Spiderdijon's "Stop spending money on food" diary

edinburgher

That's a really good idea! I might just do that, have another bit on the "savings" part of my spreadsheet.

That is a really good idea. Some recent research (was in the decent newspapers, can't remember the source) said that people are far better spending money on 'experiences', as opposed to objects, as the psyhological benefits lasted for a heck of a lot longer. This seems a fair enough proposal - after all, how many of us remember, say, a pair of jeans with the fondness we'd attach to a romantic meal in a beautiful location?

spiderdijon

Today I spent money (booooo) but it was necessary so it's not that bad.
I filled my car up with petrol (which should last me about 10 days all being well)
I bought shampoo and conditioner. Nearly (very nearly) got sucked into the big yellow "BUT THIS IS OONNNLLLLYYY £3.49 PER BOTTLE and look how pretty the bottles are!" signs. Ended up buying shampoo and conditioner for £2, haven't tried it yet but it's VO5 so should be nice.

So yes I took a trip all the way through Tesco and only bought what I needed to. Usually I fall for all the offers and end up spending about £20. Very good.

My boyfriend thinks he's got swine flu, uhoh! And do you know what my comforting words were? "Ooo if you're stuck at home ill you won't be spending money on petrol!" :rolleyes:

spiderdijon

Well here we go - the start of another boring weekend!

I had over-estimated how much money I could save before Christmas, I thought I could save £3000, but I will probably be lucky to save £2000. Which is a shame but £2000 is still alot I suppose!

I completley forgot about a spa-break I have got booked for October. I have got about £200 to pay off for that but it's all inclusive so won't have to take much spending money (plus my brother's friends work in the kitchen so I wont have to buy snacks )

I spent unnecessary money on Thursday. I had serious jacket potato craving so went to Tesco to buy jacket potato stuff...I did buy less than I needed and it was mostly own-brand but then I decided to "reward" myself with some beers! Silly. So I managed to spent about £14 on jacket potato fillings and beer. Sigh.

So this weekend I'm not driving anywhere and not spending any money. Thank god for the Sims 3!! And somone at work has lent me Dawn French's book so hopefully I wont go too crazy being cooped up at home.

Just finished a lovely bacon sandwich that my Dad made me, complete with cup of tea and mars bar
Oh and this morning my cat bought me my first present! A little mouse. I felt really sorry for the mouse but quite flattered that Phillip had bought me a present. Luckily he didn't bring it into the house though, yuck!

I'm gonna have a couple of hours MSE-ing then go on the Sims for the rest of the day, unless a better offer comes along.
So far I have:
Done some lightspeed surveys - up to 800 points there
Done some onepoll surveys - just over £35!
Updated my spending diary with my jacket potato wobble.

I'm off to try to intergrate myself into the dooyoo community now, wish me luck

Fire_Fox

One of our cats used to bring us living gifts too! She'd try to miaow with her mouth full, drop the 'present' and it'd scuttle off under the kitchen cupboards/ fly onto the top of the dresser and she'd look all confused ... :rolleyes: We realised she brought us more presents whenever we bought her new toys; one day she lined a dead vole down next to a toy mouse!!

Primula

Oh yeah, we get the prezzies too. Thank goodness we don't have a catflap!

You are right £2,000 is still a great amount to save so don't be disheartened. You will enjoy the spa and come back with lots of energy for more debt busting/saving.

pandora205

I think OP is doing well, especially saving £2k.
With regard to the lunches thing, it may help to get into cooking a bit more. Perhaps think about your ideal/perfect lunches, look at recipes etc. and try them. For example, if you usually take sandwiches, try wraps, or soup and a roll, or pitta filled with salad. I get bored easily to try to vary it, and my very favourite is home made bread with just about anything. (Bread mixes are very cheap from Lidl/Aldi and can be made by hand or in a breadmachine). I freeze the spare stuff. I also like to have yoghurt with fruit (homemade again.. another interesting thing to experiment with) and a piece of fruit. That makes a very substantial but healthy lunch.

