Frugal Friends Fearlessly Facing February.

[needastrongoneagain]

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

Welcome Scarlet ☺️
Took Mum for lunch today cost £23 for both of us . She really enjoyed it .
Spent £6 in my local discount store on sweets and mints for Mum .
Hope everyone is ok 🙂

That did include a primark visit Kessie

welcome scarlet that sounds a very considered post

spends yes £30 pets at home dog food is oos in big bags and little ones are ££ more but got £10 in loyalty vouchers knocked off
£15 home bargains and still forget tinned pineapple
£61 Sainsbury’s but mil owes me £30 off that

my food was £62 Aldi, £36 lidl thanks for the voucher,

fri £50 petrol now nearly gone as drive to the lakes for a day out £8.20 parking Robbin bastards, probably £40 on food and ancillaries but no other day out in the hols

£45 riding
£33 breakfast out yesterday.
£1.80 bakers on 2x gingerbread men for the kids as a bribe so they went with DH to see fil and the misery while I was riding.

£7 stationery/school supplies shop. Ds and I spent the afternoon at school with dsis (teacher) and we made props for his world book day costume. Guess the book.

today is a “reset” day. Food shop. Laundry. Ironing. Prep for the week.

I need to keep up with this thread!

@TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans , you’re sweet to your Mum. Mine loves pub lunches/dinners too, and sweeties! I’m off to see mine next weekend, I’ve a jar of piccalilli and one of honey to take her. We will take her for a pub meal too.
Spends yesterday £90 Waitrose, £30 farm shop and £20 Marks and Spencer’s. Annoyingly, my main freezer delivered itself of an ice baby yesterday and I had to move ice cream and most of my frozen ready meals to the other little freezer. Hopefully not too much waste bar a few frozen potatoes. DP slightly bemused to get a large helping of Thai chicken curry and oven chips for dinner yesterday, but ate with gusto. It will be slightly weirder today, but I don’t want more waste than I can help.
im off into work today to complete some e learning. Via Next to look at some shoes.
Have a lovely Sunday everyone.

Very spendy Saturday as had tickets to theatre and did a pre show meal, drinks. Brunch with friends today but then head down for 2 weeks til my big interview.
DH and I have agreed to try a low spend couple of weeks so I think we will be having some interesting meal plans 😁

£97 Waitrose. Food for the week. DH meal planned and shopped with a list.

no idea what’s on said meal plan. I’ll just eat what’s cooked for me!
except for today when I’m doing a roasty chicken.

Been to a car boot this morning spent around £10 on bits and bobs for the garden and a hot drink. Went with dd which was nice.

Going to Aldi in a minute, want to keep it under £80.

Yo, frugaleers. V&A yesterday - free exhibitions only, best room the Japan room, as ever. Emerged ravenous and DH treated us to tea and cake in a cafe nearby (museum café heaving, as always - we walked in to look at the tiles). South Ken is extremely clean - much more so than my neighbourhood, sigh. Apple TV in the evening, plus leftover ragu.

Today, NSD, making scones and trying out paint samples in the loo. Harder decision than I first thought, as ever. Trying to find the right pinky-neutral, not too strong, to go with grey splashback tiles and flooring. LG Ferdinand ahead of the pack at present.

Harissa Roast chicken and couscous tonight with roast peppers and onions. 'Tis a big chicken, should keep us going another couple of days.

if you are not feeling the 5000 big you are not doing the chicken right

Evening all

Very easy no-spend day today as I didn't leave the house and have done 7 hours overtime which will hit my April pay. I could cry when I think about how much they take off me in deductions - it's criminal.

When I finished, I was tempted to drive down to Morrisons and buy a Starbucks cold-coffee from the fridges but even though they are currently half price at £1.25, I knew I wouldn't have just bought one so I have made my own at home…although I am waiting for it to cool down and it won't be as nice as the Starbucks one but I'll enjoy the taste of not having paid £1.25 for it.

After singing the praises of Too Good to Go, I went to Morrisons yesterday to collect the hot food one I had reserved only to be told they had none left.
Getting a refund was so easy though just had to swipe to say I hadn't collected it and the money that was pending leaving my account is now not pending any more

Budget looks like this: 16 days to pay-day
Groceries: £275.23 (need to go to Company Shop this week)
Dog food: £20.86 (should have enough food to last until pay-day; V good Boi)
Petrol : £70 - I should be okay but DH will definitely need some soon.
My own spends: £138.45 (of which £50 is for my hair next weekend)
Everything else money: £234.43 (which is owed £11).

£93 in Aldi 😫 that was with me being careful! It's crazy how much food has gone up by.

Meal plan:

Cajun chicken with rice and mixed veg, dd chickpea curry with rice and veg

Toad in the hole with veg and gravy

Veggie spaghetti bolognaise with garlic bread

Veggie chilli (will add a tin of red beans to the bolognaise!) with rice and flat bread

Jacket spuds beans and cheese

Salmon en croute, spuds and veg

Roast dinner

Have everything I need for above meals apart from some veggie sausages for the toad in the hole. I now only buy frozen veg as have found this is much more cost effective and I waste less.

Pay day tomorrow- thank God!!!

That would be the Mumsnet Chicken, eh, life? We just eat way too much to meet that exacting standard.

That’s the one blue…. Doesn’t last in the house either

ooh, must do a mumsnet chicken! I quite fancy fakeaway chicken fried rice 😋

Hi all, I’ve been MIA for a bit again, had a crazy half term with way too many deadlines. However,
I do feel the last few weeks have moved me forward on a few fronts so though I am knackered, I feel satisfied to have made progress. Not been too spendy either, apart from bloomin’ prescription charges ! I don’t usually have so many so don’t prepay but I have been caught out this last few weeks.

