Frugal Friends Fearlessly Facing February.

[needastrongoneagain]

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

Weight airfryers are cheaper and faster. It's basically just a small oven that heats up in two mins and because it's very efficient you can shave a couple of mins off your cooking time

A crap take away would give me the rage!

Weight I've yet to get a blue light card 🙈 I signed up but stopped short when they wanted a fiver for postage 😂 I don't tend to buy new clothes tbh and dd gets her own these days.

I walked round a garden centre this morning and didn't buy anything!! I am going to go to The Range later and will probably spend a bit as need potting soil, compost, plant feed etc. I want to sow my seeds this afternoon, I tend to grow all my summer bedding plants from seed now which is frugal I think.

Dd has helped with the housework this morning, she's a good girl, the house looks lovely now.

I’m renewing my blc this month and it’s only valid for 2 years now, still £5 though

I've definitely had more benefit from my box than the £5 I paid even though I sometimes forget to use it

Ahh just lost long post. Summary £6 spent

I’ve used blc loads
£176 new airfryer as £80 refund from debt back one is being processed, I went vortex

*sent not debt

Afternoon.... I have been reading along but always get interrupted as I go to post.

DH is finally on board with reducing expenditure. Everi and DPD called the police thinking he had been put under the patio.

Our house plans are an electric shower, finish putting up the very expensive wallpaper in DDs room and and put the flooring down. All should make the house more energy efficient.

gen ... Good luck this week. We are lovely up this way.

Hmm, the initial outlay for air fryer puts me off though.

Didn't get around to buying the clothes, I thought you could use BLC for H&M but then couldn't find anything on the app? Looked at Peacocks but the sizing for the kids clothes didn't seem to suit DD. Back to the drawing board. Will be going for a meal next week with DH and will use my BLC then definitely.

Spends: £9.30ish at play cafe on drinks and cake for me, DD and DS.
£4ish in Tesco on groceries. Most of that went on tonight's tea, I did get two yellow label products. One I used with dinner and the other I've frozen.

Tomorrow lunch will be free as going to DP's for lunch.

Emailed nursery to see if they have any availability over various other sessions this month for me to do some more work. Two of my joys have a lot of meetings and other work I could do if I had the childcare (and I can then claim it back as an expense). But they're all random times and dates etc so not things I could book a steady childcare booking pattern in for. They're usually full but occasionally they do have random spaces so we will see.

Painting in DD's new room finally finished! We are getting a free hand-me-down single bed for her tomorrow from my DPs. And same with mattress from them or my DSis if we can transport it tomorrow too. Already have a free single duvet for her from DSis that she'd never even taken out of the packet. Her new bedroom is proving a fairly frugal enterprise really! Need to get the curtains and nets dry cleaned. And eventually may need to buy her a proper single pillow, pillow and duvet cases, and sheets. Oh and mattress protectors too which has only just occurred to me. She's still in her toddler bed at the moment you see.

@WeightoftheWorld we initially weren't sure about an air fryer either so we just got a cheap one from Asda it was around £40 I think. It's an absolute game changer, the oven is now basically a cupboard 🤣 it's so much faster than our oven although having said that our oven is rubbish so depends how good your oven is really! We've actually bought a second one so now have 2 so can do seperate things in them. Some have 2 drawers for this purpose but they were more expensive

I’m lucky I have a bit of savings but my cheaper one was great, shame it was recalled

Spends today £73 Tesco grocery, £17 Aldi . Been busy all week and have now got a very painful right upper arm it's either tendonitis or a partial biceps/triceps tear according to my GP who gave me CoCodamols and Voltarol gel. He suggested l did some exercises to help , he recommended DrJo on You tube . Looks excellent tbf. Hope everyone is ok ☺️

Spends:
£22 Lidl (nearly DHs payday but was running short on basics)
£12 Primark. Returned a jacket but saw another I really liked 😊 also mascara, eyeshadow and some shorts for DD. Now I need

Not bad as I'm at a huge shopping centre. DD has gone off with her friend, I gave her £5 towards food as she had pocket money saved up.

Oh that will be sore mrs hope the meds help.

I've debated on an arifryer too, space, other priorities kind of thing. They do sound great though. Purchasing a new car, painting the house and making the garden nice to sit in this summer are goals this year.

I did this now I gave twin air fryers it was about £70 for both from b&m

Got out of the house quite early for us and headed to Kent for a great romp across the North Downs. Lunch in a nice pub garden after, paid for by DH. I had French onion soup - delicious, and could cheerfully have eaten three times the quantity. So that's on the list for this week's menus. I even have gruyere in the fridge. I was using a walking app on a free trial, but won't be signing up and have cancelled.

