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Archive for July, 2013

Christmas Shopping

July 30th, 2013 at 08:17 pm

SG's first Christmas present was delivered today. I got her my first playdough set. It was reduced from £20 to £6 but I used my rewards from my catalogue, so it was free. I'm now on a mission to think of what else I can get her since she will be almost two by the time Christmas comes.

Meal Plan

July 28th, 2013 at 10:36 pm

- Fish with homemade chips and peas
- Beef burger pasta (plenty of leftovers)
- Tomato soup

We've also got a lot of rolls and sandwiches to use up. We will have them for lunch/with dinner this week.

Update

July 28th, 2013 at 10:20 pm

My total snowflakes for July are £9.23. I've done better but I can't complain. However, I don't know how much longer I can keep it up since we are in a dire situation here.

This is DH's second pay since reducing his hours by 5hrs/wk (£100 four-weekly) At the beginning of the month I had to give him money out of savings to cover his shortfall, so I thought he was ok. Nope, he went into his unauthorised overdraft and was charged £5/day. Fine will be taken out either this month, or next. Well we've got the same problem this month. Tomorrow we're going to go over hubby's outgoings with a fine-tooth comb. (We don't have a joint account) Well, hopefully we will. The problem is that he doesn't know exactly what is coming out of his account, whereas I do. Hubby is currently working a nightshift after being at work all day (nobody was in) so he might not be alert enough to discuss but it needs to happen. It's stressing me out.

I also have a shortfall of roughly £50 in my budget, although I'm not as worried since I can - hopefully - alter my variable expenses to spend as little as possible.

Wish me luck for the next four weeks. I'm going to stretch our pennies as far as they can go. I had leftover pasta for dinner, and hubby will finish it tomorrow.

I forgot to meal plan. Off to do that now.

Just a quick entry

July 22nd, 2013 at 08:48 am

For those that are interested, the Royal Baby is on its way. Kate was taken to hospital three hours ago.

This and That

July 19th, 2013 at 08:53 pm

This week I received money that I had been saving from my pay every four weeks (£640). The money was from company shares. This money will be used to:

- buy a carpet for our room
- pay for trip to England to visit DH's grandpa
- towards debt

I want to do some shopping around before we buy a carpet so we get the best deal. I'm going to have a look online then we're going shopping tomorrow.

I put some of the money towards my catalogue so I only have £69 left of the fridge freezer to pay. I will pay half when I get paid next week, and the rest in August. I also gave hubby money towards his credit card since he was over the limit!!

I checked online for train tickets, and we can get a return for £41. Of course, we haven't picked actual dates yet or spoken to his Grandpa so these were just random dates in September that I picked.

Ideally, I would love to keep some money in savings but it might be a bit unrealistic.

Vague Meal Planning

July 15th, 2013 at 09:41 pm

Now I know the whole point of a meal plan is to be specific but my freezer really needs defrosting, and we have some stuff that's been in there a while. So this week I will try to use that up. We will be having:

- filled pasta with wedges
- vegetable pasta/risotto
- toasties/wraps with chips
- fish pie with veg

Also, I've been thinking more about my grocery budget, and maybe where I shop is the problem. So next pay I'm going to get some stuff from Farmfoods. I noticed on their leaflet that they sell the cereal bars that I've been buying from the pound store for 89p. That's an 11p saving, there must be other stuff too. I'm going to investigate.

Financial housekeeping

July 11th, 2013 at 10:37 am

I've overspent on groceries by £5.46 so far. Two weeks to go and we will need more milk at some point, and bread too. I think I will budget more next month for groceries and less in another category.

I counted up my snowflakes: £5.93. I've got some direct debits coming out soon though so I'll make the payment once they're paid.

I budgeted £40 for nappies and baby snacks for SG. Spent £27.35 so far and this includes a pair of sandals and a top for £3.

Interesting

July 10th, 2013 at 09:56 pm

I work for a large retail company. I would be lying if I said that we had a lot of staff (in my dept anyway) Whenever people leave, they're not replaced. Which was ok, at first. A year later or so though, it's not so fine. I think some full-time colleagues may have been complaining because it was brought up today. What was basically said was that the reason the company doesn't replace them is because they are investing the money elsewhere [to bring customers in] Nobody said a word. In fact, I think it wasn't mentioned again.

In other news, I read in the paper this morning that £5.8m is being invested in Scotland after Andy Murray's success. I found a link to a detailed article if anyone's interested:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23238125

Some hot weather here...

July 9th, 2013 at 07:56 pm

It was 20 degrees Celsius here, roughly, which frankly is enough for us. I don't know how my fellow SA bloggers manage to survive in the extreme heat you have - this is a cold day for you guys I bet!! Well, here, we are useless. We complain that we don't have the sun and when it's here we complain.

We were out in MIL's garden yesterday with SG but we had to bring her inside a lot because it's just too much for her - plus she hates wearing her sun hat.

Meal Planning and other stuff

July 7th, 2013 at 10:02 pm

This week I will make:

- five bean chilli with wedges/rice (never made it last week)
- chicken in a garlic and herb sauce with potatoes and veg
- risotto

I'm really close to using all of my grocery budget so I'm hoping to spend as little as possible. How did this happen? Well, because I'm not used to us having nice weather we never have ice cream in the house. This means when we do go to the shop to get it I'm usually feeling tired and hungry and I end up buying other stuff such as BBQ chicken wings and spicy chicken thighs. We finished the last of them tonight. Maybe I should pay more attention to the weather forecast in future and buy these things in advance! It could have been worse, well that's what I keep telling myself. We spent £20.11 in the shop and £8 was for nappies.



Update

July 1st, 2013 at 04:23 pm

My shopping came today. I've spent about £70 of my £100 grocery budget. But the fridge, freezer and cupboards are full. The only things I may need to buy are a few fresh items. I've lost my receipt from the butcher's but I know I spent £11.xx there.

Waiting on my new credit card statement so I can make a payment for this pay period. I also want to start putting snowflakes towards debt again.

This is hubby's first pay with his new hours. £100 less than it used to be. Maybe I'm trying to get too much done, put towards debt, especially with less income. But, in my opinion, I'm saving myself money in the future by dealing with debt now. I just hope it works out. I'm going to track every penny for the rest of this pay period.

We were given some free food from a local cafe at the weekend so I made the steak pasta today. It was food that was going to get thrown out otherwise. We ate it over the weekend, but we still have some sandwiches left.