Currently clueless...aiming for awareness

stymied

At least there’s a few non-perishable things on your top up list that you can push to the fortnightly shop. I used to bulk buy the Huggies night time pull-ups every time they were on offer! The only way I’ve really found works for me to reduce shopping cost is to go less often. I don’t know why that works given we throw very little food away - we must just eat more when there’s new tasty treats in.

Maybe we could start a brand-a-like comparison for some of the particular brands although I’m not so good with avoiding processed food so am probably more of a specialist on that 😂 I definitely bulk buy the brands we have when on offer and get things like Kellogg cereal from Ss because they’re the only place I’ve found with the 1kg boxes.

foxgloves

While we were debt-busting & then getting used to the process of living within our means, I found top-up shops an absolute scourge. We all know that they start with perfectly good useful intentions of popping in for milk, bread or other essential item, then the basket (& heaven help anyone who takes a trolley round the supermarket on a 'top-up shop'!) gets heavier & heavier with stuff that isn't on the list, 'might come in useful', we've kidded ourselves is a cracking deal or convinced ourselves we 'deserve it'. Then at the tills, reality strikes when we realise that the fiver we intended to spend has become £20 or £30 plus. Oooooh look, yellow stickers! That was another one of our favourites. Yellow stickered items can be a fab find.....stuff which will make a meal or can be frozen to make a meal, but in honesty, a lot of what we used to buy from the yellow stickers was plastic packs of little nibbly bits, occasionally even pre-prepared fruit (still usually cheaper to buy a whole mango & chop at home, as we're also paying for the plastic container which goes in the bin).......we always look at them, but have come to the conclusion that nothing's a bargain unless we actually need it. Back in the Spendy Decades, I used to do top-up shops multiple times a week for no better reason that I fancied something other than all the stuff I already had in the fridge at home! 
I think it's a good idea to assess what you're regularly buying on top-up shops. Some items can perhaps be moved to your fortnightly big shop? As with all things, there's nothing like the zeal of the converted, but I honestly feel now that if we need a top-up shop in the week for anything other than an emergency loaf or a specific missing ingredient which will facilitate some useful batch cooking (say if we have a glut of something, as we grow a fair bit of food), then I think my system has failed somewhere along the line. We're not perfect - everyone sometimes forgets to put a run-out item on the shopping list now & again, but I look back at the sheer amount of cashola frittered this way in the past & it's quite scary!
The thing with budgeting/household economy is that there's always room to try things & tweak them if you think they could work better or try something completely new just to see. It certainly took me a good few 'goes' to get an integrated system which worked.
F x

canvascamper

@stymied I managed to stealth convert them from Cheerios to the Aldi version, and super noodles to maggi, but most things are sadly rejected! 

@foxgloves were you spying on my top up shops 😂 that's basically me. I am (was?) terrible for Aldi special buys, I'd get stuff for the kids for birthday/Christmas, forget where I'd put it or worse, they'd find it, and then still have to buy a load more presents nearer the time 🤨.

I'm definitely open to trying lots of new systems. I always thought apps were the answer, tried YNAB, Emma etc, but turns out I prefer a spreadsheet. 

foxgloves

Me too, @canvascamper. I have 3 spreadsheets & my trusty Money Book, pencils, a ruler & a rubber! After various tweaks over the years, I now have a system which works well. It doesn't matter if you use apps or a more analogue approach as long as it's effective in facilitating your financial goals. 
F

canvascamper

Well, my savvy friends, I have come undone somewhat this evening. Sigh.

I've been asking OH for weeks what he wants to do for his birthday, with no real response - it's in 2 weeks.

Yesterday he sent me a link to a play that's on at the big theatre in our city. It's 10yo favourite ever TV show (the Goes Wrong Show), but live, and on OH birthday. So he proposed that I could get him, 10yo and 7yo tickets (I'd have to stay at home with 3yo) as his birthday present and Thing To Do.

So, I have booked it and I absolutely know that they are going to truly adore it, but the ticket price in total was £120 which is far over the £80 budget I'd allocated for a meal and mini golf or something equally low key. 

