Frugal Friends Fearlessly Facing February.

[needastrongoneagain]

Thought I'd start the new thread. Been ages since I started a thread!

Oh God that heat sounds awful, I can't cope with anything above 30 degrees!

My day off today, I've been clearing up and walking the dog.

Need to post a couple of bits and hoping I've got enough money in my purse to cover it.

Spent £9 in Tesco express and had enough vouchers and a £2 win on a lottery card to cover it.

£6 in post office scrapped together enough change to pay for it.

I really hope to do better next month, the last two have been awful. On Friday I can see what I'll be paid on Monday so will sort out a budget.

Will be interesting to see if the RCN manage to get us a pay increase now they've stopped the strikes...

Girlie sorry to hear things are tough for you at present.

Ynab shows age of money as a marker & mine is only at 16 days, which means I'm spending money earned only 16 days ago, I remember when this was up in the hundreds

Girlie Really hoping you do get a pay rise!! You all more than deserve it, this government is disgraceful.

Spends today: £2 bus fare to work, £5 to my manager for a colleague's collection for bereavement flowers, £2 bus fare home.

DH and I trying to sort out car insurance renewal which is due imminently. We made a claim a few months ago, we weren't even in the car at the time! Agreed obviously not our fault at all and insurer even waived the excesses completely and said our no claims bonus would not be affected. Comes to renewal time and they've literally doubled the premium! Their response is that they haven't had the funds from the other side yet, so premiums are always automatically doubled whilst a claim is in process. After some negotiation they did agree to reduce the figure but it's still about £300 more than we paid this year, and comparison sites are saying we can get cover for about the same as what we paid this year. So we will need to switch. Soooo unfair though, our insurance is around £900 (DH fairly new driver and only had car couple of years) and we were so hoping to see this drop significantly this year, but it's not, because some utter twonk drove way too fast down our tiny street and properly bashed into the side of our car as it was parked nicely outside our house (and tried to leave the scene - but two passersby accosted them in the next street and made them stop and knocked to tell us about it!!). Sigh.

kooka phew that is v hot, 28° is about my limit! Although I dislike the cold equally - I like a nice mild breezy day or warm.

girlie really hope you get the payrise

weight that's really unfair. We often move insurer, I'd rather not but it saves cash.

The Lidl code worked and got a £5 voucher. Thank you to that frugaler, sorry on my phone so only can see one page and have forgotten who!

Not too bad a day, bearing in mind it's half term
£11 Lidl (also got the free bakery item, cheese loaf for soup or toasties). Food budget running low so about to organise and audit freezer.
£17 on bits for DMs birthday (in budget)
£15 ice cream parlour. Treat for DD after her first secondary school report
£35 fuel (in budget)

Also took back an impulse buy from The The Range so £12.99 coming back to cover most of the ice cream. 🍨☺️

Weight - I work for an insurance company, and I can't imagine that UK would be all that different to Australia, (The reinsurance pool in particular is worldwide - the UK insurers will have a stake in most insurances around the world.) All insurances have gone up dramatically. Costs of secondhand cars and car parts have gone up dramatically due to Covid and the interrupted car and car parts chain supply and have not yet come down significantly. Not to mention the climate perils, earthquake, floods and fires everywhere. And the budget insurers don't actually want anyone who has made a claim.

The temp is hot, but not as bad as you guys are imagining. We have a dry heat here which is much easier to cope with than muggy temps. But, yes, at these levels most people just stay inside or in the shade. We move from air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned shops/offices.

Problem is the cost of electricity and gas has gone up a lot here too, and there are people who can't afford to use their air conditioner, or install/fix them.

@Unescorted - agree re the cost of packet herbs!

Wow- 39 degrees. Have temperatures been steadily rising over the last few years @OrderOfTheKookaburra?

Cheers @Bornlazy, used that £5 off today in Lidl, Martin Lewis mentioned this on the radio yesterday too, and I had forgotten...🙃

Boo re the insurance @WeightoftheWorld. Cheeses me off when the claim was absolutely not your fault at all!

