Familiar Friends in Frugality(Feb 24>)

[Happierwithouthim]

Frugal Friends Facing Forward with Fortitude http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/costoff_living/4957140-frugal-friends-facing-forward-with-fortitude

New thread

@BigSkies2022 yum 😋 I'm a chocoholic myself

Forgot to note that although spendy, some elements were frugal.
Tickets for day out had been booked on a special deal saving £5.50 pp. We also took snacks saving probably £20 or so.

Still tinkering with the budget but it's interesting to see where I'm going over and where I'm saving. Will do a proper analysis this evening, and then have a think about March. Mothers' Day and World Book Day mean cash required for various collections and we have a surprise day trip planned to the beach if the weather isn't too miserable.

Rum the brownies are indeed delicious but very rich - 8 in box so that's 16 portions easily, although dd ate a full one last night and said she felt sickly after it. What kind of bar of chocolate costs £16.99
While I'm on chocolate BigSkies Neuhaus Praline sound & look delicious.

Spencer I think it could be cream but I'm only guessing
I got a Lindt Master Chocolatier Collection for Christmas and opened them last Thurs, trying to just have two per day also, every one so far has been delicious. I keep things like this in a high press behind my fridge but overhead, so that I can't access them easily I'm only 5'2"

Yesterday spends
€8.25 on two hot chocs for dc after his football training & one other item that I can't remember now
€63.80 in Dunnes €24.63 reimbursed by work €7 on food for ddog & dcats and remainder on food

Saturday spends
€89 on football boots & mouthguard for ds, leggings with drawstring waist for running for me Sportsdirect
60c parking
Donated my old curtains to charity shop
Brought back 9 library books and renewed dc's accounts 6 more books to find
€12 on ps4 game for ds, he's meant to give me €8 of this
€3 sliced pan Tesco
€22 PepnCo cleaning products

Glad nephew is ok spencer and that dh enjoyed his birthday albeit frugally!

Gen one car will help with exercise maybe? Less fuel spends too

DH just reminded me we had a food spend last night.

£2.89 on a small pot of cream, a yellow sticker gluten free bread and yellow sticker tenderstem broccoli.

We only buy fancy broccoli on cheap and it will last 2 days.

Frozen veggies so much tastier. Does anyone else find that?

They're frozen at point of picking as opposed to supermarket fresh veg which may be travelling for days, not as good as locally grown and sourced veg however.

I've to confess to throwing out two containers of stirfry veg last week, bad planning I hate wasting food.

We hate food waste too. DM is terrible for buying spare food and not eating it.

DH and I very rarely have food waste, but we have our shopping down to a very fine art.

Frugal win: I just checked our energy app and we are £102 in credit. So next month our direct debit will be £25 cheaper. More for the savings pot.

Afternoon.

Didn't know you were in sunny Yorkshire @BigSkies2022. What a lovely weekend re weather that you chose! I'm glad you enjoyed it. You picked a nice area of the county to explore.

I think we managed a no spend weekend.

Menu plan
Left over salmon and beef (me, salmon)
Aubergine, fennel and butter beans with cod.
Persian style herby chickpeas with chicken
Green pesto pasta
White bean prawn saganaki
Kimchi and black bean quesadillas.
Broccoli stalk pesto and beetroot hummus to make also

I've booked my car in for valet, but will be naughty and put through the business (it's a company car that gets used occasionally by other folk).

Today I paid the bill due for some alterations to the garden we've had done, some of which so it's better for DH, some of which because the old chicken area was a complete mess. Three very large hip height raised beds, extra turfing and replanting and some more compost bins made from an old fence that has also come down. Fruit trees and extra drainage at the very bottom. It's so wet that at least I don't have to water the turf.

@needastrongoneagain sounds brilliant. I'm still battling my garden and my own lack of experience and trial and error approach!! 🤣

I have some fruit trees to plant with are currently potted but it's one of those jobs where a whole sequence of jobs needs to happen to get them planted in their final resting spot. I also need oh to do the manual labouring which is absolutely not his favourite job....
I'm hoping aldi/lidl do one of their garden events soon as they had some well priced DIY Raised beds last time (sold out in the size I wanted last summer)

Spends
£18 diy storage
£85 holiday

In the margins, worked out have made just under £90 on mortgage overpayments this month.
Will be making 95 payment to acc2 this evening to make it -1380

Thank you Big. One day down four to go. Enjoy your Neuhaus.

It was an Italian brand with pistachios Happier. My friend loves pistachios and it would fit through her letterbox.

The garden really does sound lovely need.

Had a quiet day today. Spent £1.78 in Aldi on chocolate milk. Last week’s purchases have arrived. Love the mid-layer. Wish I’d bought another colour too so I’m trying to stay off the website. Now I have waterproof shoes I’m sure a drought will shortly be upon us.

No spend day, although I did do a massive Sainsbury's shop for delivery tomorrow.

DH collected his new coat from the local yodel pickup.

Looks like DH needs an urgent eye test, so more spending to come.

Nephew update, he has urgent mri first thing tomorrow on his knee.

Frugal win: checked the pockets of the new second hand coat for DH before washing.

