Enjoying the Sunshine whilst Saving for the Rainy Day

debtfreewannabe321

Not a nsd today, needed some salad bits (some yummy strawberries and plums locally grown may have jumped in the basket too ) so a £7 spend there which will come from the grocery budget this month. I need to sit down and do a meal plan with £73 to spend :eek: let's see if I can stick to it. Would be marvellous if I could ...if not it's not too big a deal as I'm well under on grocery spends overall for the month so far :T

We've had a lovely free day out at a local beach, petrol costs only. Free parking, we found a free petting farm which DD spent her money on buying food to feed the animals (50p!! :T) was a lovely day even if we did get caught in a huge hail storm :eek: ....hm chilli in the slow cooker and we've got banana cake for pudding (hm by dh!) Hope everyone is well

brizzledfw

That sounds like a lovely day. OH is making dahl, naan and rice which is making me feel very spoilt as I feel very lethargic today. Think I know how you felt DFW, had a bug too, and my energy levels are still pants.

Here's to a lovely day with great weather tomorrow..I want to do stuff in the garden

please-let-me-be-lucky

Sounds like a lovely day.

Mmmm banana cake Xx

debtfreewannabe321

Oh that sounds delicious Brizzle I bet you enjoyed that! Our chilli and salad was yummy. DH makes a lovely onion salad Lucky the banana cake was lovely and it's all gone now as are all of the huge strawberries we bought at least they are healthy though lol

I've only just in the last day started to feel normal energy levels again after that bug I had (weeks ago now???) I can't believe how much it knocked me :eek: DH reckons it's because I'm getting older (cheeky git!)

Today he has gone to a charity thing for injured soldiers and has to do lots of exercise-y type things so I waved him off thinking for once I have the better end of the deal doing shopping, dinner, childcare, cleaning and ironing!

debtfreewannabe321

DD bought me breakfast in bed :smileyhea :happyhear it was just a few crumbs left from the cake last night :rotfl: but she brought up a knife and fork too for me to eat it with so I sat and ate it and she looked pleased as punch bless her

I've sat down and done the meal plan but i'm not sure it's looking very cheap here it is:

Mon: Jacket potato with L/O chilli from yesterday for adults and for the 5 little ones it will be cheese & beans. With salad.
Tues: sausage with mustard mash & red onion gravy
Weds: Pasta, veg & sauce (my use up the l/o veg & salad that is wilting day)
Thurs: Salad, boiled eggs, ham, HM savoury rice/ HM potato salad (dinner that can be eaten cold and pre-prepared as we have 3 different after school clubs to collect from at different times!)
Friday:Fish & chips (I nearly have enough in the freezer l/o from last week for this so only need to buy a small pack of fish)
Sat: Ready made pizza which I usually hate but we're travelling most of the day to and from DH's sister and kids will be eating at the party there anyway. We may even end up eating out as it could be quite late we finish there but am hoping to avoid that with some cheap ready meals in the freezer :money:
Sun: Easy oven frittata (recipe online hope it's nice!)

We can't eat anything with eggs as one of the kids i look after has an egg allergy so we try and have a day when i'm not looking after them where we can eat them. I've put boiled eggs on the menu for Thurs with the salad but the little one with allergy won't be offered one. The kids I look after are so fussy with salads & veg that this will be hit or miss anyway when I offer up a salad as a main meal :eek: but my kids like it and i'm hoping they will be a good role model and encourage the others to eat it we'll see though........!

My budget is so tight if I want to put money away into savings so I'm really hoping I can make it under £100. I also need fridge stuff like milk & yoghurts and lunchbox stuff.I will be shopping in a1di so i'll be back later to report :cool:

AlexLK

Your posts about food and cakes always leave me feeling hungry, your husband is a very lucky man.

debtfreewannabe321

Ah thank you Alex, I doubt he would say the same though. He thinks steak and beer (minus any sort of green veg/salad/fruit) is the way forward and often grumbles at my budget friendly pasta/potato dishes (ungrateful!)

Well we went shopping and got hailed on again! The hail was huge! It was like someone was up there throwing rocks at us :eek: DS2 thought it was great! DD & myself not so and we stood under cover whilst DS2 did a little rain dance in it outside a1di

Shopping amazingly came in at £62.51 :j Although I had to stop in at the co-op for a few things a1di didn't sell. That came to £3.50. Minus the £3 I spent on flowers shopping came to £63.01 :T. Let's see if it lasts though. There is only a few quid left in the envelope for shopping now as I lent the rest to my friend. I'm determined to make it last though, so game on

Tonight's dinner was supposed to be a nice stew but i've left it too late so that's now tomorrow's dinner instead! Today I will try the sausage, mustard mash with red wine & onion gravy sounds yummy so i hope it is!

