Courgette's 'Frugality gives us options' diary

edinburgher

£3k profit from a side business? That's depressingly awesome, almost as much as we earn from real work!

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Great to hear from you, glad all is going well. Good luck with everything and I look forward to keeping up with your diary. Xx

Courgette

Thanks all!

Ed - the eBay figure is what I'd like to earn, it's currently around half that. It's also taken three years to get it to that point and we do work very hard on it. Most days we send out about 15 parcels which just in themselves even with a great system in place isn't quick.

For the record, I set the £3k pm profit figure when I was trying to work out how much I'd need to feel well off. We need around about £1300 pm to cover the basics including food and travel, I'd like about £100 pm family fun money, £100 pm each for me and DH as fritter money then something towards travel/weekends away. I'd also like to be able to OP/save about £1k pm. That to me would feel wealthy so that's what I'm aiming for!

Family day out today to a free museum. Bus fares for all of us was £5 but unfortunately needed to pop into a supermarket as DS3 is having a big growth spurt and I hadn't taken him enough food. Ended up buying yellow stickered bread for the freezer, half price coffee which we sort of needed, an out of date stick of celery half price (why?????) and some gyoza as our regular supermarket don't sell it. Ended up spending £13 which I'm a bit annoyed about really as I'd intended to have a NSD. Ho hum.

greent

Great to see you back x

earthgirl

Love family days and free museums!

Courgette

Woo-hoo, London tomorrow!!!:j:j:j Really hoping the weather behaves though :eek::eek::eek:

I went to a funeral this week which really knocked the wind out of my sails. My beloved electric bike has stopped working too which is a real pain in the rear. It's done approx 200 miles and is 2 months old. The battery just will not hold a charge. Have attempted to contact people I bought it from but they're not answering my emails. Will leave it until after the weekend then ramp it up if I still haven't heard from them but I'm a bit worried about it really and have very real transportation issues too. Grrrr.

Otherwise it's been a quiet week. I've added another £250 to my S&S ISA taking this up to the giddy heights of £2000.

Very very excited about London, if I haven't already said it :rotfl: Looking forward to coming back with renewed vim and vigour too!

newbiesaver55

De-lurking to say I find your posts v encouraging! You've inspired me to increase my number of client hours... Not as motivated as I could be at the moment! Impulse spender here... anyway, as you were!

Bravo on the long breastfeeding, i'd had enough by about a year. 2 years is amazing!

I'm going to look at Frugalwoods as I've never heard of them!

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Hello,

Have a lovely time in London, so much fun to be had. Xxxx

earthgirl

Hope you are having a great trip!

Courgette

Had a really great time in London, even DH the professional London-hater enjoyed it! We packed absolutely loads into our 2.5 days there and really didn't spend a lot and what we did spend was all food and transport. It seems to me that if you can find a way around the ridiculous, hilarious property prices you could have a very cheap, very interesting life living in London.

Some of the things we did:
- Natural History Museum
- V&A
- tube from South Kensington to Greenwich with a pushchair, loads of bags and two tired children over Friday rush hour. Sorry if you were held up by us :rotfl:
- Free trip up the Skygarden. Great views. It snowed a tiny little bit while we were up there so the outside bit was closed. Not sure why as it was still undercover!
- Gorgeous vegan food at Borough Market and got to do a good load of people spotting
- Got to lie on the floor in the Tate Modern under some blankets. We were cold, wet and tired by this point so it was great!
- Saw deer in Greenwich Park
-Saw wild parakeets in Greenwich Park!
- Visited the Maritime Museum but didn't have enough time there
- Walked through the Greenwich Tunnel

DS3 was also particularly taken with the DLR we were on that broke down, he's still talking about that a week later :rotfl:
Tried to convince DS2 that all you need to do in life is get a job at Canary Wharf for 10 years, shout some numbers all day then you can spend the rest of it watching DanTDM. Don't think he's entirely convinced!

Didn't get to meet the lovely Museumworker cos she was ill and unfortunately I've been ill since. Boooo.

Concentrating on getting rid of this bug but am feeling completely re-motivated and ready to get stuck back in!