Spends

£71 Lidl. Full shop. But you get less and less, even at Lidl.
£7 coffee and chocolate for DH.

Need - it doesn't feel as though the temps have risen that much (although statistically they may have), but the edges of summer have extended. So it gets hot earlier and stays hot later.

The other thing is that I think as adults we're less tolerant because most of us aren't outside all that often compared to kids.

@OrderOfTheKookaburra oof. Hot. Where abouts are you in Aussie? WA?
when we were in Perth a few weeks back now it was 38/39 degrees. But it wasn’t as hot as I imagined it would be. As you say it’s a dry heat not that humid muggy heat we get here. It got to 36 degrees here over the summer and we all struggled.

sat down with DH yesterday and looked at finances. We are in a good place. Which is good. Things we need to look at:

electriciry useage
phones

electric we can’t switch. Because there’s only one provider here. So we need to look at what we’re using and see if there’s any way of dealing with this.
ideas are:
New heaters in bedrooms - £££ to begin with but the ones we have are old old old and we often forget to turn them off during the day
insulate the outside of the house - again £££ but will save us in the long run
solar panels - as above.

phones : potentially an easier fix. I need to check our contract. And if I can maybe make a switch. Although I know I signed up for 24 months. So it’s just a matter of when that is due to finish.

our car has been making wierd noises too. So I think that needs to be looked at. We’re not planning on getting a new one just yet (ours is a 2008 model fiesta) so need to keep it going as long as we feasibly can. DH wants an electric car so that’s what we’re going for. But again they’re spendy. (Hence the thoughts of solar panels). Another job for today. Cal garage.

Hi just a quick drop in before I head off to work. I’ve been really frugal this month, barely spent anything unless absolutely essential. And it’s paid off as I have some money left over to move over to my ‘emergency £500’ account. Which is currently sitting at £137. So it’ll be nice to get that topped up a bit.

Afternoon everyone
New fridge freezer is lovely we are very pleased with it thank God!
Spends 12 today in Morrisons , did a good shop last Monday £100 between Tesco and Morrisons to fill the new fridge freezer , everything is going up every week even little things
Been busy this week, my darling cousin 78 has broken her humerus and is in hospital so l have been going in every morning to get her showered and dressed because the wards are so short staffed it's unbelievable . My poor cousin was terribly upset this morning because a female patient, obviously mentally ill poor thing , assaulted 2 nurses and smashed up the nurses station outside her door , so she saw everything . They have security stationed by the patients bed now to stop it happening again. Popped to see Mum in the home then , she is very settled there thankfully & the staff are amazing
Hope everyone is ok , can't wait for the Spring

Netflix cancelled - will save me £110 between now and the end of the year. Doesn't seem much, but I suppose it all helps.

Aldi, Savers and Sainsbury's today and that's us done now until 28 Feb when the joint account is next topped up. £281 on food and household items this month, which is good for us.

Booked hair cut and colour for next month (12 weeks since the last one). I will get 50% off having built up a loyalty discount, which makes it affordable - but I need to find a different salon, alas. I get it, their costs are up, but so are mine!

Evening all veg box delivers today, but paid for last week. Ocado delivery coming later £55. Claimed expenses from a recent work trip so those should be paid in in a week or so and have paid deposit for summer holiday cottage £300. Balance due in May so best get saving

Spendy day:
£24 Lidl (£13.50 for logs which came from my energy account surplus) also used the £5 voucher 👍 included flowers and treats for a friend I am visiting tomorrow, she is making lunch.

£30 lunch out for DM birthday.

£5.97 coop

£1.10 parking

Only £13 down out of main spending account today - all the rest is in budget accounts. £21 for food to last until I get paid on Tuesday, should manage that.

Good to hear everyone's updates.
😊

Nsd 😇

Will see pay pending tomorrow and am thinking I'll be able to spend over the weekend as nothing will really come out until Monday anyway 😬

My car says I have 70 miles left until the petrol runs out and I have a 50 mile trip for work tomorrow, might just have to get some petrol as will stressing at the light flashing!

