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

sophiesmum_2

Marru wrote: »

PS I have decided to take a fifth guinea pig...

I knew you wouldn't be able to resist:p

sophiesmum_2

Went to Mr A tonight for stuff for party, and managed tp pick up a few bargains.
Half crispy duck with pancakes etc reduced from £4.68 to 30p:D
Indian meal takeaway for 2 reduced from £6.48 to 30p:D
Fresh 12" ham and pinepple pizza reduced to 10p:D

So another 70p from contingency fund and yummy crispy duck for supper tonight:D rest of stuff now in freezer.

Skint_Lynne

I've got a confession to make. I've found myself adding stuff up all the time now. I tend to buy bottled water, usually from Lidl, so it is about 34p for 2 litres. What if I had to buy one every day for the whole year? It would cost me £124.10 for water for the year.

My mum buys lots of newspapers. I tallied up her annual expenditure, it is £825 on newspapers.:eek: She spends £6.00 on fizzy pop as well, (my bother's doing, he works to a schedule and one of his jobs is to go and collect this from the shop). Annual expenditure on pop is, £2,190:eek: , more than half of the annual budget on this challenge. She used to spend around £50 on the lottery, annual spend, £2600. She could really save a lot, but does not listen to me. They are laughing at me adding money up, but the last laugh will be on them when I have some savings (eventually).

I think I might look at the cost of water filters, cause I probably spend more than that on water, DH drinks a lot so when he is back it will be even more.

I am really thinking about money from all angles now, the pennies really do add into pounds.

SL x (number cruncher).

SiannieLaz

Cheers for the warm welcome guys:D Have decided to start 'practising' for the rest of the year and have set myself the target of £75 pw for everything. That would add up to £975 for the rest of the year, and would make next years total £3600 - am I being too hard on myself?!! Pretty daunting, but here goes :hello:

Woodyrocks

I wondered where you had all disappeared off to! Such a muppet I am forgot that new thread was due to start 1st of the month.

Talking about months, although my preliminary month doesn't end for another 5days, noting all my spends down on spendingdiary has really shown me exactly where my money goes! Without going into details, it is fair to say that I have done abysmally. Seriously, truly dreadful :eek: The chances of me being able to join as a fully fledged member is beyond slim

On the plus side, it is obvious where I am going wrong and what habits I need to curb but seeing it all recorded in black & white is so deflating. I never knew I was that bad

I must admit that I came into the challenge with a lot of respect for you all, but believed that it couldn't be that hard to meet the requirements but after going through this, I am just AMAZED at how you all do it. Once again, kudos.

I hope it will be okay for me to still stick around. I can learn a lot from you all and will keep up my spending diary because with focus and determination and support I think I can learn to bring my spending down.

whitewing

Thank you woodyrocks for your amazement.

Sadly, most of us probably don't make it! But it's fun failing. And we're not doing as badly as we were....:)

Frugaldom

Good afternoon

Bails, have a great weekend!
Marru, I had missed the bit about the 5th guinea pig, thank you Sophiesmum for highlighting it.
Mumzy, one of these days we'll get you on board for the longterm but I fear we may need to tie your life jacket to the frugal ship and give you a waterproof market pen and board. :rotfl: And I want to know why you keep saying "friend"?!!! :cool:
Skint Lynne, didn't you say you lived in Scotland? I've never used a water filter here before but if you really don't like drinking tap water, you could always save excess boiled water, cool it then store it in the fridge? I'm afraid I can't work out how your bro can drink £6 worth of Irn Bru a day and I'm also curious to know how much your mum won off her lottery tickets over the space of a year. I tried the lottery as a challenge a couple of years ago, £2 per week for a full year. I must rake out my results, as the chalenge was to comapre various methods of gambling - horses, lottery, premium bonds and shares dealing (on very small scales). :rotfl:
SiannieLaz - £3650 would be an easier number to work with, as it's exactly £10 per day, but I think it would depend on your household situation.