My own spends: £34 on annual sub for ad-blocker/anti malware thingy. Was going to manage without, but the pain of pop-ups and the sluggishness of my laptop prior to installing it makes it worth the money for me. £58 on deposit for hair cut and colour next week. Have simultaneously run out of SPF, cleanser, moisturiser and shampoo, so the 'grooming' category on my spends this month is going to be higher. Just going to grit my teeth and do it.

Spent £30ish Ystd in The Range on stuff for the garden and a few other household bits, had a lovely afternoon making up seed trays and tidying the garden.

Did dog agility this morning and went to my dads for lunch and a walk. Almost a NSD but needed to get dd a snack and ended up spending £7 in the shop or various snacks for dd 🙈

Good morning everyone 😊
Thank you Kessie ☺️
Re air fryers ,. We had one years ago but the amount of steam caused made such terrible condensation especially if cooking from frozen that we stopped using it . I don't know if the newer ones cause the same condensation but we try to keep the moisture down in the Winter because it causes mould patches 🙄
Have a lovely day everyone 😊

Morning all.

Should be a nsd today. Yesterday wasn't too spendy either, and I got a refund on something that we didn't need in the end so that £14 back. Although I did get diesel at £30. We are noticing a bit of a difference now prices aren't super high, we were spending £80 a month and now it's nearer £70 (we don't drive far 😂)

Sounds like you had a lovely day @BigSkies2022 .

Have a good Monday all!

I've fallen off the thread more often than I've been on it lately. I have tried to keep up a bit but again not done very well. Great to hear your good news decaff, what a relief. Hope your recovery has gone well too.
We bought a Ninja multi cooker and it's used most days. As someone else said, the oven is now hardly used & the electricity bill has gone down significantly.
Managed to save a decent amount in Feb & trying to do the same in March but we'll see how it goes
Dd is in the midst of hr A level mocks so stress levels are fairly high!

North very good luck to your Dd 🍀😊
Decaff glad you are finding the fuel costing less , it's really helped us too, from the height of 190 to now 139, less 51p per litre ,filling up is now £30 cheaper a week!
Tesco £15 today for bits and bobs

£7.25 on pilates class.

Hi everyone, been a bit since I posted. I realised my budget needed a bit of reworking. I've grouped things together now, particularly my discretionary spending, so that if I spend a bit more on one thing, I can spend less on something else within the group and still be within budget. We'll see if what I've allocated for utilities will be enough....

It's making it much easier to keep track now.

I've been pretty good with the spending, everything is within budget. Trying to stop myself blowing out because the budget I've set myself is pretty strict.

Fingers crossed I will get a bonus and pay rise in the second half of the year, standard time to get them in our company. Not guaranteed though because I changed jobs in January with a pay rise already, so I might be excluded from it.

Hi, dropped off the thread again, sorry!

What to tell you…
DS1 has passed his course on his apprenticeship, he’s now a fully qualified gas heating engineer! V proud.
DS2 has chosen his GCSEs for next year.
Finally booked a holiday, first one in 4 years. We’re off to Tenerife for a week. Just the 3 of us, as DS1 is going to France with friends and also Leedsfest.

Sorted out the freezer and as a result the last couple of weeks food shopping has been very good. Aldi and Morrisons both ran out of tomatoes and peppers last week, but fortunately we’ve got a really good greeengrocers in town that had plenty. I’m going to make a point of using them more, it might be a bit more expensive but the quality is really good and supporting local business and all that.

Hello all, jeez, it's cold again. The extra I am paying against the energy bill ain't gonna make much headway if we have to keep the thermostat at these levels. Mostly we are using just one floor, but even so..

Curls, congratulations to DS1 and on booking holidays! And to DS2 embarking on GSCEs - these milestones...

Kookaburra - I too have set a very strict budget, governed by fairly demanding savings targets, mortgage overpayments and repaying credit cards (the latter 0%, but they still have to be paid!) I have done all my transfers to various pots and so on this morning, and, after all DDs and everything through to next pay day, I now have ...£9 left, in a month where I am going away for 2 days. So, plainly, I shall have to raid my own stores at some point.

But not today! Today, I can bathe in the glow of commitments fulfilled. Also, getting my hair cut, and visiting DParents, to plan some nice days out as the weather improves (huh!) DM is drooping a bit, and needs a bit of jollying along.