May: Pin Money Savings Challenge

Queenie

:A Well done, Lucie!!

catznine

Slow start this month - £5.91 from pennies found down back of sofa and on floor (does that count?) Brain a bit foggy this week but hope to do better later.

Last 2 months total is £51.02 (from bogofs, choosing cheaper options and buying 2nd hand)

moggins

Virtual saving of £16 from buying my daughters birthday present early. Baby Chou Chou reduced from £29 to £13 in Boots

nicki_2

I spent £1.20 of my PIN on a box file and some superglue the otherday as housekeeping for this week is very thin to say the least!

I also took my daughter shopping last Thursday so I got my non-food- shopping fix without spending that much money. I went into home bargins and bought exactly £5 worth of food/foil (including "Spiderman" on video for OH for only 99p! Taken out the money he owes me) and some sweets for daughter. The rest of the shopping, apart from a roll of plain gold giftwrap from Oxfam (orginally £2.99, reduced to £1.50) was daughters. We hit EVERY charity shop along the road and I noted where I could buy cheap toiletries, bleach etc. She bought 5 cassettes (50p each), a black velvet & diamante dress from George (£2.50), a top from George (75p), sweets and wanted to buy trainers but I managed to talk her out of that. My mum always wants ideas of what to buy her, as daughter got a "20meter aided swim" certificate over the bank holiday, I knew she'd want to get her a prize. Daughters face on Saturday when my mum produced the EXACT trainers she'd seen as a prize for the certificate was worth the screaming fit daughter had when I said no, plus it saved us £5. :j

However the following day, a gypsy knocked at our door and tried to sell us some charms. I've been brought up to NEVER turn a gypsy away and always buy whatever you can no matter how tight the money is. So I spent £5 PIN money on a charm to bring us good luck in money. Over the years I've bought 2 other charms and both have brought me luck/love. The one I'm most happy with though is a small glass nugget which has some bubbles/lines inside. I bought it as a love charm and noticed, afterwards but before I met OH, if you look at it a certain way you can actually make out the letter 'P' which is OH's first initial :eek: Since we've been together for 6 years this weekend I couldn't bring myself to turn away the gypsy, although I haven't told OH. He doesn't believe in all that "nonsense".

Taking an inventory now of what I have :
PIN Total : £3.48
Virtual PIN : Can't remember LOL!!!

angela110660

During the last 3 weeks, I have managed to save just over £43 entirely from food shopping at Sainsburys, Somerfields and Tesco. I am amazed at the amount. DH is a bit cynical and says that I should expect there to be savings anyway when I go to so many places but by the end of the month, I could have over £60 which equates to a frugal week's shopping. I intend to save the money however and show DH later in the year how much I have saved! Ha ha.
My only question is - where do people find all these money off coupons that they seem to use when shopping? I never seem to get any at all - not even when the free papers drop onto the doormat.
Happy saving!
PS I write all the amounts I save in a little book and put the actual cash in a pot.

crana999

nicki wrote:

Elona, we rarely take our daughter to the cinema so it really is a treat. Between our video/DVD collection and my mums collection (just about every Disney film ever released on video and more!!!) I can manage to keep her entertained with films for days on end. Infact, a few weeks ago she was really ill for a number of weeks (about 4 in total) and she spent most days curled up under her quilt on the sofa watching videos which I borrowed 5+ at a time from my mum, and she still hasn't seen all the "U" videos

Nicki, do you ever use your local library? If you run out of videos for her, you can usually borrow kids' videos for free (on her library card) plus books and story tapes for her. It's worth checking out the events they have on too - they usually have some great free events for kids.

catznine

I've just bought an eyelet setter tool kit and some lovely pens for card making for half price on ebay even with postage I have saved £20 on items I have been wanting to get for ages! Combined with the 5p :rolleyes: I found on the bedroom floor today (I think OH is being more careful about his loose change now he's seen me gathering it up, well it all goes into our joint savings account!) total £20.05 + £5.91 (previous dropped pennies!) = £25.96 :j

Have just had a go at home made yogurt so will see if that worked in the morning and work out how much I saved there.

pavlovs_dog

after the week's victorious nature i may just join you!

a virtual saving of £10 on saturday (got a GV from pizza hut after i complained about the dire service)

today, i set up office so that i have a dedicated space for study. the desk was £25, but i had a bonus bonds GV from that lottery survey, so i got it for £20, then my chair was £45 from work, but with staff discount came to £40.

bnringing my PIN total to

actual £10
virtual £10

not a bad start, just need to find somewhere to keep it all now!

Mrs_Thrift

Well after thinking I couldn't possibly join in as we're currently living beyond our weekly budget at the moment anyway (hubby is on sick pay and we're making up for the excess from my wages so we're not in the red yet, but we aren't able to save up like we were.) But, this weekend has made me realise I've got a lot of virtual savings I can record. I'm not including BOGOFs and reductions as they just come out of the grocery budget which I'm over on anyway, if you see what I mean. So I'm including things we don't buy that we usually do, and points and freebies and the like:

Starting in May -

First week, didn't buy TV guide - £0.40 saving
Second week, bought cheaper TV guide (as a treat!) - £0.10 saving
Last Saturday, hubby traded in 21 unused PC games - £45.00 credit
Last Saturday, spent Boots points - £7.65
Last night, received gift voucher from Asda for being overcharged - £2.00

TOTAL so far: £55.15 :j

We were particularly impressed with the Asda voucher. We went shopping last night and had allocated £1.50 for fizzy pop. Hubby was going to buy 1 bottle of Irn Bru for £1.32 when I spotted 2 for £1.50 on the 1.25 litre (used to be 1.5 l didn't they?!) bottles of Cocoa Cola, which will last him longer as he tends to finish a bottle in about a day once he's opened it, regardless of size. :rolleyes:

But after we'd paid I looked over the recepit as usual and we'd been charged £1.06 each for the Coke. Went to Customer Services desk, the girl went to check the shelf, came back, gave us the 62p overcharge in cash (we'd been worried we'd have to faff around with debit card which we'd used to pay with) then also handed us this £2.00 voucher "for the inconvenience." Standing at the customer service desk for a few minutes, chatting to hubby, is the kind of inconvenience I certainly don't mind being paid £2.00 for!!!

omega_2

Goal: aPMS>£60 for May

aPMS money looking a bit weedy this week: £5 from using a Tesco “deal” for airport parking, 30p misc, c.40p for buying Boots own hayfever spray.
On the up side, vPMS is consistently healthy with £9 saved (coupons).
Plus I’ve got some more aPMS planned.

So May totals so far:
aPIN: £13.70
vPIN: £19.47