** Wish I was a money fairy **

Housework*Fairy

No debt busting done today.

Next-door-neighbour gave us four pot noodles that for some reason her brood aren't eating so my lads have had one each for lunch. If there's one thing I like better than food, it's free food!

Have been guilt-tripped into giving DH a tenner to go to the pub to see his friend. :mad:

I also suggested instead of buying food from the supermarket daily, which he currently does and spends £4, that he give me a shopping list, and I will buy them in with my grocery shop. He buys those ridiculously expensive tubs of melon from the supermarket at £2 a throw. I said I was not going to fund them, so hopefully with his £20 per week pocket money it will soon dawn on him that it'd be cheaper to buy a bag of apples. Although I did also point out it would be cheaper if he bought 2 at £3 and that'd be £1.50 a throw then....

I also suggested that he think about cycling to work on the days that he does not need the car. He said it was a good idea, but I'm not sure if he was taking the proverbial....also, if he does think it's a good idea - that means we have to find the money for a bike :rotfl:

Spends today:
£10.00 - DH (pub)
£2.00 - birthday card (hopefully it will cost less than this)
£2.66 - from spends to bills to cover debit card payment made by DH :mad:
£2.00 - lotto

Housework*Fairy

No debt busting done again today but frugalism is still alive and well. DH's car went into the garage to have an item replaced due to a manufacturing fault upon the car being built. Thankfully we haven't had to pay for this. Hopefully it will do the trick!

Today's spends
£2.50 - DS2 football
£1.00 - my lunch at work.

Not sure on DH's spends yet as he is still in possession of the cash card :eek:

..and DS2 has come home from school with two begging letters that will cost £10 in total :mad:

Had a nice letter from Natwest Credit Card to DH offering him 0% on balance transfers for 12 months. His credit limit is £2900 and his balance is £900 so we could only transfer around £1700 but thought I could put some of the Tesco balance on there however unfortunately Tesco is RBS and I think that is part of the same group isn't it?. I seem to remember when I was scratting around for a credit card to bring the overlimit balance down last week that NW said that I couldn't pay with another NW or RBS credit card. Maybe I could transfer some of the Halifax Clarity Card balance?

Housework*Fairy

Today's spends
£4.00- DS1 & DS2 athletics
£2.25 groceries
£3.50 - DS2 school trip
£50.00 - DS1 school trip

Today DS1 has come home with a letter from school regarding a school trip to Spain in March 2012. He's desperate to go on it, it's £395 with a £50 deposit so I am going to do the best in budgeteering that I can, so he is able to go. I have written a cheque out for the deposit but DH will be getting a cheque for last month's mileage (when he gets his finger out) so that will cover that. In order to cover the rest I will keep my food budget at £350 on paper, and what I spend under budget will pay for the trip. However, the letter does say it will only go ahead if they get enough interest....I've also, upon doing my sums, realised that my bills account has £60 per month more going into it than coming out, whereas for spends I am just concentrating on the spends account, so as long as I keep checking accounts and updating spreadsheets on a daily basis and not spending mindlessly, then I can do it.

The groceries was finger rolls and oven chips.

I didn't even spend £1 for my lunch today as I took my own sandwich in as I was on a training course. Cheese, chorizo and mayonnaise, and it was the mutts nutts.

Update: I haven't mentioned this before, but when I bought my current car, I never got around to selling the old one (this was only two months ago). It's got no tax but we were talking to my neighbour at the weekend who said his friend might be interested in it, and he's come this evening and offered me £150 for it. I said £200, and we met in the middle at £170. So only £175 to find for DS1's school trip now

Housework*Fairy

Incidentally, a girl at work is an agent for Utility Warehouse, and I'm speaking to her tomorrow about possibly switching to them. I'm sure she's not going to be able to do things any cheaper for me, but I'm taking my bills in none-the-less. Thought seeing how my Virgin bill caused shock and outrage in my SOA I would tell you how it is broken down

This month's bill
Grand total: £63.48
Phone line rental: £13.90
Phone calls: £1.02
Paper bills: £1.50 (now cancelled)
Sky Sports: £22.50
XL Broadband & Talk Bundles: £24.56
Free additional set top box: FREE
Broadband &

I'm on 'mates rates' and if I made any changes (for example, cancelling landline) I am sure that I would lose that package because I remember at the time to qualify for it, I had to have all three services. Incidentally my 'mate' has been made redundant over a year ago from Virgin and they've still let me keep them.

Could of course lose Sky Sports, but then that'd just result in DH and the boys sulking and wanting to go to the pub to watch any big games.

