** Wish I was a money fairy **

fallen121

Shame you don't have an ASDA near you as I always haunt their discount counter for meal ideas.

You mentioned you had a slow cooker. I buy knocked down reduced price down meat and sausages which are about to go out of date and bung them in the freezer then slow cook them with whatever I can find in the cupboards for a good filling meal. I have a LARGE cooker so always make lots of sauce because you can take the leftover sauce to work the next day for your lunch and warm it over if you have access to a microwave, or you could have it for your lunch on a day you were at home. Leftover sauce may sound yucky but it's nice warmed over when you're hungry; you can pour it over chips or rice or dip bread in it and if you're at home and can't afford the heating on then it helps warm you up and with a nice cup of tea and a piece of fruit probably no worse for your diet than a mayonaise filled sandwich which many people buy.

Some good ideas for slow cooked meals - you can use things like sausage casserole sauces which are sometimes knocked down in the supermarkets, but "bulk out" the sauce with lots of water and things like tinned lentil soup which will have lots of veggies in. Go easy on using stock cubes as they can make the sauce very salty. I use soy sauce if the colour doesn't look right, and bung in things like an onion I found in the cupboard, some tinned carrots, frozen peas leftover sauce from last night's homemade pizza, leftover gravy from the sunday roast, leftover bolognaise sauce. I bung in a few potatoes and Bobs your Uncle. If you find the sauce a bit runny when you get back in the evening, I find McDougall's Thickening Granules are a great alternative to cornflour as they won't make the sauce lumpy and you can buy them in Morrisons - you'll find them in blue gravy granule like containers near the gravy or sometimes near the home baking section. Sometimes when I get home in the evening I will make dumplings out of suet which helps to soak up some of the excess sauce. Serving casseroles with rice or Aunt Bessies Roast potatoes make them go a long way. I try to do as little as possible because I work really long hours and have a long commute on top but I always try and make sure I make a home cooked meal at least 4 times a week.

I think you mentioned one time about how you had made a casserole in the slow cooker and the sauce had dried out so much it wasn't enough to feed 4 people. I get around this as stated above by making far more sauce than I will ever need by bulking it out with water and soup and either eating it the next day or freezing it for future use but also bear in mind that oval shaped slow cookers are far more prone to drying out so if you have one of these you will either need to use more sauce or think about getting yourself a round cooker as they seldom if ever dry out.

Housework*Fairy

evening all

PADS for today - did DS1's paper-round plus I did the other round as the lad who normally does it couldn't do it today (or next week) so I earned £8 in one hour :T also no football matches today so the £6 training money has gone in there too.

Total towards school trip saved is now £79.33. It should be quite substantial by the end of the week as it's the school holidays so all the stuff I would normally pay out for (bus, football etc) will go towards the school trip.

Housework*Fairy

Hi again Fallen121

I love, love, love sausage casserole and you know what - it's not on my menu plan at all!!! I shall have to rectify that immediately before my next (online) shopping trip. There will be an Asda opening up at some point over the future. They have purchased some land, and the planning etc is all going through. I'm quite happy internet shopping at the moment and what I am going to do when I get paid at the end of the month is work out how much meat I need for the meals, and then get it from Farmfoods for the month as the chicken is a lot better and cheaper than what I purchased from Tesco. I'll maybe do a weekly.

My trouble is, when I physically go into a supermarket I have zero self-control. I cannot seem to stop myself from sticking to a list. hence I'm trying to keep out of them for as much as I can.

fallen121

I also have zero self control, but my grocery bill is around £45 a week (including packed lunches). This is mainly because I menu plan EVERYTHING to the nth degree and try to avoid ready meals or processed food except when it is knocked down because I think they're expensive and I also like to know what I am eating! I also have terrible skin allergies and watching what you eat can help to control it to some extent.

My plan for not spending money? Several times a week I WALK to the the local supermarket after dinner. It's open until 10pm. Walking means I can only buy what I can carry. I've eaten, so I tend to buy less. And it's late, so the discount stuff often gets knocked down even more. Better still, I go with a ten pound note and NOTHING ELSE. No debit card. That way I HAVE to stay within budget. Oh yes, and all the walking makes up for no gymn membership or weightwatchers!

Menu planning also helps in other ways. We have no food waste except tea bags, apple cores and banana skins. Anything not eaten goes for lunch the next day. Anything due to go out of date gets frozen or incorporated into the next meal. My mother-in-law has two freezers and about 9 months of food, but still goes to the supermarket twice a week. Her fridge is full to bursting and she is always throwing stuff out. If I was her, I would buy nothing but bread milk and fruit/veggies and live off the freezer!

Housework*Fairy

Just a note to myself:

PADS:
me not having lunch at work: £5.00
DS1 not needing bus fare: £5.00
No school footy for DS2: £2.50
No school dinners for DS2: £7.50
No athletics for DS2: £2.00
No athletics for DS1: £3.00
postage savings: £0.39
Total savings this week: £25.39

Total PAD £104.72 (£30.28 to go, 17 days to find this by)

fallen121

Well done! Once the school trip is paid for, what's the NEXT milestone?

Housework*Fairy

fallen121 wrote: »

Well done! Once the school trip is paid for, what's the NEXT milestone?

That'll be spending money for the school trip LOL. He goes on 24th March so I have 2 paydays. School reckon £25 per day while they are away (£100 in Euro) and £50 in sterling :eek::eek: admittedly though my lad is quite sensible with money.

Then after that, it'll be spending money for our own holiday in August.

And at some point this year I need to get laminate flooring down in the living room because the carpet is beyond disgusting and I'm fed up of needing a new carpet every few years.

After that it'll be Christmas.

mooomin

Can you start allocating money for Christmas into an account now? That way if you see a bargain that could be used for Christmas you can just pick it up.

Even £20 a month starting from the end of this month would give you £200 by the end of November, plus anything else you can throw at it.

Housework*Fairy

Total PAD £107.82 (£27.18 to go, 15 days to find this by)

£3.10 into the PAD account today, had to get petrol and had a 10p off a litre voucher, put 31 litres in thus saving £3.10.

FF - will start putting £20 away into an account like you suggested as of next month.

Had a letter from the Tax credits yesterday informing me that our £10.25 per week tax credit is being taken away from us as of April. I had thought it would happening but then I read somewhere that it was April 2013 however I was correct the first time around. Thankfully the tax allowance goes up at the same time so we should be £15 each a month better off than that, plus DH is getting a £1500 pay rise which is £75 a month after tax, so we wont be worse off but I'm still sulking....

Hopefully now I'm an internet shopping ninja, I shouldn't miss £41 a month in tax credits.

Housework*Fairy

Total PAD £112.82 (£22.18 to go, 14 days to find this by)

Got another £5 off a shop voucher for Tesco, and today's shop came to £46.48. I'm also going to go to Home Bargains with a tenner, and get some biscuits, cereal bars, chocolate bars which are too expensive in Tesco. They're also going in a lockable cash tin so I can't get my hands on them.