Getting it together...one £ at a time!

Homegrown0

Nice use of the red wine choccy! Surely you're still being dry if there's a splash of wine in your food?

Had a fairly relaxing day today - a chilled morning followed by a trip into town for the four of us. I had a couple of items of clothes that the kids got for Christmas to change sizes and we went for a wander. I managed to spend £3 on a lovely jumper in the sale and a nice top woth some Christmas money left over.

I must clear out my purse and make a deposit into the sealed pot. I've not managed to put much in this week due to no change!

Tomorrow I'm getting the food shopping done first thing so that I can a) beat the masses of shoppers and b) get home at a reasonable time to get the meals prepped and soup for lunches cooked.

Kids hace a birthday party in the afternoon so that will zap 2 hours of my day. If it was just the oldest I'd have dropped him off and come away but it's both and the youngest is too wee to be left yet. I get on well with the parents so I'm sure there'll be some chatting and I'll take my kindle just in case.

Still haven't taken down the Christmas decs... it's a thought! Maybe another job for tomorrow.

My gym just issued a new timetable to start on Monday so will need to look at the changes and see what's possible for me to commit to. My body needs exercise ASAP. I'm not looking g forward to the pain right enough...

Homegrown0

Money
Last night I mined my purse and husband's pocket change to add £4.80 to my sealed pot.

I then remembered about a big plastic quality streets tub (Not the tin shape, the tall one) that's been in our wardrobe full probably since we moved (the shame) and we had forgotten about.

I emptied it last night and bagged up everything I could so:

- £39 to go to the bank - will then withdraw £40 to put into the sealed pot

- £7.50 in 50p coins which isn't enough got a bag so just added that to the sealed pot

- probably about £10-15 of other change that didn't add up to a full bag was chucked back into the tub to start us off again.

It doesn't take long in adding up when we empty our purse/ wallet a couple of times per week.

I think I'll make it anything upwards of 20p can go into the sealed pot and anything 10p and below can go into the quality streets tub.

Shopping
I'm about to go off and do the weekly shop. I have a list and I plan to stick to it! We are back on the healthy eating bandwagon so I'm expecting to spend £30 on fruit and veg alone... I know it's worth it for the sake of our diets and wellbeing but it always hits me how much we spend when we are eating well.

The kids eat loads of fruit too which I'm very grateful for but it does add up to a lot. We just need to make sure we minimise waste. My husband bulks up a lot of his 'packed lunch' with fruit to snack on- probably a couple of Apples, 2 bananas, a tub of chopped fruit (berries etc) and 3 or 4 tangerines. That's per day as a minimum. I try to buy seasonal to keep cost down but he's allergic to quite a few fruits so it can make it difficult.

I'm going to try to analyse our shopping over the next few weeks to see if/ how we can do things any cheaper. Maybe there is a better way? I'm not sure.

doingitanyway

I also think the fruit is worth it even if it is pricey. I always eat better when I can see fruit in my home and I can grab fruit whenever I leave the house. My friends with kids who eat poorly don't have a fruit bowl on display and the ones that eat well have one. It might be coincidence...

Great how small change can add up.

kindofagilr

Homegrown0 wrote: »

Just spent a little half hour while having a coffee doing some surveys. Qmee is up yo £1.09 now and was just screened out of about 45,000 surveys on swagbucks.

Is it worth my while continuing with this? Is it a waste of time? Does anyone get anything decent from it?

I used to do swagbucks and made £30 a month from it, then far too many surveys were screening me out near the end after I had pretty much finished the survey and I didn't get the points

Homegrown0

DIA - there might be something in that actually! We have always had a fruit bowl out on the work top and the kids take a piece to school for snack time and they can each have a piece after dinner. Tonight it's yoghurts and apples for them both - better than sugary deserts although I think they, like me, are sugared out after the festive period.

Kindofagilr - this is my issue at the moment too (although I've only been doing it for a couple of weeks). It's so frustrating spending time answering questions just to get frozen out. It shouldn't be that hard to screen people!

Today
Quite pleased with how today went- my only spend was £7.20 on train fare to work. Although my husband spent £11.40 at the dentist this evening and has a bit more work coming up next month.

Eating-wise, I have eaten well and on plan all day (following slimming world) so I'm looking forward to an injection of energy that comes with eating ALL the fruit and veg in the world. I have also drunk 3 x 900ml bottles of water so far and am aiming for another before bed. I really must continue my quest to rehydrate.

Quiet night ahead - just getting the kids to bed, having a shower then relaxing for an hour before bed. Aiming to be in bed for 10.30 as I didn't have the best sleep last night.

Taking ideas from DIA and getting up bang on my alarm tomorrow instead of snoozing.

Homegrown0

Sealed pot
My poor husband has just had £3.50 snaffled from his coin tray and it's now residing in my pot!

Not managed to get to the bank yet with the £39 in coins, that'll probably be the weekend before we get around to that. Looking forward to banking that £40 in my pot.

Homegrown0

Morning all!

Second morning in a row that I have got out of bed as soon as the alarm has gone off. Managed to put dishes away, put a load of washing on and chill for a while with a coffee in peace before the sprogs get up. Just about to wake them and then chaos will ensue!

Today will be a NSD!

I'm waiting on a refund of £70 to go into the spending account from something my husband returned but he has since bought another (similar) item to the account looks pretty unhealthy. Have to keep reminding myself that the refund will come and that makes it look a bit less scary.

I want to get ahead with meal plans instead of frantically trying to put something together before I rush to the shops. That's how things get forgotten and overpurchased. The only thing I should need to buy this week is a top up of fruit tomorrow (I'll see how I get on with tonight's prep) but that comes from spending time meal planning properly.

I also used up my cumin and oregano while cooking last night so they were put straight on the list instead of me just thinking about it and assuming it remember.

I replied to two party invitations that my son got from school yesterday too. I was talking into a habit of putting things off when in reality, it's something that would take 5 minutes max to do.

Trying to push myself to just get things done where possible instead of putting things off. My planner is so far helping with that. Just need to keep it going.

Have a lovely day everyone!

Homegrown0

Survey / Extra cash overview
I'd quite like to keep track of the extras that are building up in different locations, so here goes:

• Nectar pints - £3.02
• Prolific Academic - £5.56 cleared, £0 pending
• Qmee - £2.93 cleared (will cash out at £5)
• Shoppix - 3015 / 3200 tokens (will cash out £5 paypal when I reach 3200)
• Onepoll - £5.05 / £25 (Think i'll just carry on with this because although it takes a while to cash out, the surveys are frequent and not too bad at screening out)
• Swagbucks - 459 / 800 for £5 PayPal (was thinking of ditching this but will see if i can get to 800 then call it quits).
• TCB - £1.20 payable, £0.42 pending

doingitanyway

We are both getting up immediately on waking, as I did too today.

I also work best when I write down something that runs out immediately. I keep a list on my fridge and just add to it if I think something is low, I then transfer it to my shopping list or bullet journal.

Have a good day

PositiveBalance

Hi Homegrown! :wave:

I'm bad at getting up in the morning, I must say, so your getting out of bed as soon as the alarms sounds impresses me greatly! (I doubt it has anything to do with my late bedtimes...:whistle:)

Surveys annoy the life out of me for the same reason.

Congratulations on having just over a year to pay on your loan and I'll stop by at a more sociable hour for a proper chat!