Scrimping behind the scenes - with debt of £31,000!

Seasidegal58

Morning! Early post for me today – have had a very busy week at work and was feeling it – so last night I went to bed fairly early (well for me anyway!), had a good night’s sleep and full of the joys of spring this morning with a nice three days off work before me.

Hi inod – you go pamper yourself! You feel so much better for it at work – it does give you confidence and even if I don’t have any actual client contact scheduled on a particular day you never know if something will crop up – they call in unexpectedly etc. Even relationships with other colleagues – it does affect how you are perceived – and more so if you’re a woman in my experience. I know there have been times when because I’ve been running late in the morning for work I’ve skimped on the make-up and ran out with my hair wet from the shower (big mistake that always is!). Now, I don’t wear loads of make-up - in fact as I’ve got older I wear less – but it looks more polished than it used to because of how I apply it and when it’s not there it it affects the way I feel at work. At home, if I’m not actually going out somewhere with friends I don’t care so much and when I go shopping I’ll go out with with my hair tied back and just a bit of powder and lipstick. You made me laugh when you mentioned the ex-in-laws – I think meeting them or good friends of exes are as nearly as bad as meeting the ex! You always want to look better/appear more successful then you were than when you were with them (see – the whole keeping up appearances thing again!):rotfl:
Morning mooomin – re newspapers –I don’t buy them five days a week all year as I only buy it on my commute in the morning so you have to take five weeks holiday out of the equation:D . BUT – that’s rather a crafty answer to your question as I usually buy a £2.50 Sunday paper each week as well which is The Sunday Times that you have to pay for online anyway. Still re. the commute, I do like my Daily Wail in the morning – I do the quick crossword to wake up my brain and then read the news which usually takes me to just before I arrive. I do have a kindle which I always take with me (for the commute in the evening) and I read this if I have finished the paper before I get to my destination (or more realistically I fall asleep! ). I have an ipad butI don’t like taking this out of the house all day – I can use my smartphone if I want to look up something on the net urgently, but the screen is too small for me to read something like a paper – it drives me up the wall!

One positive thing re. papers/magazines that I have done though – for years I have been reading three monthly women’s magazines. One I these I receive via a subscription that comes from a Christmas gift so that’s ok. The other two I buy myself at nearly £4 a pop each! I’ve decided that I am no longer doing this as I can read these online free at my leisure so that’s nearly £8 per month saved.

So Thursday night was end of my first LBM week – I ended spending £28.55 on food/household – so came in under budget with £1.45 spare! Other spends (taking the greetings cards/stamps out of the equation which are in the “Gifts” account), were £167.55 – but £154 of this was the theatre tickets mentioned in my previous post so the balance of £10.25 comprised of newspapers, handcream (I have to use Aveeno) and 50p towards an umbrella (my old one broke so I used some £7 of my underwear budget M&S vouchers as I deemed this an emergency – can't walk to and fro to the station without an umbrella in my bag! ). The umbrella was £7.50 so I paid the extra in cash.

All in all I find this quite satisfactory and I’m under budget this week. Mind you last night was officially the start of week 2 of 4 and I met my friend for a drink after work – that rolled in at £25 each as wine and nibbles aren’t cheap in the City of Mammon! So more scrimping behind the scenes!


I’m now off to have my Aldi luxury croissants before sorting out handbags to see if any can go to the dress agency. I’ll report back on whether I found them tasty (the croissants not the handbags!). By the way, if anyone is interested, the Aldi version of Shredded Wheat Bitesize is great – couldn’t tell them from the real thing!

Chrysalis1976

You're doing so well, I used to buy magazines a lot then realised that it's the same old stuff churned out repeatedly and if I want something now I can just use the web for research.

Enjoy your croissants and have a lovely weekend.

C x

dawnybabes

You're doing Great x

Divingmad

Hiya,


Looks like things are going really well, keep up the good work

in_need_of_direction

I now suggest a magazine sub as a gift when asked what I want for birthday, etc. I love getting nice post.

Seasidegal58

Good afternoon

Hi Chrysalis – I came to the same conclusion on the mags I have stopped – you can find most things on the web now and their actual online magazines are very good and free! Inod - It’s good to get nice post though isn’t it instead of rotten old bills!

Hi there to dawnybabes and Divingmad and thanks a bundle for your good wishes.

