Pumpkins, Pies… and Prudence! Autumn Frugal Saving Shenanigans here 🍂🌰All Welcome 🌰🍁

[MaryGreenhill]

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 we are all friends 😊

Bought 4 x these candle boxes at Home Bargains £2.99 each they are gorgeous and the fruit was reduced to 99p a box .
The candles must be a dupe of somewhere because they are just mwah ! 😁

No spend day today for me. Supper was leftovers from yesterday.

Thank you for the rice link @needastrongoneagain1. It’s on my list.

Welcome @Placestogo

Ohh @MaryGreenhill - I have four packages of Marks and Spencer Marmite macaroni cheese in the freezer. I bought six one day they were yellow stickered. Please indulge me about your candle purchases though there isn’t a Home Bargains near where I am.

I did go into town to buy a candle to cheer myself up today. I couldn’t find anything I liked so opted for dusting off some lithophane votives that I didn’t throw out. I used to get one every time I went to Paris and had quite a few but only kept four. Will see how I find them and if not I’ll throw them out. It’s quite frightening the amount of things that have been thrown away while trying to clear the place out.

This evening seems to have kicked off early with more Person of Interest.

Oh l forgot to put the pic on sorry 🤗 Here it is @RumBananaSundae
Your candles sound lovely hope they work out ok for you 😊

Ye re the Marmite Mac n cheese love @RumBananaSundae 🤣❤️

Hi guys,

spendy day yesterday- took my youngest of 4 children to a university open day about 100 miles away, it’s in a beautiful old town loads of lovely buildings and had a great farmers type market on, mostly selling food and arts and crafts type things, so we got some fudge, cookies, brownies and samosas, spent around £40 and had Nando’s for lunch which was the biggest waste of £48 ever, food was cold and they messed our order up. Never mind, dd had a nice day looking around and getting a feel of the place.

today has been better, £6 In McDonald’s, £3 in Poundland, did a really long walk along the seafront which was nice and free ☺️

Sounds like a full day yesterday for you all @Johaanah! Glad your Dd enjoyed the uni visit despite the Nando’s fail. Today sounds much more relaxing and budget friendly, love that you had a seafront walk l can imagine it was brilliant.

Hello @Placestogo

Same here @Vinorosso74 and @HP87 , tight until half term now so two weeks to go here!

I thought the same about the kimchi rice @MaryGreenhill . I currently pay for the Good Food app - it's £4.49 per month so perhaps I will swap to that one @needastrongoneagain . Off to look now.

Today was £15 Starbucks (treat for DD as she got two postcards sent home) and £6 coop. Also £207 for an activity for our Northumberland trip away, that's for six of us so not too bad. But ouch, need to try to rein in these next two weeks!

I need to start using the deliciously ells app. Had it for two years and never used it.. awful.
Welcome @Placestogo !

NSD here and had a day pottering in the garden.
Happy Sunday all

I remember those days of trying to budget for school holidays- they were tough for sure. The amount of hours we spent at the park was insane, usually when there was a storm blowing and youngest dd would do all she could to delay leaving.

My kids are all much older now and have jobs and their own money to spend, so I don’t need to figure out how to stretch the pennies at the end of the month for soft play and farm visits in the school holidays, but I really miss those days, they go by so quickly and maybe I’m wearing my rose tinted glasses but they were some of the best times. I hope you enjoy half term x

That's very good for 6 of you for £207 @Mochi1fudge.
I agree that Kimchi fried rice looked delicious 😋
It looks a good app @Frugal25 thank you and l hope you had a happy Sunday too 🤗

Morning all. I’m having a tough time at the moment and over the past week was quite manic and just hit the buy buy buy button. Poor DW was quite shocked at all the parcels piling up every day.

I’ve deleted a card off my Apple Pay and when my feedback comes out and the balance on vinted I’ll delete that too for a while.

Anyway onwards and upwards!

Have a good week everyone xxx and Mary those are Neom dupes, let us know if they smell good, I have the neom ones and they are gorgeous but spendy.

Aw bless you @PearlsPearl it's awfully tempting to just spend on the Internet when we just need a lift. Re the candles, they were only £2.99 so they aren't going to be quality like Neom but they smell perfectly ok to me . I knew they had to be a dupe because they were so lovely . I would have even been tempted to buy the Neom ones l just love them 🤩
Just looking at the Neom ones they are OOS l think they may have been last years ?
Aiming for a ND day , going for lunch with my friend but it's her turn to pay 😁
Have a lovely day everyone 😊

Oohhh I love a dupe. I shall look out for these candles!!
Quite proud of myself today. Spent my £50 voucher in tkmaxx and bought all but two friends their Christmas presents. It's downsized from previous years. But I'm wiser now with money. I did go over by £30 but still, £30 is souch better than the hundreds I've spent in years gone by.
Just family to buy now and that will be downsized too.

Just need to wrap it all. Fun fun fun!

Half term thankfully lands on a pay day for me but I haven't budgeted for anything extra so will do the same activities as normal. Swimming. Parks etc. It's Def tough, but the happiest of days.

Thank god Monday is done. Work was busy today!! Mmm mmm marmite Mac and cheese..... Drool.

I used a £20 voucher in Asda today to deduce some off the food bill and also bought DS a magazine. I got it from the Asda credit card. I used to get them for DD when she was 2/3, but decided they were bad value when the plastic toys she wanted it for broke. I found a vinted seller that sells out of date ones cheeper so I bought a bulk and have them stashed for when I feel it's the right time. But today, I used it as a bribe because DS can be awful in supermarkets, and he was good as gold holding it esspecaly when I said we won't buy it if he continued shouting. My eldest gets the phoenix magazine subscription as a gift from my mum and loves it for the stories.

