Gadget Crazy Abigail doesn't need a new iphone!

abby1234519

Well we didn't go for a walk, in fact I didn't leave bed till 4pm :O
Husband got Son up, then son came back upstairs and we watched 3 movies. I'm surprised he sat still for that long, he's a very active 5 year old.

Waiting for bills to leave my account, boooorrringggg. I just want to pay off some debt!

For dinner I used the last of the macaroni pasta, freezer green beans, frozen cooked sausages and made mac and cheese. Was yum. Currently defrosting turkey mince to make bolognese tomorrow. Haven't planned Wednesdays food yet but I promise I won't visit the shop!

abby1234519

Ynab broke and wasn't tallying up even after reconciling so I've started my 2017 budget again. Also YNAB prefers you to allocate this months income to next months outgoings. So I'm in the process of doing that but it means I have to have a really tight January and February and also use more of the student loan this month. I usually "withdraw" or pay ourselves £600 a month of the student loan to make it last 12 months but in January I will need to pay us £1200 so we can be ahead of ourselves. This will be balanced out by DH's double pay in March. Originally I was going to use said double pay to pay off a debt but I'd rather just always be ahead with money.

I've managed 4 days without eating chocolate (Aiming for a month) and we have £100 for groceries for the rest of the month.

Tonight is spaghetti bolognese made with turkey mince (i hate turkey mince). I've got a freezer bagel and hm soup for lunch, no idea what husband is having but probably will be toast. I defrosted a banana muffin (ys from marks and spencers before christmas, got several packs and frozen them. 20p for 4 muffins!) for DS for when he gets home from school. And DS supper will be porridge as usual.

Tomorrow DS is going to his Grandmas for the weekend so he will be having an ASDA frozen pasta meal (kids one that was reduced, has carrots in the sauce etc) and as husband is working a night, he will probably be in bed by the time I get home. So I'll probably cook some sausages and he can have them in a sandwich before he goes to work, I'll finish the last of the bolognese.

So in theory - don't need to buy any food till Saturday. Obviously, I don't want to buy any food at all even on Saturday but if I take it 2 or 3 days at a time then I can't get overwhelmed.

As DS is going to grandmas, I plan to spend saturday morning doing some MB - would like to make £50 to put into savings. I've got a savings targe of £400 this month to be made from ebay/mbing

abby1234519

Finished MBing for the day, have been sat at the PC for 6 hours and so haven't done ANY housework. However as DS is away this weekend I don't feel guilty for not doing anything, its rare I get a day just to sit on my bum! And I've made £100 which will go into savings to replace some money I had to take out for husbands broken phone and to cover the excess for my macbook screen.

Went to the cinema last night, a friend paid for it which was very kind. I spent £5 on two metal popcorn star wars things. I don't know how to describe them, a bit like bins but with Rogue One pictures all over the sides. Now, I didn't buy these for popcorn, bought them to hold all of DS's Star War figurines. I've been stressing about where to put all 30 figurines, but now I have a solution. Yes I could have just used a plastic tub but these are far prettier and its come out of my personal spends. The £5 also included a reusable drinks cup.

Went shopping first thing this morning, spent £75ish at Aldi.

£20 of that are presents for parties, DS is already invited to 2 this month and I picked up some sets where you build say a skeleton, or pirate ship with cardboard. They were reduced from £6 to £3 so I've got however many to cover the year.

£25 of the aldi spend was on a mattress protector and topper. We've needed a new one for ages so lets hope this does the job. It looked similar to the £50 one in matalan so i've given it a try and kept the receipt for it if tears or anything like that.

Then the £30 on food covers multipack of crisps, bread, crumpets, reduced mince pies (so we can use up all the tinned custard and evaporated milk). I didn't buy anything superfluous to needs which I'm proud of, didn't buy any meat or vegetables I won't use etc. Essentially I've not bought anything that will go out of date before I get a chance to use it.

Tonight we're having freezer food, ie - junk food. Onion rings, breaded chicken etc. I always have something like that in for a saturday as I can't be bothered to cook! I need to take various things out of the freezer tonight so that I can batch cook Sunday evening. Off to OH's mums for sunday dinner and to pick up DS. So that will all have to be cooked tomorrow evening. As long as I can make a habit of this then there is no reason for OH to need to buy food when he is working his night shift. Found two jars of curry sauce so that's my first step. Then I'm thinking I'll make a tarka dahl as per A girl called Jack's recent recipe. Not sure if that will freeze well but then again don't really have much room in the freezer! Also need to see if those parsnips are ok to make into this weeks soup. They might be too mouldy by now.

My personal challenges for the upcoming week are not to buy any more food. We have £68 left for the month. We will probably need some toilet roll and some fruit/veg/bread/milk but OH will sort that out.

