All the small things - tell me what you have done to be MF today

bloomerang72

Having been a long time lurker ( I once asked a question on a forum, but have been silently lurking since) I thought it was about time I joined in - the community spirit here has been an inspiration to me, to recommence my money savig efforts, after a tough year health wise. So a HUGE thank you to you all for your positive attitudes.

We are due to remortgage next year but owe my Mum nearly £5000 from the loan she gave us for the deposit. While I know this would be interest free and she would never pressure us for the money back, I feel the need to repay her before serious attempts at the mortgage are made - although there is a little each month that goes away into an account for when the remortgaging time comes (we are limited as to the OP we can make).

I have sat down and worked out that we can pay this back by Christmas with a little bit of belt tightening and penny pinching. With a lot of it we can pay it off sooner and then the extra pennies can also go towards driving the mortgage down.

One of the difficulties I have is that while I am money conscious, my DH leaves it all to me, and can only be cajoled into doing so much towards keeping bills down and not spending. Any hints and tips as to how to encourage a reluctat OH welcomed (or should that be a separate thread? now see what you've all started encouraging a long time lurker to contribute).

Anyway in the last couple of weeks I have:

-sent my gold off for cash (£85.00 thank you)
-reminded myself of the logins for online surveys and found I have £5 on one and £4.25 on another (ive been screened out of adding to them)
-made bread using ingredients from the store cupboard and frozen 3 loaves
- ordered from approved foods for the first time ever (OH did seem impressed with what came)
- put all the stuff I want to ebay on one side to photograph etc once I have a new memory card for my camera
- listed everything in the house I want to 'recycle' into money
- used every left over in the fridge, with the exception of a very old piece of Brie (little more than the rind really) that was beyond saving
- signed up to imeasure
- checked that I am on the most competitive electric tariff (I am)
- charged my phone at work
- compared car insurance for my OH which is due next month (is there an optimum time period in advance where the premiums are lower - I notice they get higher in the last few days before the renewal is due)
- broached the subject of dropping to become a one car family with DH in an attempt to save further pennies (you should have seen his face)

And it is all thanks to you guys who I have been following since the conception of this particular thread!

Well thanks again
Bloomers

LilacViolet

Morning all

Not alot from me yesterday

• Opened a Northern Rock Fixed Bond which I will pay £200 into a month, plus any cash gifts like birthdays and Christmas. Its fixed for three years but it will be a nice lump sum in three years time.
• Did a couple of surveys from mysurvey - enough to cash out another £3 into paypal.
• Spoke to Elec company and arranged to have our economy 7 meter taken out so we can go on a standard tarrif. This should save us about £140 a year as we just dont use the night rate.
• £1.00 Overpayment.

brownscottu

its really good saving money on daily needs which really helps at the end of months, this idea is really nice i will follow this methods to save by money.

curlygirl1971

LilacViolet: with regards to the car insurance try quoting for a couple of different secondary drivers and see what those quotes come out at. Mine is due in June and I was trying to get an idea of what a quote will be and after reading the MSE guide I put in my BF's details - he doesn't live with me and he never drives my car - but my quote was £100 cheaper!!!

Once I've found the quote I want I then look to see if there is any Casback available via the likes of Quidco / Topcashback.

Car insurance has gone up a lot recently

tinkerbel

mine is due son I think it will have gone up loads but that's a job to sort out over the next few bank hols!
I've done another review this morning and it should have taken me over my (persona) challenge threshold!! woop woop! It wasn't too hard a challenge (to get to a payment level before easter) but hey - next time maybe I'll stretch myself harder because it really did make me get up and write things!
Not a lot else done though

cha97michelle

Hello to bloomerang and brownscottu. Nice to see you posting about money saving. All the small things do add up, and we are all living proof. It is easy to say what the heck and spend all those pennies, but a bit of discipline changes your life.

Any other lurkers? Do pop in and say hi.

Tinkerbel - see, told you what i was doing was not that hard didn't i. Congratulations. I'm already back up at £14 this month, and it all helps.

wantabetterlife

Welcome to all the new posters :wave:

• Went to lidl and stocked up on mangos at 49p each :j....was going to buy these in mrS but they were £2.50 for 2 :eek:.
• Also bought a case of white wine in Lidl and works out at £2.39 per bottle
• Got 2 whole chickens in MrS last night for £1.17 each and loads of other whopsies, the only problem is that all 3 freezers are now full to bursting. I am vowing not to buy anything unless its fruit or veg etc until i have run the freezers down.
• Went walking yesterday evening for free exercise
• DD off school now for almost 2 weeks so am hoping to save a few pounds in diesel by not doing the school run
• Have dug out DD1 and DD2's money boxes so that they can save any money they get from family for their holiday in july
• Joined tesco consumer panel so that i can earn extra clubcard points

misscousinitt

Hi, I'm back at last - you really don't realise how much you rely on the internet until you lose it!

Anyway, todays offering:

* Lunch from home, DH had pack up too
* Renewed car insurance (at least I had saved some money towards it), switched and hopefully will get cashback of £30 (edit: its been tracked, woohoo....my first quidco purchase!)
* Have made shopping list and mealplan for today/tomorrow's shopping

A

x
*

lincoln-potter

Not had the best start today, didn't take the bread out of the freezer last night so had to have a sarnie from the local butchers. £2.00 but to be honest it was the nicest and biggest chicken sandwich I have had in a very long time!

Making up for it tonight as I am off to my grandpas place to pick up some furniture, shelving and more fire wood.

Also had email form musicmagpie that i should have around £100 of cheques en-route to myself! :T

curlygirl1971

Parked car 15 mins walk away from appt rather than pay for car park

Treated the BF and I to National Trust membership - works out at under £22 each with current cashback (which has tracked )

Wanted to get my dad the 3 'the girl with....' DVDS for his bday - priced them up at various places and ended up with 2 from play.com (2 for £10) and one from tescos.com using 15% off code - that was cheapest combination and got cashback

Have compiled a shopping list using mysupermarket.com as got a voucher for Tescos 'spend £40 get £6 off' and I don't normally spend that much unless I'm stocking up

On the downside I forgot to defrost meat this AM for tonight's dinner so need to buy something