NSK; February 28 Days Later!

splodgethefirst

good evening all,

done my budgets for the month:
petrol - 120
fun spends (includes half term) 100
food bank - done
NSD - target 15

Today was a very expensive day. Paid out for my MOT/service (but had saved for it ahead of time) but still painful to pay out. also got some food bits n bobs.

PheoniX

Hullo peeps :wave:

Good luck with your move Kat n Dorothy!

Have had a busy day of cleaning and decluttering and have managed to bin a few bits and set aside several items to sell when Im ready to tackle ebay! So a spend free day to kick start February. Food supplies are running low but I am hoping to use up as much foodage as possible before hitting the shops. I find this pattern of eating up supplies before buying more works well for me and my budgets ..

I am planning to use my credit card to pay for everything (excluding direct debits) from now on and Repay in Full :money:so I can accumulate loyalty points. The vouchers I will receive in return will go toward food bills.

I am also thinking of buying weekly £1 Te$co saving stamps for Xmas! :xmassmile (note how Im embracing this prepping malarkey ). £1 a week wont break the bank but will be valuable nearer the time to spend as necessary or to give part gift to my lovely parents :A

No exercise today as Ive been a bit throaty so I'll snuggle up tonight and hit the treadmill in the next few days

Nowt much else to report really, hope you are all keeping warm and well

:wave:

short_bird

Hi, it's a free listing weekend on eb@y...

MrsGSR

catshark88 wrote: »

One question on NSDs. Do they count if it's just me not spending, or does DH have to have one too?? I realise it would be a total cheat for me to claim them and to just pass the shopping to DH, but I am eternally doomed to fail 'cos I just cannot convince him to take a packed lunch and not pop into Boots (Lord knows I've tried....)????

If I can act independently, then it's a NSD today for me. If not, it was close, but DH has taken the kids to Mr M to buy the ingredients for them to make home made ice cream.

I'm now shopping entirely at Ald1, though extras like today would be mr m due to mileage in the country!

Enjoy your weekends peeps. :-)

I just count them as me cos my DH just can't help himself! He can't not spend!

CEW

Hi All Zombie Slayers,

As promised a quick daily update just to keep me on track.

Food budget has been reduced from £150 down to £130. This is for 2 adults, 5 dogs, 3 chickens and a parrot. This also covers all household and toiletry items as well. Stocked up a little on chicken and parrot food last month so hoping to get closer to the £100 mark but didn't want to set too hard a budget as I only just reached budget last month.

Have already spent quite a chunk of the budget as I did a big Aldi shop on Thursday, which I took out if the Feb budget as I only went then so I could use the £5 off voucher. That was a little under £50 plus I spent more today on a few bits that I could not get in A's and dog food from the farm shop. I will update the total tomorrow once I have checked the figures.

The really good news is I have spent less than £100 and now have all of the main ingredients for ALL of our meals for Feb (meal plan for the month prepared and batch cooking tomorrow) plus there will be spare meat / meals in the freezer towards March. All I should need to buy during the month is milk and fresh fruit and veg and maybe some cooked meat and cheese for lunches to work, or maybe I could just use more of the eggs from the chicks instead :money:

Not sure what the fuel budget is yet as I need to check what we used last month as still getting used to the fuel consumption of the new car we got in Oct.

As regards the decluttering I persuaded (read forced) OH to help me sort out the misc food cupboard. You know the one.....where you put that particular ingredient you needed for that recipe you made once. 3 carrier bags of out of date or really not needed food sent to landfill :mad: Does green food colouring really go off ? I am counting this as 1 item decluttered as it was only one cupboard and I would be cheating myself if I counted each item individually.

Well at least I can see everything we have and as we have lots of strong white flour OH has decided he needs to make a lot more bread so as usual I am looking on the bright side. In general we don't actually have any food waste as we have lots of little 4 and 2 legged dustbins that eat anything that's left on our plates and any left overs when cooking are frozen for another day :T

Sorry for the long post. I promise it won't be this long every day but wanted to get a couple of things down to get me started and keep me motivated.

