Low spend March

[Orcubed]

Following on from February.

I’m trying not to spend outside of our existing direct debits, standing orders, birthdays etc, also trying to keep groceries etc low. I failed badly in February, hoping March will be better!

All newcomers welcome!

Check in for today. £2.95 too good to go from Greggs, £1.55 lunch from work and a £2.95 vegan chocolate swirls (a treat for DH), last item £1.25 veg from market. Total £8.70 I absolutely love Greggs’ too good to go, great value!! For £2.95 today I have received a pack of 4 sausage rolls, 1 x cheddar sandwich, 1 x has cheese baguette, 1 x sausage beans melt, 1 x vegan sausage beans melt, 2 x jam doughnuts and 2 x sticky toffee muffins!!! Absolutely amazing!

Great haul @pinkroseapp !

I collected oranges & croissants today from olio.

And I agree @Threeboysandadog leaving the house is expensive! Lol
I'm going to try and spend some of tomorrow listing stuff for sale on marketplace. We have some galvanised steel chicken feeders we no longer need & a few other bits. Got to be worth a few quid to help my meagre food budget.

Finally a NSD today for me - phew!

Amazing value some of you get in TGTG offers. I've never tried it because when they first started, I didn't see any option for vegan or vegetarian food, but it sounds like that has improved recently. Hmm. Will consider.

That’s the thing, TGTO is completely random most of time. I am not vegetarian or vegan so it’s ok but DH is Vegan.

@moimichme The TGTG bags from our local Costa often has vegan items. It would depend on whether you are a vegan/vegetarian family or if some of you eat meat. We’ve had vegan ham and cheeze toasties, no duck wraps and vegan bacon/egg and spinach baps. The problem is the contents vary so much but they’ve always been good value for money.

@Orcubed ohh I understand what you mean, this is all so exciting and it makes my heart so happy that my husband is as much excited as I am 💕

My last few TGTG bags from Morrison’s have been all breads and fruit/veg. I have to time it do there’s room in the freezer for bread, if there’s more cut veg than I’ll use quickly I make soup but still need room in the freezer. I’m getting one tomorrow and hope it’s not all potatoes and oranges, as I have plenty of those.

NSD yesterday and today. I stocked up on raw dog food and chews at the weekend and spent more than I do on myself, also cat food and wild bird food, milk, onions and chick peas.

Direct debit for my mobile goes out on the 9th, then no more DDs for the rest of the month. Pension will be paid a week today.

Disappointing unexpected spend on a two-ring portable electric hob as my built-in ceramic hob has stopped working. It was second hand and pretty old when I bought it in 2009 so I’m not going to pay a fortune to try and fix it, I’ll replace it eventually but it’s not a priority.

Yesterday I spent £2.76 in tesco on reduced gluten free bread ×2, crumpets, hot cross buns and a stir fry bag. £11 in aldi on a few fresh bits to make dinners/lunches this week.

I only spent £22.80 in total on Sunday when we went to London, that was the train, bus, a badge each from the museum and a mcdonalds. Very happy with that!

I have looked at too good to go, but I'm gluten and dairy free, dd2 is vegetarian and dd1 can be a little fussy. So unfortunately I don't think they will work out good value for us! I used to like the no waste £1.50 boxes in lidl which I got alot when we lived closer as you could see what was inside before buying. Although I am considering getting a veggie breakfast tgtg from our local carvery tomorrow morning as its on my way into work and I've got to go in for a staff meeting! It's £2.79 and would be a nice treat!!

Everyone’s Magic bags seem way better than the ones here! My first one was from Greggs and was great but all since have been average with a couple of disappointing ones thrown in. And the best two places seem to have stopped doing them.

£37 on eye drops for me and ds and a heat mask for ds. I have MGD and blepharitis and the optician has now told ds he has dry eyes and needs to use drops and heat therapy too. Hope he doesn’t get as bad as me, it’s really painful some days.

And £2 in Poundland for pain au chocolats.

So £123.15 groceries
£50.99 other

@Grey13 dd is cutting much better with an appropriately sized knife but still struggling to get enough force sometimes

Greggs TGTG bags are fabulous! Trying not to spend even on these as they are useful, but not healthy really!

Still doing okay here but the budget will be tight this month that I've set myself.

£400 deposit paid for our holiday in Scotland, all budgeted for from one of my Chase pots.

Discretionary spends have been £15 champagne from Aldi to celebrate DD getting a funded phd placement.

Did a big shop at Aldi, £140, but thats most of the food for the month. Bought two pairs of PJs for myself from Cyber Jammies, they were reduced to £10.50 each so good value. Also had to buy vet recomended dog food which was £53 for 7kg. Very expensive but will be well worth it if it sorts his skin and gut problems out.

