Jumping into July: Frugal Friends Financial Fun

[needastrongoneagain]

New 'Fred.

Very low spend couple of days.

£12 AdBlue but that's expenses.

Will be back to post fully later.

€58.02 on Amazon - new shower head, boot storage box, shoe storage for inside my wardrobe, yes I could have used the ikea units that have been in the shed for 2 years but they'd be awkward and I'd have done it now if I was going to wouldn't I?

Final flooring quote is £360 so over £100 more than I thought 😕 I'm trying to think of it as a one off spend plus investment in the house. I can pay it in two instalments which cushions the pain a bit!

Had to make an adjustment to my car insurance £25.

Started looking at getting dd insured as a provisional driver on my car, that was loads more than I was expecting 🫣 have said to dd we will wait until closer to the test and then cover her just for a month.

Off to Aldi now, it will be a big shop as fridge and freezer are really run down.

Afternoon.

I'm so sorry about the holiday @HalfWomanHalfChocolate. You really do have a lot on don't you? You can understand folk buying new builds, having work done is incredibly stressful. Enjoy Whitby!

Enjoy the time off @Timetoswitch

Sorry to hear about your DM and DD @TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans. I find Boots extortionate, and our specific branch the staff are really unhelpful!

Good luck for the interview @kessiebird !

Must used cash back apps!

Spends
£12 Amazon, bulk buy of granite cleaner.
£2 The Range, miracle - I could spend a fortune on unnecessary items there!
£££ on Dh's therapy!
£4 M&S
£40 veg box delivery plus other items, to last two weeks.

Oh £35 fuel too this morning

I really want work to start on my extension but equally I'm in dread of it too
girlie somehow installments make it seem a little better
need wow serious discipline at the Range

I cancelled Spotify Premium today, it was €9.99 a month, hope I don't regret it because new subscription is €10.99 a month.

Half Sorry for your stresses. Hope you’ve managed to get some sleep. Glad you have an alternative break. That’s not good about the building costs. I’m not a fan of surprises.

Time Woohoo on your time off. Any good stuff planned?

New Good to hear your mother has recovered and hope your daughter is on the mend too.

Thestart I’m jealous of your walking holiday. Hope you’re getting some sunny spells. Cake is indeed an essential.

Yesterday was a no spend day. Today has been 35p on some yogurt.

Tried Virgin to cut my bill. They offered £178 a month and a new 18 month contract. I passed. No new tariffs on offer for my mobile either so I think I’ll look for a different supplier. I’m paying over £30 a month and last month sent 12 text messages and used less than 20 minutes of phone calls.

No news on my leave request at work. It’s not helping my stressful few days. Might brave the rain and wind later and go on a snack shopping trip. Then settle down and watch rubbish TV.

Half, sorry about your DH's kidney stone (laughed at your marital tolerance overload and pipe of compassion blockage - vent here!) and the loss of the French holiday sucks. But Yorkshire is lovely too! Bugger to the electrics - that is a big oversight in the contract spec. Fingers crossed it turns out to be a mistake.

DS has used up all the hardcore and we now have most of the patio sub-based. Bricks have been delivered. So now we need Fella-with-the-Skillz to return and build the wall so DH and I can do the next stage - hopefully push through to the end and lay the slabs by the end of next weekend.

Ddog fed up because no-one wants to take him out in the horrible weather.

Rum do you have providers that piggyback on other networks? In Ireland we've got 48, Gomo, ClearMobile all about €15 a month and under. I switched to Clear Mobile as they piggyback on the Vodafone network, I pay €12.99 a month, when I went to Canada they capped my roaming so my bill is €34 odd, my db and bf's bills doubled on the same holiday to the tune of €60 extra.

Just been to GP for bloods, got repeat prescription for pill and new advice means I can take it continuously(I suffer from extreme tiredness on my week off it - like you unplugged me so this will help) and a referral to private endocrinologist also.

Taking tomorrow off work to go to ds football blitz, will be gone all day but looking forward to later alarm clock

Spent €7 in shop on some real butter and a can of Monster Khaotic

Hope everyone is good.

