter duvets in the loft, and some wool winter socks getting prepared early while they were on offer. Then £5 on DC bus fares they usually bike to school but it's hammering it down and it's a couple of miles so we said take the bus. We may get a weekly pass as it works out slightly cheaper but only if they were going on the bus every day. Any less than 5 days and it's cheaper to buy day by day.

Sausage and mash / egg fried rice for tea. Just 2 meals tonight not 3 woohoo!

Hi all, I have not been here for a while ( but was an oldie on this thread and still lurk sometimes). Glad to see everyone is still frugalling.. we have stopped working now and on a fixed income and pension, so despite being ok we really need to start properly frugalling again..

Anyway I wanted to share this. I dont know if you have heard of slow cooking bags like the Wonderbag ( started off in Africa to save fuel and mitigate accidents caused by cooking on open fires( but they are brilliant and really work . Basically it works on the old haybox idea , you heat up your casserole etc, take ot off the stove and put it in the bag then it cooks itself thermally over several hours using no other heat sauce
Anyway there's a crowdfunding campaign for similar bags from a social enterprise company in Lancashire..
You buy one and they send one to a food bank.
Its called the Sew Fab Bag ..
I think its a fab idea , so just thought I'd share

Hi , all I just posted with a crowdfunding link for a sew fab cooking bag project which may mean that my post gets rejected .. Anyway its a great idea and worth looking up ( I am not involved with them )

Anyway hi , I was just saying hello again , and pointing out a money saving ideas which also benefits food banks

Hope you are all well and glad to see some 'oldies' here still ...we are now 'retired' so need to commit to long term frugalling ways again..
Did manage to buy that campervan which was my original frugalling goal when I was here previously ..

Fantastic to see the photo of your 'babies' , Ememem .. I remember you being first pregnant !

Hi laska I remember you, was on the threads years ago (2013ish) paying off massive credit card debt run up by my first husband. Have nc since then. I’ve been debating a thermal cooking bag for years, will look into it!
have also been wondering about air fryer to avoid using oven…

We've just bought and air fryer @Gensola and it's an absolute gamechanger hardly use the oven now. Last night we had pasta and garlic bread and normally I would have put the oven on just for the garlic bread which is a bit of a waste but did it in the air fryer and it's so much quicker!

I'm thinking about an air fryer - partly to save money and partly because I live in a hot countrt and can't bear to have the oven on in the summer in our tiny kitchen! What can you use them for?

@Decafflatteplease we absorbed the last few price increases from the dairy but it's become unsustainable, so we sent letters out with new prices which has understandably resulted in some cancellations but not as many as we expected yet.

We're debating whether to invest in an electric milk float to mitigate petrol and repair costs (and be more environmentally friendly) but it's hard to justify the £30k cost when the future of the round is so uncertain!

@Decafflatteplease we do do our food shopping in it and pull up to nice restaurants😂

Fabulous!!

Hey laksa, the linky didn’t post I don’t think
pleased you got the camper and I hope it’s fuel efficient :)

No sadly MN vetoed the link as it was to the bag makers crowdfunding page but its easy to Google. And when you donate, you get a bag and so does a food bank .

Campervanning is so fab. ( Though obvs because of the last couple of years we havent been able to use it as much as we hoped so far)...Well worth the frugalleering we did to buy it..
Yes, fuel prices , bit of a blow that to travel plans , so we'll have to cut back elsewhere..

Ah I’m soo pleased it was worth it for you. Does dgs come with you?