Spend Nowt, Buy Nowt, Owe Nowt

Suffolk_lass

I still TT my accounts every time something is taken - and depending on the time of the month, it is to the nearest £5, £10 or occasionally down to a £100 - the running total is well over £21k but I would have to unhide a few hundred rows of my spreadsheet to tell you when this started. It's over £4k per year usually now we are retired

XSpender

Suffolk_lass said:

I still TT my accounts every time something is taken - and depending on the time of the month, it is to the nearest £5, £10 or occasionally down to a £100 - the running total is well over £21k but I would have to unhide a few hundred rows of my spreadsheet to tell you when this started. It's over £4k per year usually now we are retired

That’s an amazing amount to save from rounding down your account SL.

I round down my account, round down my spending categories and do some of the savings challenges that The Budget Mum(TBM) sets as part of a 12 month ‘course’.  This month was choosing a word and saving so much per letter.  I set my own challenge in December which was saving £20/week from my spending categories.  TBM has also set a save/pay £20 to your biggest goal today on insta so I will move another £20 to the challenges pot.  

These challenges are in addition to the monthly DD and extra savings we set as part of our monthly budget.  The money for the savings challenges is taken from the money I have already budgeted for my variable expenses.  It forces me to make it work and save more than I think I can.  I am hoping to save £1500 doing various monthly challenges and rounding down this year and an additional £1336 from the two 365 penny challenges.

Suffolk_lass

That is absolutely brilliant - you have definitely taken a massive step forward. This sweating of what seems like the small stuff is the lesson I think we all have to learn before money saving (and paying off debt) really becomes the way we are, rather than something we say we are doing. Those challenges sound just the thing for you!

XSpender

I am in the dead zone money wise at this point in the month and (not so) patiently waiting for payday so I can start shuffling money about to make a proper start on our savings goals.  I wasn't expecting to save much this month because of the tax bill and having to replace my phone with funds from the EF.  I first cracked my phone in April and have added more cracks and lost more chunks of glass out of it as the months progressed until I dropped it, for the final time at the beginning of the month, and it died.  I am on a SIM only deal so bought a 2nd hand handset from CEX which was an upgrade for me 

I have 1 more food shop to do for the month, probably tonight, and am chuffed to bits with how much we have (or should it be haven't?) spent so far this month compared with 2020.  I set an ambitious target of £400 to cover 5 weeks and we have spent £395 so far.  However, this does include £47 for DS school lunches of which he has not spent a penny and I have had to buy lunch items for him to eat at home with the schools being closed.  I would really like to come in as close to £447 as I can but realistically will end up about £470 for the 5 weeks the budget covered as we are out of a few things and need meat. Our average spend between Sept and Dec last year was £858/month   We have used up most of the meat and a lot of other things in the freezer but they are no way empty. We haven't bought any booze for me either this month as I have used up what we got in for Christmas but that is normally about 1 bottle of wine a week at most which takes me 3 days to drink 

DH said he thought we could achieve £200/month (rolley-eye-smiley) but with a booze bill of £20/week I can't see that happening.  I do think we could reduce our spending further (maybe £70/week?) but, for now, I am going for consistency and would like to achieve under £100/week for food and booze and then reduce it again in the future. Pet food and household items like laundry liquid and loo paper are budgeted for separately and we have spent £20 on each this month.  I will have a much bigger pet food budget from March 

DH and I both get small bonuses in our end of Jan pay and we plan to pay some to savings and some to cover the last few things we need for the pup like a crate and toys, lots of toys.  Our JRT has never been interested in toys or balls even as a youngster so I am looking forward to playing with the pup.

I am setting an ambitious challenge of saving £1000 in February. This will include the bonus savings, a DD to a regular saver, the monthly TBM savings challenges, round downs from the bank account and spending categories, the money budgeted for my hair (if they are still shut) and anything else I can scrape up.  I do have about £60 in coins to pay into the bank when I get 5 minutes to pay them in.  I won't count the money for the 365 x 2 challenge or anything I make from sales as I am counting these as 2 separate challenges to my monthly saving challenges. I also don't include money put towards my sinking funds as part of this. 

DH has a voucher from a client due that I will 'swap' for money from the food budget as it is for Morries but I am classing this as 'income' so it will go against the 'Make £2021 in 2021' challenge not the 'Save £1000 in Feb' challenge.  It all makes sense to me!   

I have started my 2021 Christmas shopping!  We exchange gifts with another family and our son is always given obviously re-gifted or used and sometimes damaged items for his gift.  This year he was gifted an item I had witnessed their daughter unwrap in front of me for her own birthday along with another item that had been half used as some of the protective cover was removed and was most likely gifted to the Dad.  It is exactly the same at DS birthday.  They are good friends but I find this behavior cheap rather than frugal where it doesn't matter what the gift is as long as it is cheap/free. It isn't an affordability issue as they are due to FIRE in the next few years.  I really wouldn't care if they only got DS a selection box. We should really suggest that we stop exchanging gifts.

This year I decided to cut back, money wise and effort wise (not that I spent more than £25 on the 4 of them last Christmas) and I have managed to pick up the parents Christmas gift and a part Christmas gift for 1 daughter in the post Christmas sale for a total of £7.75 and on things I think they will like. I have a birthday gift for the other daughter that hasn't cost me anything as I ordered a gift for DS at Christmas and was sent a box of 6 instead of 1 and have been told to keep them as the stores are closed!  They retail at around £20 each so the rest will be going on ebay which is where I expect the one I gift will be going too    

In other news we have had more snow but not enough to play in and DH has been unwell for a few days but his COVID test came back negative and he has gone back to work.  DH is definitely becoming more money focused as he has asked to take the sick days as holiday rather than receive SSP.

