The Reckoning

January was a long month and had some unexpected expenses ! The most costly were tree surgery and a parking ticket, altogether these cost us over £400, since neither counted as emergency spending that fund was left untouched, so they had to be met out of current income. As I spent all our saving from 2017 paying for a trip to Norway in the Summer, before I knew about the additional spending, there were a lot of pennies to be squeezed ! Thankfully we managed it and finished the month with a bit under £100 to spare. We put off some expenses until February, like new printer cartridges and paper and MrShoestring and USAShoestring had very frugal birthdays !

We still managed to have fun, with a free trip to the cinema for four of us using gift vouchers from the Nielsen shopping panel and a nice birthday supper saved from the special things that came in the two Christmas hampers we received. I was much better at charging for expenses for the work we do and claimed petrol money. We also generated some cash for the gift account by selling old books and DVDs to Ziffit and musicMagpie. However, I think we are now well and truly decluttered !

MasterShoestring still needs new shoes and the food budget for the rest of us will have to shrink next month to take account of his increasing appetite for school lunches ! However, he is now so tall that he fits in men's clothing which should mean that any clothes bought this year last a bit longer than a few months !

Roll on a nice short month !

A Nice Freebie

The March edition of "Kitchen Garden" magazine arrived in the post today and just as I had hoped, it arrived with 3 free packets of seeds. Since the magazine was also free with Tesco Clubcard points this is definitely a 'win' ! 

The tomato seeds were the 'Mamande' variety which I have never grown, so that will be great to try. I've already sprouted some tomato seeds but they are a bit leggy so as soon as the second leaves start to appear I'll re-pot them much deeper in the soil so that I get stronger plants.

I also got courgette seeds which were the "Zucchini" variety which I grew last year and was very pleased with as they were heavy croppers.

Finally, the last packet of seeds were for celeriac, which we don't like, so I'll give those away or swap them with someone.

The seeds were all from Kings Seeds and would have cost £4.35 plus the postage if I had bought them, so that is quite a good freebie !

I seem to have been talking about magazines quite a bit lately and I do love reading them, so over the weekend I had another go at accessing the magazines available via the local library. After a few goes at getting a password I got the site to work and now have access to over 130 magazines, they were quick to download too, which had been a problem when I tried the service previously. I was delighted and can see that I shall be using fewer Tesco points to purchase subscriptions in the future !

January Challenge 4

The final update on our grocery challenge for this month and I have good news ! The final total, including school lunches is just under £115 ! That means we saved £55 on the normal budget of £170, which will definitely help to fill the dent made by the Boxing Day parking ticket !

In fact we still have quite a bit of food in the freezer, especially fruit and vegetables from the garden, so I've made a menu plan for February where I also hope to save some money in the grocery category of the budget. I'm not sure whether it will be as much as £55, but I'm certainly going to give it a try !

Overall, we spent just over £30 on school lunches, which means that the total for the rest of us comes down to just under £85 and since this also includes household necessities, such as washing up liquid and toilet paper, I think we did pretty well. However, we have run out of quite a few things, like coffee and syrup, so there will be a bit of stocking up to do and a few substitutions to be made to make sure that things like cheese and oil stretch until Thursday when February begins !

I found it an interesting exercise to try and use recipes where we used up things we had and I don't think before I tried the challenge I would have thought that it was possible to get the budget any lower for the 4 of us and still stay healthy, but we did it !

If you are interested in on-going challenges there are a couple of interesting blogs who are trying to keep the grocery spending really low all year, I have found them very inspiring this month. The first is:-

A Challenging Year on a Welsh Hillside

http://achallengingyearonawelshhillside.blogspot.co.uk

and the second is :-

The 1940s Experiment

https://the1940sexperiment.com

Now, to go and reckon up the rest of this month's spending !

LandScape Magazine

I used some of my Tesco vouchers from November to get a subscription to this magazine. I was rather tired of all the fashion, beauty and interior design features that you find in other magazines and this has lots of good reading and plenty of lovely photographs. It is also written in such a way that you could easily keep the issues and read them again another year. One of the drawbacks with the magazine was that it was only published every other month, but I didn't mind has it has a lot of content and far fewer adverts than some other magazines.

