Significant Summer Saving, significantly less spending, super (non) splurging. Frugal folk continue being frugal here. All welcome.

[needastrongoneagain]

Making a new thread!

Please check in regular posters and welcome new people.

This is a super friendly thread to contribute to. We are all wanting to be as efficient as possible re spending but all have different budgets and priorities. No judgement here.

NSD (no spend day) for me.

£30 on a kilo of whey protein powder. Having started out as sceptical about protein supplements, I am now addicted to a post-workout shake. Also cottage cheese.

Biscoff frappes sound a highly addictive sugar bomb, chipshop! I spent Christmas to Easter building a near-daily ice-cream habit, so am aware of the temptations...and how obligingly a sweet tooth will grow if you feed it.

Last day of DPILs in London, DH has taken them to Barnes Wetlands, so I can mooch about with Ddog (whom my DFIL does not like). They're taking us out for dinner tonight and have kindly invited DMum too. I will be driving, so a good way of avoiding the temptations of the Saturday night glass of wine.

Got a friend coming for lunch on Tuesday, so plan to buy another chicken from posh butcher today.

Afternoon everyone 😁
@BigSkies2022 my Dd2 is the same ,addicted to cotttage cheese and protein powder . We bought her a bag from Costco it was cheaper by a couple of Pounds . She's been doing couch to 5k and can now run for 7k bless her , she loves it 🤗
Dd2 is going out tonight so l gave her £20 for her taxi 😁
And a £10 donation to the BHF for my Mum's neighbour whose funeral we went to . I was merely there as a representative of the family so l wasn't emotionally involved.
That's all my spending today though 🤗

Yes we did , she couldn't bear to sell her home and we agreed with her , so her pensions are taken to contribute towards the bill and then when Mum dies the house can be sold and the bill paid . I really don't care about the money as long as she is happy that's all that matters and l really means that . It was never my money anyway 🤗
Mum's social worker was very helpful and so was the local Authority financial officer TBF to them .Mum is very happy there and the staff and the residents love her to bits 😁. We visit every day and take her out for lunch and coffee. I realise we have been so so lucky in finding the home for Mum . That was her social workers doing , she was amazing, she had experience of all the homes in the area and she knew us personally as a family ,so we were very lucky. I thank our lucky stars 🙏
I forgot to say you can rent her property out , you have to pay insurance on the house and income tax on the rental you have coming in . This is paid to the LA from source and it goes towards the fees of course along with their pensions . We decided against this because we really couldn't have the stress of having to be responsible if anything went wrong with the property and we didn't want any trouble with tenants causing damage or stopping paying or refusing to leave . It seemed like a terribly stressful idea tbh .

Happy Saturday everyone 😊

Have a lovely dinner @BigSkies2022
I'm pretending I didn't hear anything about that lovely treat @ChipshopPickledEgg or I'll be straight there

A LSD today. Was meant to be NSD but DD wanted a ride in the toy bus so that was £2 and I saw a gift in a charity shop for niece for £5 that I've put away for Christmas so at least that's a planned expense just sooner than expected!

I have gone to post two days in a row, both times typed it out and fallen asleep before posting! I am working extra hours ready to take flexi over the summer hols, doing extra exercise, calorie counting and then trying to be frugal!

Hope everyone is enjoying the warmer weather and not affected by the storms.

past two days were LSDs

Today was
£31.55 Lidl,
£44 Ocado (25% off for first order)£11.55 IKEA Swedish Food Shop,
£14 New Look
£15.76 Asda

I have a top to return to New Look as it's 'not me' plus made £10.50 on Vinted this weekend.

Morning all. Went shopping at Morrison’s yesterday and spent £54, which includes stocking up on some stuff like coffee, loo roll etc. Still need to pop out for some bits this morning. Out with my friend last night and it was a low spend of £4.50 car park and £8.50 drinks - and we didn’t even need to spend on the car park as there was a free one nearby 🤦🏻‍♀️ It was a really good night watching some local bands.

