Pinching Pennies

savingholmes

Good look with your presentation. 

daintydaisy

savingholmes said:

Good look with your presentation. 

Thank you @savingholmes & thanks for stopping by 😊 hope you are well. 

beanielou

Hope all goes well for you tomorrow 

daintydaisy

Hi all, presentation went well today. That’s another one ticked off and 1 more to do before I can finally wave goodbye to the academic year 😊 have next week off uni so I’ll be spending that focusing on my last presentation.

Joined CuriousCat as I saw someone recommending it and have made £3 in surveys today 😊 think I’ll build that up to £10 before I withdraw. I have £7 pending in Prolific, payout has been really slow lately and I haven’t had any surveys for a while. 

Spent £10 in Sainsbos today on a top up shop (wraps, chicken, sweeties and crisps). A lot of junk I don’t need but I wanted to treat myself after today! 

I have an exciting weekend ahead, going to see Harry Styles on Friday!! 

Tomorrow I’ll be aiming to try W3 R1 of C25K, if it’s a write off then I’ll be repeating W2 so wish me luck.

T minus 8 days til payday… 

savingholmes

Enjoy your concert 

daintydaisy

NSD today and finished my first run of week 3 in C25K 😊 so happy because I thought I’d really struggle. 

Homemade chicken wraps for lunch and HelloFresh for tea. Cutting my OH’s hair in about an hour (thought I’d be nice and save him £20!)

Friend is coming over after tea because we’re heading off early for the concert tomorrow. I still have my birthday money so will be taking that with me tomorrow, ideally I don’t want to be spending more than £30 (is that realistic? Maybe it’s too much?). Hoping that I won’t have to spend on anything other than some food, drinks and travel. We also owe my OH petrol money for coming to pick us up which will be around £30 each (I’ll sort that on payday). 

savingholmes

I think if it's your birthday money - don't over-sweat it. Stay on budget if you can but not to the point it ruins the experience. Can you take drinks with you and any food? If you take some it may reduce what you need to buy overall.

daintydaisy

Had a fab time at the concert on Friday. Feeling the concert blues now  

spent around £30-40 on Friday & the petrol money only cost £30 total so that’s good. Spent around £4 on Saturday getting bread and chicken slices. NSD on Sunday and today. Cashed out around £12 on Prolific the past couple of days and have another £6 waiting to be approved. 

My OH and I went to the garden centre today. I’ve been wanting to start growing my own veg for a while so he kindly bought the supplies we need - pots, seeds, compost.. we have some all-year round lettuce seeds which I’m currently germinating, we bought some Maris Piper pots which I’m hoping will sprout so I can plant them soon, and finally my OH is keeping an eye out for some wild garlic seedlings. If anyone can recommend where to get those let me know as both of our local garden centres had none. 

We spent the evening in the garden having a BBQ and we’re now starting Daisy Jones & the Six. Going to read my book later, only 10 chapters left so should finish it tomorrow! It’s part of the ACOTAR series which is amazing. Im currently reading the 2nd book of the series.

Plan for tomorrow: ring the vets and get Todd’s worm and flea treatment and organise his booster vaccine. Shouldn’t cost anything as I pay monthly for a wellness plan. 

I then need to work on some uni work as I have a big presentation next week. Hoping to get 2 segments ticked off tomorrow. Hope the weather will be as nice as it has been today & hoping for another NSD. Payslip should be through tomorrow too so I can begin to budget for June.

Aiming for an earlier start tomorrow so I can do W3 R2 of C25K.

daintydaisy

Feeling a tad stressed today.
Got my payslip and my wage is £800. Have calculated my bills and the remaining amount after non-negotiables leaves me with £170 for the month or £42 pw. 
I have 2x concerts this month (booked last year) but have had a discussion with my OH and we should be able to pay for things from our joint account and he said he can pay any extras if I'm really struggling.
I also have 2x birthdays this month but I already have cards for them and shouldn't be spending more than £10 so not too worried about that. Bad timing with the concerts but I know my wage will be going up during summer so I can even out any downfalls when my wage increases. 

I owe around £30 on CC1 which I'll pay off on Thurs, and will just make the minimum payment on my 0% CC for now.
Last week of uni next week and the week following I will hopefully have more hours so my wage for end of June will be higher, but this month is going to be a struggle. Even £40 pw for food shopping is a stretch for us. 

Did some Prolific surveys and have £13 waiting to be approved, will continue to accrue this and withdraw on Thurs and send it to my CC. 

In more positive news, I ran W3 R2 of C25K today. I also picked up Todd's flea and worm treatment (no cost as I pay for a wellness plan monthly), and have booked him in for his booster vax (again, no cost due to wellness plan). 

daintydaisy

Been busy in the garden this afternoon, finally planted the veggies I want. 

If anybody has any advice please let me know because I’m a complete beginner my OH purchased a cheap mini greenhouse from Amazon last night so we should be able to transport some things over to there. The amount of money all of this has cost is probably cheaper than what  a life time supply of veg is haha but it gives me a hobby for summer time. I tend to spiral once uni is finished as I go from 100 to 0! 

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Did our weekly shop in Ald!, came to £60 which is really good going for us. We have just had a new (bigger) one open near us so there’s a lot of choice now and we no longer need to top up from T3sco. 

Meals we have for this week:
- spag bol
- jacket potato & beans or tuna 
- stir fry
- pizza
- prawn tacos

Some of them will double up so we will have extras for the day after. 

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prolific is currently sat at £24, not bad going. I’ve been doing them as and when I can which is more often this week since I’m doing uni work at home. I’ve been doing a few on CuriousCat too but some of the surveys keep screening me out when I’ve completed them (and therefore I don’t get the full payout). Frustrating, but it’s a nice app as the cash out threshold is so low. 

Payday tomorrow so will tot up my finances and go from there. 

Plan for tomorrow: do more uni work, take Todd for his booster vax, top up the soil in the pots (apparently they’re too low) & do my 3rd run of this week!