This month won't have any overpayments towards debt as I am trying to build up the bank so this months wages cover next months expenses, as is the YNAB way. I've always used this months wages to cover this months expenses which always means falling into the overdraft. Luckily, its 0% up to 250 and then minimal pence if I go over as I'm never in it for long. But I need to try to get it so we're never in the overdraft and I can only do that with being super frugal this month.

abby1234519

Last night I cooked a tarka daal (cooking on a bootstrap recipe) using leftover onions/garlic etc plus some of the 5kg bag of red lentils we've got lying around. I think I've made 8 portions? If everything had been bought fresh it would be about 50pence a portion but its "free" to me.

I plan on having this for lunch over the next 4 days (had freezer soup today) with rice I already have, or cous cous that's been hanging around.

Thermostat is set to 18 Celsius, we got rid of the tumble dryer and constantly have clothes drying around the house. Also upgraded to a smart meter with EDF, we can see how much energy we are using a day, hasn't topped £2 so that would mean we'd be on track for less than £65 for a 3 bed house. It's also made me conscious of using the extractor fan/ light on the cooker hood or boiling the kettle repeatedly when I realise I hadn't boiled enough water! Need to put the thermostat back on a timer though. I'd like to get our daily usage down to £1.50 whilst its still cold and HOPEFULLY £1 in the summer. Is that too much to ask?

I did manage to make an overpayment to a debt, realised I had some wiggle room.

Also realised I've made £167 from MBing so that will go straight into savings to replace the savings as I mentioned in my last post. Only £308 left to go into savings. And then I can start using MB money to pay off debt again.

My plan this week is to not go shopping at all. I've got some horrible parsnips to try to turn into soup tonight, don't want to buy cream so hoping below ingredients list will make nice soup!

Olive oil
1 knob butter
1 large onion, peeled and Finely chopped (have 2 small red onions)
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped (have jarred garlic)
8 parsnips, peeled and chopped into centimeter chunks (no idea on weight)
500 ml semi-skimmed milk
1 litre good chicken stock (going to use stock pots)

For dinner tonight we've got freezer bolognese. I will portion up the tarka daal for the freezer. Need to plan Tuesdays dinner, thinking of defrosting bacon and making pesto pasta. Could throw some chicken in as well. However we also have a part baked bread loaf to use so maybe I should do something with that instead. Hmmmmm. I'm really enjoying using up food stores, its so challenging!

abby1234519

Got my maths wrong! Think its only £67 made from MBing. Which is still better than nothing!!!

Husband is asleep at the moment in preparation for his night shift, once he is up and awake I'm going to raid the wardrobe and list things on ebay.

abby1234519

So… not only has it been 1 month since I posted, it is also my birthday!

What has happened over the past month? Well…I made a mistake that cost me £750 and so for two weeks avoided looking at my accounts. The good news is that I have made that money back by matched betting. The bad news is that I haven’t made any additional payments to my credit cards so my 2017 plan hasn’t started.
I’m currently using an ASDA cashback credit card for daily expenses – my husband is a cardholder and we aren’t going over our budget. We’re working hard on eating our freezer stores – having said that I did just spend £30 on YS meat from ASDA butcher counter!
I also have an American Express Costco Rewards card which I have been using to buy a few bits and bobs. My husband’s new phone £160 went on that, he is paying me back monthly which I am shoving into my Tesco 3% interest current account. As the card is 0% for 6 months, instead of paying things off it’s going into the Tesco account and will be paid off in June. I also paid £260 to our phone bill so that’s now in credit. Then there are a couple of purchases on there. The balance of the card is around £990 which is a lot but there isn’t anything on there that I’ve bought on a whim. £55 is a new wool duvet for my son, (particular make last years, I’ve had mine 6 years and it is amazing) but I had been saving for that, the £55 is in the Tesco account ready to be paid off.
The main aim with the Costco card is to be able to go to Costco, buy two months’ worth of supplies and get cashback.
I also have opened a Halifax 0% Purchases card. I have used this to pay everything I possibly can, I’ve paid the car tax on it (£2.5 fee but I was paying more by paying it monthly). I’ve put all of our bill accounts in credit and I’m putting the money into the Tesco account. Basically I am stoozing.