Ds had fun playing with the toy set but has zero interest in the magazine.

In still trying to work out how to spend my £10 swagbucks voucher. It was invalid so I just bought the booster seat we need without the discount. Then I saw you have to activate it first. So I'll try again next time I need something from Amazon.

We overpaid the mortgage this week.

Well done on paying over on the mortgage and buying the mags in bulk @Alwayslearning25 👏🤗
@Frugal25 well done on the present buying. l am in awe of you ! ☺️ I love dupes too Lidl /Aldi do them in their toiletries and they are lovely 🤩

@PearlsPearl sorry you have had a rough time and it's great you have reigned it back in by the sounds of it.

Had a LSD £3.44 Aldi for lunch and £4 for a strawberry milk bubble tea with tapioca. I need a tumbler composter for my new recycling system so I think that'll be around £25.

I love the shower gels in Lidl that I think are dupes of Lush - the honey and lavender ones are really good.

Me too @Mochi1fudge they do the snow fairy dupe in the shower gel and l managed to get a bottle for my Dds to use, absolutely lovely.

Hi everyone - I got back from my cruise at the weekend. Have just caught up on the thread. I’m now hungry from reading about fruit crumbles 🤣
I spent less than I thought I would last week, and the week before I had a surprise tax rebate and won £20 on the thunderball. I also got my first pay packet from temping at my old employers and received my tax free lump sum from one of my DB pensions.
I bought a few bits for the house this weekend including a replacement pop up plug for the bathroom sink which hasn’t had a plug since I moved in almost five years ago!!
Today I’ve been researching tv and broadband deals and managed to get my monthly BT bill down from £77 a month (due to go up to £82 from next month) to £50. I found that Sky did a package for £47 and mentioned this to the customer service rep as well as the fact that BT offer much lower prices to new customers. After a bit of time he offered me the new price which I’m
very happy with. I dropped my broadband speed down from 900 to 500 as now it’s only me here I don’t need such a good speed. So overall good deal!

Wow well done @chimichangaz !! Amazing news on BT and having some more money coming in.
We all do in @PearlsPearl . Well done for clapping down. It's hard to do so hats off to you.

Ooohhh snow fairy dupe??? I need this..... Will have a proper look on Thursday. I do love Lidl dupe perfumes tbh

Good morning everyone 😁
l am up early because DH couldn't sleep past half 5 poor thing .No plans for any spends today .
@chimichangaz great news re your BT and tax and thunderball wins 😁.
Glad you had a lovely cruise 🤗
@Frugal25 here's a pic of the Snow Fairy dupe in Lidl , l have only managed to get one in all the weeks l have been going 🤣 hope you find some .
God knows what Jennifer has been posting 🤣

If you have an Aldi near you they have stacks of their snow fairy dupe, tilts called Sweet Angel and is about £1.50/£2, boots also have the below which is pretty similar:

https://www.boots.com/treaclemoon-frosted-candy-angel-shower-bath-gel-500ml-10326969?traffic=paid.shopping&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19971248798&gbraid=0AAAAA-AdmwSlOLbjypFwa5JLEd1l_LDqd&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6bfHBhDNARIsAIGsqLjviBD8Gv2YYg9HeZBicL9M3sw4YuBioXGAopZZ-kxjzpzESNRh0J8aAmS-EALw_wcB

Its really cold here this morning and I’m already on my third cup of tea! Working from home so I’ve got my Oodie on and a blanket but I’m still
feeling the drop in temperature.

Hoping to make a chilli for dinner tonight if the mince is defrosted in time, if not I’ll be jacket potatoes. Should be a NSD today, no plans to visit any shops and will hold back on any online purchases.

Well impressed with everyone that’s started the Christmas shopping already, I’ve got a few bits in the loft that I’ve picked up here and there but nothing much.

Aw thank you @Johaanah l had no idea there were dupes of Snow Fairy in Aldi and Boots and the Boots one looks so lovely 😍
Well done on keeping off the online spending too 😊

Hello all, Last week was minic in work and then we went to centerparcs for the weekend so i haven't been posting or checking my spending much.

However i was too busy to actually spend much. Centerparcs didn't cost much out of pocket, about €100 i think. We had prebooked our activities and meals etc were covered mainly by my mum and sister who joined us and by a shared revolut vault i had with another sister for this trip. DH also bought us brunch on the last day out of his funds so overall its been a pretty frugal few days. Nana and auntie were also very generous to the small people in the group so i wasn't pestered for toys etc.

I used my vinted balance to buy a few bits and have decided to return one of the dresses i bought from my favourite designer. it would need altering and at €110 for the dress its too much. However i know they have another drop landing soon and i have my eye on another one so this is just delaying the paying.

Today i took advantage of an offer with a supermarket local to work to get a €20 off €80 for a first time online order. i'll collect it so no delivery fees. I used this order to get the food for small childs birthday party. its an overall more expensive supermarket so i kept it to just what is good value there and not the whole shop. I also pushed out the tesco shop with alcohol etc for the party until later in the month as i realised i didn't need much of it for this weeks meals and today i edited out the items i have in the other shop.

Then i spent €38 in lidl on this weeks groceries and €2 on tea in work.

Our joint account will barely squeak by this month, though i just realised we used it to pay an annual bill which should come out of a different account so that means we actually have more wiggle room than i thought. My personal accounts are also doing well and its 10 days to pay day for me. Fingers crossed i can keep the frugal ways going!