Live on £4000 for a year - Part 3

Frugaldom

Shaz, what can I say? :rotfl: Sorry, not laughing, honest... err, OK, maybe a bit! All I can say is have a great holiday next week, I'm sure there will be plenty more thrills and spills over the coming year, so best make the most of the break for now.

My £10 of shopping vouchers arrived today, courtesy of Euroffice. Only trouble is, they have sent me £20 worth (good) of House of Fraser (bad) vouchers instead. I don't live anywhere near a House of Fraser and don't know anyone who does! Guess I best contact them and explain their mistake. I definitely ticked the box for the Kingfisher ones but my receipt says HoF. :mad:

dfw844

Hi Nyk,

Thanks for changing my total.

Do you ever sell on ebay? Because I often sell vouchers (from surveys etc) and usually get close to face value. So even after your ebay fees and a stamp you should still end up with more than £10 for those vouchers.

Oh and everyone if you don't know already it's half price listing on ebay on Thursday! And free gallery photos as well at the mo. Time for me to declutter again I think.

Just a thought, pm me if you need help with ebay (bit of an addict...)

x

Edit: or it might be 5p listing? I can't remember, anyway, I know it's cheap!

Frugaldom

Hi DFW844, it's half price listing on Thursday and I had thought about that, although I would probably list them on eBid, where listing is always free for me. In the meantime, I have emailed the company to let them know of their mistake. Hopefully, they will suggest I send back the vouchers and they'll replace them with the correct ones.

dfw844

Nooooo, hopefully they will suggest you keep those vouchers and they can send the correct ones as well. We can dream, eh?!

slowlyfading

looby-loo wrote: »

slowlyfading - I hope works gets sorted out soon.

Thanks, I'm sure it will be

shaz_mum_of__2

nykmedia wrote: »

Shaz, what can I say? :rotfl: Sorry, not laughing, honest... err, OK, maybe a bit! All I can say is have a great holiday next week, I'm sure there will be plenty more thrills and spills over the coming year, so best make the most of the break for now.

Definitely will be he's off away to army college soon so am sure lots of high jinx to come

I start uni in september (social science at Lincoln ).....................grant/loan is £8 week more than my crappy p/t job .....go figure ???


How did everyone here decide how to break down their budgets we want a bit more structure to finances fromseptember on especilly as grant is paid in thirds in advance:eek: we are quite good but don't have seperate pots for different things some things are fixed and i have a handle on groceries (ish) it things like garden stuff,haircuts DIY and birthdays etc this always gets lumped into "groceries"suppose a list is the place to start?

Shaz

lyndasharp

Shaz - hope everything goes well in Lincoln, I studied there until a year ago, it's a fantastic place. Stay away from the ice cream parlour just off the Castle Square, it's very bad for frugalness - and for the waist line Went back there the other week - freezing cold weather, but still had to have one of the ice creams anyway. Apple pie flavour is the best.

Bf is back from Ireland, think he's a little happier but don't know when I'll get to see him next. He's now on late shift at work, 2-10pm, and as I'm away in Cambridge all this weekend I think we'll just have to chat on the phone instead. I'm a bit worried about him having too much thinking time by himself in his semi derelict house, but there's not much I can do other than hope he's OK. No new contract appeared for me yet, fingers crossed as I have to give a months notice if I do need to leave my rented room - and there's only 3 weeks of my contract left now :eek: The person organising my contract is away, might be back Friday, might not.

shaz_mum_of__2

lyndasharp wrote: »

Shaz - hope everything goes well in Lincoln, I studied there until a year ago, it's a fantastic place. Stay away from the ice cream parlour just off the Castle Square, it's very bad for frugalness - and for the waist line Went back there the other week - freezing cold weather, but still had to have one of the ice creams anyway. Apple pie flavour is the best.

.

Will be doing most days at a local college and travelling to lincoln for the odd lecture yr 1 & 2 and all classes yr 3

we go regularly(it's about an hour away) for shopping at the farmers market and food festivals etc

Did you graduate in the cathedral ,i bet that was fantastic

Shaz

Frugaldom

Lynda - I hope everything goes to plan for you, there's nothing worse than simply 'not knowing' and trying to maintain normality around it!

Shaz - I set my budget at £4000 and simply refuse to budge it from there. First I deduct absolute essentials like food and utilities, then I deduct unavoidable household expenses like insurance, then whatever is left needs to cover everything else. It started out like this:

27/12/08
Electricity - £1200
Insurance - £52
TV - £135.50
Internet - £149.95
Telephone - £300
Mobile - £60
Gifts & hobbies etc - £500
Everything else - £1602.55 (including food)
Total - £4000

Then it became this:
All Household & Utility bills - £1855
Gifts/Special Occasions - £500
Everything else - £445
Groceries - £1200
Total - £4000

And then it was this:
Groceries: £1000 (including all toiletries, laundry & cleaning products)
Gifts/Special Occasions: £400
Utilities: £1800
Household Insurance: £52.40
Internet: £240
Everything else: £507.60
Total - £4000

Since incorporating the energy watch challenge, I will be reviewing this again because electricity and certain foodstuffs have increased drastically since the last household budget was done here. My budget is like shifting sands, all over the place, constantly changing and the only thing that stays the exact same is the overall amount I have in the entire budget.

Hope this helps - I don't have much of a social life, hardly ever pay for entertainment and am not known for holidaying... I want a house first.

Watch this space

studentgirl_2

Hi Shaz both my partner and I are students and are paid in three lump sums and we find this really hard. we try to pay every this when we get the money ie three months rent, £50 on the elec meter. But we always end up skint towards the end of th three months. One this that has helped is buy say £75 worth of savings stamps for when the money is gone.

Good Luck Studentgirl