The Thrifty Gifty Girls 'n' Guys 2009 (Organised & Money Neutral for All Occasions)

phunkles

Oooo I love glitchs
Oh the Home Delivery Network site isnt working properly if anyones watching an order - I have it showing a parcel as still being in - the hub- but its actually all over my floor now
Ive kinda raided the Wilkinsonsplus website and got some of them fisher price pooh bath things and pop up pirates

And Jammy - You can never have too much stuff
honest

mum2one

Been very good today and made the mince pies sort of went a bit mad, lost count after 100!! So have been gd and dropped some off to the 2 nice neighbours (both elderly men), they were ova the moon. Have to confess thou I used the pastry mix you just add water to, (have to hot hands ofr pastry).

Have to confess, I went on amazon, and found some of my childhood favourites, got Bagpuss and the Clingens (the funny little mice, (I was a 70s child)).

Also brought Christmas Carol - 99% sure got the right one, as the one I want was part filmed in Shrewsbury, (home town), and in the film where they had the gravestone it was left in place after the film. Made a slight error, got mine and my dads initials muddled up, so they debited his credit card!! x

mum2one

Here goes, admitaddly I didnt include parents and dds xmas / birthday in money neutral, but this is for all others. At the last count there was 57 people on xmas list, gets biggers, dd has swimming lessons so thats the instructor, and 2 ladies that run it. (Have to give them her due they swopped people around to get her in). Ballet and Tap, so thats another 3 presents, and as a very big one off, we have brought presents for 2 of the gps, and 4 of the reception staff, as they been such a help over the hassle nxt dr.

here goes - The spends include presents from mum + dad, me and dd. I get the presents and it off sets paying some household bills).

Birthday and Xmas

Budget - £1126.00:eek: (thou there was no way, we wanted to spend that much). Plan 2009 reduce the list

Actual Spend - £544.30:j (a lot better, but bad enough)

Total saved - £618.70:j

This is the best bit, the actual price of presents if I had to pay full price, not sale or freebies etc

£1747.50:eek:
:T
xxx

jamtart6

well done mum2one that is brilliant!! I might copy mine over from the neutral thread to show everyone too

so your actual spend of £544.30 - was that all covered by cashback/vouchers/points etc?

jamtart6

So...here is a summary of how I did this year (and how I ended up spending £66 hard cash). This includes all birthdays, christmas, weddings, births, get well flowers...the lot!!

Original Cost: A staggering £1431.76 is what all my goodies would have cost me if I had paid full price, but due to BOGOF's, 342's, sales, vouchers, loyalty points and the fact I would never have paid full price....then I obviously managed to reduce this cost to the....

...Actual Price paid which was £639.60 which was 54% less than the original cost :T this was how much cold hard cash I spent NOT the vouchers, online voucher codes, loyalty points etc. Literally just actual cash....then I needed some way to cover the cost of this cash so what did I do? I calculated the.....

...Total Cash Fund available.... which came to a super duper £572.89 from surveys on onepoll (£23.00), recycling 2 old mobile phones with Envirophone (£5.00 referral and £19.72 in Argos vouchers which an relative exchanged for cash), Quidco brough in £180 this year (opened a bank account got £20 etc.) - don't own a house so none of this is from insurances, £20.99 from cashbackrewards, £12.06 from Top cashback but the winner of all of this was de-junking clearing out the house and putting things on eBay managed to make me £267.12.
So ....


..the TOTAL LEFT TO PAY for ALL OCCASIONS in 2008 is £66.07...which I might still be able to cover but won't worry if I don't


90% money neutral overall, MUCH better than I thought. Have a [strike]£50 amazon vouche[/strike]r and £151 Boots points for the sale and £30 cashback already left for next years shopping too (although I have tons ready for next year too!) and a very happy purse

mum2one

All was money neutral, carried some presents over from last year, payments from Quidco, global survey, 342s, 341 (superdrug glitch). Car boot sales, ebay, Argos gift cards, Boots points. I used both mum and dads Quidco so that helped a lot. Anything and everything all got chucked in.

had £200 left in Supermarket tin, (would of been over £600 but helped out with xmas prezzies, hol money, and haveing tv aeriel and feeview boxes etc.

All my stamps for the xmas cards came from doing the posting scheme.

Jamtart - Youve done briliantly, I recommend a glass of wine or 2 as a treat!

Might go to Woolies tomorrow, got £18.00 love to shop vouchers, got £50 Boots vouchers, but want to hold on to them for next yr. xx

furrypig

WOW!!

Mum2one and Jamtart that makes for impressive reading!!
I will try and do the same thing for next year I think!

Very excited today as we are going out to choose our tree!! ALL 4 of us go and we all look and compare trees and choose it together, I've only missed 1 year as had a big op 3 years ago and couldn't get out of bed on the 1st Sat in December!

Feeling pretty rough this morning as sore throat, head nose running and can't sleep so here with my tea reading my fav thread trying not to open the choccie advent calendars I bought everyone!!!

scattymam1

Quote: shevs
Sarah191979: Hi from freezing manchester, was gutted when I woke up thursday morning and the ''blizzard'' hadnt hit. only cos it ment I still had to go to work.
I was the same cos if the blizzards had have come I could have stayed in instead of taking the bairn to nursery! no such luck.

Quote
Sugaspun: Congratulations, stay in bed if you have to you need protect baby sugaspun. My word there are a lot of people pregnant on this board. Shall we do a bet on who is next to announce a new arrival lol
It's funny cos we are going to start trying in the new year for baby 2 so it could well be me!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jammy and mum20ne That really does make for fantastic reading - I don't know if I can work it out to the penny like you have but I'll try - will have to work it all out - will get back to you on that.
Also Jammy do you want to pm me - if you refer me to envirophone do you get a fiver - if so refer me, I have a mobile to trade in and that can be my christmas present to you for all your help and for all the money you've helped me save by starting on money neutral. x

Off to see madagascar today and possibly go and put my dad's christmas tree up - should make for a nice day (glad I have no shopping to do).:T

furrypig

Hi Jamtart I just went over to the boots thread and read about 6 pages trying to understand all the abbreviations it's like another language over there!!

Sadly the glitch seems to have been fixed by boots now but who knows i might be lucky another time, I used to do a bit of bootsing but other than the 75% off sale in Jan, haven't really been in there this year!!

Please do update/give us advice on the boots thing! Gonna try for neutral money christmas next year xxx

furrypig

Just checked my boots points and i have 3785 with 607 pending! WEll that was a nice surprise!!
Will have to shop there now with over £40 to spend on the card!!