2008 - Live on £4000 for a full year.

sophiesmum_2

:eek: :eek: at the windows Markymark.

Glad DD is gradually getting better, hope she gets rid of her cold soon,sounds like she has been through the mill lately,poor babe.

funkyfunkymonkey

mumzyof2 wrote: »

awww i wanted coloured choc

I have no idea if this would work, but could you add a few/couple of drops of food colouring to melted white chocolate?

FFM

whitewing

I love the thought that melted chocolate would last long enough to actually use, lol!

Should be a NSD today.

Have a fab Saturday everyone.

broke_mum_of_three

Went out with some old work mates last night, we meet up once a year just to keep in touch. Had chicken curry, fried rice, snowball icecream for pudding, diet coke and a coffee for £18 not too bad I didnt think:beer:

Only thing for today is I promised to take the kids to the cinema, only saving grace is that I am taking them to the kids club where it is £2 for each of them and I'm free, debating whether to take them to M'Donalds for lunch. Need to be careful as they finish on Thursday for two weeks Easter Hols. Although I am quite organized as I have ordered my Tesco clubcard vouchers to take them out with:j

Janey51

Working extra today, tomorrow and Monday which is good for the bank balance as DH will be off work for at least another week but I will be pooped :rolleyes:
Good thing is that it means I can claim petrol expenses for driving to see Mum which I would have had to do anyway.
I can also nip into the Co-op and see if there are any bargains tonight about 9.30 just before closing time.
It means that I will be working 9 days without a day off. The Working Time Directive isn't recognised up here methinks :rotfl:

Good ideas on the frugal Easter Front :T

Am now speaking to DH again as the cats are a bit short on conversation

sophiesmum_2

Morning everyone,
Lots to do today, need to stardrops the house, make a fruit loaf, update my spreadsheets, move some money into my savings (result of frugal savings last month:D ) and do some shredding and filing.
Today will be a spend day as I need some fruit and veggies but not much else, so hope to keep it low.

Spends for this week so far:

Toy lamb £2
Book for OU course £12.50
Money in sealed pot for electric £10.00
Top up shopping today £.............

Doing okay so far, but got dd's in the next weeks:o

Broke mum of three- Glad you had a good night with your friends, enjoy the cinema today with the kids. Why not save macdonalds for during the holidays they will probably have sweets etc at the cinema anyway (smuggled in by yourself )

Have a good day everyone, will catch up later. Hopefully my dehydrator will arrive today as it has been despatched now:rolleyes:

redglass_2

Hi
I'm a bit late on this topic. I've been wondering whether to join this 'city versus country' debate as in my experience it's one that arouses intense feelings, even when people are just talking about the cost of living, but here goes. I was never a city slicker, but I was a city-dweller on a low wage, in London, and then I moved to the West Country. I agree with everything that's been said about the country being expensive. Everything is miles away, and when I first came here, I was paying the same for a 5 minute bus journey as I did for 45 minutes in London, and half the villages never had a bus service at all. :eek: Soon I had a car, something I'd never needed before. Small village shops tend to be expensive, and so on. Agree with all of it.
BUT....!
The pressures in large cities are psychological. You may not be a high earner but you are constantly surrounded by those who are, with their fabulous wardrobes and sky-high personal grooming standards (not that I ever managed to emulate them). City shops are like Aladdin's caves, with the dinkiest, most irresistible things in them and as for the take-aways (oh, those Greek cheese pastries I used to buy! Excuse me while i just take time off to drool). I still love to visit London but I always think, 'If I lived here I wouldn't be able to keep a penny in my pocket.' Whereas when I'm here....well, it's more a fleeces and wellies sort of place and to be honest, the shops are not exactly tempting. So I think both city and country have their pitfalls for the dedicated frugaller, and it partly depends what sort of person you are. As a lover of foreign food and craft jewellery, I'm much safer down here.

Frugaldom

sophiesmum wrote: »

:rotfl: :rotfl: Sorry wendy:rotfl: :rotfl:
Go and brush your teeth , everything tastes naff after that:D

OH!!!! Minty toothpaste & chocolate combo made me think of the mint cracknel bars you used to get! There were 2 in the pack, chocolate covered green crackly mint. They probably got banned from production as it was a bit like eating crushed shards of glass but oh BOY! I loved them! And what about Cabanas! All that chocolatey coconuty cherry bitty yum......... someone left a link to a racipe for hm sweetened condensed milk.... I'm thinking hm bounty bars now! I'm supposed to be preparing for the madcap chimney sweeping escapades and I want to make bounty bars!!!

Redglass - I have only ever visited London once, other than passing through when changing trains, and I have never lived in a city. To be shockingly honest, I hadn't been in one of those mega supermarkets until last year, which sounds really naff and silly to some, but I just never lived near one. However, I did work in the city for a short time and the way my work colleagues lived was beyond my reasoning. Nipping out at lunchtime and spending a couple of hundred pounds on a pair of jeans, for example! Suggesting a works 'night out' involved them all piling off to a ski resort for the weekend or down to London. Even more amazing was the fact that some lived nowhere near Glasgow, so they would just book into the Marriot Hotel opposite our office when they didn't want to travel home! It's a whole different world to country living. Like you say, it's down to the individual how they make their lifestyle choices, but the essential basics still balance out about the same.

Aaaarg! Council Tax bill just arrived through the door! :mad: £127 per month or would we like to pay the entire sum by 1st April and receive a £44 discount?!!! Off to do some rough calculations now :rotfl:I DON'T THINK SO... can get more interest from the bank, thanks

MarkyMarkD

We live around 10 miles out of a city in a large village (small town that doesn't want to acknowledge its size, to be honest).

We used to live 3 miles out of the centre of Bristol.

I do like living here. It's a lot more peaceful in the house - all you can hear, most of the time, is birds tweeting in the trees.

But I also miss the benefits of being in a more built-up area. We would walk out around the area in the evenings, and it was well-lit and interesting; we could walk to a nice Victorian park which was half a mile away and wander around that. Here, we can do a circuit of the same set of streets and look at lots of boring 1980s houses and that's about it ... not quite the same.

We too have the shopping issues that have been referred to. In the village, there's just a Co-op which is relatively expensive. All the "proper" supermarkets are about 10 miles away - although there's been an Aldi opened only 5 miles away this year, which is great.

I often wonder whether it's more frugal to shop at the Co-op and save travelling, or shop 10 miles (now 5 miles) away and pay less. It tends to depend on circumstances - top-up things like milk especially sometimes come from the Co-op because it's on the way home from work. £1.99 for 6 pints, though. :eek:

Then again, we can get free range eggs from hens living in someone's garden for 60p/half dozen. Which we couldn't do in town!

Frugaldom

Hi Marky, thanks for your comments.
I was just thinking about what you said about your replacement windows and wondered if you are in a position to take advantage of a 0% interest credit card deal? If the double glazing company would accept a one off payment via credit card (possible even to get a slight discount) then that could give you up to about 14 months to pay, depending on the card terms. I know it would be a form of debt, but if you paid the minimum monthly card payments and saved the remainder into a high interest savings account to pay off the balance in full when the time comes, it's not only interest free, it's also made you a couple of pounds in interest

Mumzy - a few drops or red food colouring will turn melted white chocolate a shade of pink but by the time you buy the baloons, food colouring and chocolate, it would probably be cheaper to take up the offer available on a shop bought Easter Egg - unless you need quite a few eggs and already have suitable packaging.