Low spend April

[Imabitchimaloverimachildimamother]

Read the March one and really need to cut back here. Anyone else?

Banana loaf, also banana flapjacks? Try recipes online but these are good for over ripe bananas

Or use them for milkshakes and smoothies? It’s no smoothie without banana😂 Ripe are the best.

I forgot, I paid £35.99 for husband’s lego lightning kit. This will go from birthdays etc. pot, not current account.

I do an Easter egg hunt for my DC @Moveforward - in the garden if it's nice enough, indoors if not! I get the small tubs of Easter chocolates from Aldi and make a trail to the bigger eggs. Which reminds me, must get the Easter stuff from wherever it may be hiding in the loft...

We make this banana bread a lot @SootspriteSearcher (without the walnuts so DTS1 can take it to school in his packed lunch) - the whole website is good although I imagine the pricing needs a rethink now! I managed to spend £140 at Aldi today

Link fail! banana bread

I'll join again. I've been mulling over asking my boss if I can do an extra drift every fortnight or so, I'm on a zero hours contract in a hotel so I'm sure she'll jump at it. It will make up the extra on our mortgage renewal so that would be great.
Had 3 no spend days last week at least. I do shopping with asda so I'm going to have a look to see how much it's risen by

Thanks for starting the new thread @Imabitchimaloverimachildimamother 😀

April spending so far:

2 good to go bags but had a £5 voucher so they cost me £0.50 in real money

£12.99 groceries

Also spent £31 of my birthday money but I don’t think that counts as it was a gift rather than our normal budget!

Banana ice cream? I also make banana mini loaf cakes (perfect for lunch boxes) and banana bread. Banana milk shakes is a good suggestion.

I spent £11 yesterday and will be spending lots of money this week on kids hobby competitions 😬

Don't think I'm going to do an Easter roast.

I let the kids make their own lunches yesterday - big mistake. All the salami and half the ham gone which was supposed to last the week. Back to pre made plates today!

I joined March and didn't do very well. Ready to try again for April.

@livingthegoodlife please can you share the banana mini loaf recipe? Or do you just do a normal banana bread recipe and then bake in smaller loaf tins?

I have a couple of days off work over the next two weeks during which time the kids will be elsewhere (unheard of! but childminder is taking different dates off to usual for easter and my workplace has compulsory leave this week and next). So I'd really like to try to do some batch cooking and one of the things I'd like to do is stuff for lunchboxes. My eldest DC is quite fussy and has got in the habit of having:

Wrap or sandwich with cheese (nothing else)
Crisps
Cereal or oat bar
Plus one piece of fruit and one veg like carrot or cucumber sticks
Sometimes a yoghurt

The childminder is good at encouraging her to eat everything but on her preschool days she is often coming home having not touched any of the fruit or veg and often not the yoghurt either. So she is going the whole day on bread, crisps and a cereal bar which is not great from a nutrition perspective. If anyone has any affordable alternatives to suggest for crisps then I'm all ears! Plus I'm going to batch cook some little low sugar cakes to put in instead of cereal bars. Would also be interested in savoury muffin type recipes if anyone has some? Thanks

Well I can't spend today anyway. Mortgage has cleared me out totally this morning. Possibly a good thing.

Good luck with no spend week all.

@Coffeecoffeeinmytummy I use this Waitrose recipe. I don't use little paper liners as I have a mini loaf tin and just use that: recipe

Just spent another £15 on Easter bits - argh.

£120 for plumber to move and replace outside tap. We can now go ahead with tiling outside space. Am going to Aldi either this afternoon or tomorrow am and that should come in at under £60 fingers crossed. Oh and £17 on another hive lightbulb so we can set them to come on and off while we're away

3rd april 10euro donation for therapy sessions and 1.50 on parking.
April so far 163.50.

NSD today, as I'm not going anywhere and not intending to buy online, but tomorrow... grocery shopping 🤐

£75 fuel. Budgeted for already
£6 Aldi on a big bag of apples and punnets of grapes.

I tend to freeze bananas and then forget about them!

Joining. I have two school trip balances to this month totally £550. But I did buy some new trainers ( from Adidas outlet) and 3 Merlin passes yesterday in the Merlin sale. The Merlin pass should give us a years worth of free days out so there's that

Joining - I need to spend as little as possible this month, I only have £10.00 to last me until 28th, after that it's the overdraft.

Staying in for the next three days for my first attempt at toilet training DS so I don't expect to spend anything. If I don't take DC anywhere they can't ask me for anything!

Aiming to clear out freezer. Need to use what we have.

Joining !
Aiming for at least 10 NSD's this month, as it was 10 last month

@IncessantNameChanger I considered the Merlin sale as well - the DC are desperate to go to Shrek Adventure - but I don't think we'd get enough value for money out of them at the moment. I'll keep looking!

£100 spent today on school breakfast clubs for next term but at least I got to use my tax free childcare this time, school have started accepting it.

@defi I need to clear out our freezer too, DTS1 has a very limited diet and I always try to keep stocks of his 'safe' food. I just really hate that job!

4th April spent 55.75 on a pair of boots...
So far €219.25 and I have to nip out for something later too. Not going well here.... The boots are fab though.

Expensive day yesterday as we went out for the day. Tickets were £88 for the six of us and then spent £17 on drinks with lunch. Worth it though as can’t actually remember the last time we all did something together.

Have visitors arriving tomorrow so grocery shop was also a lot this week £149. Also going out for dinner at the weekend so that will be expensive too! Although the dinner out is instead of a birthday present so maybe I won’t count that?

Plans to take the younger dc out somewhere (free) today foiled as waiting for workmen to arrive and they still haven’t come. Probably good as no doubt they’d have talked me into a slushy or ice cream whilst there! As it is I’m trying to tidy up ready for visitors whilst they’re intent on getting absolutely everything they own out and demanding constant snacks!

New totals:
Groceries: £161.99
Other: £105.50

@Coffeecoffeeinmytummy I went online to compare old baskets but both ocado and Tesco are only showing the last 90 days whereas they used to show all old orders!

I went grocery shopping yesterday and didn't find any eggs. What on Earth 😂There's no Easter without eggs. Need to come back to the shop after work today and will update my spending.

I'm doing OK so far, I think. NSDs on Tuesday and yesterday.
Today took ds to swim in the local pool this afternoon - about a tenner including a requisite snack afterwards --even though I brought something, he didn't want that one!-
Then we went to his jiu-jitsu class (paid in advance) and I've paid £20 for an extra day of holiday club tomorrow for him.
Hoping for another NSD tomorrow, but we'll see.

Im up to 387.80 so far spent in April. We are 5 fucking days in.
Thats on food and drinks, kids needed socks and jocks, I paid for an eye treatment I had forgotten I had booked and a pair of boots for myself too.