I've paid via PayPal pay-in-3 which I'm not sure is classed as MSE at all as it's basically debt, but at least it's interest free. So £40 a month for 3 months. I'm hoping I could do a combination of surveys and more eBay listings to make up the budget shortfall of £40 in 3 months, but then that's survey and eBay funds that aren't going into paying off other stuff. 

I've also cancelled my lottery direct debit (my dreams of being a millionaire are dashed) so that's £20 a month saved, and, I know this is a controversial one, but I've been paying £60 a month into a private pension since I was 25, because my work pensions were all awful. My current employer matches contributions so I currently pay 11% of my salary into my work pension, and I've reduced my private pension £20 a month for now - I will definitely aim to increase this when we're no longer paying nursery fees, along with increasing my salary sacrifice percentage, although thinking out loud it makes more sense to just put all the increase into the salary one, right? 

So anyway, that's saving me £60 a month straight away. 

I've got numbers flying around my brain. I'm a words person, not a numbers person, really, so I feel a bit addled 🤯

canvascamper

Well thank God it's Friday! Work was full on today, I'm knackered. Got home at 5:45 and had to get 10yo and 7yo to school disco by 6:00. Who plans these things...I mean, I know it's teachers, that was rhetorical, and before I'm accused of teacher bashing it must be such a hard job, but could they give working parents a bit more time of an evening to get kids to stuff? 

Ended up having to buy lunch at work today because I left in a rush this morning and didn't have time to pack anything, so not a NSD but minimal, just lunch and tram. Had my favourite vegan rice and 3 curries from a vegan curry shop. Not going to lie, I had a real 3pm slump after a massive lunch! 

Weekend plans -

Tomorrow, gymnastics in the morning, in the afternoon we've got what used to be called 1to1 time before we had a 3rd kid, so now it's technically 1to1 and 2to1 time - I've got 10yo and 3yo and OH has 7yo, they get to pick whatever they want to do. 10yo always picks going for pancakes and a comic shop in the city. 

On Sunday 10yo has a practice exam for the 11+, which he doesn't mind too much as his reward is unlimited YouTube for the rest of the day. He adores YouTube but is usually restricted to an hour at weekends so it's a real treat for him. He's working really hard on his 11+ practice, I'm very proud of him! Hopefully the weather will be ok and I can take 7yo and 3yo to the park whilst he's in a YouTube stupor. 

Hoping to list a load more stuff on eBay and do some more gardening.

That sounds like enough for a weekend! 

WinterWarrior

That sounds like a full on weekend. Sorry the present was a lot more than expected, I fall into that trap too. 

canvascamper

Weekend change of plans - 3yo has chicken pox! So we've spent the afternoon baking and pottering about the garden and watching cartoons, and we now have strawberry cake AND meringues for tea 😄

canvascamper

Well, not going to lie, the weekend was a bit stressful and more expensive than ideal. Saturday took big 2 to gymnastics, came home, discovered chicken pox on youngest so couldn't have our afternoon out as planned with the 2 boys. I took 10yo out to the local shops as we needed some skin cream and Calpol for The Pox, but he was a bit gutted about his lost afternoon out so I bought him a box of fidget toys and got 3yo a spideman magazine to take his mind off the spots, so that was £10 spent (although TBF much cheaper than going into the city for pancakes), plus the cost of the medicines.

Sunday, 10yo had his mock exam and was super anxious so had a full meltdown in the morning. All credit to him, he managed to calm down and do it, but it's horrible at the time, for everyone including his siblings who get in the firing line even when we try to keep them out of it. 

Im a member of a food co-op that does a shop with a wholesaler every 3 or 4 months so I did that and got a lot of the stuff we have daily at wholesale price, which is fab but it's also a £200 spend all at once which is not ideal, I do have a Monzo pot for this but it only has £40 in at the moment, so it will take me over budget. It's hard to know what to do for the best with it because we do save in the long term. 

This week we're both juggling work and 3yo who can't go to nursery. We've both got the whole of next week of for half term which I was really looking forward to but now it's going to be a case of working all hours around the kids this week to make sure I can actually have time off next week. The juggle is real!! 

WinterWarrior

Sorry about the pox, what a pain.
could you recreate pancakes at home for cheaper?