Extra Frugal

Slight miscalculation this month.

I paid a chunk of extra mortgage repayment this month plus half of the money for a consultant we have employed in Greece to make sure a legal on everything we do and have done. I also had to fork out for Ahdels month tuition fee for his IT course and his swimming teachers course. He will give me the money back on the 18th when he gets paid but because he has just started a new job he has four weeks before he has any cash in his pocket.After all of the additional expense, four days later Fahed's money arrived, considerably shorter than normal. I remember now he missed some work when he had a chest infection.

Oops. So rather than dig into reserves I thought I would see if I could make it through to the 24th anyway. Well I can tell you that nothing focuses you on really being frugal like not having any money! No spend days were a breeze. I challenged my youngest son to getting the most for the least with me last Saturday and we got a vast amount of shopping fro £71, including £7 of multisave savings and then a further £5 of price challenge discount. I dragged my petrol out to last all week (light has been flashing since Friday). I spent £7 in Tesco Express midweek on some reduced pork chops, mushrooms and something else which I have forgotten. Otherwise nothing. Yesterday I shopped again. It came to £44, less £2 on multisave and another £5 for the price challenge discount.

We have plenty of food for the week. We are introducing a soup day, which will be on JuJitsu day for ease, and a sandwich day which will be on the day when Fahed has an hours break mid evening and then goes to another pool to teach adults and doesn't get home until ten. Pretty sure I have dressed up my frugal choices as convenient common sense moves there too. I have brought my food expenditure down to what I consider to be seriously low levels. I am very pleases to say that my home made bread is so popular that they would happily live on just that given the choice. How I wish I had threatened the bread machine with freecycle previously.

In other frugal news I was rewarded for writing to the council about my parking problem by them rescinding the parking fine so a £50 save there. I also wrote to the bank about my bank charges for the current account that went 20p and then 2p over drawn. They credited me back the original £110 and have now kindly credit me the other £75. I did this by saving my sons holiday money in an account which is at the bottom of my e-banking screen. When we went on holiday I transferred it all to his account but a typo meant I gave him an en extra 20p. I don't know the system would allow that but it did. I didnt notice until almost two months later when I suddenly went £110 overdrawn. The bank were really good but like the council parking people they suggested that maybe I be slightly more observant in future. There are obviously some nice people about.

More frugal news. The hall stairs and landing redec is going well. I used paint I already owned for the most part. Mulberry blush or maybe crush on the feature wall at the top of the stairs and around the front door. Natural calico on the big walls. Crazy cream on most of the paint work. Natural calico and crazy cream are the paints I use everywhere, except a few accents in feature colours, so I had plenty of them plus I did some touching up of existing decor once I had them out of the shed. Bed room and sitting room are now also looking a little fresher at a total cost of nothing. I wish I could be this clever with my wardrobe.

OKay, less talk more action. My roller is calling.