February faffing, wig mischieving, pancake stuffing, bargain gymnastics and looking forward to Spring Shenanigans ❤️

[DirtyGertiefromno30]

Welcome to our new thread everyone 🤗. All are welcome to our supportive, kind , frugal thread .

Oh congratulations on the job @Holidaysandchocolate!!
And well done on the nomination @lifelongfrugaleer
Both very well deserved!!
Love that you found a decluttering book whilst decluttering @Rainbow1901 this obviously means your method is working!!

I was about to post a long awaited NSD but then realised I paid £20 for DD school trip this morning. Sigh. But I redid my budget as I do every Friday to ensure I'm not straying too far away and I'm doing good. Debts down. Savings up and my budget is in the black.

To make you giggle. I picked up DD from pre school and considering she has been a bit of a pickle this week, when a teacher asked to have a word I thought "oh here we go. What has she done now?". I got asked "DD says that mummy's has a baby in her tummy. Can I congratulate you?" Erm. No. I just eat way too much pizza.
On the way home "mummy. You have a baby in your tummy but I don't know what to call it yet". Either she is psychic and knows before even I do or she will be amazing for the daily mail one day.

Leading to tonight's dinner. Pizza. Homemade with toppings of tomato and red onion as they need using up.

Afternoon everyone 🤗
I would love to try some Melatonin @BigSkies2022 🤗
I don't think you can buy it here though not sure about the rest of the UK (Wales).
Hope the Magnesium helps your DH sleep too💤
Well done on the decluttering and Vinted @Rainbow1901👏
@Lockin26 hope you are having a lovely time with your friend and enjoying Costco . I love a good mooch in Costco 😁
Hope you Dd is feeling much better bless her 🤗
Payday here too thankfully 🤗.
@lifelongfrugaleer have a lovely lunch out 🤗
Well done on your work award and nice win on the award money win too 👏🤗
@ChipshopPickledEgg l left my cashback to mou t up over a few months and l had about £8 in the end, it does rack up in the end 😁
@Frugal25 hope your Dd is feeling better today sounds as if she is from the sound of it today 🤣🤣🤣
Been lazy here today , l didn't see Mum though but she was fine there thankfully , my sister is back and she visited her today . NSD for me so far 🤗 .

Oooh she's not doing the looking between her legs thing is she?!
Would this be welcomed?

It would be welcomed by me, although perhaps not the OH. We got together and I wanted 4 children, he said he would give me 1 as he already had 2. I took the 1 with the love of my life over 4 with someone else. Although he is an amazing dad and would almost certainly love another unconditionally and just start another savings pot! But at 44 and about to go back full time perhaps not the best time.
£4.99 on a tgtg bag tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed 🤞

@Frugal25 very cute, I bet the preschools and reception teachers hear some tales!

@BigSkies2022 I find magnesium helpful, hope it helps.

@DirtyGertiefromno30 and @ChipshopPickledEgg I get 2% cash back at Costco, so far £8.97 but yes it does all add up ☺️

@Rainbow1901 good luck with the decluttering, you've inspired me to start on an area of the house and put some items on Vinted.

Costco £69.12
Pub lunch for two £27 much better than the £70 me and DH racked up last week!

Lunch was £20 yesterday.
i tried to spend money this morning but only managed £12 in dunhelm

@Frugal25
I hope you get the answer you want either way x
£9 in a much needed Starbucks after a rough night with DD - service station prices make my eyes water and she has learnt they don't just have babychino now 🤯🤑
Possibly going to be another £30 on a takeaway later - wish I could bill DD for it 😆 can you imagine a Mummy invoice? Taxes and national insurance covering the ever growing child's wardrobe and school costs.

£3.78 in card factory on a birthday card and a balloon.
Tried again to find a cd player and failed again! Shall try eBay although it's not urgent.

Ooohhh mummy invoices... I adore this idea.
Hope DD is ok @ChipshopPickledEgg? Coffee is Def needed some mornings.
If you need help spending in Dunelm @lifelongfrugaleer you just let me know. I'm a right sucker for that shop.
Oh id love to be a fly on the wall at a pre school and reception @Lockin26!!! They must have so much fun listening to the stories!!!

