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!

@Coffeecoffeeinmytummy will your child have lots of other people buy for them? Eg family & grandparents? Whenever I think I haven't bought enough for birthdays I just remind myself that they will get lots of presents from other people too!

And I'm a sucker for a holiday...

@livingthegoodlife She will get a few other gifts but not an insane amount. The frustrating thing is that none of my family ever seem to get my DC things that we ask for, even when they have asked for suggestions, so we end up with duplicates or things that she won’t play with. That sounds really ungrateful but it just means if there’s things we’d like her to have then we have to get them ourselves.

Just stick with the doll because she's just little. My DCs are grown up now, but the amount of money I've wasted over the years on toys that they sometimes didn't even play with makes me want to weep. Every time I did a clear out and sent stuff to the charity shop that hadn't been played with or hardly touched. Buy the doll and put the rest of the money in a bank account for her or towards Christmas.

So as usual I've done a no spend week, one of the things about being so busy in my job is I have no time to go to the shops so I rarely spend money from Saturday to Saturday, however, it does mean that I'm really starting to dread Saturdays because I seem to spend loads in one day. This week I need to buy gas for the cooker, it's a monthly thing, I know it's coming but I still hate it, so that's 25 euros straight away. I need to go to the supermarket and buy breakfast and lunches for the week and a friend is coming over tonight for dinner so will need a couple of bottles of wine at least. I'm dreading to see how much it costs, every week I'm spending 50 euros on a small bag of shopping, it's ridiculous.

However, all being well, I'm still in budget and hopefully will still be able to save a couple of hundred at the end of the month, provided no massive emergencies arise.

@Coffeecoffeeinmytummy I would stick to the 80 or try to even reduce that if you need to save. I bet she will be more than happy with the doll and additional family presents. I too have bought many toys thinking they will be loved and played with but have turned out to be a waste of money and given away nearly new. Such a lovely age, I bet you are so excited for it.

@brittanyfairies Well done on a no spend week.

Was hoping for a NSD but had to order more medication for the dog. Hoping that will be my only spend though and it is essential.

Grocery day here today. Spent £23.51 between Lidl & Morrisons. Pretty happy with that as it included some toiletries too & cheese. Our week is heavily subsided by meat from the freezer although I reckon we've only got about 1 more week left until I have to start buying meat.

Still no sign of new job for DH. Couple of leads this week so fingers crossed. And more news expected next week in relation to liquidation of previous company (and more importantly news of any money will be paid to us I hope).

Bizarrely, we are going to the theatre this afternoon. I completely forgot I had booked (& paid for!!) tickets with our panto tickets before Christmas. Bonus family outing which is exciting!

Ive spent £65 on some dungarees and £35 on some smart bulbs (so I can set them randomly while we're away for 6 weeks in the Spring.

Food was £28 for the big Aldi shop but that didn't include any meat or cleaning stuff as we already had it

I would keep it simple with a 2 year old, too much can overwhelm them.

If you are wanting to stick to the £80 but have more on your list for her, would you consider second hand? I have always done this for my girls, they are now 14 and 10 and I still get some second hand stuff for them. I would wrap the small bits in tissue paper inside a box/bag I had bought to store that toy. Big things wrapped up or with a big bow. They never knew any different and I was able to buy all the cute things but still stick to my budget! Dd2s stocking gifts last year were mostly all free from olio! Vinted, ebay, Facebook, charity shops, carboots, olio. Lots of choice!

My biggest birthday hit was when we covered the front room door in wrapping paper for them to break through to get to their presents! Dd2 must have been about 2 the first time we did it!

How is everyone doing?

£3.50 spend for me today. I forgot cling film and custard powder yesterday.

Dinner today:
Sausages £2.30 x10
Mash potato
Carrots
Peas
Gravy

Pudding: apple sauce (from free apples) & custard.

A fairy economical meal.