I had a half-day today so I got my hair done and then spent a while sorting out paperwork. I also downloaded a direct debit mandate form to pay my TV licence. I'm going to pay it in quarterly instalments. It's not a huge sum of money (€160 per year) but the bill always arrives during the summer, usually when I'm just about to go on holiday or when I'm just home from a holiday and I'm skint. Easier to pay four instalments of €40. Feeling very virtuous now after all my sorting .

DD is expecting to get a college offer tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for her.

A very sad news story here in Ireland this week. A group of teenagers were on their way to their debs (prom) but the car went off the road and hit a tree. Two of the teenagers died in the crash. Another young person (a sister of one of the victims) was injured and is currently in hospital in Dublin. The driver (a 60 year old man) is in critical condition. The fifth passenger has non life-threatening injuries. Very poignant photos of the two girls in their debs dresses. Just devastating for all concerned.

Girlie can't believe your DD is working and taking driving lessons! That's disappointing about the floor quote but paying in two instalments will help.

Curls congrats. on getting your DS safely to adulthood. I'm sure he was proud as a peacock waving his ID at the door staff .

Rum hope your friend shows this week. I also have a flaky friend so I recognize those feelings of frustration and disappointment.

Oh Half so disappointing about the holiday but I get why you cancelled it. Hope you have a nice time in Yorkshire. Living with the out in-laws is always stressful, however nice they are. You're not in your own home and you end up tiptoeing around other people. And that's before you take into account your DC and their ASD which brings its own issues. I can't believe the builder/surveyor didn't make provision for these extra charges. Hope your e-mail has the desired effect.

Time enjoy your time off work. You going anywhere nice? Or are you holding off until October?

Mrs sounds like you've a lot on your plate atm between your Mum and your DD.

kessie good luck with the job interview

start hope you have a nice holiday, even with the rain.

Big sounds like you're making good progress with the patio.

Happier hope the AirFryer works out. Good news about being able to take the pill without any breaks.

I saw that story on the news tayto absolutely heartbreaking 💔

I spent £146 in Aldi 🤦‍♀️ how is that even possible?! It did include a few extra bits as a friend and her kids are visiting at the wend but even so!

I got some NHS discount on the flooring so that made it a bit better.

Awful news about those teens

Didn't get my pots sorted. Will do it today after talking outlaw to hospital

Good luck for college

DS gone back, clutching chocolate, cheese and a jar of peanut butter. He'll work 30 hours over the weekend, and has more hours next week, so his bank balance is going in the right direction.

Fella-with-the-Skillz is here and we should have a wall by the time he leaves today. He has been reminding us of some of the wrinkles involved in the laying of slabs. Good intel, and I'm glad he pointed it out before we blithely set about the task; but yet another reminder of why I absolutely don't want to be doing this again in my lifetime, ever. We still have yet more hardcore and more ballast to order and shift, more concrete to mix and pour, and sub-base to lay before we even get to that point. Then we have to shift all the crap that is currently in the garden to a skip, one barrow load at a time, before generating yet more crap that will in turn have to be shifted, to make a path. Oh well.

I shifted my 'investment style' from 'confident' to 'adventurous' on my ISA this morning i.e. a bit more in equities. I have been listening to various FIRE podcasters, and been encouraged towards a bit more risk.

Getting Ddog's animal health certificate organised, which will leave us £200 poorer. Thank you, Brexit.

I read the news story about those two girls tayto, so sad.

We’re having our holiday at home this summer, mainly so we had a bit longer to save by delaying going away until October half term. DH is off from this evening until the end of next week, but then I have three weeks of just me with the DC. Need to make some frugal plans!

DC are at sports camp today and tomorrow.

Spent the morning cleaning Dmums dishwasher and sink. Sadly the sink still looks terrible (I was scraping off grease with a knife 🤮) but the dishwasher came out well after a scrub and hot wash. Her kitchen/bathrooms are grim, but she won’t get a cleaner as she says she has loads of time to do it but doesn’t. I’ll clean bits irregularly for her, but I refuse to become her cleaner.

