Personal Grocery Challenge

I have noticed on a few other blogs, and other websites that there are a fair bit of personal challenges going on - decluttering, debt repaying etc, one that I like the look of (and indirectly helping in our debt repaying) is the Grocery challenge - Now as a family of 5 plus a dog we normally spend about £50 per week and this includes normal food, packed lunches, cleaning, toiletries, and pet food which I dont think is too bad? but there is always room for improvement - and so for the rest of March I am going to try and reduce this gradually by £5-£10 and then to reduce this by £10 permanently from April onwards so that our grocery shopping will be £40 per week, I have been inspired by the book title Family feasts $75 per month (I assume this is per person as it is a family of 10(I think) )which by my calculations is roughly £48 and I know I cant spend out £48 per month for a family of 5 (as much as I would love to !!) so that is the challenge and to obviously not scrimp on the quality or quantity of the food, I'll let you know how we get on.........

Walkabout Wednesday

Back to it now - no posts yesterday Internet off - one of those things you dont know how much you miss it until its gone, not bad considering it is only a relatively new technology, which reminds me I heard on the radio yesterday that during a sermon the pastor asked everybody to put their mobiles,blackberrys etc up in the air during the service and pray for technology! I know I'm attached to my laptop but enough !!

Anyway onwards - back to Walkabout Wednesday, found two great blogs this time, one is www.livingonadime.com I have been following the website for quite a while now but either the blog is new or I havent been reading the newsletter properly ( I know which one I would go for !!) and I know that some of the information is not relevant to us in the UK and you have all the conversion stuff to contend with, but I love it, I find it reassuring that if I find myself slipping back into old habits then to nip on here and it puts me back on track, they also have a great e-book to download on money saving recipes, and another offer at the moment of a budgeting spreadsheet which I am doing my best to get .

The other one that I have found is www.amothersramblings.com title says it all really! its written by a mum and quotes the funny conversations that goes on in her family and other tit-bits all very well written, some very cute pictures x

and so for today this is all I have because my little man has just woken up,

take care until next time x x

Menu Plan Monday

Yes, I know it is technically Tuesday but in my defence the kids had a teacher training day yesterday and didnt go into school until today and basically......... I've lost the plot !!

so until my mind catches up it is still Monday !

With me the New Year brings a desire to get on top of things and to KEEP on top of them (therin lies the difference) we are still plodding along with the spending/saving ratio and because of this and also partially inspired by other blogs I have read January seems to be use whats there month - basically instead of nipping off to the supermarket at the drop of a hat - use up what you already have in the freezer/cupboards which may be a tact I bring in maybe a week per month (probably the last week) or even if it is just for the last couple of the days of the week to tide us over until the next big shopping trip.

So by using these tactics I have gone through the stocks and surprised myself and have managed to come up with 14 meals - which just goes to show the surplus that most of us have lurking about - it means that I may have to go out for vegetables to add but the basics are there.

I have:

Corned Beef Hash, Shepherd Pie, Spagetti Bolognase, Mince and potatoes,Omelette, Chicken and Chips, Roast Dinner, Home made meatballs. Lasagne, Cowmans pie, Scouse (Stew) Sausage Cassarole., Stir Fry and Fried rice

so that is me for menu plan Monday/Tuesday, I will take 5 now and try and convince myself that it is infact TUESDAY now ! lol x x

Until next time

Money Monday - small steps

~ Every journey starts with a single step ~

so despite our little blip when Owen was in hospital our spending this month hasnt been to over the top, although this went awol when we had to pay for tunnel fees, hospital food, petrol, but trust me this was a small price to pay, but we have dusted ourselves off and onwards and upwards, small changes we are going to implement this month.

1. Try and meet all direct debit payments, saving bank charges @ £20 per item

2. Stopped our bank account with an overdraft/debit card and changed to bank account with no overdraft facility and one of the new O2 money manager visa cards, a visa card that you load up as and when and can only use what is available, no cross over transactions and text notifications when money is added or debited.

3. Keeping our spending to a limit, our proposed spend on food for October is £200 which averages out at about £50 per month, £50 will be loaded onto the O2 money manager card and kept specifically for food shopping, if we use less then this is carried over to the following week, and any overspend will be saved up for Christmas, which I have always started buying little bits for in September when the kids go back to school

4. Cook properly, I always try to whenever possible cook from scratch, but sometimes I find that it isn't always the most economical way with all the supermarkets competing at the moment, especially when the recipies ask for 1 of and you have to buy a whole packet of, so what I have tried to do is to cook double the quantities of easily freezable stuff (like stews, sauces, cassaroles etc) which I find cheaper and also means that we still have home cooked food on the two days that I do work ( because bless him my hubby still thinks that his version of home cooked is to read the oven instructions !)