Check in today, so far £3 TGTO from Morrisons, never had them before so will see, last two Aldi ones were a bit disappointed. 🤞

NSD for me plus I made £3 selling a game.

I've started doing surveys on qmee. It's not great but I'm hoping to earn enough to buy my mum something for mother's Day. I'm going to make her a cake but don't have any spare money to buy anything. Other plan is daffodils - only £1 a bunch. So far I've earned £1.50 on surveys.

Well today’s £3.09 TGTG from Morrison’s isn’t great - all veg but not much selection (4 bags of carrots, two of Brussels sprouts, two of spares lettuce, and one catering pack each of veg slaw and sliced mushrooms from the Food To Go counter, they’re not sold as packs in store. I’ll make soup with the veg slaw and carrots, and more soup with the iceberg lettuce, but there’s no room in the freezer. I’ve rammed the sprouts in there and don’t know how I’ll get through 500g of sliced mushrooms, just 150g went in tonight’s stir fry.

Then I spent another £15 on extra salad and fruit, and some yellow-stickered bits, including ham, and Quorn green Thai curries which I’ve never tried, but for 88p are worth a punt!

*iceberg lettuce (not ‘spares’)!

I dont know how easy it is as I've never made it, but could you make a mushroom patè?

Salad leaves you can make pesto with so that could be another option for the iceberg lettuce? I don't know how long you could keep in the fridge for.

Morning Everyone, hope everyone's well and managed to get of the house despite snow if needed.

We had our landlady in yesterday for rent review. I can't believe how lucky we are. They only put it up by £50 which is waaaay below market rate. I would be very upset if it wouldn't be affordable for us to live here, as we love the house and neighbourhood.

NSD yesterday and today. Tomorrow I will take husband out for coffee or sushi or whatever he fancies, as it's Men's Day (is there such thing in the UK? I know we have International Women's Day on 8th of March, but maybe men's day is Polish thing? 😂)

@xogossipgirlxo lucky you on the rent review. It's so nice you can stay where you are happy.

I'm not sure about that tgtg bag - that's a lot of mushrooms!!

NSD planned for me today. I sold something else on marketplace so +£2.

The amounts I'm talking about are so paltry but every little helps!

DH collected quite a lot of food from olio last night so making homemade pizzas for dinner.

Dough: 13p
Sauce: 20p
Mozzarella: free
Onions: free
Ham: 16p

Makes 2 pizzas so about 20p per pizza excluding electric.

There still seems so much of March left!

£8 in coop. Still managing since last big shop 9 days ago. Will have to go tomorrow though. Also ordered a pair of denim dungarees from Hush. Spendy but did have a £20 voucher. If they're not perfect they will be returned and returns are free

Checking in. Only spend today was £30 on a haircut. I don't get it done often and was well over due.

Well I have truly over spent this month. Husband talked me into 2 new sofas. They were perfect for our lounge and heavily discounted and DH and DS hated the old one, which I picked. Will cover a good chunck this month as we managed to sell our old one and the rest is on interest free on a credit card, which we will pay before that period ends. I am really pleased with then though.

@Grey13 where did you buy new sofas? We're in the need of new one too. Our current one is 8 years old, not fit for purpose anymore. You won't offer it to guests to stay overnight, as it's so uncomfortable

Hoping for another NSD today 🤞

How was the too good to go bag? @pinkroseapp

I find I'm doing a lot more home cooking on my budget to try and use up odd bits of food in the cupboards. I made a tart yesterday using a random sachet of lemon pie filling I found (just add water) so only had to use a bit of margarine to make pastry. I added a bit of orange zest to make it more interesting. The girls were very happy with a "fancy" pudding!

I’ll have your mushrooms @YourWinter , we get through loads of them! Do you like biryani? I make a really easy mushroom biryani. Just sauté an onion, add mushrooms, garlic, chopped tomatoes (tinned or fresh is fine) and curry paste (or spices depending what I have), top with rinsed basmati rice and add 1.5 x the rice of water (or stock) bring to the boil and simmer for 4/5 minutes before turning the heat off and letting it steam cook for approx 10 mins. Even easier in the instant pot.

@xogossipgirlxo We got the sofas from next. From an outlet home store, which was why they were heavily discounted. One has some slight damage which is not visible and can't find a fault with the other. Really happy with them.

Low spend today. Considering using TGTG again. Used it quite a bit last year, hit and miss but got some good bargains.

Ok I have been doing fairly well all week but now someone needs to talk me down from overspending on DD2’s 2nd birthday😬 I had given myself a budget of £80 which is quite a lot already for a 2 year old… but I just can’t resist the numerous beautiful toys that are available now! I have managed to find the doll that we were planning to get her on offer so that’s a saving, but gosh it’s hard not to spend more. We can’t afford it really, I am really trying to save hard for holidays, please someone stop me!