Trimming The Household Finances
Posted on 14 March 2012 No Comments
The best way to cut back on the finances is to literally start assessing your financial decisions – it is the small every day decisions that save you lots of money over time.
Today I have:
Gas & Electric -
I have read our gas & electric meters and entered them on our utility companies website. We are £200 in debit so I am sure our DD payments will increase soon! Even more reason to cut back!
I then set up a spreadsheet to analyse our usage over the last year using the information from the bills & also created a page to enter our weekly meter readings to hopefully keep track of our energy usage/spends before we get a bill & therefore be able to impact how much they are.
Renewal Date – When I was looking through our bills I realised that our renewal date is 30/06/2012 so I will have a look soon to see if it is worth switching companies/tariffs ready for the renewal date.
Food Shopping -
I tend to go through peaks and troughs when it comes to food shopping, I will spend a month or so running down my stores and then the following month building them up with offers that I find. I have been very savvy with the offers recently (especially the lidl weekly offers) and therefore now have a full fridge, freezer & cupboards. I think I can get to the end of April only buying the fresh things we need on a weekly basis.
I will sit down and write a meal plan for the week to ensure we do not buy anything that we do not need.
Making Extra Money -
Selling – I have been trying to sell some things on a Facebook selling page local to us – I think I have made about £60 so far although interest has all but died off. I think I am going to wait until the next free listing day on eBay and then after that go to a car boot sale, anything left then can go to a charity shop.
Cash back Credit Card – I am going to look into a cash back credit card – After all I know that we are very good at being strict with our finances and therefore would pay off any purchases the following month – I am really looking for something that we can in effect use as a debit card yet get cash back from. If not good for us I will investigate the possibility of stoozing!
Interest Received – After the 5th of April once I know how much interest our accounts have earned I will have a look around and see if our money is in the highest paying accounts and if not switch them.
I am off now for more investigations!
Stacey x
Cutting & Sticking – How to make a Tractor collage
Posted on 09 March 2012 No Comments
Take one daddy who can get some tractor brochures & literature.
Add one mummy who will sit and cut out all the pictures.
Finally get one child to do the messy bit and glue all the pictures onto some sheets of cardboard:
Voila! Although we had too many pictures so we ended up making three!
This is a great activity to do with children who love ‘cutting & sticking’ & you ultimately end up with homemade pictures for their bedroom!
Think about the other collages that you can make with your children..
- Use the leftover children’s magazines & cut out their favourite characters.
- Look at your magazines – cut out pictures of cakes, shoes, bags, clothes, jewellery, crafts etc for little girls to cut and stick.
- Ask around for any mens cars/fishing/other hobby magazines for boys to use!
- Go to the tourist information centre and pick up some leaflets of local attractions there will be lots of fab pictures of animals, fair rides & trains!
- Use the leaflets that come through the door to make an educational collage of food types to test your children through play as they stick them down.
You only need to pay for the glue to stick your cut outs down with (onto a cereal box), so this is a virtually free activity as well!
Stacey x
Whats in your junk drawer?
Posted on 08 March 2012 2 Comments
Today I sorted out ‘the junk drawer’ – I think most kitchens have one (don’t they?), the drawer where all the ‘other stuff’ goes.
Guess what I found in there?
2 phone chargers, an Ipod charger, 2 pairs of glasses in their cases, 6 socket covers, 1 double plug adapter, 10 completely dried out crocus bulbs (can I still stick these in the garden or are they no good?), 1 energy-saving plug, a pack of mini playing cards, a tube of bubbles, 2 mini yoyos, a small tape measure, a mini notebook, 2 kinder egg toys, a badge, a bag of marbles, 1 pence, 2 packs of chalk, a key, a pipe cleaner, a bit of string, some stickers, 2 mini traffic cones, a teether, a meningitis test kit, labels for storage boxes, a used tealight, 2 head torches, a remote control, a garden hose adapter, 3 rechargeable batteries, superglue, a ball of string, gaffertape, a cable tidy, a paintbrush, a torch, a retractable tape measure, a leatherman case, a 30cm metal ruler, 2 key rings, some hand sanitiser, an old wallet, some in ear headphones, a bike repair kit, the end of a mastic tube, 3 USB sticks, a box of matches, a screen wipe in sachet, 4 curtain track hooks, 1 expired tax disc & holder, 1 expired AA card, 2 hairgrips, 2 paperclips, 1 calpol bottle lids, 2 screws, 1 wooden block with a rough edge, 1 dog cage clip, 1 trolley coin, 2 hairbands, 2 bangles, 1 nail buffer, 6 emery boards, 2 open packs of tissues, 1 empty spray bottle, 1 nail varnish, 1 manicure set, 3 pages, 1 notepad, 1 sewing tape measure, 2 rechargeable hand warmers, 7 buttons, tweezers, sunglasses, some out of date Tesco vouchers, 2 pens, a pencil….and some old receipts!
I wonder if we played junk drawer bingo how many items the same you would have?
I have rehomed all items worth keeping, binned the rest and left just the chargers, glasses & socket covers in the drawer.
That’s one job I hate doing off my list…
Stacey x
She doesn’t do much
Posted on 07 March 2012 4 Comments
I had to explain to Tom that although Matilda will be able to play with him when she is older at the moment she doesn’t do much other than eat & sleep and she isn’t quite big enough to play with him.
He is so loving and kind to her and just wants to hold her, feed her and play with her which although is sweet, presents its own problems as I have to keep a watchful eye on them in case he tries to pick her up without me there.
Sometimes though you can’t watch them all the time, you leave them for only a few minutes and then when you return…
I came in to find Tom had stacked his wooden blocks on Tilly – who had remarkably slept through the whole thing! Ok it’s not the worst thing in the world but I did have to explain that she was a bit too little to play with the heavy blocks and that I would really appreciate him letting her sleep!
The face says it all really – busted!
Stacey x
Planning the vegetable garden for 2012
Posted on 06 March 2012 No Comments
I just cannot believe that it is March already!
Having a little one means that the days are flying by at breakneck speed and with a toddler too, I certainly have my hands full! However I really would like to grow some veggies again this year, albeit maybe on a smaller scale so it is a little more manageable!
I am going to sit down and plan what we will grow, where it is going to go and when it will need to be done. I might have to jot some reminders down in my diary so I remember to plant things before it is too late too!
Last year things like carrots, potatoes, parsnips and virtually all the brassicas did really poorly so I am not sure if I am going to bother with these this year. I also need to repot one of the fruit trees that survived a summer in a pot but only just!
Once I have an action plan I will list it on here to make sure I remain accountable and get everything done!
Stacey x