New Challenge - Details

Murtle

Count me on this - not sure what I'm saving for but a holiday would be good, like the idea of paying for it before I go....not for months afterwards. Also have no idea where my money is going - so no takeaways for a while and everyting to be written down....uh-oh this could become a full time job....

oueyouey

jazzyjustlaw wrote:

Often I go to sainsburys late and they have cakes reduced from 99p to 40p or even 20p does anyone have idea what I can do with them. For instance can scones be frozen? I obviously do not want to eat them all in one day but surely there must be something I can do with them.

I've tried freezing things like scones and thought that they tasted fine after defrosting

Biddswood

Fantastic Idea :-)
will use any money saved to pay that extra of the credit cards that i have transfered balances onto with 6 months 0%

nicki_2

Tried saving some money on this weeks shop but it all went sour when I got home and realised I had forgotten somethings! Had to go to the corner shop yesterday to get washing up liquid - only cost 48p but I usually buy the SmartPrice one at 13p which lasts us two weeks. Having OH home and DD off school has increased my grocery shopping bill as they seem to be able to eat me out of house and home by Sunday night, when I go shopping on a Thursday! After spending £10 on fruit on Thursday night I now have 1 green & 1 red apple, 1 clemintine & a lemon left!

I saved some money on a extra large chicken Managers Special in Asda, should be £5.38 but was £4.11 instead. Roasted it, skinned, removed as much meat as possible, frozen the meat and used leftovers/bones to make stock which is currently cooling in the fridge (to remove the fat). Already used the meat to make a chicken & Pea pie for tea last night when I realised we were low on milk and therefore couldn't make Country Veg Toad like I had planned.

Also sort of saved money on bread - I was planning on spending £1.20 on sliced bread for OH lunches and breakfast. I spotted alot of bread reduced and managed to pick up 6 loaves of bread, including 3 kingsmill wholemeal medium sliced (for me) for 20p each so I managed to get twice the amount of bread I was planning on :) BTW I also make my own bread but we tend to have that with soup or stews, we haven't the co-ordination of a morning to be slicing bread to put in the toaster. Plus at the speed OH goes through unsliced bread, it would cost me at least double a week! LOL

Our council tax bill came in and it will be LESS this year! Since June we have been paying £85 a month, our new payments will be £71.00 after a one of payment of £73

Water Bill is on rates - was £23 a month (10 months) and will now be £21 also over 10 months.

Phone bill used to be £46 a month and is now at £30.

Don't know whats going on but I'm not complaining. Haven't changed anything. Next thing to be tackled is the Gas and electric. We're currently on prepayment meters (little plastic cards) with British Gas. Going to look now at how much it will cost to swap either meters or suppliers or both

moggins

nicki as long as you don't have any arrears with British Gas it's normally very easy to change meters. I'm with nPower and I just rang them up and asked, they booked a date and came and changed the meter.

Galtizz

nicki wrote:

Having OH home and DD off school has increased my grocery shopping bill as they seem to be able to eat me out of house and home by Sunday night, when I go shopping on a Thursday!

I know it's a really small thing, but, if they are usually at school/ work have you thought about going shopping on either Sunday night or Monday that way there won't be lots of nice things to eat at the weekend that come off your menu plan, they just have whatever you planned for Saturday and Sunday and store cupboard things, it might save you having to panic buy things at extortionate local shop prices.

oueyouey

Don't know whats going on but I'm not complaining. Haven't changed anything. Next thing to be tackled is the Gas and electric. We're currently on prepayment meters (little plastic cards) with British Gas. Going to look now at how much it will cost to swap either meters or suppliers or both [/QUOTE]

When we moved into our house gas and electric were both on meters with British Gas. We found them really expensive - the gas costing us around £4 per day. We switched to Scottish Hydro electric and £2 lasted for about 3 days. We finally got both meters changed to the "normal" ones, it was free for the electric but we had to pay £60 to have the gas meter changed. We rang NPower to see if it would be any cheaper. The NPower woman actually said that Scottish Hydro electric offer would be the best deal for us at that time.

nicki_2

I've now emailed British Gas about any charges they have for changing the meters.

I also looked at possible savings if we switched to DD :

Gas & electricity = £190
Gas = £132
Electricity = £72

So we would, in theory save more by having seperate Gas and electricity suppliers. Of course, I need to find the last "bill" and go through the recipts to double check figures but I'm getting there slowly.

mrsmab59

nicki wrote:

I've now emailed British Gas about any charges they have for changing the meters.

I also looked at possible savings if we switched to DD :

Gas & electricity = £190
Gas = £132
Electricity = £72

So we would, in theory save more by having seperate Gas and electricity suppliers. Of course, I need to find the last "bill" and go through the recipts to double check figures but I'm getting there slowly.

Nicki you're better off getting there slowly rather than rushing into something without checking and then double checking all the facts first.
Can't you tell I'm a bit of a cautious person

omega_2

Hello, I’m pretty pleased with my March trial run of £172.90 saved/earned extra this month. My biggest saving was opting to use £23 of Tesco Vouchers for £92 of RAC cover – yes, I know I could have got a cheaper quote than £92, so I’ve only included a £40 saving in the PIN money challenge.

BUT, and it’s a BIG BUT have blown the Grocery Budget (and that’s set comparatively high at £200) bigstyle – we are likely to be at least £30 over by the end of the month, Ooops, so that will be taken off the PIN money challenge. Think that I’d better hop over to the Grocery Challenge! Quick!

I know that come April I am going to have to work a harder to achieve anything nearing my March amount.

Thanks to EVERYONE on this board for the great inspiration!