Remember you're a womble - 2016

Dizzy_Imp

Evening fellow wombles - some great savings being posted recently :T

Yesterday I decided, after much deliberation, to join The National Trust...but...being a stingy old mare, I looked for a money saving code and am pleased to report a reduction of £27.75 against the cost of an annual family pass. Made immediate use of it today meeting a friend and her two boys at Attingham Park for a great day of outdoor fun. There was an Easter egg hunt, a huge play area and lots of space for them all to blow off steam. Great day out Planning the next one already!

Only one egg today from the hens - they have, at last, decided that it's cold enough to have a moulting, so the hen-house looks like there's been a fox raid with feathers everywhere, scraggly looking birds and severe drop in production. So, just 10p for that.

Online food shop arrived just before dinner, which was good, as tonight's meal was on the order and total savings with promotions, price matching vouchers and substitutions was £8.21, so a grand total of £36.06 today. Not bad

d0nna

Dizzy_Imp wrote: »

Evening fellow wombles - some great savings being posted recently :T

Yesterday I decided, after much deliberation, to join The National Trust...but...being a stingy old mare, I looked for a money saving code and am pleased to report a reduction of £27.75 against the cost of an annual family pass. Made immediate use of it today meeting a friend and her two boys at Attingham Park for a great day of outdoor fun. There was an Easter egg hunt, a huge play area and lots of space for them all to blow off steam. Great day out Planning the next one already!

Only one egg today from the hens - they have, at last, decided that it's cold enough to have a moulting, so the hen-house looks like there's been a fox raid with feathers everywhere, scraggly looking birds and severe drop in production. So, just 10p for that.

Online food shop arrived just before dinner, which was good, as tonight's meal was on the order and total savings with promotions, price matching vouchers and substitutions was £8.21, so a grand total of £36.06 today. Not bad

Hi, if you don't mind me asking, where did you find the discount code to please? How much did the annual family pass then cost? Thanks

chirpycheap

Well not only have I caught up with the whole of this years thread I've also got off the starting block in my Wombling challenge.

We went out with mum and dad yesterday to the garden centre. Dad has been ill and it was his first trip out in a while but I realised where my wombling habits come from as my elderly Dad wasn't even out of the car before he was bending down to pick up a washer that he found on the ground. My dad never buys a screw or a washer as he is constantly picking them up on his travels.

Anyway I managed to make some good savings at the garden centre. I have thought about whether I should include shopping savings in my wombling totals because although I may save money I am still out of pocket when I buy something and perhaps I shouldn't have bought it in the first place and saved a whole lot more-if that makes sense?

So what I have decided to include is savings for items that fit into my budget categories and not include fripperies that I shouldn't be buying in the first place. I know that I could easily kid myself that I was being thrifty when I was actually spending unnecessarily. So if I make savings on areas of spending that are a challenge to me they won't be included. In this category are my particular spendthrift items of art and craft stuff, candles, books and magazines. If I get something for nothing it will go in but I really need to discipline myself into buying fewer of the above items. Does anybody else have an area of spending that they find a challenge?

Anyway the savings that I made at the garden centre I will count. We did all of the borders and slabbed over the lawn last year. I'm really pleased with the progress but if I'm honest it's looking more East European car park than the Mediterranean sanctuary I had in mind. So this years home/DIY budget will be going towards improving the garden and in particular the patio.
So I found a lovely tall pot reduced from £14.99 to £5.99.
and I found a lovely purple Hebe that was £6.99 but as mum liked them too we used the offer to buy two for £12

On the way home we stopped at the newsagents and found some Star Wars lollies reduced from £3 to £1 which will fit nicely into my Great Nephews Easter basket.

Mum gave me a bag of stuff to take home, some Sunday Times Magazines, soem cuttings of plants from her garden, a jigsaw and one of those book folding projects, a hedgehog with no eyes. It'll be a nice little project for me. Lovely freebies but not sure I could put anything but a nominal value on them.

Until I found this group I had no idea about the Asda Price Match thing. I dragged out my old receipts but mine were either worth nothing, too far out of date or had less than eight items on them. All this time I have probably been throwing money away! My son phoned to say that he was coming home for the weekend and happened to mention that he had just been to Asda and gave me his receipt number. I discovered that it had £1.37 on it and seeing as I will be feeding him it's going in my purse. He's bringing the receipt with him. The things we do to save a penny or two!
Anyway much thanks for all the ideas and inspiration. I am really thinking about how to make my money go further. I am an old fashioned money saver but really need to get to grips with all the deals and savings that can be made online nowadays.

