Floozie does Frugal 2010

Intergalactic_Floozie

Someone has also posted that you can get a free photobox mother's day card when you enter a free code, so I'll look into that!

Days to payday: 27
Money in bank : 274.15
Money in purse: £86.60
Grand Total: £371.21

Money spent since last update: £10.31
£0.90 - 'congratulations on birth of your baby boy' card.
£4.00 - DS2 haircut
£1.99 - toilet brush
£3.42 - groceries
£0.15 - change jar

Grocery budget: £220.00 / £161.06 remaining
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £54.50 remaining
Everything else budget: £152.23 / £146.09 remaining

OnePoll: Balance £11.90 (only 1 x 10p survey yesterday and nowt today, I think they must have fallen out with me)
Mystery shopping: No new shops available, nothing pending for me to do.
Lightspeed: 780 points (had an 80 pointer, and a 200 pointer yesterday!). So I have enough now for £6 paypal!
Toluna: 25300 points - 2745 added since yesterday
Advantage Card Points: Still on 830.

Intergalactic_Floozie

PS - Virgin Media bill came today. I usually guesstimate it on the last bill because it doesn't come til a couple of days after payday. Anyway it was £3.64 less than last month so I have PAD'd it to my Gifts fund.

I've also transferred £3.00 from my grocery budget into the Gifts Fund because I have the same value in gift vouchers.

Gifts fund account is nearly £100 now. Not bad to say I only started doing it on Boxing Day (7 weeks).

Intergalactic_Floozie

Days to payday: 26
Money in bank : 274.15
Money in purse: £86.18
Grand Total: £360.33

Money spent since last update: £0.42
£0.42 - stamp

Grocery budget: £220.00 / £161.06 remaining
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £54.50 remaining
Everything else budget: £152.23 / £145.67 remaining

OnePoll: Balance £12.20
Mystery shopping: Website is down at the minute
Lightspeed: 1080 points! I had a 300 pointer yesterday, so now I have the equivalent of £9 in paypal when I choose to redeem it.
Toluna: 29560 points - 4260 added since yesterday
Advantage Card Points: Still on 830.

Need to take the car to the garage tomorrow. The driver's side electric window doesn't wind down (although you can hear the motor whirring) but then when you are out and about, the window falls down and you have to wrestle it back into place. This will be coming out of the car fund. Hope it's not a big job.

Talking of the car, I have been having arguments with DH for the last couple of days over money. The trouble is he wont talk about things, just leaves it to me to sort out and buries his head in the sand. But I sat him down last night and told him the car is a drain on our resources.

Okay, I was party to buying it, but I genuinely didn't realise just how much it would cost to run. I budget £110 for petrol but most months I have to put extra in the week before payday. When we were running two cars we were only spending £80 on his, and £35 on mine. Now we're spending a fiver less on one car PLUS I also have to pay £56 bus fare for me, and £20 bus fare for DS1 so running costs per month have increased by £71. Having the bump last January hasn't helped matters and sent the insurance sky high and that was with protected claims! We live in the 2nd worst postcode area for un-insured drivers and bogus claims, you see.

It doesn't help that most of the driving DH does, means he is stuck in traffic jams so stopping and starting. In a typical cycle, a full tank costs around £55 depending on petrol prices and lasts about 13-14 days and we get around 260 miles out of it, so £110 is lasting 26-28 days and thus I have to stick a few quid in it, if the pay period has been 30+ days. It also doesn't help that we're only averaging 30mpg!!!

Anyway he does see it makes sense, but was coming up with ways to keep the car but not use as much petrol, which included DS1 making his own way to school (costing me an extra £10 per month in bus fare), walking DS2 to school in a morning, depositing him at breakfast club (£30 per month) then walking back home and then using the car to drive himself to work and back and see how much petrol he can save doing that. It wont save much money, but I can see he is trying. He also admitted he had lost confidence in driving it because it handled so badly in the snow.

Ideally I'd like to sell it to a garage and see how much we can get for it, then buy something around the same value with a smaller engine. I hate buying cars because we know nothing about them.

I also said the only other options I could think of were for him to reduce his pocket money by 50% (thus gaining me £100) OR to get a new job. As we know jobs are as rare as hen's teeth. I did point out this is because I am having to find £62 for his college course and it would be silly to pack it in but unfortunately we all have to make sacrifices and so far he's done nothing visible, whilst I am the one who has to adjust regardless.

So - watch this space.

Have to take DS1 for his haircutting day as he's starting to look like Captain Caveman. He wont go to barbers (ie cheap) and he will only let my hairdresser touch it!

Apart from that no other plans. I hate being skint. I wish the school holidays had been the last week before payday as I daredn't spend any money at the moment as I don't know what the rest of the month will bring.

Verbatim

Oh well done Floozie for tackling your OH. It isn't on that you have to take it all on. Sounds like you were very calm and mature over it. I think I'd have been a screaming banshee with him!

Intergalactic_Floozie

Hmmmm....back to the drawing board. I've rang round a few garages and we'd be lucky to get £4000 in part exchange, and only £3500 if we were to sell it outright.

moo2moo

917 Lightspeed points gets you a £10 Love to Shop voucher, obvioulsy not as universally accpetable as cold hard cash but a 10% improvement with points towards the next voucher too.

