April Pin Money Challenge

DaisyNelson

westwardbymanier wrote:

I have just come across a website which may be of interest to sell or buy second hand books.To buy £3.75 incl postage and to sell your own £3.00 each and no fee unlike amazon.I am definitly going to use it for getting rid of my childrens books they never read.There is also a guide on how much you can charge for postage when selling. Good luck the website is www.greenmetropolis.com and they donate 5p to the woodland trust everytime you buy a book.

I've been using this site for about a year, (books are my vice). I can't reccomend it enough. When you sell a book, you leave the money in and let it build up. Also makes buying books much cheaper, especially as you can put them back on sale, once you've read it.

nicki_2

My PIN money is all but gone :mad: Since I had to give OH money for the train on Friday, I was left short on housekeeping and wouldn't you know this week I've needed to buy more spread/butter and milk as well as fruit! I had two choices, take the money out of the next lot of housekeeping (which is already down to £30 with once-a-month purchases needed) or out of my PIN. Oh, and did I mention I also gave OH another £4 out of my PIN money to pay for his train on Monday? I think I'm going to start afresh next time my money goes in to my bank account from OH. Not that I'm going to go on a spending spree with the PIN money after all you can't buy much with 26p.

As for our car :wall: The mechanic didn't turn up on Friday, we didn't find the insurance documents until Sunday (everything seemed to go wrong on Saturday so I just curled up and hid from the world that night for a change). OH rang Churchill told them of the situation and they arranged for a garage to come and pick the car up on Monday. From what we were told there was supposed to be a curtesy(sp?) car dropped off when the car got picked up as we are entitled to one according to the insurance policy. This didn't happen as apparently the garage takes the car away, assesses the repairs, reports them to the insurance company who then has to give the go ahead for the repairs to be done and that is when we would get the curtesy car :mad: Wednesday morning and still no car!

Its costing £5.10 return on the train and another £1.50 on the bus (thank goodness OH has the time to walk from work to the train station after work instead of getting the bus back as well!) so thats £6.70 a day and a total of £26.80 over the last 4 days which is what OH pays out for a tank of petrol which lasts 8 or so days. He's even had to borrow £10 from our daughters birthday money/savings to pay for his train as he only gets paid today. I just keep telling myself that we'll get the money back one way or another and then it can be put to good use, like paying off some debt or being put into our "savings" account to pay for car tax & MOT in 12 months time.

OH has paid me back the money he borrowed from the housekeeping, but not the PIN money (I actually forgot about that until I've just found the IOU in the PIN tub. Thankfully that puts next weeks housekeeping up to £35 so I will hopefully have some money left at the end of the month.

Lucie_2

nicki wrote:

My PIN money is all but gone

Don't worry - at least you had some "spare" cash to pay for it all, instead of sticking it on a credit card & worrying about it when the bill comes. Emergencies crop up all the time - it's just one of those irritating things in life.
Don't get too downhearted - there's always next month!

omega_2

Time for a check-in, me-thinks:
£25 Joining Incentive from First Direct.
54p Holiday pay from Mystery Shopping Co.
Approx £1 for using up some free baby lotion and cotton wool instead of buying wipes for daughter.
£2.97 for buying beaker for daughter with Boots Points.
£3.00 for making 4 birthday cards + 50p or sos worth of paper by using some recycled gift bags for OH’s Birthday Pressies.
Oh, and Grocery shopping has yielded: £4.05 from coupons, 38p multibuy savings and 89p from “re-branding” this week.
Closing Balance £93.89, (and well on target to achieve £100 goal! – happy dance!)

nicki_2

Just done my weekly shop (minus fruit & veg, that will be done soon when I go to pick up daughter) which came to £21.49. Not bad considering there are things on there that I wasn't going to buy and remembered we needed it as I went around.

I checked at customer service as to what Asdas policy on Money off coupons was and, my store at least (Sefton store, Liverpool) accepts them even if you haven't bought the product. I didn't push it though and only used £1.50 so this weeks shopping came in at £19.99 :j Daughter owes me 31p for a bag of sweets she wanted and I saved 8p on multibuys. So, I'm keeping the £1.50 I saved to spend on some flowers at the fruit shop when I get my fruit and veg (I've wanted some for ages but I'm not buying them unless I have the money "spare"). Daughter can give me the money when she gets in from school which will go in the PIN money, and the 8p will go in as well. I also include any "slummy" (anything from 10p > )

Since I'm starting over :
Virtual Savings : £1.50
PIN Total : £0.76

Right, off to the fruit shop with my list.

westwardbymanier

Queenie i noticed from a previous thread that you use a breadmaker.I was wondering if there was a recipe included with it for malt loaf that you can use in the breadmaker?

Curry_Queen

I've just used up most of my PMS for this month to cover the cost of the extra Tesco and Iceland orders I made this week, plus a mobile phone for my son, which I spotted on one of the other boards and was a bargain I couldn't resist ... and the rest will pay for my Lakeland order when I get round to placing it

I would have had almost £200 for the month though had I not used it, most of which came from Tesco, Iceland and M & M sports but sometimes you just have to speculate to accumulate and I should have enough food now to last all next month, and possibly longer, and enough wine to start up my own cellar

elona

I have given up on saving this month as everything has conspired against me.

After waiting over 2 weeks for shower part - it did not solve the problem so we now have a new shower- bill has not yet arrived.

Hall floor tiles arrived and floor is being renewed to match original - still have to pay for labour.

Daughter's laptop arrived (fixed) but took it to her yesterday so train fares, lunch, cinema etc.


On the plus side

1 The tiles are an investment in the house :money:

2 We have a nice new shower that works Yipee :j


3 I got to spend a nice day with my daughter which I thoroughly enjoyed

(she sent me a nice e-mail last night to say how much she liked the day)

So to sum it all up some things are more important than money.

omega_2

nicki - enjoy the flowers - from your recent posts, looks like you could welcome a treat!

Curry_Queen wrote:

but sometimes you just have to speculate to accumulate

Too true, Curry Queen – but I am just trying to justify putting a “shipping” sized order into Boots.com. to stock up my gift draw? (7 pressies, 12 christmas crackers, enough shower stuff and conditioner for the next year, 170 nappies, not to mention some pot pourri for me! Came to just over £40.). Will put savings made in my PIN money in the month that I give the gifts. Where the original price was more than the budget, I will just include the difference.

Elona wrote:

some things are more important than money

Well said!

nicki_2

They had run out of the flowers that I wanted (other flowers were £2.49+) so I invested the money (and a bit more) in a shopping trolley. I can now do runs to the charity shop without having to wait until the weekend for OH to be home with our car and at the same time I can go to a cheaper fruit shop and to Savers for stuff. If I wear my new walking boots (bargin around here at £14.99 for proper walking shoes!) so I can walk all the way there (around 30 minutes) I'll get more than my daily quota of exercise AND burn extra calories. All it will cost me is the bus fare back to ensure I'm home intime for picking daughter up from nursery.

So, £4.89 on fruit & veg (usually about £10 in Asda but I haven't bought that much this week), £2.99 on a trolley and 12p in PIN. I've now got £2.60 to last me the week :rolleyes:

Oh, and did I mention I found 10p on the floor? Into the PIN money it went