My building tender is due to go out this coming week, so soon I will find out the extent to which our huge building plans are all affordable, or not. I am costing up all the extras I will need to buy, mainly kitchen and bathroom fittings, so I have an idea of what is affordable overall - we may have to reduce the scope of work if it is outside the budget. I am trying not to get too excited but we’ve been planning this for 5 years, and thinking about it since we moved almost 15 years ago, so it is high time! I do hope we can do most of the work we want.

Food costs are still ridiculous 😬 but we are trying to run down the very well-stocked cupboards, as we will need to move out while the building work is done, so that is actually helping to offset spends a bit for the next few weeks. I only spent £98 this week, with some top-ups still to come for fruit, bread and a couple of missing items from the delivery. I must start taking lunch to work though, I’ve not been doing well with that at all!

Spends this weekend are too numerous to mention as I have been ordering paint samples, door handles, tiles and whatnot from all over the place. I am treating all this as capital and not revenue though, so it’s all from the project bucket 😉. Have also done a big Amazon shop - first one in a while - and bought new pillows for DC, cereal storage boxes, some cardboard packing boxes and a flash powermop with reuseable washable pads (in the hope that I might swish the kitchen and bathroom a bit more often). Hope it’s not just gimmicky and annoying.

I still need to order some bras today. I am a bit short of bras and also still recovering from surgery over half term to remove a cyst from my armpit. It’s not healing well and is pretty painful so I need to do something to reduce the friction around it. I might try to buy a soft sleep bra to wear at home, and a proper bra just for going outside (have big boobs so cannot possibly leave the house without proper cantilevering 😉)

That was a big catch up and all about me, sorry! Very relieved to hear you’ve had the all-clear Big, and Need, I hope DH’s return home goes well.

Took the dc for a run On the beach this afternoon which resulted In bumping into a friend of dds and her mum who lived nearby. So we splashed in rock pools (wellies and puddle suits) and collected shells and other assorted mermaid treasures.

cleaned a bucket of plastic too from the beach.

had hot chocolates back at their place and an impromptu play date.

then roast chicken. DH is currently picking it and is making a stock. We have so much chicken stock in the freezer….I have the soup cube ice cube trays so freeze some in those then bag them up. Other times I use small ice cube trays. (Have special stock ones so they don’t make the ice taste ick). Then we have it to throw in stuff.

he’s planning on a leftover roast dinner soup yum and then chicken wraps.

Cricket was canceled so my no spend Saturday turned into a very expensive Saturday with a trip to the hardware store.

$1,056 - battery lawnmower, battery whopper snipper (I think it's a flymo in the UK?) and a removable rotary clothesline (Hills Hoist of course, for any Aussies that read this 😬)

All things I needed but had been waiting for my credit card so that I can get some benefit to it (points). Now I have some work waiting for me - eg teaching DSs how to mow the lawn so that it becomes their job!

Also need a large borer from the hardware store to drill drainage holes in the wine casks, will pick one up after work.

Low spend Sunday - $8.30 on 2 Sausage rolls from the petrol station. Cold ones from the supermarket cost the same (!!) so I don't feel it's a waste of money.

$5 lunch money for DS1 - they are allowed to buy lunch 1 day a week, their choice of day.

I could cry, I was fossicking about in the fridge in the shed and took out a leg of lamb and forgot to put it back.... $30 in the bin. 😢

Whipper snipper - not whopper snipper ...🤣

LSD £9.01 coop, £4 kindling (in budget).
Booked online shop with Sainsburys in case I'm without the car a few days next week, £15 voucher off a £60 spend for new customers. So it'll be around £70 rather than £85..

Frugal cooking today. Was so tempted to order a takeaway. Found some good quality bacon in the freezer. Bacon and lentil soup and pasta amatriciana. Also made some meringues. Still thinking about the takeaway though 😊

is it too late to cook and refreeze the lamb. ?
Gosh I’m tired.

Sadly not, because it was in the fridge in the shed shed I didn't see it for a couple of days.

Aww that's annoying about the lamb order. not the same but the other week I had to throw out a pack of chicken thighs as they were at the pack of the fridge and I found them 2days past the use by date. Only £3.50 but still really annoying and a waste of an animal!

Well it was a spendy weekend here but fun! Out all day Saturday at a museum so parking was expensive (annoyingly blue badges still had to pay!) McDonald's for DC on way home and DH and I got a takeaway when we got home but we were really disappointed. We use to have a takeaway every weekend and now it's every 6-8 weeks so we've majorly cut down but it wasn't nice on Saturday, from our usual place that our friends own but literally half the size in the box and really greasy tasteless and hardly any meat ☹️

We have been getting those simply cook things for the weekend not the subscription just the one off ones from Asda but we might trial a subscription. Great for an adults only treat type meal which we try to do most weekends.

Also paid a half term of school lunches and a nursery fees plus money for a trip so about £400 together but that's for the half term so nothing next month to pay if that makes sense.

That is annoying

I know it's still a Cosori,( but not on the recalled list) cannot beat the Dual Blaze. I have different airfryers with varying capabilities. This one beats them all.

At garage with car now. Could be soendy. Could be not. We shall see.

Starter motor on car has gone or is going. It’s going to cost £285 to fix. Parts and labour. Sigh. But still cheaper than a new car. We’re hoping car will hold out until next year. It’s booked in on Thursday for fixing

£44 on seminar attendance but can expense that back. So it doesn’t count.