*Robin*

Hi DFw, :hello:

Just catching up after what feels like ages; it's such a busy life you lead!
Yay to cheap days out and continuing to put ££ into savings - hope the mortgage adviser has good news for DH. :cool2:
Oooer to lending out cash you really cannot spare - am the same as you though; find it almost impossible to refuse the first time am asked (hate being put on the spot by someone in obvious need ).
Still, hopefully the woman's lottery win means you'll get back her loan without any hassles - keeping fingers crossed for you about that!

DD sounds gorgeous - aren't kids heart-meltingly adorable when they show their love in unexpectedly touching ways? Had to chuckle at the thought of you finishing off cake - in bed - with knife and fork! :rotfl:

All quiet on NastyN's fence and dog dispute front, atm? ..Long may it continue (she said hopefully ).

Am very impressed with your meal planning; I just used to rely on store-cupboard staples plus whatever could be found in fridge or garden - even brewed up nettle soup during our worst bouts of impecunity!
(For those who've not tried it; tastes mostly like spinach with chard overtones - not bad with a few sprigs of fresh mint and grated cheese - helps if everyone's really hungry of course ).

ETA: Cross-posted! Well done on grocery spends - tonight's dinner sounds pretty tasty; nowt for DH to complain about there (tell him he'll live longer if he treats steak as a very occasional treat, lol).

AlexLK

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

Ah thank you Alex, I doubt he would say the same though. He thinks steak and beer (minus any sort of green veg/salad/fruit) is the way forward and often grumbles at my budget friendly pasta/potato dishes (ungrateful!)

Well we went shopping and got hailed on again! The hail was huge! It was like someone was up there throwing rocks at us :eek: DS2 thought it was great! DD & myself not so and we stood under cover whilst DS2 did a little rain dance in it outside a1di

Shopping amazingly came in at £62.51 :j Although I had to stop in at the co-op for a few things a1di didn't sell. That came to £3.50. Minus the £3 I spent on flowers shopping came to £63.01 :T. Let's see if it lasts though. There is only a few quid left in the envelope for shopping now as I lent the rest to my friend. I'm determined to make it last though, so game on

Tonight's dinner was supposed to be a nice stew but i've left it too late so that's now tomorrow's dinner instead! Today I will try the sausage, mustard mash with red wine & onion gravy sounds yummy so i hope it is!

Very ungrateful indeed, he'd quickly change his mind if he had to spend a week with Mrs. K.

It was hailing here too not so long ago.

debtfreewannabe321

Right! Let's try again! I've just tried posting and the keyboard was playing up, so after hoovering it it seems to be working again :T. DS1 I expect is to blame as he wanders off with the laptop for hours on end and every time we get it back something has been downloaded on it or there is something stuck under the keyboard! Grrr!

Anyway!

Yesterday, DH had the day off so we did the garden. It looks worse than before now :rotfl: we put grass seeds down but we get so many birds in our garden I was worried they would eat them all so we went off to a1di and bought some cheap compost and have sprinkled it all on top, now the garden looks like it has NO grass whatsoever :eek: I hope it rains soon for some of it to disappear :eek:

I've checked the bank quickly this morning and there isn't any money to transfer into savings just yet. There is £26 left until payday which is next Monday, have left it in there in case I need more than the £50 I already have aside for petrol at the weekend (am hoping not but it's a loooooooooong drive )

DH & I had a meeting with a mortgage advisor yesterday evening too . Good news is he thinks we can get a mortgage for around 4% interest ( I was thinking it would be more like 8% so this is great news to my ears:T) although would be better if we could get together a 25% deposit he thinks we would be assured a yes then. With only a 15%-20% deposit they may still say no, the higher the amount we have saved the better, he thinks our chances are good though. Our defaults from all the debts went on our credit file in 2011. So because this is 3 years ago he told us our credit history is not as dire as we first thought :eek::j September is when the last default was applied so that is when Ideally we should be looking to apply, not before. I'm happy enough with that as we don't actually want to move before next July anyway .

So savings will continue between now and then and we will see just how much we can scrape together. 25% of 150k is £37,500 :eek::eek::eek: which I think will be nigh on impossible to get together in that time. However 20% is 30,000. We have £9200 saved already and we can borrow interest free from DH's work £15k so potentially we already have £24,200 so that's just £5,800 to save :cool:

Wish me luck