Housework*Fairy

Today's spends
£8.00 - lunch tokens at work (£1 per day) this will see me to next pay day
£2.00 - DS1 group physio session from athletics club
£97.00 - petrol (DH topped up and I filled up)
£0.99 - an Amazon e-book (cheaper than a magazine)

My balance at the moment in spends account is -£77. A month ago it was -£450!!! and I haven't paid in the cash from selling the car yesterday. The frugalising is working - yay me :j

I had a chat with the colleague who is an agent for the utility company but I'm not convinced she can save me any money. She didn't seem to comprehend that if I cancelled my broadband and landline with Virgin, that I would end up paying more to Virgin for my TV, plus extra on top to Utility Warehouse, plus having to pay BT to get a landline installed meaning my monthly payment would be more overall. "But you'll be saving £5 on your broadband!" they kept exclaiming!

She did say she would get back to me with a quote for gas and electric.

I was reading the bills this morning and there was a section on the back giving my projected usage for the next 12 months, and divided up over 12 months my electric would be £48 per month (pay £41 at mo) and gas would be £98 (Pay £70 at the mo) so I need to look into saving fuel!:eek:

Housework*Fairy

Today's spends
£1.10 -on a four pack of muffins
£1.00 - salad tray
£1.50 - DS2 breakfast club

BAH, I cannot be trusted to go into a supermarket! Went for a salad for tonight's tea, so how did the muffins jump into the equation? (and then into my stomach?!). MERRGGGHHHHH. This was after I lectured DH about not sticking to the plan of buying 2 tubs of fruit for £3 (to last 2 days) and instead going and spending £2 per day.

Housework*Fairy

Today's spends
£2.74 - groceries (milk and pop)
£6.00 - DS1 & DS2 football practice.
£5.00 - 5 x birthday cards

DH informed me we were out of milk, and also asked me if I could pick up some fizzy pop from the corner shop, so I've had to pay corner shop prices for them (thud).

I'm babysitting for my nephew tonight but told my brother he had to think of it as a birthday present as I'm on skid row I'm also taking a microwave pasta ready meal with me instead of calling at the chip shop at the top of his road for a fish butty or ordering a curry which is what I would previously have done.

Sent DH to cheap-card-shop-hell in his lunchbreak armed with a fiver and express instructions of whom to buy cards for. I daredn't ask if there's any change after yesterday's shouty shenanigans so it's going down in the budget as a fiver.

I'm going to try and do a shopping list / meal planner for adventures in grocery shopping tomorrow once the baby goes to sleep. (note optimism).

DS1 handed in his school trip letter and cheque today. I had hoped he might change his mind after I had made many anti-Spanish remarks and pointed out he gets travel sick, but nope, the boy remained steadfast

Oh and after deciding to try and cut down on gas and electricity I promptly turned the heating on yesterday evening, left it on all night and all day when I was at work.....<epic Fail>

Lemon_Tree

hope you've sorted out your heating on a timer if you're going to keep it on from now it may have been a little fail but if you sort it out as soon as possible it won't become a huge epic fail so don't you worry.
Have you got a card factory shop near you? when i see one i stock up on them, they have some which are 8 or 10 for a quid which is good for work collegues, kids etc it's certainly more than enough to spend in my opinion.
Have you had a look at checking out your own utilities through cash back site? if you haven't then have a go you'll be surprised what you can save. Also i know with my leccy last year when i actually looked into it i could stay with my same provider but change the online plan and save a fair bit of money, if i hadn't looked then i would have continued paying more. I have to admit though i'm a terror with turning things off and running things overnight in cheap leccy, it all helps eventually even if it's just to reduce the DD by a couple of quid each month.

mooomin

Housework*Fairy wrote: »

BAH, I cannot be trusted to go into a supermarket! Went for a salad for tonight's tea, so how did the muffins jump into the equation? (and then into my stomach?!). MERRGGGHHHHH.

I have the same problem. Last night I had to hide a packet of WW Sticky Toffee puddings in the petfood aisle after they leapt into my basket. The swines.

Housework*Fairy wrote: »

I'm going to try and do a shopping list / meal planner for adventures in grocery shopping tomorrow once the baby goes to sleep. (note optimism).

DS1 handed in his school trip letter and cheque today. I had hoped he might change his mind after I had made many anti-Spanish remarks and pointed out he gets travel sick, but nope, the boy remained steadfast
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

How did you get on with your shopping list/meal plan?

Don't beat yourself up about the heating, you'll find that it will become second nature. Mr Fresian now asks if he can put the heating on as he knows that otherwise he risks my heating-based wrath

POSITIVE_AND_FOCUSED

Hi housework fairy,

Just popping in to wish you well on your debt free journey. The one thing I can relate to is dh and drink and cigs. For me, this was before my money saving days I had to give the money to my dh each day, I found giving him an allowance each week didn't work because he would spend it in the first couple of days and then the rest of the week would become stressful. I hope whatever arrangement is in place with your dh you can make it work. Keep going!