Cleaned mum's house top to bottom this morning ready for people to view it. Up for sale so she can move closer to me and my DB (who lives in the next road to me) she is only 15 mins away but wants to be able to walk to us which is fair enough.

£47 in Iceland.
DH has started dismantling the bed that is to go to charity. He's been quite busy whiIe I've been at work as he's also done a couple of jobs to do with his hobby and hung out my washing!
Over the weekend I need to contact the local council to pay and arrange for collection of the mattress and our other bits of furniture will need emptying before they are collected with the bed on Wednesday. De-cluttering will continue with a vengeance tomorrow - so need to get in the mindset of keep, get rid to charity or the tip etc etc.

@Frugal25
We've gone from being an exceptionally good sleeper to pretty atrocious since Christmas once she's down she is down and happy but it's a battle to get her to sleep and then in the morning once she decides it's wake up there's no point arguing regretfully this morning was 4am. Absolutely fantastic when you've got a pre planned social arrangement you can't cancel when you just want your pyjamas!
Girls are lethal 😆

£36 for the Indian in the end. Guess it's a mummy invoice if it's out of her potential inheritance 😆

If it’s any consolation my once poor sleeper are much better now they are teens.

£15.70 to local council for mattress collection.
If we can avoid B&Q today it should be a NSD. Out to Bingo tonight but that is paid for with vouchers given for Xmas Bonus so will be a freebie. I livein hope of winning the big one!! 🤓
Back to de-cluttering!!

@Rainbow1901 - for some reason I didn’t realise you could pay for a council collection of items. That’s useful info. It makes total sense, I just stupidly hadn’t thought about it. Glad you posted!

We’ve had an insanely expensive few days, so I’m going to have to rein it in for the next couple of weeks. Nothing that wasn’t expected, just it’s all come at once and I get a bit of anxiety seeing the money drain out all at the same time, particularly at the start of the month. We’ve no further plans for the next week or so, so hopefully equilibrium will be restored.

It’s a lovely day here so hopefully a gentle walk or a bit of tidying up of the garden in order.

Have a super day folks.

I've had a very low spend week apart from food plus highlights and a hair cut but money from a cat sit covered that.
Working all week so that keeps the spending down.

So far this weekend:
£151 booked boat trip as part birthday present for DSD (it's a big birthday coming up).
£12 bubble tea with DD
£27.59 Lidl some of the hiking shoes for DH will be returned
£16.13 Asda
£41 Holister for DD. Blown my clothes budget this month, least said the better about that. I may scrape it from other places. Was supposed to be going to a free event in town, neither of us felt like it and then she caught me at a weak moment - next time we head into town I'll set boundaries before we go!

Spendy month here too Need.

Morning all. I’ve been reading but apologies that I can’t hold much info in my addled brain. It’s been a really crap week at work, lots of stress and not much sleep!

Nursie, it’s lot to process, be kind to yourself. Congrats on the new job, Holidays, and on the nomination Life.

Lots of spring cleaning and decluttering action, I see, which needs to happen here too. I’d like to make a dent in it today because next weekend might finally be dry and if it is I’d like to get out into our waterlogged garden and start surveying the gardening mountain we will have to climb to make it nice again! Middle age is all about jobs, right?

The house is really quite disgusting because our cleaner has cancelled for the last two weeks. And other than keeping the kitchen clean I have not done much, I have certainly not troubled the vacuum cleaner or the bathrooms. Off to strip beds and do bathrooms now. Ug.

On the plus side the cleaning money we saved more or less covered tickets to see War Horse in the summer for me and DD, which I am very excited about.

February was the first full month of using YNAB and I was so impressed I paid for the annual subscription. Well worth it for me, I have done budgets in excel before but somehow linking that sort of thinking to the daily flow of money really is a game changer for me. I finished Feb in a much stronger position and should be able to get to the end of March with a little more in savings than usual, even taking into account that I am allocating cash to lumpy spends like Christmas, holidays, car insurance etc, some of which are not a whole year away, iyswim, so I have to front-load those for now. It helps a lot that March is a shorter month - only 4 weeks from the Feb payday, and no council tax. However, quite a lot will go up in March, including our mortgage which goes up by £300 😳😭. I dont know how much some things will rise by yet (the most material will probably be life insurances) so I will reset all the budgets next month and see how tight the rest of the year will be then. I did manage to reduce our mobile phone bills by £30 pm so that’s a win.