5. I am also going to try and eke out meat as much as I can, again working out to be more economical, for example yesterday I cooked a medium chicken for Sunday Lunch, instead of putting loads of meat on the plate I put a little less on and padded the meal out with Vegetables, I took the rest of the meat off the carcass and then boiled the carcass to make a good stock along with whatever meat came off the bones, I can then make a chicken and bacon stew out of the stock and then we can have a chicken omlette with the rest of the meat so out of 1 medium sized chicken we would have made 3 meals

Chicken £ 4.00

Sunday Roast Veg £ 2.00

Stew veg and Bacon £ 1.50

Eggs for omlette £ 1.00

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Total £8.50

For 3 meals for a family of 5 - not bad eh !!

see you next time x

Money Monday

For this post I thought honesty would be the best policy. Now that the kids have gone back to school I have had a mid year recap on what we set out to do in our resolutions. Financially we are still pretty much in the same situation, but has now come to a head and needs to be addressed - not because it is getting worse but just because I am fed up of the money situation dragging on.

So anyway after going to the bookshop to try and find a book to help us in our situation, there isnt one definitive book that I could find that deals only on tips to get out of debt, sure they all contain a chapter on getting out of debt, but then the remaining 3/4 of the book is not relevant to me, why would I need chapters on savings and investments???? give me that when I am OUT of debt, plus all of them held some information but not all, and then I thought, surely the first step in saving money.... is to not spend money on a book telling me how to save money !!

After an indepth look at our finances we are just under £17,000 in debt, (this doesnt include the mortgage) included in this is a £12,000 loan which we took out over 20 years in order to keep the payments down to a minimum but looking at the small print it totals (when you add the interest)that we would owe £35,000 !!!!!!!!!. since looking at our finances I have figured a way that all debt can be paid off within 7 years - without it being too much upheaval or cutbacks.

I also chose to share this information with you at the START of my journey so that we can all live it together if you choose to join me on being debt free rather than sounding all preachy at the end of it, yes it will be tough, yes there will be times im sure I would rather throw the towel in and buy something pretty and blow the budget, but all I can hold onto is that light at the end of 7 years (if not sooner)

We have already had a kick start to our budgeting by default - the second car (which has always been needed for Mark to get to work at 5.30am) failed its MOT and needed to much work to put through so that was scrapped, profit (£80) but on top of this we do not need to pay £120 p/yr Tax, £40 p/yr MOT, £300 p/yr Insurance, £65 p/mth Petrol. so in all it will save us £1240 p/yr

So in order for Mark to get to work now we are in the process of trying to find a small 50cc scooter/moped for him to ride(its too far for a bicyle)which on average will cost us £500 to buy, £15 p/year tax, MOT £15 p/yr, £100 p/yr insurance and £8 p/mth petrol Saving us (without including actual purchase price of scooter) £1014 p/yr.

I have picked up some other tips frugal living, budgeting, saving tips whatever you want to call them, so over the next days, weeks, months, years I will share them with you along the way.

Menu Planning

Before I start - can I again please appologise for my lack of posting - back up to speed now and am bursting with ideas for you. so for starters here is our menu for this week.

We are having a very cheap week this week not an awful lot of money to spare this week, so have had to draw on all of my budgeting and cooking skills, but seem to have pulled it off !

Sunday - Sausage Cassarole and Mashed Potato
Monday - Shepherds Pie
Tuesday - Chicken in White sauce with Rice
Wednesday - Spanish Omelette
Thusday - Spagetti Bolognase
Friday - Lasagne and Chips

All this including food for school lunches, milk, bread, dog food etc for a family of 5 cost £35.00 not bad eh!

The future plan is to continue in this fashion even on the weeks that money isnt as stretched (its always tight!) then even a couple of pound saved will gradually over time build so that we have a small buffer zone incase of any emergencies

Hope you are all keeping well and I promise I will be more forthcoming with the posts !!

Love to you all x

Frugal Living

So this weekend the whole family was set to work, husband has just put up our new greenhouse, and the kids and myself have all spent the day planting seeds in our new resolve to :

1. cut back on weekly foodbill helping the family budget by growing our own vegetables

2. eat more healthily

so here we are, surrounded by trays of soil, full of the wonder of nature waiting to burst out. so far we have planted 2 types of tomatoes, strawberries and carrots, to be joined next week by 3 sacks waiting to be filled with differing varieties of potatoes. keeps us all healthy, helps to teach the kids where food comes from and how easy it is to produce these small nuggets in your own back garden. we have, by no means an orchard in our garden we have an average sized garden, but one tip that I have learned is that no matter how small your garden is you can always find space to plant some seeds, be it, herbs in flower beds, or hanging varieties of tomatoes and strawberries to plant in hanging baskets, (although hang them in the back garden otherwise all your visitors will eat them while they wait for you answer the door !!)

so hopefully, in a few weeks I'll have some seedlings to show you before they are planted out in the big world.

Wish me luck !!x