However, when the new issue popped through the letterbox yesterday it came with an explanation that since the magazine has been so successful it is now going to be published monthly and I should get some extra issues per year ! The letter did go on to say that if you were paying by direct debit they would be increasing the price to pay for the extra issues but since I got an annual subscription I think I might get all the extra issues for free ! I certainly hope so ! That would be a bargain !

RSPB Garden Watch

Today we are looking forward to taking an hour in front of the sitting room windows and watching the birds in the garden.

The Big Garden Birdwatch is taking place 27th-29th January and all you have to do is record the species you see in your garden over your chosen hour. You can submit the results at rspb.org.uk/birdwatch and it helps the charity keep tabs on what is happening with our native bird species. It has been going on for over 40 years and means that we are now aware that sparrows are in decline and we should do what we can to help them survive, such as not replacing hedging with fences.

We are very fortunate here, as we are right beside set-aside farmland and native beech woods so we get to see a lot of birds that are not on the spotter sheet for the general survey. Birds such as red kites and spotted woodpeckers. We also get pigeons and magpies just like everyone else, but on these dark January evenings there is something quite thrilling about seeing a tawny owl perched on your gatepost, waiting for a mouse !

Birdwatching is a great hobby and very frugal, so why not give it a go this weekend and pick an hour to join the birdwatch ?

Frugal Friday

So I'm not sure if we will squeak through the month without dipping into savings but we certainly are trying ! This week I got 3 free magazines and a local newspaper at the supermarket where I spent just over £11 for the week. I got three  yellow-stickered turkey legs for the freezer and put them away for meals in February.

I made breadcrumbs from old bread and vegetable stock from vegetable peelings, a great saving from something that would otherwise be thrown away. I was also given some Marks and Spencer's money off coupons which I'm not sure that I will spend but which MissShoestring might find useful when she gets a flat.

I went to the library and instead of limiting myself to 5 books a week went and picked up everything I liked the look of and brought home 9 books and 2 magazines. I also ordered 2 books, paying 60p for each reservation rather than buying the book, so I can see if I like them first.

I made tortillas, yoghurt, pancakes, quiche, cake, bread, pasta bake and apple crumble from scratch and bought petrol on the way home from work as it is 3p a litre cheaper near work than it is near home ! I have never understood how petrol prices can vary so much within a radius of 10 miles, but they do !

I washed out a plastic bag for re-use, saved foil for re-use and got a free copy of "Moneywise" magazine. I read about a special offer with 'musicMagpie' on MoneySavingExpert and decluttered some workout videos in exchange for cash for the gift account.

We lost a very old apple tree in the storm this week so MrShoestring is going to cut up what is left for logs for next year, so it looks like we are starting a free log pile for 2019 already !

I hope you are stretching the money into the 5th January week !

Using Music Magpie

I saw that the moneysaving expert website was advertising a code to get an extra £5 on your trade if you traded in some old DVDs etc. with musicMagpie so I thought that I would see what they would give me for some old workout DVDs which ziffit would not take. I was very surprised to find that I could get well over £25 for them, that would help the gift account very nicely ! So I packaged them up and sent them off at the closest post office.

Here's what you have to do. It's not quite as straightforward as Ziffit as there are more options for posting your parcel and if you want to use the moneysaving expert code, which is MSEJAN5 then you have to remember to enter that at the basket before you put in all the codes for your items. I did not know this to start with and entered all the items and when I entered the code they all disappeared and I had to start again ! So enter the code if you want to use it, I think that it might take the money off the prices they give you for the items so you might not want to ! Then enter all the codes for your items and see if they are accepted. When you are ready to complete the trade enter the details of how you want to be paid and choose an option to deliver your parcel, you can have a label delivered to you by post or email. Then send your items off and see if you get the money you were promised !

I haven't been paid yet as I only sent the parcel off yesterday, so we shall see, getting something for items that were just collecting dust on a shelf would be good !