I updated my finances yesterday (first time for two weeks) and I was shocked at how much I had spent on ‘unplanned’ spending - and I am over my garden budget which was a surprise. Think I need to update them more regularly. I also think I need to get cracking on listing stuff on Vinted and marketplace!

Was doing so well yesterday until I gave in and bought an Ancestry DNA testing kit. 🙄
I've been doing some research into our family history, off and on, for years but retirement seems like a good time to put in a bit more effort. In my defence , it was on offer. But it's often on offer !
Let's see what it throws up 😃

I really need to get round to listing my pile of clothes on vinted too @chimichangaz . It’s currently at my mums so I can’t get it done this week (and I’m away next weekend) but I’ve been making excuses too long.

Yesterday was a LSD. I spent £17 at Superdrug on 2 packs of hair dye for me (very much needed) and 2 deodorants for dd (also very much needed!)

I’m hoping for a NSD today and then a very low spend week which should be achievable. I’ve spent too much this month and although I’m still within my limits, I’ll need to be more careful from now on.

Ive started watching the Rebel Finance videos. Thank you to whoever it was who recommended them. I find them a bit irritating but useful at the same time. My money is mainly in cash based savings and tied up in the house rather than in investments. I do have a DB pension (although I’m not sure how much income I’m projected to get. It’s not going to be much as it’s only got about 12 years paid into it atm) and I’ve also inherited DHs pension pots which I need to reinvest. They’re not huge either. I’m very clueless when it comes to investments! I’ve taken up a 6 week trial of The Week Money which I’m hoping I can use to educate myself more. I’d be interested in other recommendations too if anyone has them!

@SockHop I’ve been making excuses for months on not selling on Vinted, and in the meantime just adding to the pile! This week I will make a start.

it was me who recommended rebel finance and I get what you mean about them being irritating and informative at the same time!! I do feel a bit of a fraud though as I only managed to watch week 1 (I joined it live) and I haven’t yet caught up with week 2 (later today) so my lesson is to watch them live or I don’t get round to it!! Glad it seems to be helping people though.

I am going to aim for 3 NSDs this week starting tomorrow.

This week has been up and down spending wise! 2 NSDs but I had a dental hygienist appointment, bought Hadestown tickets (kids week deal so £55 for two of us) and bought some Cyberjammies pjs in TKMaxx-they were £23 so a lot less than full price, lovely colours and watermelon design.
Spent £20 in Boots yesterday but got 500 points for the recycling scheme and acquired a £10 off No7 voucher-all helps!
I have £50 owed to me for cat sitting but have a spendy week ahead.

@vinorosso74 Hadestown is amazing. It's well worth the money.

I didn't spend anything at all on Friday, and yesterday I only paid bills (milkman and a small credit card bill) and dh did some food shopping. We do need to buy food frequently because we have a small kitchen without much storage, and a tiny freezer. But we're very good at using things up too.

I expect today to be quite a bit more expensive because of father's day.

£173 on emergency vet. Dog has a tummy bug

Decided not to go out to eat this evening but have lasagne from the freezer instead so hope that will mean a NSD.
In other news OH bought a nutribullet to make healthy smoothies, all that's happened so far is an experiment on how many cocktail ingredients there are on hand. I guess we're saving on not going out to drink cocktails, which we do on a regular basis (not), does that count?

Oh @lifelongfrugaleer hope your DDog is ok 🤗
£50 on a Chinese tonight for DH for Father's day tonight .

@Songlines DH also bought us a nutri bullet about 12 years ago. For a long time I only used it for cocktails too though now I use it for açai bowls.

friday €20 on an extension lead. Saturday €17 for my share of a takeaway. Today it’s been €40 on paint, €55 in Lidl’s for groceries and €42 on a camogie half zip top. A pretty low spend weekend as I’ve been busy revamping my utility.

I hope your dog is ok @lifelongfrugaleer .

