Live on £4000 for a year - part 4 (Oct - Dec 2008)

purplevamp

bails wrote: »

Phew, up to page 48 but need to go so wil catch up on the rest later.

bails - if you go to User CP at top of the page, click on edit options on the left, scroll down to thread display options. Where it says Number of Posts to Show Per Page, click on the drop down menu and change it to 40 per page.

I'm only on page 27 .

I've entered my energy useage for the 2nd week and now have something to compare it to. The difference is gas - 10m3 (£3.89) and elec - 62kWh (£7.44). Is this good? Compared to other households it seems to be below average but the £ seems a lot

Bought 4-pack of baked beans in £Land today, only saves 16p but still...

Brighton_belle

whitewing wrote: »

If I set an isa for this tax year and saved the full amount, and then did one next tax year and filled it by Aug 09, then needed to withdraw £1000 in Sept 2009, what happens? Does this mean I can't then replace that £1000 in Feb 2010?quote]
That is correct white wing. You wouldn't beable to 'replace' that £1000 until after April 5th 2010 and that would be the the first £1,000 of your new allowance for tax year 10/11.
Nyk - that is really good news and I'm really happy for you. You so deserve this.

taka

Nyk - Congrats on signing the lease! I didn't know there was a legal minimum for working temperatures! Is it only for office workers?

Thriftylass - Your budget looks good! Its also a whole load closer to 4k than mine...

Marru - Congrats proud car owner! :j

Bails - glad the wedding went well if slightly costly!

As to the ads - its the one for Brighth*use that gets me... How much APR :eek:

I got my payslip today! It appears my calculations were correct to within a couple of pence :j Blimey though... that means half of the online salary calculators are way out in their calculations! :rolleyes:

PS Has the year got suddenly longer and no one told me?... from Nyk's sig...
Day 301, 665 days to go :eek: :rotfl:

cw18

taka wrote: »

PS Has the year got suddenly longer and no one told me?... from Nyk's sig...
Day 301, 665 days to go :eek: :rotfl:

As long as the extra 600 days are before my redundancy kicks in (which also means an extra 600 days to get ready for Christmas ) then I'm happy :T

But only if we can have the various seasons within that time, as I really don't want to be running my heating for an extra 600 days :eek:

taka

cw18 wrote: »

As long as the extra 600 days are before my redundancy kicks in (which also means an extra 600 days to get ready for Christmas ) then I'm happy :T

But only if we can have the various seasons within that time, as I really don't want to be running my heating for an extra 600 days :eek:

Deal!! :rotfl: I vote summer... well we didn't really have one this year did we? :rotfl:

thriftylass

cw18 wrote: »

I'm so pleased to see someone else does it this way :T

When DH and I both worked I did exactly the same -- add up all the outgoings, deduct child benefit and CTC, then split the rest according to basic wages of the two of us (though we did each pay our own mot, servicing, road tax and diesel bills).

My friends thought I was nuts not to take more off DH (he earned about 2/3 of what I did), and his friends thought I was cruel not to split the 'free' money exactly in half!!

With overtime/bonuses etc, we clubbed together for the kids birthdays/christmas or any work needed on the house, and I paid for the accomodation on holiday while he provided the holiday spending money (with one exception all family holidays were in the UK while we both worked, so balanced out pretty much as if I'd accounted for them in the budget).

We just thought that's the fairest way to do it. We started it when I was still on a student grand, hence on much less than BF. The food is for two since I pay all the food and household stuff (am just better at shopping for this ). That plus my share of the bills then comes to the agreed percentage of bills for me to pay (BF basically pays the phone, internet, car etc).

Have to admit that I feel a bit guilty because my budget is theoretically just for me and my share of the bills, I admire people that have that budget for a family of 3 or more. So Taka (sorry can't remember if you have kids and/or budget for all of you) that might explain how I'm not that far of from 4000.

bails

Woohoo, congrats on the car ownership and the signing of the house lease! :T I hope these herald a new start for both of you.