Previously I would have lost control and spent money on the cards and spent the savings. This time round I am controlled and do not want to risk it. I know that it is now or never. It’s also helped that I’m not bored anymore, I’m focused on getting the house and garden in order without spending money.
So my plan for the rest of the month is to make more profit MBing. I can’t forsee myself making much more. I replaced the “lost” £750 and then used £100 of my extra profit to treat myself to a very expensive hair cut and hair dye for my birthday (I go to this particular hair dresser once a year). I’ve then got £188 left of MB profit for January. I’m going to try to double this by the end of Feb so that I’ve got £400 I can use to put towards the student finance debt.
Then by May I want to make £1100 through MBing that I can lock into savings. Once I’ve done that I will continue MBing but on a smaller scale, it’s taken over my weekends and I’d like to spend more time with my son. So if I can try to make £50 a week MBing then that’s £50 to put towards debt.

pennystretcher

well done! So what's your current SOA now? Bet you are miles away from when you started? (And I mean in the good way) It's the small things, and I can't blame you for hairdressers etc, if you go all in and don't budget for a wee treat every now and then, you are bound to feel like you have failed...which makes it worse. So set yourself a small amount every month to a treat. (e.g. £20 month and once you have saved enough, treat yourself)

abby1234519

pennystretcher wrote: »

well done! So what's your current SOA now? Bet you are miles away from when you started? (And I mean in the good way) It's the small things, and I can't blame you for hairdressers etc, if you go all in and don't budget for a wee treat every now and then, you are bound to feel like you have failed...which makes it worse. So set yourself a small amount every month to a treat. (e.g. £20 month and once you have saved enough, treat yourself)

Sort of - don't have a current SOA, well, I do for food £200 and petrol £100. Every other bill has been paid in advance by 0% credit card and I've left the other categories on YNAB with the amounts in. I'm making this very complicated haha. But basically I transfer the money I would have spent on the bills into my Tesco current account to make most of the interest. Just got to make sure I pay off the credit card when it's due! But its useful to do this because I can use that money for Matched Betting so it's enabled me to make money. Once I've paid all of our debt off I'll hopefully be able to continue doing this so that I can use the money to save for a house etc

abby1234519

So I have now spent the food budget for the month - We've got £20 left for milk and bread etc - however I can definitely get some milk from work as we've got too much and hopefully all the bananas won't get eaten that way I can bring them home to make banana cake.

My Instant Pot (birthday present) arrived last week so I am excited to start using that to get food on the table. Once we've mowed our way through the freezer my plan is to make up packs that can just be dumped in the instant pot. Then it's easy to rustle food up (I have a very short window to cook food in between me getting home and OH starting work)

Currently have a balance of £1,194.55 on the amex which is built up as below. It's 0% for 6 months so needs paying off by July. Not counting it as a debt because....

£160 OH's new phone. He's paid me back £80, this has gone into savings.
£247.90 amazon stuff - Instant Pot, things for house etc, some cookery books. Covered by the money I made matched betting this month. I didn't spend the money until I had the money in my account. They were things that had been on my wishlist for over a year, I've been trying not to buy things on a whim.
£13.77 Boots - baby items in 70% sale for sister in law. Comes undergifts, the money for which is in savings.
£33.88 Costco - bulk buying zip loc bags. Comes under groceries, the money is in savings.
£260 EDF - paid bill in advance, money is put into savings each month
£85.50 spent on Everything5Pounds have kept some things and sold the rest on Facebook for a profit. Money is in savings
£256 02. Paid my bill up to end of the contract in May and then OH's which is August. Money is going into savings each month.
£55 Baavet Duvet for DS - made the world of difference - hasn't needed a hot water bottle and isn't kicking the duvet off in the middle of the night.
£42.99 CDKeys - bought £50 netflix voucher instead of paying monthly, saves me a months fee.
£2.59 Sainsburys - groceries
£37.88 ViralStyle - present for OH for his birthday

So the payment is set as min £25 and I'll pay this off in June/July not sure when its due. All the money is in my Tesco account, essentially stoozing. Obviously, the key thing is not to spend that money or spend any more on the card as that's when you fall into a trap. Good news is that its earned me cashback to spend at Costco (reason for having the card) and all the spending on the Asda card (petrol and food) is totting up nicely. However now I've taken the Asda and Amex cards out of my purse to avoid temptation.

abby1234519

Also should note I do not intend to buy anything else for the house or me. I've replaced all my worn out leggings, bought new cardigans and tried to repair holes in the old ones. Blinds have been paid for etc.

There is one thing I have taken on which probably seems really anti-frugal (and it is) is that we have a cleaner starting next week, every two weeks for two hours so about £52 a month? I've been battling with this for a while but as my other half works nights we just don't seem to be able to keep on top of it. My son is demanding attention wise so I take him out of the house on a Saturday whilst husband sleeps, and sundays we are usually traipsing off places. Weekdays I'm just so tired and trying to lose weight so I exercise then have to sit down! I'd rather pay £52 a month for someone to do the things I never do than to worry and get stressed. Now it means I can focus on the decluttering. Basically someone will deep clean and I just have to keep the robot hoover going and do surface cleaning. Although, I'm not sure how much dirt collects in two weeks and whether I'll find it doesn't make a difference? But I guess knowing that the floors have been properly cleaned etc will help.