OS Tuesday 8th January 2008

odds-n-sods

Dinner was very nice, DH can cook, he just doesn't think he's very good at it.

Am watching Hugh F- W. CHicken Run right now, Now i remember why I don't eat supermarket chickens, I dont' care how skint I am, I would rather not have meat than eat one again.

grannybroon

Well, worked a 9 hour day and then came home and cooked Spag bol, did 2 loads of washing and got bedroom ready for friend tomorrow. Haven't kept up with anything as we are still down at work internetwise- 2 weeks plus and now causing real probs! Have to process orders which go before Christmas and the Council might get penalties - not my fault!

We have a severe weather forecast for tomorrow - already blowing tonight. We have been told through work serious disruption and possible power downs tomorrow!
GB x

sparklewing

Hi I lurk here a lot but never really post, although hoping to change that now.

Me and Mr Sparkle had somewhat of a lightbulb moment at the new year about how much money we spend on nothing. We aren't in debt(except the mortgage) but we fritter away our money on nothing.

We sat down and worked out that in December we spent £500 on cigarettes and a shocking £850 on food shopping(and toiletries, cleaning and cat stuff) and that is utterly ridiculous for 2 people and a cat!:eek:

The worst thing is the majority of the food we buy gets thrown out because we never use it before the use by date and if we can't think what to buy we phone for take-away(also included in that £850)

We are awful for going to the shops and just throwing random stuff in the trolley with no thought for what we might actually make from what we have.

So I have pored over this section of the site for the past few days and it has helped so so much so thank you very much to everyone who has contributed :T

We have both stopped smoking(been a week on patches and seems to be fine so far), we also sat and wrote down what meals we would have each night for the rest of this month(again thank you as we stole a fair few ideas from people here).

So today we went to the butcher and bought the meat we need for the month for £24 and we have done an Asda online shop for the rest which came to £110(including cleaning stuff, toiletries and cat stuff). We'll still need top ups of milk, bread, fruit and veg but already it's an amazing difference!

I ordered star drops from asda after reading so much about them and getting extremely excited, Mr sparkle thinks I'm a loser:rotfl: , however I got worried that perhaps Asda wouldn't have any in stock so today I dragged him into Semi Chem by the butcher and bought another bottle there :rolleyes: , I'm actually looking forward to cleaning!

Next thing on the list is to stop taking taxis everywhere and buy less random rubbish, we spend a fortune on taxis, nipping to shop for sweets/crisps/ general junk food, and on magazines, DVDs and computer games.

I'm giving up my magazine habit, I have thousands of books so don't need magazines, we have set aside £40 a month for DVD's and games which I know seems a lot but we are using it as incentive to keep up the non smoking and menu planning

So this is just a thread to say a big thank you to everyone for the tips and inspiration. :beer:

Skint_Catt

Well done :j an excellent start! Wow, December was an expensive month! :eek: but you'll more than make that lot back if you stick on here!

Catt xx

mrbadexample

Before long you'll be looking at that £850 as a year's budget!

Mind you, you'll have to rein that cat in a bit, as he's spending far too much on fags & takeaways.

Skint_Catt

mrbadexample wrote: »

Mind you, you'll have to rein that cat in a bit, as he's spending far too much on fags & takeaways.

Thanks for that PMSL. My colleague just asked me why I was snorting with laughter while doing a boring spreadsheet! Had to explain I'm on MSE too! :rotfl: :rotfl:

sparklewing

mrbadexample wrote: »

Mind you, you'll have to rein that cat in a bit, as he's spending far too much on fags & takeaways.

:rotfl: I know! they never warned us at the shelter about his expensive habits.

He'll probably want to go back to the shelter after this month though. He'll only eat whiskas dried food and this expensive pate type wet cat food, he's so fussy, however I've decided to be mean and have bought some cheapy dried food which I plan to mix in with his whiskas gradually upping the quantity until he is on purely cheapy food, he's also going to be forced to eat whiskas wet food as it was on offer and is half the price of his pate stuff.

Ah well the vet told us he needed to lose weight so feeding him food he won't eat should work

Skint_Catt

Our cats were fussy little **** too! They would just turn their noses up at anything less than those tiny little tins of pate or sachets of wet meat stuff! Then again they did get a full roast from mum on a Sunday - mashed up meat, veg with a little gravy! No wonder they both lived to 17! :rotfl:

Stephen_Leak

Hmm. I wish you luck with MSE/OS-ing the cat. As they say, dogs have owners, cats have staff. OTOH, a cat's idea of a takeaway meal is a mouse.

mrbadexample

sparklewing wrote: »

:rotfl: I know! they never warned us at the shelter about his expensive habits.

He'll probably want to go back to the shelter after this month though. He'll only eat whiskas dried food and this expensive pate type wet cat food, he's so fussy, however I've decided to be mean and have bought some cheapy dried food which I plan to mix in with his whiskas gradually upping the quantity until he is on purely cheapy food, he's also going to be forced to eat whiskas wet food as it was on offer and is half the price of his pate stuff.

Ah well the vet told us he needed to lose weight so feeding him food he won't eat should work

I like to make sure Spaghetti gets good grub, so he gets IAMS. Mostly the dried food, which I buy in large quantities when there's an offer on. 60g per day so he doesn't get fat! I'll get him the wet stuff as a treat if Morrisons are good enough to have it on special, too.