XSpender

Final food shop of the month, hopefully, today.  

We have spent £490.81 against an original target of £400 or £445.81 if you exclude the £45 I spent on school meals for DS which hasn’t been touched this month.  I am pleased with this result as we were out of a few things like coffee, cereal and needed some meat. None of us have felt deprived of anything this month and there is definitely more flab in the budget to cut.  We have used stuff up and eaten the leftover Christmas stuff but the freezers are nowhere near bare although we hardly have any meat left.  Jan’s spends are under £100/week.  I can’t tell you how long this has been my goal, I just need to maintain it now.

Changing my approach to meal planning and meal prep has really helped.  I meal prep about 3 evening meals on a Sunday, we normally eat frozen pizza on Saturday and the other nights are flexible using what’s in the freezer or fridge but planned so I am not staring into it wondering what the heck to feed everybody,

I have also tried to limit our food shopping to once a week to avoid overspending but also to avoid mixing too often with others. We don’t always achieve it but are getting better at not buying extra stuff if we pop to the local shop for a bottle of wine mid week.  I did try on line shopping last year but there was so many missing items, things I couldn’t order and daft substitutions I had to go the shop anyway which defeats the object. This month we have only had one chippy tea on top of our New Year’s Eve Chinese.  Last year we were having them weekly.  

I had set a provisional budget of £480 for February but think this may be too high so will have a rethink. I am planning on using some of this budget, along with some money from our bonuses, to do a 3 month meat stock up at Costco next week.  I will then take a bit off the budget for the next 3 months to build up a sinking fund for next quarter. I also need laundry liquid and loo paper from Costco but I budget for this separately.

This month I am focusing on:

• Reducing waste - not massive, but we do waste a little fruit, veg and bread which I want to eliminate 
• Introducing a spud and pud night - I may alternate weekly with a ‘summat-on-toast’ night
• Weekly meat-free night - as an ex veggie I am surprisingly finding this one a challenge as DS hates onions, peppers, eggs and beans of any type.  I’ve got as far as pasta bake and macaroni cheese with broccoli 
• Listing the freezers and continuing to use up what we have by meal planning from the list first.  Adapt recipes and leave stuff out if we haven’t got it
• Continuing to serve pudding - DH finds this is filling him up and stops him eating ingredients out of the fridge!
• Bake most of our snacks/treats - I have half a sack of GF SR flour to use up from Lockdown #1 and have bought apples from crumble and sprinkles to make school dinner cake with custard 
• Continue shopping once a week with a list, feeding DH before we go to the shop, meal planning, meal prep and making do

Any other tips gratefully received🙂

Honeysucklelou2

I find meal planning to be essential...I’ve done it so often now that DD2 requests 2 pieces of paper on a Friday morning and we’ll write a meal plan and list together! My food budget was between £600 and £800 to feed 9 of us ( the upper end was school holidays) but it’s now around the £400 mark. I’ve had to be more savvy because the higher figures were unsustainable. We have a jacket potato tea once a week, a pasta based meal, kedgeree is becoming quite a favourite and pasties often feature. We probably have meat 4 times a week and vegetable based meals the rest of the time. Sometimes the most satisfying meals can be the most simple, like egg on toast.

f0xh0les

Biryani is a ridiculously cheap meal - those hairy biking boys do a cheat one that is lovely - one pot, 20 minutes, job done, you can tart it up with crispy fried onions (for those who eat such things) and flaked almonds, or not if you don't have them in the cupboard anyway. 

XSpender

Honeysucklelou2 said:

I find meal planning to be essential...I’ve done it so often now that DD2 requests 2 pieces of paper on a Friday morning and we’ll write a meal plan and list together! My food budget was between £600 and £800 to feed 9 of us ( the upper end was school holidays) but it’s now around the £400 mark. I’ve had to be more savvy because the higher figures were unsustainable. We have a jacket potato tea once a week, a pasta based meal, kedgeree is becoming quite a favourite and pasties often feature. We probably have meat 4 times a week and vegetable based meals the rest of the time. Sometimes the most satisfying meals can be the most simple, like egg on toast.

That you can feed your family of 9 so well, and with all that lovely baking, for less than we spend on 3 just shows me that we can cut back a lot further. I have found a new pasta recipe to try but I could do with some more to make a change from a jar of tomato and cheese pasta bake. I make some nice veggie pasties using wraps for pastry but they are not so cheap with GF wraps for me.  Maybe is should try making GF pastry again? 

janb5

Amazing progress and you`ve inspired me to set to and do a meal planner!
If you have any left over bread, fruit and veg you can utilize the freezer.  the bread can be broken up and dried out in the oven or on a low heat until hard and then made into crumbs in liquidiser.  Could used it in cauliflower cheese or mac. cheese.  Any odd fruit could be frozen ready for crumbles and the veg frozen ready to add to a soup or added to spag bol.
Always handy to have a odds and sods box for odd portions of food to be used up for lunches or Pot Luck night.
Some things just seem to miss the stocktake and ` hide`` in the frig!

XSpender

f0xh0les said:

Biryani is a ridiculously cheap meal - those hairy biking boys do a cheat one that is lovely - one pot, 20 minutes, job done, you can tart it up with crispy fried onions (for those who eat such things) and flaked almonds, or not if you don't have them in the cupboard anyway. 

I love biryani! DH makes the one from the hairy bikers curry book and it is what I usually order at the Indians.  I never thought of making a veggie one....I’m off to have a google 😀