March....Spending and Thrifty Bits

Well, March 2018 was a good deal less expensive than March 2017..........Don't Move House - is my advice.

The spendy bits....

The estimated electric bill arrived = £127, I read the meter and phoned in the actual numbers and only had to pay £88. For a winter quarter it's much less than expected, much less than at the smallholding - somehow. I'm not complaining but  I quite expect Eon to send a person to check the meter!

Beach Hut ground rent paid.
We've re-stocked with bird's fat balls - 300! = £22. And 20kg of mixed seed for £10
3 fill ups in total of diesel for the cars.
A big food shop for the month  and the family weekend and several top-ups because Col is eating like a Horse!
Council Tax bill  for 2018/19 arrived......... up 4.6% on last year
Cat flu booster jab and wormer drops and stocked up on cat food while it was on offer
Membership for small WI = £41
Col got a roof rack for the grey car
Multi purpose compost £12
We got some Duplo people off ebay enough to send to Jacob for his birthday and some to keep for Florence
 


The thrifty bits
Bought 5lt Ecover washing up liquid from local hardware shop which is £1.50 cheaper than buying 5 x 1lt from supermarket. Then I  decant ¾ liquid and add ¼ water into an old 1lt bottle, and give it a shake to mix which works fine and makes it even cheaper.
Took drinks and snacks/lunch to Addenbrookes hospital each time for the clinic appointments.
Still stitching cross stitch from the stash,  for little Christmas gifts and cards
Ran cold water into jug while waiting for hot to appear  and used  for flushing loos all through month.
Used our own frozen peppers,  courgettes, mangetout peas and last of the green beans from freezer.
Used last leeks from the garden
Used first purple sprouting broccoli from garden
First few sticks of rhubarb from the garden
Picked up twigs from field to dry and use for kindling
Printed out a price comparison voucher from Asda worth £2.10
Printed out a price comparison voucher from Asda worth £1.68
Remembered to use car park voucher in Asda - twice - saving £2
Found Duplo from charity shop for Jacobs birthday in May, sent it back to Surrey with them
3 tee-shirts for me from charity shops just over £6
Had coffees in the MacMillan centre when at Ipswich hospital for a small charity donation.
Helped Youngest save money by collecting some new tyres for their car from an ebay seller just over the border in Norfolk to save her having to buy new ones for the MOT.


Just a normal sort of month of  Spending and Saving.

When Colin went into hospital on Wednesday we weren't sure how long he would be in for but Hooray! he is home again, I picked him up from Addenbrookes yesterday afternoon. They've done numerous tests and we will get the results next week. In the meantime they've put him on some tablets which they tried in 2016 after his own stem-cell transplant had failed, the tablets didn't work then but as the donor stem cells seems to have got rid of the Lymphoma in the bone marrow they are hoping the tablets will have some effect on the new problem...........enlarged Lymph glands.......hopefully only caused by the wonderfully named Graft Versus Host Disease, rather than any other reason ..........(Frightening thought) .We shall see how things go.

Did anyone else get the torrential rain on Friday afternoon? We were driving home through it for over an hour, the roads were rivers - really horrible.It carried on for even more hours after we got home.

Hello and welcome to some more new followers.
Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday, I feel embarrassed when people say we are brave or strong because we are just trying to get through as best we can. Coping and hoping!

Back Tomorrow, even though it's a Sunday,  as it's the first of the month and I'll be doing the April folklore post.

Sue