We found a penny!!

That counts right?

Sainsbury's receipt: £76.24

Lots of items for the house because our favoured brands were discounted. And their own brand GF bread was on sale, so that's another 3 loaves for the freezer.

Means we can buy less next time.

spencer my mum and dad have a story about when they were a young skint married couple. They bought an armchair from a junk shop in London and found a gold watch down the side which they could then sell. Bit sad for the person who lost the watch though 🤔

Pay day 🎉

It's quite a nice one as did overtime and a lot of miles last month, have paid my savings back the £200 I borrowed to get to the end of last month. Also topped up the car emergencies fund as it's looking depleted by £50.

Am going to increase my DD to my savings account as really need to save some money over the next few months.

In theory March should be a quiet spends month, no birthdays, no Christmas, no trips planned - so hopefully can catch up with myself a bit.

@Girliefriendlikespuppies it's great that the overtime is paying off. Payday is so satisfying!

Think I'm ending the month with a less than £60 deficit. Wondering whether to have a £100 float in my current account to enable me to budget on time as at the moment I can't settle some of my payments just in case something comes out of the account. Also the annoying wait and complex shuffling required until expenses pay out as it won't be in time for the credit card bill.

Spends
£7 gym

Acc2 -1347 (and another £125 earmarked once it's payday)

@marthasmum ooh how useful for your parents. I hope it brought them a little breathing space.

Chile - the float sounds a good idea, unless you quite enjoy the tinkering and monitoring involved (I do, a legacy of too many years when I ignored stuff). I think a good rule of thumb, once you understand your expenditure, is to add 15% to cover stuff that just happens and which you forget about - the odd prescription, dry cleaning, additional transport costs, every item of skin care/make-up running out at once are usually the things that catch me.

Planning ahead for Easter chores, and I have booked a heavy-duty pressure washer from our local Library of Things. £20 for two days/overnight loan. Will be recruiting DS, once he's home, to climb ladders and reach the tops of shrubs to trim them, and clear gutters. Also listing the plants I want to buy, which could get spenny indeed. That Sarah Raven catalogue is very seductive. If anyone knows of reliable and lower-price suppliers of perennials (verbena, veronicastrum, heleniums, echinacea, geums, salvias, are on the list so far), ferns and hellebores, I'd love to know about them. Also need to buy mulch.

€30 waxing
€10.50 on thai takeaway
€10 dd school trip
€281.66 on deposit for family break for 9 adults, 3 dc, 2 infants, dm got flustered with the id verification process. I'll get it back so I'll just count it out of my emergency fund on ynab so it doesn't mess up my figures!

Rum sounds lovely
Martha lucky devils

£24 on jeans from Sainsburys. But bank account still happily in the black, and still looking to be able to save £150 ish at the end of the month.

Spent just over £80 putting some money on my travelcard. Only in town twice this week so will spend a little less than usual. Bought some more chocolate milk in Aldi and some apples and yogurt that came to just under £4. And a book for 17.47 euro. Well that’s more than I thought.

Have stayed off the Rossignol website and not caved to the mid layer temptation. Am looking at hotels for April though so might be a spendy weekend.

@BigSkies2022 usually we've been covered with excess as we've had a more lac budget, but now that I'm accounting for every pound it all gets a bit tight to the end of the month and I don't want to get charged od fees. Not helped by currently over £1500 in expenses. Eta: have you tried gardeningexpress? There are some mixed reviews but i would say that I've been broadly happy and the pricing usually beats Sarah raven, Thompson etc.

@Happierwithouthim sounds like a big holiday! Is it local or abroad?

@Nellieinthebarn 👏 for staying in the black at the end of the month

About to head off to the shops - probably around £30

Hi. I’ve just had a read and been drawing inspiration from all your posts.

Just delurking now to ask @BigSkies2022 if you are looking to grow from seed or buy established plants? I harvested loads of echinacea seeds last year. No idea yet if they will grow or not. Happy to send you some if you want to give them a try? They were just the bog standard pink ones but the bees absolutely loved them.

Is today your birthday Happier? Hope you’ve had a great day. And had brownies.

It's two nights in Doolin on the west coast of Ireland, we will visit Aran islands one of the days & cycle around it. I don't think I've ever seen my df on a bike in my life

Yes it is rum thank you.
I had apple pie in a bar at a meeting, inhaled it I was starving, an hour later I'd a 7" thin crust pizza & after that half a magic bar brownie

€15 half of which will be reimbursed
€13 takeaway dd & I
€4.23 on three little jars of chutney

Happy birthday @Happierwithouthim 🎂

Happy belated birthday @Happierwithouthim

Today is some benefit money in for me.

Predicted spending: public transport for DH. Uber if weather very bad or my care overruns and he doesn't leave on time (unlikely).

Cost of emergency eye tests plus additional camera work for his eye. Potentially large spending for new glasses.

But you know what? If he does need new glasses I'll be over the moon because it means his vision is unexpectedly returning and that's only a positive thing.

Since we met he's not had vision in 1 eye. Suddenly yesterday he recognised shapes.

Sounds silly but I can't contain my excitement.