€67 diesel , I've a fuel card which saves me 4c a litre & comes out of my account every two weeks, have any of you considered these?

60c parking for orthodontist
€4.50 face masks, dd wants us to do them together dealz got us a tube & 3 single use masks, boots this would have got us one mask.
€14 30 eggs
€8 chipper
€4.70 ds pocket money spends (he's over budget must check YNAB to see why)
€15 recycling & rubbish

Been a quiet week here:
£195 car repair 🙁
£10 top up shop yesterday
£50 Tesco today

DD1 has stayed home unwell today. Fortunately she’s well and old enough to leave to run my errands today. Heating is on though as she is home as it’s turned really cold here. But I have some one to eat lunch with today which is nice!

Hope everyone is doing ok x

ememem - I'm in Adelaide. Today was 41 but hopefully that's the end of this heat wave.

Yesterday's spends:
$30 barber for DS1
$14.05 - groceries
$21.97 - rice crackers from fruit and veg store (result of having DS1 with me at the shopping centre for his haircut 🙄)

Today's spends:
$39.97 - chick starter feed
$48 - 4 totally adorable day old chicks which I have just popped under the broody hen in the dark. Checked her 10 minutes and she's all puffed up and not a chick on site as they're all snuggled under her feathers. Fingers crossed she takes to them!

Just realised I had forgotten a spend from last week - paid in cash so forgot about it
$45 for an old 50s style cabinet and $5 delivery fee (reminded of it when it was delivered ...lol!)

@OrderOfTheKookaburra omg those chicks are so sweet, l hope your hen takes to them too but it sounds very promising bless them
Our mobile contracts are going up by over £5 a month so l am going to see if l can change them to get them for less.
Petrol £58 @ 139.9 per litre that is 50 p less than we were paying at the highest
Very cold here last night and this morning, we went to see Tom Allen last night in Treorchy, tickets were a Christmas pressie off the Daughters he was hilarious. He is just like he is on the bake off and apprentice spin offs , so funny .
Hope everyone is ok

MrsMadEvans - check if you can get a discounted sim only plan through any of your memberships. I got 30% off for the first 12 months through my bank, and it will then be 10% off after that, from an already fairly well priced sim provider.

I found a bottle of vodka in the corner of the pantry. Forgot I had bought 2 bottles last time. So I've pulled out a bag of frozen mulberries and have put them in a jar and covered them in vodka - in a week or 2 I shall have some very nice mulberry vodka. You could do this with any berries really. Mix with lemonade and a nice, low cost alcoholic drink.

You can also do a heated version with sweets/chocolates - I've made an awesome Terry's chocolate orange vodka before by putting it through a dishwasher cycle - idea from a Mumsnet thread many years ago!

Made a banana cake last night to use up some over ripe bananas (have a surplus of eggs!) and I'm about to make some tomato and chilli relish. I'm cheating and I'll freeze small amounts as I can't be bothered with the canning process right now. The relish will jazz up lunches given I work from home most days.

Trying to not waste food and to avoid spending on expensive treats if I can easily make it myself. And if I use the oven during the day (on days we're not running the air con all day) I don't pay for electricity either because of the solar panels.

Yay I found you all at last! I've been on the low spend thread thinking it was this one but thought I didn't recognise many names 🤣 glad to be back here!

First off, I have wonderful news that I got the all clear from my cancer scare / surgery. It was begnin thankfully. I'm all healed up now and pretty much back to normal albeit infertile now but our family was thankfully complete but I'm still a bit up and down hormonally. Surgeon said give it 6 months post op to settle.

Thanks for all the support on here 😊

Finance wise we are plodding along nicely. Still being frugal and looking for new ways each month to cut costs.

Onwards and upwards! 👍

Borrowed money from the emergency savings fund for fuel.

Glad to get to the weekend!

Pleased the cancer scare was nothing after all. Still 🙁❤️ for you about the infertility

Thank you @lifelongfrugaleer