Live on £4000 for a year - Part 3

Brighton_belle

Thanks for birthday wishes:D . I had my best birthday ever and my remoska arrived too:j . Sure yours must be with you soon Janey. Haven't tried it yet as too bushed from massive walk yesterday but will brave it this afternoon.
OH bought me the perfect pressie: a frugalista's teacup - when he's at work it feel such a waste for me to use a teabag for one, when it'll do for two, but I never want more than one cup at a time. With out me even thinking of this, he bought me a teamug for one (beautiful blue with white spots - I love spotty things), with lid and in build strainer. So today, as he's at work, has found me cutting up tea bags and using half of one at a time in my fruglamug:rotfl: .

Sending you big birthday wishes Nyk & Janey. Hope you have the best day you can Janey, knowing that many people love and care for you. Good for you for making a cake:T . I only discovered cake making a few years ago: never liked them myself - like sawdust to me & too sweet but found the fun and pleasure in making them for others. My lemon drizzle cake seemed to go down well yesterday. While you may be considering moving in to 'old age' category, I'm having to face the fact that maybe, possibly that 45 could be classified as middleaged. Shhhh, who said that ! How very dare you:rotfl: . It's all a state of mind anyway. Long live denial:D .
Off to start September accounts spreadsheet:j .

System

nykmedia wrote: »

In fact, the guy next to me actually tried to console me!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

im off to make a late appearance at a car boot sale

(my reasoning is that i can leave it late, as I have peculiar tastes and no-one else will have bought the stuff i like!)

then i have conned my mum n dad into coming to help me clean my flat :T cos i want to have it all perfect and clean and the freezer stocked with meals ready for becoming a one-armed bandit

happy birthday, birthday frunchkins!

1274

Hi. Since MSE was down yesterday, I spent the time I'd normally be surfing re-doing my budget in order to get my daily financial fix.

Since I took the decision to give up my regular monthly income I will need to count everything in my challenge for this year and next. Now I've redone the spreadsheet, my totals have shot way over £4K. I'm currently at £6,450 with a budget of £8,805, but that's for everything for the whole year except mortgage (i.e. including non £4K challenge stuff like council tax and work related travel). Next year, I plan to limit myself to £8K for total living expenses minus mortgage, which should be doable thanks to all the MSE tips I've picked up.

Now, here's my Q4 challenge for 2008:

• get my shopping bills down to £90 per month (currently £100-120)
• not buy any more clothes, gifts, books or ITunes (already overshot the budget on those categories by August)
• not buy any more nicknacks/electronics for my new house (overshot my budget already by £685)
• not spend more than £60 per moth on going out (overshot this figure for 6 out of the last 8 month)

Wish me luck, this is a tough one!

PS hope you won't kick me out for the challenge for changing my rules like this, just couldn't count the original things and then find out that I had no money to pay for my train pass in a few months!

Janey51

Just been speaking to my nephew who is the grateful recipient of unlabelled contents of my freezer...DH never labelled anything.

Last week I gave him a huge block of Mozzarella which I would never have eaten in a million years.

So yesterday, he made pizza bases, made toppings....took Mozzarella out and hacked off a chunk of....






Marzipan :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

lingojingo

Happy Birthday Nyk and Janey :bdaycake:

Went to Manchester yesterday to see DS and his new accommodation - further out from centre and more expensive :eek: but he likes it.
Blew the budget but had a lovely time with him and DD, was too tired to do supermarket shop as well so DD is going to go today instead!

bails

Hiya everyone, and Happy Birthday to Janey and Nyk, hope you both have a lovely day! So glad you had a wonderful birthday yesterday BB, you really deserve it :kisses3:

As for all this talk of being middle-aged or old.... PAAAAH, I say! Having met BB and knowing Janey from your posts, I'd say there's NO WAY either of you fall into those categories! 'Young' is definitely a state of mind and you two are basically teenagers

Bluefleur, glad to see you are making progress with OH. I also struggle with mine sometimes (although he has come on leaps and bounds too). I have complete admiration for BB in her incredible patience and support of OH (a lovely, lovely man who in her own words just finds money very difficult).
Janey, I love the marzipan story - did he actually put it on the pizzas or realise first? :rotfl:Standing on the bowl didn't cross my mind either, doh! :doh:It must be a man thing
1274, your plan sounds mighty impressive to me! (and of course you're still perfectly entitled to be here). I need to do the same thing and work out all my spends so I know how many hours I need to build back up to. It keeps getting put off 8k all in sounds v cheap to me - I wonder what I'm doing wrong? - so well done! :T
Ooh, what did you get at the car boot JB?
I have been spending a bit of money recently... I have been trying to keep myself entertained to help shift my frustration/fedupness but it seems to result in dispensing moolah (not so much haemorraghing as trickling but still) :rolleyes: Trying to strike a balance is hard.
If I can I'll try and add my this month's spends at least and update my sig :eek: Have a lovely afternoon everyone and enjoy that cake Janey!

tryingtodobetter

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NYK and JANEY _party_ _party_ _party_ _party_ HOPE YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY

BlueFleur

Thanks bails. We've definitely found money to be one of the trickiest things to sort out since we've moved in together. But it must be love- I'm about to cook my first roast chicken for him (I'm a vege)

Happy birthday to nyk and janey :beer: Hope you have a great day.

I love that marizipan story. If he did put it on the pizza then it could be a whole new invention

Frugaldom

redglass wrote: »

Today we actually got some sunshine for once. And guess what? When the sunshine lit up the dark corners I discovered MOULD growing on the kitchen door and on the doors of the dresser. :eek::eek::eek: I didn't notice it before because the doors are dark wood and the mould is like a fine dark powder and only shows when the light hits it at a certain angle. This is a very damp area (drained marshes, basically) and nobody can have a cellar here because it would fill up with water but mouldy doors in August, well I've seen it all now... perhaps I should just build myself an ark :rolleyes:

Redglass, that fixy-up boat is still advertised on our Freecycle! :rotfl: I've now stuck an advert on asking for a dehumidifier, no responses yet but I'll keep trying.

Thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes! I'm sat here surrounded by chocolates (munch, munch) and my 'Smiley' balloon trying to put off chores that still need doing. As expected, it's raining, so I'm way behind with the washing/drying. DD has been in and gone again, DS has been away most of the week, but he's due home this afternoon (along with all his washing) and HS/OH2B has gone a walk to drop off bottles/tins/paper at the recycling units. No... he's back already! I must be a really slow typer.

J-B, don't spend too much at the carboot sale, 1274 you can reorganise your challenge budget however it best suits you. Next year, I think I'll just call it the 'Reduce Your Cost of Living' Challenge and I may count everything. :eek: OK, I may NOT count in the price of building the house if that's the route we decide to take :rotfl:


Have a good day, everyone, I need to go get the chicken into the oven... I just remembered!

Janey - YOU ARE FAR, FAR FROM BEING ELDERLY! We completely skip that part by jumping from youthfull silliness to calamitous (if that's even a word) to complete eccentricity

kbarty

Hi all,

just checking in. Getting ready to start in earnest tomorrow. Will need to do a food shop but will walk and take our shopping trolley so I don't feel tempted to get too much. I still need to make a shopping list. Feeling uninspired today though!

Have spent the last couple of days sorting out our budgets. I spend so long just trundling along and not checking our money. I know we *should* be ok with our incoming and outgoings but everytime I actually sit down and sort it properly it's always in such a state. This month will be tough. Am positive we'll do it though.