In the meantime I want to buy yarn for a particular project. But I do have other yarn. I am sitting on my hands…. I am not sure I’m going to win this internal struggle, lol!

Ours is £22 for 6 items from the council. Very useful.
sold all but one thing on vinted so will list more.

sorry about the crap week arm
i too hate seeing money drain away. Planned or not

I refuse to spend more than I absolutely need to today so I am leaving my husband and daughter firmly at home when I pop to the shops later!

That’s decent value re the council collections.

Boo to the cleaner cancelling twice @ArmDimples - I’d be quite stressed after two weeks!

Returning my swanky running gear as it doesn’t fit well and can’t justify keeping at that price so that’s some money saved.

Cashew and courgette curry for tea. Will add chicken to DH’s.

Afternoon everyone 🤗
Happy St Davids Day 🤗
Been shopping today ,
Home Bargains £19
Tesco £65
Farm foods £12
I cleaned both fridge freezers before l went and got rid of the old food . I am going to give myself a good talking to . I threw out a coleslaw and 4 soups that was £7.59 wasted.
I ought to be ashamed of myself.
No more soups or coleslaws.
l am fed up to my back teeth of them being left .
My own fault l need to take stock more often . I was in it more when l cleaned the fridge freezers every week but l haven't the past fortnight and that's got to stop 🙄
Hope everyone is ok.
Weather is pants here but hey ho. Tis what it is 🤗

Last year past me decided she had a fad of MoMA porridge unfortunately past me was very unorganized and it went into the black hole that is the kitchen cupboard (somewhere near the soup maker of 2017 and burger maker of 2016) it just popped out to tell me the BBD date runs out mid march so I now have approximately 40 sachets of porridge to eat this month 😆

Oh that's a shame re the running gear @needastrongone
My Dd2 has just bought a load of Adidas stuff half price in the M&S sale . I don't know if that is any good to you but worth a shout out in case 🤗
Oh no @ArmDimples l would be pulling my hair out if l had a cleaner and they cancelled twice , you get so you depend on their help 🤗.
Sorry your mortgage is going up so much that's a lot more to have to pay 🙁
That's the way to do it @ChipshopPickledEgg 👏😁
Well done on the Vinted sales @lifelongfrugaleer your 6 for £22 is very reasonable it's 3 for £20 here.
Boat trip sounds fabulous @Lockin26 , the spend in Hollister on Dd , well these things happen and it's so nice to treat them to something they want 😍.
Well done on the LSW @Vinorosso74 excellent job on the cat sitting too 👏😁.
Hope you have a fab evening at Bingo @Rainbow1901🤗
@Frugal25oh you are such a good un to do the cleaning for your Mum . Bless you l hope the house sells very quickly 🤗

You have just made me burst out laughing @ChipshopPickledEgg🤣
I was wondering if you could make some flapjacks with them? Worth a try 😁

DIrty it seems very selfish and entitled to talk about no cleaner… but we both work very long hours, our kids are really messy (and unhelpful - LD and young) and most of my non-work time I am hostage in the kitchen as I can’t leave ds unattended in there. I honestly struggle to spend any time upstairs! He also can’t tolerate the sound of the vacuum cleaner so that has to be done when he’s at school… which is when we work.

anyway, it’s fine but when a nice neighbour came round yesterday to pass on some lovely cook books I didn’t dare invite her in 😳. Will take her some flowers later.

Happy St David’s day!

I have defo found expired stuff in the cupboards far too often…

@ArmDimples
My cleaner is honestly one of the last things I would give up if we needed to cut back. I had a lady during maternity leave who would do 2 hours a week for £20 and honestly I called her Mary Poppins now she in true Mary Poppins style "When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go" so now we have another who is £38 every two weeks for two magicians to come in and do it in an hour when she first came to sprinkle magic dust I remember saying to my husband "can we keep her?"
Also I find it makes me do a fortnightly deshit of surfaces.