Good luck everyone

Chez x

Fmess

Evening all, new and old

Had a spendy day today as did the food shopping. This is my second food shop as I record money totals from 25th to 24th so my totals are quite high compared. Also bought all the animal food for the month as had a £5 off voucher when you spent over £40

Was very good as went shopping in town for the first time in months and months. I only used birthday money to buy a couple of needed items and a new jumper for a treat I still have some birthday money left over so I am going to use it to pay off some more of my ccard and then if I think of something else I would like to buy later, I'll put that on the ccard. If not, then it will pay off more of my debt

Done the 'cleaning' tonight, in preparation for a day of going to the gym and doing school work tomorrow. During term time I do a very quick clean of the dirtiest looking parts of the house each weekend and then in the holidays I always try to do a complete spring clean of the whole house. Anyone else have lots of pets and lots of dust? It drives me mad!

Good luck for the move tomorrow Kat and Dorothy

Hope you've all had a productive/relaxing day

CEW

Fmess wrote: »

Evening all, new and old

Done the 'cleaning' tonight, in preparation for a day of going to the gym and doing school work tomorrow. During term time I do a very quick clean of the dirtiest looking parts of the house each weekend and then in the holidays I always try to do a complete spring clean of the whole house. Anyone else have lots of pets and lots of dust? It drives me mad!

Good luck for the move tomorrow Kat and Dorothy

Hope you've all had a productive/relaxing day

Lots of pets, lots of dust and mega lots of love and fun :T:T

I wouldn't be without them

Chez x

Mountaingirl

Sounds like everyone is having a good start to February!
Kat, cleaning up after moving out always goes really quickly because everything is empty so you can really crack on - it's the tidying up of things that drives me nuts.

I had a very spendy day as I bought some much needed clothes for DS2 - he's grown out of everything and I just know that he's going to go through a huge growth spurt soon - his feet have gone up about 3 sizes just recently. He also has very 'hard to shoe' feet so his trainers were very expensive. In any case he had no trousers that fit so money had to be spent!
I also got some food which might see us to the end of the week, but given that I have three men in the house eating like horses I doubt it!

My budget for food last month was 450€ so this month I will say 440€ and I am going to be more strict about the NSDs this month.

Food 107.09/440.
NSD 0/15
Clothing 372.33

I have 45€ left in my purse to top up on next week if I need to. Basically I'll be staying in and not spending anything for the next 10 days. Ireally feel as if we are battoning down the hatches

I finally have found a really good goal to motivate me on the money saving front. I really want to move away from where we are now, it's not that it's not not nice here, it really is lovely and thre are so many great things about here. But, and it's a big but, it's a German speaking area and it's slowly making me die living in a place where I just don't really understand everything that is going on. So, if I want us to move, then we need to save up a lot of money to allow that.
I planned out a '3 year escape plan' the other day and some of the major things I need to do is de-clutter, sell off, finish the house, tidy up the loose ends. I keep adding on extra things as I think of them, little steps to get me to my goal. I suppose I better tell my DH some day, but in the meantime I'm sure he'll love to see the savings add up.

Midgie

Today was a spend day but I planned spend day so wasn't too bad! I bought much needed clothes for DD (she managed to put her knee through 2 pairs of jeans and leggings in a week!) and out for lunch with mum.

I did my weekly shopping and was really surprised at how well the meal planning worked in reducing my weekly shop (particularly when I went down a shelf on things)!

I also withdrew money and split into envelopes to cover the cost of my food shopping for the rest of the month and travel expenses. I get paid cash in a hand for a small job every Tuesday so I'm going to use that money to live on and try not to take any money out of my bank account for the rest of the month!

Gym tomorrow! First session in a few weeks so its going to be a sore one! Also first NSD tomorrow - the first of 5 planned ones this week! Fingers crossed!

• 0/15 Spend Free Days.
• £27.02/£100 Food Budget
• £0/£5 Local Food Bank.
• 0/12 fitness sessions

Midgie

Fmess

CEW wrote: »

Lots of pets, lots of dust and mega lots of love and fun :T:T

I wouldn't be without them

Chez x

I agree the dust is worth it for the unconditional love they give. I love coming home to see their waggy tails and happy faces. I have several friends who love being out and about, but I always can't wait to be home