Live on £4000 for a year - Part 3

wendywitch

We had rain here last night to which is great for those growing veggies :T but so great for those with an over grown garden and tons of nettles :rolleyes: :eek:

Right guys, what can I do with couscous? I brought some and it's lived in the cupboard for awhile then DD1 says she doesn't actually like it!
What can I do with it to get rid of it?? Obviously without her knowing :cool:

Marru

Hi All,

I have been crunching my numbers all morning and a call to Tax Credits and to my bank gave me a thumping head ache. So, here are my half way point numbers for last 5 months:

Utilities (gas, electricity, mobile): £389.76
Food + Household: £823.16
Animals: £369.71
Other: £136.40 (this is mainly my clothes, DD's shoes and hair cuts for both, DD's clothes are part of food and household as they get bought from Mr T)

Total £1,719.03 which is £46.90 over budget. I don't think I will be able to claw back in August as I need to do a big shop soon but hopefully in the autumn I am well organised and also too busy to go and buy anything so I can get under budget.

But the good news are that when I started making "free money" in the beginning of March I have made up to date £1,166.84. :T This has been divided between ISA and CTF savings. I already put some money into ISA before starting to save for CTF but at the moment CTF is a priority.

Also got to borrow for a year school tops for DD for next year so that was enourmous help as well. I am now calculating if I can afford DD to spend one hour at the nursery in the mornings before being taken to school. That would allow me time to walk The Dog in the mornings, bring her back home if it is a hot day and she can't be left in the car and then still make it to the college in time. Perhaps I need some paracetamol before attempting to tackle that calculation.

Off now to put the kettle on...

Frugaldom

Back again! I risked hanging out the washing and, touch wood, it hasn't rained yet but it is still looking like it could at any minute. We did a quick dash into town for a top-up shop and spent £20.01 in Mr S (Autumn Meadows) but managed to get quite a bit, including a huge £6 chicken for £3.75, so that will do at least 3 meals for the 3 of us. En route there, we pass 2 petrol stations and I was horrified at the prices! They have increased again! :eek: It worked out at £5.36 a gallon for petrol and £5.95 a gallon for diesel! For as long as I can remember, petrol and cigarette prices have always been fairly similar, but back when it cost 78p/gallon and 78p for 20 Regal King Size (giving my age away now, eh? ) I'm almost sure milk worked out around the same price per gallon... how does the cost per litre of milk compare to a litre of heating oil and a litre of cooking oil?

Just for added interest, I spotted the following:

In 1918 your shopping cost: (today's approximate cost)
Litre of petrol - 4p (Approx £1.20 = 120 times the price)
Pint of beer - 1.5p (Approx £2.50 = 116 times the price)
20 cigarettes - 20p (Approx £5 = 25 times the price)
Loaf of bread - 4p (value loaf 40p = 10 times the price)
Eggs 2.5p each (value eggs 10p each = 4 times the price)
Bottle of whisky - 45p (value whisky £9 = 20 times the price)
Pint of milk - 1p (Approx 40p = 40 times the price)

My reckoning is that cigarettes should now be about £20 per pack, whisky should be £45 a bottle and the best value for money foodstuff available is the humble egg

Frugaldom

My washing is now much, much wetter than it was when I hung it out! :mad: I can't even see out my window because there are holes in our gutters that mean the water comes down over them in torrents! I feel like I'm sitting behind a waterfall!

Just updated my signature again to include £1.99 for the 90th birthday card. That's where I got the little bit info about prices - I was so busy reading the card that I forgot to include the cost in my budget update.

Yet another boring piece of useless information - in the first 7 months of this challenge, 49.16% of all my spending went on utilities bills! :eek: :mad:

Burlesque_Babe

righty ho - here goes with my foray back into frugaldom!

NSD for 'spends'
£45.96 water DD

Got some free donated bread (a HUGE loaf) from my ex so it was Lidl chocolate spread on bread for lunch which was lush.

I have £7.61 in my purse plus a £1.50 Tesco clubcard voucher. I'll put the 61p in my sealed tin and see how long the remaining £8.50 last. Gulp.

I do have a full freezer though so I shouldn't need to go to the supermarket for around 10 days or so.

bails

Afternoon everyone (Marru, if you're reading this, get on with that letter )

I have had an eventful day! I went into town this morning, paid my shrapnel into the bank for my Me Fund then headed to the stationers. This, along with books, is my absolute downfall - mmm, shiny paper objects :smileyhea- so I'm pleased to report I came out relatively unscathed. I got myself and OH a diary, and also ended up with a red pen that I don't need (bought one there a while back, was meant to be half price but got it for 50p so thought I'd try again, unsuccessfully so it's going back). I'm also taking OH's diary back as later on I found one for £1.25, saving him £4.74:T. After that was the library to return some books, had a free read of the TES and picked up a book about setting up your own tutoring business. Met OH for lunch at the house he's working at (lovely people) and saw an amazing Victorian spiral staircase in their garage...which they're selling...:j:eek::o Yes, I'm thinking about it - we need to move the paddle stairs up to our partially-converted loft and had planned to put in a complete staircase...can I put the spiral in instead, can I, can I? :j Will of course be incredibly sensible and look into how much it's worth blahblahblah
So day all going well (oh, did I mention I picked up a couple of lovely dresses in charity shop? ) but had a nightmare on the way home as I ran over a deer _pale_ I was very distressed as you can imagine. Turned the car straight back round and went looking for it - checked the car for damage to see if I could tell how badly hurt it might be (the deer not the piece of metal contraption) but nothing, no dents or blood or anything. I walked around for ages, in flipflops in fields of nettles, OH came to help me, got absolutely soaked to the bone; just as we were giving up and making a run for the cars, a deer jumped out of the long grass! It was completely fine, I just have no way of knowing that it was definitely the same deer

Now having a cuddle with the kitten instead of a hot toddy and praying (metaphorically) that the deer is okay. We both seem to have had a lucky escape as it's a very fast road :eek: and he came right out of the woods in front of me, no time to do anything.

Burlesque_Babe

oooh, what a horrible thing to happen I think if it were injured it wouldn't have left the scene (so to speak) so quickly.

bails

Thanks BB.
M-A-R-R-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U!! I see you!

Frugaldom

Hi guys,

Bails, I hope you are OK after the deer incident! :eek: You must have got such a fright and you're very lucky there wasn't major damage. I've seen what a deer can do; fortunately they do seem to recover from the shock quicker than many of us can!

I just checked the Government site and can confirm that the State Pension Forecast service it is now back up and running, for any of you who were waiting to get their pension forecasts. Linked to it here for anyone wanting to do same. Mine took about 2 minutes to do as I was able to log in using my Govt. Gateway ID. Makes for interesting reading! Apparently, I can look forward to a basic state pension of around £95 per week (today's rate), so that's almost 25% more than I'm living on right now... I'm going to be rich! :j :rotfl:

Back again - just checked the link, you may need to register for Government Gateway and await your details by post. If you are self-employed and/or already file your tax returns online then you can access the details immediately.

bails

Thanks Nyk, I'm aware it could've been very bad indeed so I think it was both our lucky days!