I’ve managed to have a NSD today. We’ve been for a longish dog walk but other than that we’ve just been at home getting stuff done. I stopped myself making an unnecessary Amazon purchase and also resisted buying some amazing looking pistachio amaretti biscuits. Will get them next time I have a friend over for tea….

I’ve just finished watching the 2nd Rebel Finance webinar now @chimichangaz. Did you manage to watch it yet? I probably won’t catch tomorrow’s one live - but I think I’ll try and watch them the week the come out.

He’s in the sofa feeling sorry for himself. Just given him some painkillers

Just been doing the calculations on kitting my daughter out for school, really adds up and that's without needing the school logo specific clothes. Im sure by the end of the school year/half way through when we've lost the last cardigan it'll have saved money on the aww that's cute for nursery purchases. Definitely going to need a couple of low spend weeks to balance it all out.

AHH bless him ❤️

I use the Rebel Finance net worth spreadsheet and I quite like the fact that they are the only PF content providers I know of that give you a way of reverse engineering your annual anticipated DB pension income into the estimated value of a DC pension pot. So, I'm on 3 civil service DB pension schemes, which will kick in at different points over the next 7 years. I know roughly what the anticipated annual income will be from each of those, in today's prices, and they (Rebel Finance) provide a methodology which allows me to assign a pension pot value to each of those. Eg. £600k, £250k, £100k. This may seem like a hopelessly nerdy point, but I find that most PF advisors talk only about building up your pot for Defined Contribution schemes. The Rebel Finance method allows me to see that over my working lifetime, my contributions to a defined benefit scheme have brought me to a position nearly on a par with those with a £1m pot. Since a £1m pot translates roughly to an annual income of £40k, that's my personal benchmark (others will feel differently, obviously) that I've made the right sort of decisions along the way.

As for using the house equity to pay care fees, Mary - I'll know more how I feel about that when we get there! I agree it was 'never my money' to inherit and at nearly 60 myself, I"m fine and pretty sorted and won't miss it. But ask me if I would prefer the money from DP's apartment be split between the grandchildren to help them with the otherwise Sisyphean task of putting together a house deposit, or go to the line the pockets of the private equity partnership owners of the care homes, well....

Seems to me that the costs and risks of social care should be borne across the whole population across our working lifetimes; but it means more compulsory levies/taxation on a bigger slice of the population, and no government wants to wear it!

More prosaically: £17 on another posh butcher chicken, meant for Tuesday's lunch with friend, but actually cooked tonight, and mostly eaten. £8 in Lidl.

DPILs gone! DS on his way back! I have approximately 60 hours ahead of me in which I'm not providing hands-on assistance to an Old.

I totally agree and would happily pay a slightly higher tax in return of the knowledge my house goes to my daughter one day and my social care is somehow provided for much like some pay into the NHS their whole lives but never end up really needing it it's a social duty IMO how exactly it would be operated I'm not clever enough to say but we need a new way of thinking about this and protecting our previous generations.

NSD here. Sold three more things on vinted so will package and send off tomorrow.
I am having to watch rebel finance in 10 minutes slots at the mo but I'm getting there.
Your poor dog, @lifelongfrugaleer . Give lots of cuddles and kisses.

Plan for today. Food shop. That should be it

Had a successful birthday weekend for DS. Luckily the weather did not ruin it.

I need to sit down and go through my finances properly but should be still on track.
Party food was €40 less than expected.
Food shop yesterday came in lower than budget.

We have one final big expense for June - to pay the rest of the airbnb for our trip in July. It's been a heavy month of bills but has been managed well due to my little savings pots I've been building up.

Paid car bill (pre MOT check and work) from current account rather than car savings pot, so I've built a buffer in there for anything else that comes up. That feels good.
Reclaimed excess from my Octopus account and put it in another, interest paying, pot. That also feels good.

I'm beginning to see that the kick I used to get out of spending I now get out of saving.
Would have thought it?