I'm hoping to save 2k by the start of the year so that I have half my budget for the year. Hoping to sort through my figures again tomorrow or Wednesday and set a budget for 2009. Might even start tonight once OH goes back out.

taka

thriftylass wrote: »

Have to admit that I feel a bit guilty because my budget is theoretically just for me and my share of the bills, I admire people that have that budget for a family of 3 or more. So Taka (sorry can't remember if you have kids and/or budget for all of you) that might explain how I'm not that far of from 4000.

My budget is just for me, no kids and a small flat :eek: It was around £5.2k at last tweeking. The biggies are food and entertainment/going out

I have been trying to get over eating problems and it was sometimes necessary to eat breakfast and a proper lunchtime meal at work (in the costly and not very tasty canteen) as at various points I was too scared to set foot in my kitchen let alone cook anything properly and forcing myself to have at least 1 proper vaugely balanced meal a day was very helpful in assisting my recovery. Some days it took all I had in me to get to work and couldn't face shopping for food to take with me. On good days I'd buy stuff that then went to waste as I hit another bump in the road. As a result my food budget has been all over the shop :eek: Things are far, far better now and my grocery budget should fall (as long as the prices don't rise too much :mad: ) as I'm getting more and more confident foodwise but I'm not sure I want to change my budget on this score as I'll just heap so much guilt on myself if I fail. On the entertainment/going out front - I also cut myself off from everything at my worst and really didn't go out much at all. I want to have a (reasonable ) budget as I'd love to do more social things and enjoy myself a bit more without going overboard as I feel like I've missed out on so much over the last few years. These 2 catagories alone take up over 50% of my budget Throw in insurance (I live near a river) and dental problems plus other bills and it all adds up!

I will give it another couple of months and see how I get on before setting a definite budget for 2009 as [STRIKE]I hope[/STRIKE] it will be nearer to 4k than it currently stands!

Oh blimey... sorry for the essay :rolleyes:

cw18

but what I like about this challenge, is that although Nyk is adamant she's staying on £4k (which hopefully her new home will allow despite rising food costs), we don't all have to set ourselves the same target -- nor a set target per person with a fixed amount for 'overheads'.

I've gone for the £4k+CB for 2009, purely because I could make this fit by not including certain items -- which did initially feel like I was cheating, but I felt I have valid reasons for excluding those things.

At one point I thought I would have to set it to what we'll be entitled to once we hit full benefits (probably late 2009/early 2010 at earliest), which would have given me a budget of over £12k (including DLA, mortgage interest assistance and council tax benefit). The real shame of it is that I already know that even if I stick to the £4k+CB for this challenge we'll still overspend by about 16% according to the Benefits Agency :eek:

I just have to keep telling myself that a 16% overspend isn't really tooooo bad, as the actual benefits level is only 41% of what we had as 'disposable income' at the start of 2006 -- and it has to cover all the same bills for the same number of people !!!!

Frugaldom

taka wrote: »

Has the year got suddenly longer and no one told me?... from Nyk's sig...
Day 301, 665 days to go :eek: :rotfl:

OOPS! Sorry, changed to the 5 and forgot to remove the extra 6. I'd NEVER last another 665 days on what's left of my 4k! :rotfl:

Minimum temperatures for working environments depend on what your job is, but all the details are on the HSE website. I know it's a bit 'geeky' sounding but when I did my Health & Safety training course they covered stuff about temperature and noise levels etc. There are exceptions to all the rules, of course, but I was probably too deaf to hear what they were because of my working environment. :rotfl:

I mentioned 'W00lies' to you all the other day, re spending of vouchers and making the most of bargains whilst we could still get them because of current 'cut backs', well, I've heard of another cutback with regards to their current advertising / marketing, so there's certainly something afoot. I didn't rush out and buy the shares just yet as they haven't quite made it to a penny yet but I do like their stores and don't want them to close