Intergalactic_Floozie

It's a good idea in theory but with the exception of HMV there's no other Games-type places on there which makes up the bulk of the DS's gifts. n

Intergalactic_Floozie

Well, I hope I am in a better mood today than I was yesterday. I alternated between rage, and pity parties.

I joined Top Cashback a while ago but didn't really do anything on it. Anyway I went back yesterday to see if there were any daily clicks I could be doing and I thought "I know, I'll have a go at Bingo". So I joined the Sun Bingo which was £10 deposit which they then matched and £10 cashback (if it tracks, which it hasn't done so far). I sat at the PC for 4 sodding hours playing my way through this £20 only not to win a sausage. I very very mad because it seemed that everyone else in the chatroom was winning and I was the only person not winning a thing.

Add this to that I had also rang a few garages during the day and none of them seemed willing to swap our top-of-the-range Vectra for a slightly older Focus. I don't want to go through the hassle of selling the Vectra, I just want to do a straight swap.

So add the above to a very painful cold sore on my top lip, and feeling bunged up after my cold, and I was a very miserable floozie to be with yesterday.

I'm fed up of having to watch every penny, and the realisation that "only 2 years" is 730 days of having to watch every penny made me want to cry (then get angry with myself that I brought this mess on all myself through my unstoppable spending - oh, and DH's ex employers by making him redundant). Although things would have been a lot worse had my mum and dad not bailed me out. I should stop moaning shouldn't I?

I did defrost my freezer which was a great achievement and means I don't have to gaffer tape the doors shut anymore.

Days to payday: 25
Money in bank : 262.42
Money in purse: £77.88
Grand Total: £340.30 (average £13.61 per day)

Money spent since last update: £20.03
£9.73 - groceries
£2.00 - DIY Mother's Day Card kits x 2
£6.50 - DS2 haircut
£1.80 - DS2 busfare into town

Grocery budget: £220.00 / £151.33 remaining (AVG £6.05 per day)
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £54.50 remaining
Everything else budget: £152.23 / £134.47 remaining (AVG £5.37 per day)

OnePoll: Balance £12.20 (nowt yesterday)
Mystery shopping: (only pubs, dont want to do them)
Lightspeed: 1080 points (nowt yesterday, felt most deprived).
Toluna: 30700 points - 1140 added since yesterday
Advantage Card Points: Still on 830.

I noticed on the front page of MSE that there is £5 off when you spend £10+ at the Body Shop. There's also an extra 15% cash back if you go through Quidco and a code of free delivery however when I went to check out, I couldn't see where to put the free delivery code, or how the £5 came off so I'll look into that later.

PS - have counted up how many days of penny pinching I have left. Loan 1 will be paid off in 590 days, and Loan 2 in 741. Loan 3 is another 1200+ (couldn't be bothered couting)

Intergalactic_Floozie

Days to payday: 24
Money in bank : 255.19
Money in purse: £77.88
Grand Total: £333.07 (average £13.87 per day)

Money spent since last update: £7.29
Can't remember exact figures but I got some Zebra Print over-the-knee socks, and a Zebra print scarf to wear at the fancy dress party which is next weekend (27th). I will probably get my wear out of them both after the party, the socks with my Uggs for football, and I love wearing scarves anyway. I was going to get a mask too but I think I'll stick to facepaint.

Grocery budget: £220.00 / £151.33 remaining (AVG £6.30 per day)
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £54.50 remaining
Everything else budget: £152.23 / £127.18 remaining (AVG £5.29 per day).

Car cost £141 to put right. In the grand scheme of things I suppose £141 isn't a lot to shell out to get a car repaired by a garage, but it is a lot when you consider it is for a window.

I rang a car dealer yesterday after I saw a 2.0L 55 plate Focus for £3995. He said he would 'probably' be happy to swap it for the Vectra but he would have to see it first. However when I ran it through an insurance quote, it was coming back at the same as the Vectra and with it being a 2.0L it wouldn't save that much on petrol costs so I'm leaving it. He did have some older, smaller engined Focus's though at around the same price but I'm not sure how I feel about swapping a 4 year old car for a 7 year old. He did say that smaller engined cars are depreciating in price slower than larger engined cars because that's what people are buying with the cost of motoring being so high. Any thoughts? The 1.6L car was coming in at £200 per year less in insurance. If I do get something else now, it has to last 2 years as there's no way I can afford another loan to buy another one before then.

OnePoll: Balance £12.20 (nowt yesterday AGAIN)
Mystery shopping: (only pubs AGAIN, dont want to do them)
Lightspeed: 1080 points (Was offered a 50 pointer yesterday but got screened out).
Toluna: 30910 points - 210 added since yesterday.
Advantage Card Points: Still on 830.

Couldn't get on the Laptop yesterday. DS2 decided he was going to hog it all day to watch wrestling clips on You Tube!

Intergalactic_Floozie

I've applied for a consolidation loan. I know it's frowned upon but I just wondered.....I doubt we'll get accepted anyway. I didn't get an instant decision despite the website boasting this. It would take our payments down from £547 to £295 which would allow me to carry on as we are, but with £250 breathing space.

EDIT

OH MY GOD - it's been accepted. WHat do you think? Should I accept it? Not sure what the APR is as yet. OH HELP ME?