My poor over used and abused hoover has died. Its done well its over 10 years old, and we've always had hairy dogs so I'm not cross with it for finally giving up the ghost. So I've ordered a new one, so thats £125 spent that was unexpected but essential. In other news, the dog actually likes his special food, and seems fine on it so at least that wasn't wasted money.

Check in today. £30 spending in total. I had two great value TGTOs, one of them is a nice treat from Krispy Kreme, 6 doughnuts for £3.80. Very happy with it.

@Grey13Thank you. I don't know why it never occurred to me you can buy sofas there 😬I always look up in standard shops like Ikea.

This week's check in.
I got £200 from NatWest for switching bank. Saved £150 and kept £50 as fun money, so I went out with my husband for a meal.

£5.50 Vinted and around £8 quid for little grocery top up in Tesco and Asda. Trying to stay strong and eat what we have in the freezer, as there's loads to keep us full.

Other than this, I booked us tickets for candlelight concert where string quartet plays Hanz Zimmer's music, so that's £60 for two people. Unplanned spending, but to be frank we won't be going out much once baby is here, as we have no family nearby plus I don't know when we will be ready to do so.

I also realised I need to pay voluntary NI contributions to have full year before it's too late, as it's for year 2014-15. It's £235 of unplanned spending, but very important to me. Need to ring HMRC to get my 18-digit number, that no one in the UK knew they exist 😂

My good intentions went out of the window last night while drinking with my friend. At around 3 this morning we booked a flight back to the UK to go and visit another friend who left France a few years ago and I also seem to have purchased a pair of pink flares off Vinted. Fortunately the flights are only 100 euros and I would really love to see my friend again, but talk about drunk spending.

I’m checking in too. Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend. I feel like I thoroughly failed on the low spending front!

Friday was my day off with DD2 and we went to town to take some returns and meet a friend for coffee. Managed to resist buying anything else in town but £3.50 for coffee. Then realised I hadn’t bought anything for DDs lunch and she was hangry so we dived into McDs which was £8ish for a meal and a happy meal 🤦‍♀️

On Saturday we went to a cafe and did a top up shop in Sainsbury’s, £9 and £43 but that’s did include two birthday gifts and two Mother’s Day cards. Then I went to a second hand kids sale and spent about £35. I got a fair few bargains but there was also definitely some unnecessary spending in there! Then went back into town as I’d forgotten to pick something up and I spent £25 in M&S and £26 in primark on swimwear! I have been trying to find some for a while and fortunately the M&S one does fit me but I will return most of the primark stuff bar one bikini top. Then I also picked up some indian readymeals for me and DH as we were verging on a takeaway. £16 plus £4 parking.

Finally swimming today which was £14 for us all. Not including the primark returns that’s £166 😮

My only wins were a) for my first direct switch bonus of £175 and b) you lot managed to convince me to only buy DD the doll for her birthday! Thank you 😊 so that’s another £40+ I would have spent but resisted.

NSD on Saturday and Sunday. However I have a design appointment with IKEA today to order our nwe kitchen - hopefully it will come in on budget

Morning everyone, I managed not to spend much at all over the weekend which is quite an achievement! Was out all day on Saturday with dc at a farm park for a birthday, dc3 and I were free as part of the party but did have to pay entry for dc4 which was £15. Took my own coffee and snacks and lunch for dc4 so didn’t spend whilst there, even though we were there for over 4 hours. DP wanted a takeaway in the evening but I stuck to my meal plan and reminded him how expensive the last one had been.

Made another £10 on vinted so that’s good. Also cancelled our gym membership which will save us a lot every month. I’m sad about not being able to use the sauna and that dd will no longer be able to do one of her clubs because she really enjoys it but we just haven’t used it enough to make it worth it. I’ll be able to book her on as pay as you go on the weeks it’s not full of members (members get priority) so may do that, will still be cheaper! We’re reviewing our tv and internet packages this month too but I’m not ready to get rid of prime, I think I’d spend more on books than the subscription is (currently read free ones on my kindle).

Have to do a big shop this morning so will update my totals after that.

