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

dfw844

Yay I'm on the first page!!

I haven't totalled up September yet (still too many hours and temptations left until the end of the day!), but I think I'm doing OK. Definitely had a better month than last month. I'll update later in the week.

Hi to everyone, and good luck for the final quarter of our challenge (can you believe how the time has flown?)

xx

Frugaldom

I've completed my budget/spending diary right up to date and it is looking quite good for today. That's until tomorrow, 1st of the month, and I have the electricity bill coming off the account, our NTS membership dd and the start of October's grocery budget. Eugh! Then mid month, I'll have the debit for the dehumidifier, so that should put paid to anything I had remaining of my 'everything else' fund. :rotfl: Still haven't touched the contingency fund, thank goodness!

I've just finished chopping up all the tomatoes and they are now in the slow cooker so I can stew them and then strain & freeze them for bolognese sauce. I didn't try the green tomato chutney as I didn't feel confident that it was saving me any money, as we don't eat much chutney, besides, the tomtoes all went red whilst sitting on the windowsill. I had forgotten how much better homegrown tomatoes tasted when compared to supermarket bought ones; yum, I think I must have eaten 2 or 3 of them whilst chopping! Now I need to try to get the next lot of potatoes boiled & mashed plus there's ANOTHER bucket of apples to stew and freeze! If I need to move house soon I'm going to HAVE to borrow another freezer as I'll never get mine emptied, defrosted and moved in time to refill it.

bails

Woo hoo, Part 4 of the challenge, I've been looking forward to this :j
Aah Lilaclady, your comment gave me a warm glow, thanks! It's been so wonderful to 'meet' so many great friends on here and to know people will be around supporting each other next year too is fantastic! I for one find it hard to cope when I think of my longterm future and coming on here is a wonderful tonic to reinspire me and remind me that I can still be in control of the financial side of my life to a large extent.
My hope is that I can keep track of all spends for this final 3 months and then work out an overall yearly spend from those figures and the months I've managed to keep all totals. I'm still pondering the best way to do my target for 2009 but all in good time
CW and SkintLynne, you're both doing really well already :T

I thought it might be nice to remind ourselves (and others) of why we're doing this challenge and what we hope to achieve...

I signed up after losing a well-paid job through ill health (with OH a student) and wanted to eek out my money as long as possible to give myself the time and space to recover as fully as I can. I thought I would have been forced back into work a long time ago but I am constantly amazed at how elastic my money is What I didn't anticipate is the superb group of friends and support network we have built along the way; I can't tell you how much this thread has improved my quality of life and saved me from going doolally stuck under the duvet, so THANKYOU everyone :iloveyou:

Optimisticpair

cw18 wrote: »

3. getting better -- just need to convince hubby it's worth turning the TV off instead of using standby.... and that's when he goes out as well as just when he changes to reading a book for a while :eek:

Hi Cw18,


I think a way to get family more on board the MS train is to be able to show how much all the small spends or savings add up to and that added together they aren’t chicken feed. I know if it came out of my pocket as a lump sum I would think “WHAT?" followed by " HOW MUCH!”. Possibly one of those energy monitors will be much more accurate but if you enter figures on here can give you a calculation of running costs of say a medium size tv.
.

http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp


Hope this is of some use to you. Will look for the other uk one

lyndasharp

Congratulations to everyone who has made it this far into the challenge, and welcome to the new people :j

Hope everyone has a fantastic final 3 months of the year.

Thanks to a mega underspend in September my budget is now back on track, though that is partly due to not getting a veg box bill (didn't get many boxes delivered in Aug as I was away a lot) and not visiting family (adds on about £40 for petrol).

cw18

Have no fear -- I'm working on the standby issue. I was buying the Daily Mail for the 1980's CDs (I know - not very MSE, but gave hubby a paper and me a CD for 50p/day). But at the same time they had vouchers for an energy monitor -- and if you're a BG customer they were also offering an extension socket that when you turn the TV onto standby turns everything off (tv / dvd / freeview / VCR). As my daughter is a BG customer she's sending off for them for us

bails

I've decided to sign up to my local Letts scheme in order to 'earn' some more cash. I've already signed up to a couple but they aren't very good so, as I can't find it online :mad:, I'm going into town tomorrow to get the contact number. This means I can home tutor in exchange for car servicing, house improvements etc that I would normally need to pay for:j How exciting, I hope it works!

Marru

bails wrote: »

(put the pen down Marru)

Moi! Use pens? No way when email is free.

I have not got a reply for my enrollment on the correspondence course and if I can pay in installments and also I sent an enquiry to take weekend course and decided to spend what I have put into ISA for that as it is more important when it comes to my future earning ability.

Got my tooth sorted today. Thank you so much everybody giving me the "kick bottom". I had been putting it off as I thought I can't afford it and in the end I got it sorted for free. So on that note it was NSD today. Now just keeping fingers crossed that I have enough petrol to get me to the petrol station tomorrow morning that I know has the cheapest petrol in the area.

I am trying to get DD to bed so that I can go and have my Tuesday evening bath. I got thoroughly soaked while walking the dogs so hot bath is just the thing.

Bails - good luck on your pledge!!

Have a great evening.

Marru

cw18

Glad to hear your tooth is sorted Marru

mumzyof2

Marru i just want to say thankyou because you have made me realise i need my tooth looking at so im going to ring emergency dentits tomorrow and say its sore as i dont have a dentist either