Meet the frugal's, 365 day challenge of buying nothing.

pigpen

I hate the value bread.. it is almost alwasy stale in the shop here.. you could build houses with it!! plus it is 5p cheaper to make my own than pay 28p for theirs!.. Plus theirs gets fed to the birds.. mine gets fed to the children!

Over on the flylady thread today is pamper day so you are permitted the can of coke.. halo restored!!

Plus after DH's spend in town the other day.. you are more than entitled to a little frivolity..

Back on the wagon now!!

lauren_1

Day 10? or 11?

Got home at the wee hour of 1am after quite an eventfull shift, taxi cost £5.50 split with a friend so not that painfull, the two drinks i got "bought" paid for it:beer:

I did fall off the wagon this morning but am back on track for the rest of the week.

Nothing else to report

Crown

Hi Lauren, Just wanted to say that you should be well chuffed with your efforts. A can of Coke and a loaf of bread are not going to break the bank and some would say that Bread was a necessity.

It was only those items wasnt it? yiou havent done a £200 spend and filled the cupboards?

Also the Costa tea-bag made me laugh. I hate paying there prices but im not sure id have the cheek to take my own tea-bag with me lol

lauren_1

We sat outside with it, i was trying to be all inconspicuous with it and covering my cup when a staff member came out, but i doubt they would of said anything about it.

It's payday tonight as i am having saturday off then will bank it all and pay off a large bit of sonycard, should have £300 by next week with OH's penny pot to count out (he's been saving it for 18 months give or take a bus fare here and there, and maybe some petrol).

Need to start looking at another car soon, the car has to go back in may so we either pick another one and carry on with finance, give it back or pay a balloon payment of £4000. I know getting another finance agreement sounds silly but its OH's car and he had it just before we got together, every now and again renault do 0% offers so will be worth a look.

lauren_1

Well its day 11 i think, keep forgetting

After a productive night at work i feel quite optimisic today, convinced my erm, line manager? cant quite think what to call him,he's been there longer than me, son of the boss and gets me to do all his skivvy jobs, yep thats a manger :rotfl: . Any way back to the point, i convinced him we should have a staff bank fascility on the till for when customers buy us drinks we could "deposit" a drink in our tab then either take the drink at the end of the night or take a large percentage of it as cash:T

:beer:

Got a lift home last night so that was another free night and had a relativly cheap day for food too, did a casserole in the slowcooker (will do for today too) and made a bread and butter pudding for afters from the remains of the value bread with some stewed apple instead of dried fruit.

hphayward

lauren_1 wrote:

Day 9

Well i passed another test yesterday, after school i went to meet a friend for a coffee at costa's BUT i did it the DFW way:j

I refuse to pay £1+ for a cup of tea so just asked for a mug of hot water, said i was detoxing and popped in one of my own teabags:beer:
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Got my filling refilled and settled for the free amalgam filling as its only my molar, if it was a front tooth then i would of stumped up the £50 for a white one, but then i would need to get my teeth whitened to match or do they do a creamyishbeensmokingfor6yearsanddrinkingtoomuchcoffee colour??

Hi Lauren - good luck with your challenge! I can't offer you much advice on saving money at the dentist (even not going won't save you money in the long run), but I can confirm that that "white" fillings come in a range of natural (and modified) colours, such as "smoker", "ex-smoker", "milky white", "bleached white", etc, though we in the trade have boring names for them like A1, A2, etc. You could look at schemes such as HSA, Westfield, etc (there is an MSE article on these) which repay you the cost of treatment against a weekly/monthly premium once you are back in the black - they can be well worthwhile if you need regular dental treatment, glasses, etc - just do the maths.

By the way, I just registered to reply to your post, and put your name as "referrer" - not sure what you get for that, but I hope it's something!

Keep up the good work!

hphayward
Armchair Money-Saver (good in theory)

smilealot

WOW - I'm so impressed by your efforts Lauren - you are an inspiration. Well done!

jinky67

wish i had the courage to do this but i think my OH would die :rotfl:
DONT EVER BUY A NEW CAR!!! every money saver should know you lose up to half the value just driving it out the showroom.Pick a reputable 2nd hand car dealer and buy one there.
in the last 10 years we have spent about 2000 and had some really good deals,currently have a merc-1992 only cost us £300 sold old car for £800 OH said it was the first time he had a car MOTd and there was nothing wrong with it:D

lauren_1

Day 12
Its Raining And Cold.
Perfect Non Spending Weather!

Deepindebt_3

Great non spending weather, unless you go and spend the afternoon looking at new houses and thinking you could just about get a mortgage for it. But knowing you are living in cloud cuckoo land when you find out it will cost £1300 per month. Think I will stay where I am.

Love reading your updates by the way lauren_1