£35 Tesco yesterday
£152 for MOT and service the other day, not too bad. But I need to replace two tyres very soon.

I love reading about FIRE and retirement bigskies, even though I have no ability to do it for many many years. Who are you listening to?

At the moment, Time, The Escape Artist - he's British, and a UK based retired accountant, so it's a lot more relevant to my experience than rugged US types living on their self-built homestead in Vermont! He doesn't, I think, have his own podcast, but if you go to his blog The Escape Artist, he lists the podcasts on which he appears there.

Happier I am sure there must be providers like you mention. I need to look properly. Hope you had a nice day off today.

Tayto Fingers crossed for your daughter. Flakey friend didn’t show. Can’t say I’m surprised but I’m still frustrated. At least I saved the train fare and the money I would have spent on food.

Big The more I hear about your garden works the more tired I feel. Any clues as to what it will look like when finished?

Spending was £9.15 today. I went to the teeny sainsbury and bought assorted junk for dinner and an evening of television watching.

Work sucked today. Took a walk to try and shake it off but it didn’t really work. Still have not heard about my leave request so am constructing Plan B. Currently it’s run off to France.

Gardens are never finished, Rum, you know that! But this phase, when finished, will provide us with a nicely paved seating area about 2.5 metres by 3.4, a new, and better-situated brick path running through the middle of the garden replacing the stupidly-situated brick path running down the side of the garden. Removing the old brick path will open up space for a decent sized border and hedges, (hence the opportunities for new planting, the thought of which is keeping me going through this phase) and there will be Corten edging everywhere to replace the hodge-podge of unhappy solutions (badly installed bricks, those Edwardian barley-sugar things, and - my favourite - green plastic) we currently have, raised beds and troughs which will provide a good work around for the uselessly soggy or hopelessly dry parts of the garden. These last bits might not all come into being this year though. And I doubt there will be any money for the garden furniture I really want, and am holding out for, so we'll be carrying tables and chairs outside for the time being.

But what's this plan about running off to France? Do you have a bolthole there? I'm about to watch Keith Floyd on France - very charming 80's BBC travelogue/food programming.

Sounds like you have a plan there Big. Any thoughts on what you might plant?

No bolthole in France. Was looking at buying before things went down the toilet and now nowhere near affording anywhere. Plan is not well developed yet. It’s not moved past ‘go to France’.

DD got an offer! She's been offered a place on an Arts Degree course. Her first preference was Psychology but given that the points needed are crazy high, the odds were stacked against her. So Plan B is to do Arts and do Psychology as one of her subjects and then go on to do a Masters. She's really relieved that she got an offer and knows what the future holds. The uncertainty was bothering her.

I'm working from home tomorrow and then I have a week off. Just doing jobs around the house and garden. They've issued a rain and wind warning for tomorrow and Saturday 🙄. On Saturday night I'm going out with my sister to celebrate her retirement.

Well done to your DD tayto that must feel good.

Sorry to hear about the work day rum depending on your working days, at least it's almost Friday.

Spent every evening this week and most of the previous two weekends preparing for this interview tomorrow. Work was a bit odd today, the politics rearing their head again. No matter what, I'm switching off tomorrow! DM has a caravan booked about 40 mins drive from here so we are driving over to spend the weekend there. Reading, eating and sleeping, bit of walking by the river.

Today:
£52 Aldi, £29 Home Bargains, £14 Lidl. Within budget for the week at least.

Well done tayto DD

Well done taytoDD 🎉

And good luck kessie

Well done to your DD @Taytocrisps

Good luck with the interview today @kessiebird And it sounds like you’ve a lovely relaxing weekend ahead too. Much deserved, by the sounds of it.

Today is a good day, we made the last payment on the additional borrowing on our mortgage. Moving forward we will be about £180 a month better off. But of course I’m going to try and use that saving to overpay on what we’ve got left. The end is definitely in sight now.

Im also expecting a bit of money back from Sky following our cancellation last month. No sign of it yet.

Spends today will just be £5 on a dance fit class.