NSK; "The Janus Illusion".

PheoniX

Hi all :wave:

NSK/Tiptoes Lol possibly so! But I think that was a shared moment of joy with the bank manager teehee

XSpender Sorry to hear that your redundancy may come about prematurely This site is brilliant for teaching the skills to budget and live on less money..

Before I jump in the bath and settle for an early night, I thought I'd pop in to report SFD no 6. I am running low on milk and am out of potatoes, fruit and bread but I'm going to try and hold off for as long as possible! I find it easier to keep the momentum while I'm on a roll.

In the meantime I will have to make do with milk free herbal tea and a water based bland porridge with manuka honey for breakfast . I have plenty of rice and pasta as carbs, some tins and jars in dry stores, green lentils, frozen neeps and mushrooms for veg and a few proteiny based foods such as quorn mince for a bolognese.. I am going to have to be imaginative with food while I hold out to do a shop next Monday!

Hope you all have a nice relaxed evening.. G'night all :wave:

mooomin

1. SFD 2/20
2. Food budget £27.37/£200
3. Brand downshift 0/5
4. Lunch to work 3/11 (projected days in the office this month)
5. Arranged outings 2/4
6. Exercise 5/15
7. Petrol budget 0/£50
8. Food bank donation 0
9. Beauty spends 0/£10

Spends today:

53p on a wee carton of milk for work
£3.08 on drinks for me and a mate I haven't seen for ages. Perfectly excellent excuse to spoil a SFD

I'm aiming to have a SFD tomorrow, but even if not I'm chuffed that I'm on track with my work lunches and doing really well with my daily exercising.

Onwards and upwards for tomorrow

Billie-jo

Phoenix - well done on not paying the bank manager any interest it’s a great feeling isn’t it. We are on our 9th month of not paying any bank charges etc and its so good to be able to stick two fingers up at them. Those £22-£25 charges sure added up at times. I look on it as THEY are working for ME now not the other way around.


Busy day sorting out the tip that is our bedroom. Two large bin bags and a carrier bag to charity shop along with a load of plastic bags that they use for customers. Recycling bin has been fed some cardboard and odd socks which I have been keeping to see if their partner turns up have now been binned - no need to state the obvious here is there but guessing on three days before at least one turns up.
Had our house and contents quote through and its £74 cheaper than last year - not sure why - but accepted it as cover is the same.
Another SFD as well so all good today.

No spend days - 4/20
Grocery budget £200 - £25.35/£200
Petrol budget £120 - £00.00/£120
Cut down 5 brands 1/5
Pre arranged outings 2 with budget of £30 in total £0/£30
Beauty spends £10 - £0.00/£10
No pub for 31 days - 6/31
Food bank donation - £1.00/£3.00

Mountaingirl

Today has been a spend day (Sunday was SF), but everything bought was essential and I went down a brand on two items (the rest I got in Ald!). I planned meals carefully and should have enough stuff in for the week. My cupboards are at a low as I had to throw so much open stuff out, but I shall build up stocks over time.

Have been very bad about exercise but will go to pilates tomorrow.

So figures now are
1. SFD 4/20
2. Food budget 207.77/450€
3. Brand downshift 2/5
4. Lunch to work n/a
5. Arranged outings 0/4
6. Exercise 3/25
7. Beauty spends 0/£10

Food spends are high but does include some eating out (if you can count scoofing down Maccy D's as eating out), and we should be fine until the end of the weekend.

We got a few bills today but they don't need to be paid out until the end of the month, so I'll set those up on internet banking to go out just after we've been paid.

missyv30

Evening everyone,

Well had a good day first day back to work am shattered kids kept me busy I have had my 3rd SFD and I walked home from work so that's 60 min walk which I will be doing everyday saves £17 on buses

Oh well early night for me am shattered night night xx

Mrs_Toast

Evening everyone.

Well I had my planned outing today so not a SFD but all budgeted. Had to pay for the park & ride and had a brew in the zoo waiting for my auntie. My sister was treating me & DS to Yo Sushi so lunch was free. My auntie is even more frugal minded so we both got our free brews at waitrose & sat in the shopping centre . I also did the food shopping today but as we didn't spend our budget for the outing I stocked up on the food/nappies we needed so SFDs for the rest of the week hopefully:D.

DH has been really kind and nipped to the local shop for something I forgot but with strict instructions not to buy anything else. Oh & the change from today, £5, has gone in the savings jar. Not quite sure what its gonna be for but if we don't need to save for anything then it'll go to the credit card.

I haven't done anything frugal as such today other than take snacks & drinks with us but thats better than nothing.

NSK. I hope the archery lesson went well. DH and I do field archery (not so much me since kids arrived) and we love it.

KittyBoo_2

Just popping in before I head off to bed for an early night.
Had a spend day today as I bought some jog bottoms, as planned and decided to take this out of the food budget. I'm sure I can make the remaining food budget stretch as I still have plenty of food left in the house.
I've actually done some walking into town, so now able to add my first session into my signature. Yipee.
Goodnight and see you all tomorrow.

Superdopsa

Evening all. Well today the weather was kind enough so I could walk to work, and go out for a run when I came home. I nearly talked myself of going for a run, but I talked myself back in to doing it, so feeling quite virtuous. Fingers crossed the weather will be good tomorrow so I can walk to work again, but it sounds to be pouring down outside at the moment.


Tomorrow will be a spendy day as it is craft club, so I will take advantage of a spend day and pick up a few fresh bits from Lidl on the way home.


I forgot to say yesterday that I took my gas and electricity readings, and will try to do that weekly so I can start to monitor my usage.


NSK - where do you buy a 2KG bag of red lentils? I have only managed to find a 1KG bag?


Hope everyone has a good Tuesday, and will check in again tomorrow.

MrsGSR

TiptoesDB wrote: »

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I think it was NSK who asked Lynneee about whether it was still financially better to go to morries with the staff discount or go to Aldi/Lidl. I would be interested to know as we have a relative who works at morries so we have the 10% card too and go there all the time. I am wondering whether to try discount supermarkets or whether it’s cheaper for us to use the card? I might have to do a comparison shop...

Both DH and I work for different food retailers, he gets a lot of our things from his store as it's a low budget one and he is there anyway. I get some things from where I work but as it's renowned for being expensive so we price check a lot of things. The nearest Aldi is a drive into one of the worst areas of the city a good 8 miles where you get a lot of traffic so it makes no sense for us to shop there because we are going out of our way and I can't see the point in using petrol to go way out of your way to get cheap groceries because in balance it doesn't save us money! I use my local market too
I do go to Lidl though as it's a few miles down the road and I combine it with a visit to friends or family and I stock up on stuff like nappies and store cupboard items so I don't go often.
So I think if you have a discount card use it, esp if the supermarket in question is nearby, then it makes sense to go there, going a long way out of your way just makes no sense, esp with fuel prices as they are. However if it's next to your place of work or something that's a bit different. Also you can often take advantage of special offers on as you get discount as well.

clippy_girl

Superdopsa wrote: »

NSK - where do you buy a 2KG bag of red lentils? I have only managed to find a 1KG

My large tesco do in the ethnic section 2kg for £2.99. A local indian shop sells them for the same. Not seen them cheaper than that but still cheaper than buying 500g bags