After a bit of a late night at some friends’ last night (I already had the bottle of wine I took round so no cost :j), I woke up to no landline phone or internet connection due to (in the words of Sky’s customer service “a major incident in East Anglia and the South-East”). Finally got on line this afternoon, but it was annoying because I wanted to order my food/household shopping this morning and had to wait. Anyway I’ve ordered three weeks shopping via Tesco to take me up to the end of the month. I worked out a three week food plan, using some of Jack’s recipes and a few from a student cookbook I found I had (obviously bought for an earlier cutting down exercise! ). The bill came to just over £63 so I have an extra £8 pw till month end to buy milk and any extra veg, etc I might need. I only ended up paying £2 for the delivery and (as tizerbell pointed out in an earlier post), this is cheaper than getting a taxi back from the supermarket. I also found in my Tesco account that I had £2.50 in Clubcard vouchers I forgot I had so I haven’t really paid for the delivery after all.:)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to sort out my handbags for the dress agency and found two in the end that I thought could go so took them down there yesterday afternoon and will wait to see if she wants them. If she sells all my other bits that will come to £32.50.

By the way, on Friday the refund of £5.99 came pinging back into my account from Lovefilm (or Amazon Prime as it is now) so that went on the Santander card.

Project for tomorrow is to have a good sort out of my make-up drawer. I certainly don’t buy as much as I used to, but am going to check out what I can keep and what can go. I used to buy the expensive designer brands, but am going to try and “drop a brand” in future as done in food shopping to see if there is much difference now. When I started wearing make up as a teenager many moons ago, it was just really Rimmel and Miners (whatever happened to Miners!) in the affordable bracket for me and the consistency and stay-on power weren’t’ as nice as the more expensive brands. A lot’s changed over the years and I believe that the cheaper brands have improved vastly so I’ll give it a go.

Will ring Sky tomorrow re the negotiation – I think they were a bit preoccupied today!

Re. the Aldi croissants – they were delicious, but I wouldn’t waste any money on the refuse bags – very flimsy!

tootallulah

Morning, you are doing really well. I hope it feels good!

skintygerlinky

Hiya missis!!


Just having a quick read, you're doing well! Know its difficult but its really good to type it all out and face up to things.


There's a thread on here (not sure where, soz...have a look or someone may post the link??) that is dedicated to 'would buy' and wouldn't buy' at Aldi and Lidl, it's dead useful. Also, you can't go wrong with Jack Monroe, that girl is ace, isn't she?!


Best of luck!! You're on the right track.
PS I'm from Liverpool - there's plenty of us up here who don't give a flying sheep's bum what our nails look like!! And we wet our pants at that Desperate Scouse Wives pile o' pants! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Seasidegal58

Thanks toots – I am feeling rather pleased as, apart from my food bill, Sunday paper, and dry cleaning for jacket, I’ve not spent anything extra over the Bank Holiday weekend. I went out for a couple of hours this afternoon as it was a lovely day here and I helped my friend walk her daughter’s two dogs – just had coffee and biscuits at her place afterwards.

Welcome skinty! Thanks for the thread tip on Aldi – it’s a shame they don’t deliver, but that’s how they keep their costs down I suppose – looks like I’m back with Mr T for food deliveries but I was impressed with Aldi’s veg so I might pop in from time to time if I need topping up.

Talking about nails and appearances you will love this skinty – I was carrying out the “Make Up Audit” earlier and I found something called a “Lash Activator!” This is something that looks like a mascara, but you put it on under your proper mascara and it’s supposed to help your eyelashes grow and thicken up! It was still sealed up in its box and I can’t even remember when I bought it, but it was obviously something I felt I could not live without at the time. I’m going to try it and I’ll let you know if I end up with eyelashes like Bambi’s mother . If it’s any good I think I will use it on my head!

Talking of the make-up audit, I ended up with eight lipsticks, four eye shadows, and three eye liner pencils to throw away. Apart from what’s in my make-up bag at the moment, I was left with ten lipsticks, a number of eye shadows, including two palettes, a couple of blushers, two foundations, three lip pencils, and a primer - all that are usable. And I still don’t look like Angelina Jolie ! So I won’t be buying any of the above for quite a while!


So back to work tomorrow – busy week again and I won’t be spending much apart from Thursday when I have a theatre and dinner day out! I’ll report how that went later in the week!!

in_need_of_direction

Can you come sort out my makeup too? I need a master class from you as I'm at the stage where I don't even know what looks right and what doesn't.