Losing control, time to take charge.

Caspeia

Cant seem to quote on my phone but student prime is £3.99 a month or £39.99 a year if you pay upfront which I did so its paid until 1st april 2019. I did get it so we have more TV to watch but now I have the added bonus of using it for music. Before hand most of the usage of prime was coming from rewatching all of paw patrol :rotfl:
We don't have sky or any anything like that. We have an amazon firestick so watch everything on prime, netflix and bbc iplayer.

Caspeia

Sorry its just a flat £39, 99p cheaper than I thought

Caspeia

I didn't spend a penny yesterday! I'm really used to always having a pending payment on my account but there's none.

I want to try and get the kids to eat healthier. They've had the same lunch for months. A cheese or ham sandwich, two fromage frais and a selection of whatever fruit we have. Its just quick and easy. I'm not really happy with the sugar content in yoghurts aimed for children either. My plan is to get some plain yoghurt and blitz some frozen fruit in the food processer up to make some fruity yoghurts for them. We have tiny little tubs in the cupboard which would be a good yoghurt size, I've found 8 tubs that have lids so I will be able to make 8 at a time.
Over the next two weeks I'm going to experiment and see what things they will eat. They can only cold food for lunch as neither of their childcare will heat up, they can bring hot food in a flask but 1. We don't have any 2. anytime I've used them in the past the food has went cold. Not sure what I've done wrong!

I also want to get rid of the chocolate cereal my daughter eats. Its expensive and I really don't want her to eat chocolate everyday for breakfast. She had some on holiday last year, husband bought her some when we got home and its a habit we haven't managed to break yet. I need to figure out some easy, cheap and healthy breakfast ideas. The baby will happily eat Weetabix (own branded) everyday. He has 1.5 boxes left and he only has one a day so he's sorted for a while. Daughter will not touch Weetabix. I was thinking some breakfast muffins of some sort, I can pack them with fruit & veggies and hopefully she will just think she's getting a cake for breakfast and will eat it.


If anyone has any breakfast and lunch ideas for kids that are healthy, easy and cheap please let me know!

Caspeia

I've placed an order with sainsburys for next week, £45.42 including delivery. I managed to get a 50p slot again. I went through quidco and should get £1 cashback.
We have 60p cashback sitting in the husbands account which I can't cash out until its over £1 so hopefully that will track soon.
In my quidco account theres £76.50 tracking, theres £26 I'm confused about as didnt end up actually buying anything I just searched on gocompare. The rest should be paid by november hopefully.

I paid of £3.30 to my 'Pay of line rental challenge'. The line rental money (plus first months payment) was put onto the tesco bank card so its not a priority as longest 0% but just thought it would be a fun challenge. £3 came from the reward I get from my main account and 30p from my husband account as cashback from using his card in coop last month. £3.30/£198.88

Caspeia

For my course theres an optional 3 day study week down in Milton Keynes. Its a lab skills class, I want to do it as doing everything online means we get no physical experiment in a lab. It will be expensive though, this years prices are £185 for the week (next years havent been released yet) and then I have to pay for accommodation and travel on top. Its not until next July though. I would need to travel down the day before and stay 3 nights, maybe 4 depending on times.

If I fly down and stay at the hotel they recommend, I'm looking at close to £500 for the trip which is just too expensive. I will need to try and work out how I can get this cheaper as I really want to do

remote_control

I had a bit of a health kick in the autumn. Managed to get the kids on to plain yoghurt, it took a while for one of them to get used to it but now they both have it and have probably forgotten fruit yoghurt! I often serve it with defrosted frozen fruit.

remote_control

I think the main way I have broken their habits have just been to stop providing the food item. What would happen if you just didn't put yoghurt in there? Could you do cubes of cheese, cucumber and carrot sticks instead? Home popped pop corn? Olives? What about switching to 50 50 bread? I don't know how much more expensive that is though.

Scott-Weiland

Caspeia wrote: »

I've placed an order with sainsburys for next week, £45.42 including delivery. I managed to get a 50p slot again. I went through quidco and should get £1 cashback.
We have 60p cashback sitting in the husbands account which I can't cash out until its over £1 so hopefully that will track soon.
In my quidco account theres £76.50 tracking, theres £26 I'm confused about as didnt end up actually buying anything I just searched on gocompare. The rest should be paid by november hopefully.

I paid of £3.30 to my 'Pay of line rental challenge'. The line rental money (plus first months payment) was put onto the tesco bank card so its not a priority as longest 0% but just thought it would be a fun challenge. £3 came from the reward I get from my main account and 30p from my husband account as cashback from using his card in coop last month. £3.30/£198.88

From experience bin quidco and start using top cashback quidco takes an eternity to pay out TC is faster.

Caspeia

I've got plain yoghurt and frozen fruit arriving tomorrow. If I took her cereal away she just wouldnt eat anything for breakfast. She'd happily skip it but I'm not happy with her skipping it as she often skips lunch when shes at nursery so just worried she'll eat nothing all day. The baby doesnt care what he gets, as long as its food hes happy. I've hyped up the yoghurt a lot,telling her she gets to mix her blueberries into it and shes excited so fingers crossed shes happy!
I've got 50/50 bread, its just its a bit boring having sandwiches everyday as they only have cheese or ham on them. I'm not sure what to put on them, they can't have nuts at nursery and I can't face scrambled eggs, I've had an aversion to them since I was little.

I've not heard of top cashback, I will go have a look sainsburys didnt even track, it wont even let me query it

Caspeia

I had my first fulltime pay this week. Nothing is going to the credit cards as a lot of things need paid this month. I paid for my daughters next block of swimming which is £43.20 which covers 10 weeks worth, next block is £48 which is due the end of October. I will put aside £4.80 each week so by then we'll have enough to cover it.

The dance shop opens this weekend for the new term so I've put aside money to get the dancing shoes. I've also put £50 into the emergency fund as I realised I hadn't put anything in it with the husbands pay. I'm really happy that swimming and dancing stuff have been paid for in cash, no credit.

Last time I used the credit card was the 16th of July which means its almost a full month since I used it! We've also now got £100 in an emergency savings account. Tax credits have also been updated with the new childcare costs so just a waiting game to see how much they will give us. The first few weeks at work my whole wage will be taken up childcare, hopefully its not too long before tax credits will help out though.

Sainsburys have also sent us a £12 off £50 shop voucher for next weeks shop. I'm really liking getting this delivered. Normally I have to bring the kids shopping as husband works 12hrs most days, I end up buying stuff I don't need. The kids end up wanting things and I end up giving in. I also have no time to look at things and see what cheapest as the kids get bored and try to climb out the trolley so its a case of quickly grab what I can see. I normally come out of the shop with a lot of money spent but not much to actually eat. The past two weeks I've only spent £48.37 and £53.69 in Sainsburys and £19.80 on our amazon milk delivery. £121.86/£250. Next weeks shop I plan to get around the £40 mark after the voucher has come off

Tonight we are having meatballs and spaghetti for tea.