Now I need your help & agreement on something. In January 2008, I paid a 2007 electricity bill off this year's money. The bill was for 16/10/07 - 11/01/08 (88 days) - £413.57. If I average this out at £4.70 per day, would anyone have any objections to me only counting in the 11 days of 2008, so I can then include this quarter up to December 31st in my 2008 budget, rather than carry it over to the beginning of 2009? I think it best to do this just in case I need to move house. I did post about it in January, but never thought anything else about it until I started thinking I may not be in the same house in 2009, so would need to pay a final electricity bill if/when we move from here. I'm going to update my spending diary and then I'll have a true picture of what each month has actually cost in 2008. Is that OK with everyone?

cw18

Hmmmm!! Dunno about that Nyk

I guess it's totally acceptable if you do the same thing every year -- and I was already considering submitting meter readings on 31st December so that I start the year off at a 'zero' point (though I'm actually likely to be in credit) and then submitting regularly throughout next year with the last on 31st December 2009.... that will (in effect) show me exactly what I've spent on gas & electricity in the year for the last round of number crunching

whitewing

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh,

You mean to tell me now that instead of singing old lang syne, we'll all be taking meter readings at midnight on New Year's Eve! The things we do for this challenge.

Skint_Lynne

nykmedia wrote: »

Good afternoon

Bails, have a great weekend!
Marru, I had missed the bit about the 5th guinea pig, thank you Sophiesmum for highlighting it.
Mumzy, one of these days we'll get you on board for the longterm but I fear we may need to tie your life jacket to the frugal ship and give you a waterproof market pen and board. :rotfl: And I want to know why you keep saying "friend"?!!! :cool:
Skint Lynne, didn't you say you lived in Scotland? I've never used a water filter here before but if you really don't like drinking tap water, you could always save excess boiled water, cool it then store it in the fridge? I'm afraid I can't work out how your bro can drink £6 worth of Irn Bru a day and I'm also curious to know how much your mum won off her lottery tickets over the space of a year. I tried the lottery as a challenge a couple of years ago, £2 per week for a full year. I must rake out my results, as the chalenge was to comapre various methods of gambling - horses, lottery, premium bonds and shares dealing (on very small scales). :rotfl:
SiannieLaz - £3650 would be an easier number to work with, as it's exactly £10 per day, but I think it would depend on your household situation.

Now I need your help & agreement on something. In January 2008, I paid a 2007 electricity bill off this year's money. The bill was for 16/10/07 - 11/01/08 (88 days) - £413.57. If I average this out at £4.70 per day, would anyone have any objections to me only counting in the 11 days of 2008, so I can then include this quarter up to December 31st in my 2008 budget, rather than carry it over to the beginning of 2009? I think it best to do this just in case I need to move house. I did post about it in January, but never thought anything else about it until I started thinking I may not be in the same house in 2009, so would need to pay a final electricity bill if/when we move from here. I'm going to update my spending diary and then I'll have a true picture of what each month has actually cost in 2008. Is that OK with everyone?

Hi Nyk,

I think that is fair enough to deduct the 2007 bill amount as it was paid out of 2008 money. The only thing is though, would this mean that you would have been over budget last year? Just a thought, though if I remember correctly, you had to pay for a house move in 2007 as well?

The water thing is me being paranoid. There were horror stories several years ago about all sorts of nasties being in the water system, therefore I have drank bottled ever since. I have also read more recently though that there are nasties in the bottled stuff due to whatever is in the plastic seeping through into the water, so really it has become a habit. I should try and revert back to the tap. You are correct, I am in Scotland, so should take advantage of our pure water.

The pop thing is shared out between the family, £6 approx per day. My mum is addicted to irn bru and can go through 12 small plastic bottles of it every day.:eek: It must be the small plastic bottles, other things like cans or glass bottles do not taste right according to her. My dad drinks diet coke and the brother drinks pepsi. I am fed up telling them to pack it in, but it falls on deaf ears I'm afraid. The sad thing is, they have one of these fancy american type fridges which has the water cooler and ice machine, so, filtered water and ice whenever they want it. I do not drink pop, I cut it out many years ago.

she is quite lucky with the lottery getting 4 numbers etc, but the big win has escaped her so far. She would not have kept a tally of her winnings over the yeatr, she's not that organised:o .

Speak to you soon,

SL x