@grannycake we found with ikea that the kitchen was reasonably priced but the fitting was expensive so if you can fit it yourself or hire a handyman then you could probably bring it in cheaper. Bit more work though!

@Coffeecoffeeinmytummy don’t beat yourself up. I often find that spending on one things seems to open the spending floodgates and I then buy lots of stuff! Had a few bad days last month and bought lots of stuff I really didn’t need to buy all at once. The good thing is that being on here makes you total it up and holds you accountable which helps you reign it in the rest of the time. And at least being careful most of the time helps absorb the splurge!

@Orcubed I'm lucky as my DH can fit it and we are using an electrician/plumber who we've known for years But it's a big job as we have changed the location of the kitchen so a lot of building type work going on at the moment (well there will be when the weather improves) laying drains etc It will be lovely when its all finally finished but I think that will be late autumn

That’s good @grannycake , should help keep costs down. I also live in a land of never ending building work but fingers crossed by the end of this year we should be on to just maintenance work and upkeep (although we seem to find a new leak every week at the moment!)

Well my big shop was indeed big £219.43. But with Clubcard prices and Clubcard+ 10% voucher it came to £165.41. And will get 5% back on credit card. Stocked up on lots of things but I’m always surprised at how quickly we run out again!

New totals
£288.56 groceries
£88.98 other

Failing miserably. Today is day one for me. Again.

Pseudo I've not had a brilliant weekend, either. But onwards and upwards, right?

My weekend spends:
Haircut (not done since September!) £20
Groceries top-up £26 for not that much...
Cafe with ds after choir rehearsal £21
Coffee with DH £6.50
Chinese takeaway £24
New airer as ours fell apart on Friday £20

On track for a NSD today I think. My app says I've spent £275 less than at this time last month - £240 of that was for ds' birthday party, but at least I'm still a tiny bit below last month (so far).

@Orcubed thank you, the budgeting gods must be looking down on me because I've just found out that in my payslip this month I will have my recent 2% pay increase backdated to the start of Feb! It doesn't work out to a huge amount after tax/NI/pension etc but it should be an extra £100 or so which is enough to cancel out my terrible weekend of spending! Plus we are have also just been told that we will get an additional 4% rise later in the year. Again it's not going to make a huge difference given the cost of inflation but it's better than nothing.

@Orcubed can I also ask about Tesco, I'm considering switching from Asda and wondered about paying the £7.99 to get the 10% off each month. Is it worth it do you think? I already have a normal clubcard. My plan would be to do a big shop once a month and stock up on all essentials and then do a small top up each week from the shops we have locally (Lidly/Waitrose/Aldi).

well if you spend £80 a month 10% off is £8 ie the fee so only if you spend more than £80 is it worth it

Any shop bought pizza recommendations? Trying to kick my Sunday night take away habit. Tried morrisons and Sainsbury's but found the base more bread like.

@defi we are really liking the Asda create your own pizzas at the moment. It's £6 for 2 pizzas (and you can do half and half at ours if you ask nicely 🤣) and you get a bottle of drink plus a free cinema or sky voucher but I haven't actually redeemed any of our vouchers yet but it's still a good deal

Also in Asda the frozen pizzas are pretty good. Teens like the essential range pepperoni one, I like the bbq chicken one, we add extra cheese and toppings at home as they are a bit sparse!

@Coffeecoffeeinmytummy as @Cottagecheeseisnotcheese says as long as you spend more than £80. £80 is a low spend week for us (6 of us) so for us it’s worth it. You get 10% off two shops a month (in store only) up to a total value of £40 for the month. You get two separate vouchers to scan in the app. Today I saved £35 something on Clubcard prices and then another £17 something with the 10%. I hate doing big shops in store (usually get them delivered) but it’s worth it to save money.

@defi we buy pizza express ones when they’re on offer or I like the zizzi ones. Ds says the takeaway ones from Tesco are most like dominos style.

Spent £1.80 on hospital parking for dd’s appointment

New totals
£288.56 groceries

£90.78 other

Also love the Crosta and mollica margarita one.