Another tip I've learned to shift my thinking from feeling deprived if I can't buy something (it's a shame I can't afford those jeans) to congratulating myself on saving money (hey I've just saved £60 by not buying those jeans). It seems to work as I can come back from shopping pleased I haven't bought anything extra.

spiderdijon

Thanks for those comments about my savings people, they've cheered me up

When I was younger we had a cat called Pumpkin that bought us a live duckling back, he put it in his water bowl then sat meowing at it, all confused. It was ever so funny, but luckily I managed to get it back to the pond before it died of fright!

I'm gonna try to vary my lunches a bit this week - I've been surviving on cheese and onion sandwiches (which were my favourite 2 weeks ago, having them every day is not nice).
I'll have to over-come my fear of the horrible warehouse at work though. We don't have a sink in our office so we have to carry our washing up through the warehouse to a sink, hence my sandwiches every day, no washing up involved!

Just had an argument with my boyfriend which usually involves me going out to buy something or going out with my friends to cheer myself up but that can't happen or I'll never have enough money to buy a new car, the amount of arguments we have. I'll have to find another method of cheering myself up. I've got "The Duchess" on DVD (courtesy of parents' lovefilm, very MSE of me haha) which I'm gonna watch in a minute.

edinburgher

When I was younger we had a cat called Pumpkin that bought us a live duckling back, he put it in his water bowl then sat meowing at it, all confused. It was ever so funny, but luckily I managed to get it back to the pond before it died of fright!

Brilliant

This reminds me of the time my GF's cat (a large stripy ginger tom called Pickles) managed to catch a magpie that must have been all of 18" long, walked round the garden with it a few times as if unsure of what to do and then spat it out in a somewhat undignified manner!

I'm gonna try to vary my lunches a bit this week - I've been surviving on cheese and onion sandwiches (which were my favourite 2 weeks ago, having them every day is not nice).

What I try and do is change my lunches once a week or so to stop things becoming mega boring. That's the theory anyway - it's been wholemeal pittas and houmous for three weeks now..

I'll have to find another method of cheering myself up. I've got "The Duchess" on DVD

Warning! This film is pretty grim...

Fire_Fox

Primula wrote: »

Oh yeah, we get the prezzies too. Thank goodness we don't have a catflap!

We had a catflap operated by a magnet on our cats' collars so as not to enable feline all night raves at our pad. Arrived home one day to find Jerry had caught a blackbird and was bashing the poor thing against the catflap - she couldn't get close enough for the magnet to work! :rotfl: Pleased to say she let the bird go when she saw me and it flew off.

spiderdijon

Well, no more cat stories to report, apart from I have one (luckily the small one!) asleep on my neck at the moment.

I am being v.lazy today and staying in bed as long as possible. I booked today and tomorrow off work - it said in the paper last month there was going to be a heatwave so I quickly booked the "hottest" days off work then the met office realised they'd got the forecast wrong, haha.
The weather is quite nice today though so all is not lost.

On the spending money front I have been very well behaved. Had to buy some flu remedies because I caught OH's cold and had to buy a mug because...well...I didn't have to but I wanted one, and I got the cheapest one so...ahh no excuses it was bad!

Yesterday I forgot to take my lunch to work but I had cleverly bought some ryvita (74p, how cheap?!) for emergencies such as this, and mum had got me some phillidelphia with chives, mmm. That was going to be my lunch but then by some miracle I managed to get a free bacon and egg sandwich from the cafe. (note to self - make friends with canteen workers more often)

So today and tomorrow I am going to try to spend as little money and petrol as possible. Dad wants me to go up to the post office which I would usually drive to, but I'm going to walk. And hopefully my clubcard vouchers have arrived so I can get "free" cat food (which I will also walk to collect!)
Tomorrow will be a problem MSE-wise because my boyfriend has the day off work too. We want to go somewhere fun but obv. don't want to spend too much money...I think there's a board on here for that so I will head on over to that for some inspiration