I'm declaring my first Wombling total to be £16.37!

sugarbaby125

Chirpycheap you have got your wombling off to a great start. My biggest spending vice is books, but I will only buy the occasional book in my local Poundland as a personal treat as I am avoiding buying any books as I have plenty of new books on my bookshelf to read. I rarely buy books in Charity shops any more as they are invariably priced at a lot more than £1 for a secondhand hardback book and I can get a new hardback book in Poundland for a £1. I also give some of my Poundland book purchases away as presents to friends or my sisters who like to read.

f0xh0les

Chirpycheap, that made me laugh, my first temp job, three days after finishing my degree (Politics + German) in 1998 was in a metalworking factory, on a foot press stamping the holes out of washers - so never, ever waste a washer!! £104 a week for 3 weeks. I am not a job snob!

Muhren

Free bottle of beer from CoS plus 6p in receipt uploads.

Bobarella

ChirpyCheap Your Dad sounds very old school. I salute him.:beer:
In terms of your points on shopping bargains. As I have credit card debt to pay off I use any significant savings to pay extra off my card each month. Yes I would have spent the money anyway if say I buy a chicken for £4 full price so if £2 on YS then the £2 goes to debt.
If you have no debt then you could either just reduce your budget if you are able to shop YS and come in at a certain figure lower each month. Or you could pay the difference into your savings. Either way I do think it counts as real wombling.

Bobarella

Small one for me today £0.65 brand match used.

The_Only_Girl

Hello and good evening fellow wombles! Haven't been on here for ages, been terribly busy at work and had a few trips away, business not pleasure I'm afraid. Please forgive me for the very long post below.

A couple of weeks ago I was in a training course in Brighton, all expenses paid - flight, hotel and food. We had £35 evening meal allowance per day and it just blew my mind. Back in the good old days prior to my DFW/MSE journey I wouldn't have batted an eyelid spending that much or even more on MYSELF, but now it sort of makes me feel guilty and ,very strange spending that much on one person - that could feel a family of 4 for almost a week! The flight alone cost £240, haven't totted up my food allowance which I still need to claim back by the way (I need to be organised, put my finger out and get it done before time runs out. I'll let you know how much I will get back as refund for all my expenses. Last week, I accompanied my eldest to Leeds for an applicants' day at a university. I'm still in denial stage, I can not believe I have a son who's old enough to go to uni soon.

Rest assured that despite my long absence from this thread, I have been practising frugality and economy and most definitely wombling, just hadn't had time to update you.

Today, I went to Mr. A after work for a small food shopping and spent £14.37. (Half of my items were YS) I used 2 APG coupons from wombles receipts to the tune of £1.01 and £0.23. Two of my items qualified for £0.60 cash back on Shopitise and I earned 4p on receipt uploads of CoS and CSnap. I also found 6p road kill.

I came home to find a very pleasant surprise waiting for me at home. A letter from Inland Revenue saying I paid TOO MUCH tax in 2014/2015 and that they owe me £231.38 which would be with me in two weeks time. I am so delighted and excited! That will go straight to the EF.

We have just renewed our home insurance, my husband's car insurance and my car insurance all in the same week (phew). Pre-MSE, it would have been a major crisis and stress inducing event. But we are so glad to have been able to plan ahead of this so we were able to pay for all of them in one annual payment. A bit of a background, prior to last year before my husband had his final light bulb moment, he considered it a major hassle to shop around for insurances. So for the last 12 years, since we bought our first house in 2003, we have never changed home insurance provider, paying £50 a month - a whopping £600 a year. Last year we were able to pay for a much better building and insurance package for £150 for the whole year. Last week, we changed providers again and paid only £134.67 for the whole year from 2016 to April 2017, saving £15.33.

As for the car insurances, please see below

Hubby's car
2015-2016 - £367.04
New quote from same provider for 2016-2017 - £545.49
New provider - £251.62
Savings from last year : £115.42
Savings made by changing provider : £293.87

My Car
2015-2016 - £232.03
New quote from same provider - £557.48
New provider 2016-2017 : £226.64
Savings from last year's insurance - £5.39
Savings by changing provider for 2016-2017 : £330.84

Now that's what I call a great result!

dave2319

Yes, that's a fantastic result!
Insane new quotes from the previous people, and amazing to think that for the two cars you've saved over 600 quid by changing to a new provider! :eek:

Also, since I'm a newbie here that's the first post of yours I've seen, and I think it's also amazing you cleared 49k of debt in only 6 years! Awesome!
I'd take my hat off to you except I don't wear one.