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

Frugaldom

mumzyof2 wrote: »

Good Morning all.
Not much to report except im waiting to see if the cashback tracks for NYK ...

:j I AM GOBSMACKED! IT HAS TRACKED ALREADY! :T

Skint_Lynne

I will be renewing my house (buildings and contents) insurance and am going to look for a better deal with my utilities. I am defo going to try and get cashback, will be gobsmacked if it works for me!!! I'm not very lucky with stuff like that.

SL x

Brighton_belle

got my M&S voucher today too:j . Just popped to lidle and got one of those energy consumption measurers for 6.99. And got a huge mirror yesterday on freecycle for a mosaic project:j .
Janey - I love fuchias and have a favourite pair of hanging fuchia earings.
My hse/contents is due for renewal in Dec and you've inspired me to look elsewhere and try for cash back this yr Nyk.

EDIT: does anyone who uses imeasure get a weekly email to remind them to log in readings? I don't and I keep forgetting...

RebekahR

nykmedia wrote: »

Hi Rebekah, I need to cut in here and issue a little word of warning as I think you may have misunderstood this challenge. The £4000 is for everything over the year but we don't pay everything weekly. Some weeks you'll only need food, other weeks you'll have bills to pay, so it averages out over an entire year. I can't remember what you said your budget was, sorry, nor can I remember what you are going to include, but please don't spend anything that's left over out of your weekly amount or the challenge won't work and you could end up running short. This is not a weekly challenge, it is for a full year. Don't mean to sound like a scolding mother but I don't want you thinking there's extra money and then finding out you forgot to budget for a major expense.

I have a budget that I have cut down month by month and then week by week for each month that I know what is going out on that week. ( I am trialling this until Decemeber for now). So the weekly I put above is my =average for this month (£78-80) my total for the month = £315. Where asI have less bills next week therefore my average weekly will be £73.68. Having the £12.20 spare means that can obviously be tacked on to another week or the last week of the month if I need some extras. Am I still wrong? lol.

thriftylass

Glorious sunny day up here.

Slowly getting into the habbit of using cashback sites and survey panels. Got my first cashback on TopCashback and so far remembered to do my daily clicks on Greasypalm. It's tidious but every penny adds up. Even started to pay more attention to the pavement to watch out for lost pennies :rotfl:. Only the surveys aren't going to well, either I'm to late, it won't open or I'm not the candidate they're looking for, och well.

cw18

Brighton_belle wrote: »

EDIT: does anyone who uses imeasure get a weekly email to remind them to log in readings? I don't and I keep forgetting...

I haven't had one - but this last Tuesday was only my 3rd time of entering readings, so wasn't sure if it was normal not to get one



DD just phoned to say her M&S voucher arrived this morning too

Marru

Hello all,

Have been out and about getting DD's hair cut and then went shopping. I was going to get grilled chicken but they were so tiny and cost over £4.- :eek: So I got some legs for £1.5 and will roast them tonight. I am not confident enough to roast a whole chicken. For lunch we have my latest invention: leftovers and frozen veg with eggs in the owen as I know that DD will eat it and it is so quick and easy (and left overs need to get used).

Have any of you ever been a member of Inter-Varsity Club? I am thinking of joining my local one for trial period to get out of the house and to meet people. (As Bails said there is no dream man inside my four walls.)

Off now to the kitchen to find out what DD is up to. Normally when she is quiet and enjoying herself that means that a great mess is being created.

Lovely day here, I will try to get as much washing outside as possible.

Have a great day everybody!!

Marru

PS AAARGHHH DD just managed to break last of my small plates...:mad:

Skint_Lynne

Hi marru,
It's easy to roast a chicken, if you can do the legs, you will be able to do the whole thing no problem.

Just give it a wash, put it in foil or a roasting tin, season it, if you like to add honey or squeeze an orange over it, do it at this point. Some people put butter on them, but that can make it greasy.

Then just keep going back to it every so often and baste it. If you put foil over it when cooking, take the top off the foil for the last half an hour so that the skin goes brown/crispy.

HTH,

SL x

cw18

I just lob my chickens in my slow cooker -- as I do large birds (over 3kg) I tend to start them off on medium for the first 60-90 mins (depending when I remember to go back to it), then I turn it down to low for the remainder of the 6-8 hours (depending on where I am/what I'm doing that afternoon)

Absolute perfection every time..... The meat all falls off the carcass, so very little carving to do (or even possible). And once I collect all the (by now clean) bones out of the slow cooker I have a pot of stock for gravy and/or rissotto.

I don't add anything apart from water when cooking mine this way (due to fussy menfolk), but I know some people seem to add herbs/veg -- and I've read of other people putting the machine back on to make the stock, which I can't see the reason for as there's nothing more to come off the bones

taka

((((hugs)))) Janey! I love fushias... they remind me of childhood holidays at my grandparents

Insurance is a bit of a pain for me... I live near a river so getting insurance is never straightforwards or cheap (even for a 1st floor flat) and I couldn't get cashback for this years. Its up for renewal in Jan so I'm going to have to do it all again :mad: I sooooo wish the council would get its finger out and actually renovate the flood defences as they are supposed to. The work should have started over a year ago :mad: Mind you the flood defences in another part of Edinburgh failed miserably recently with water actually being funneled towards some houses as they forgot to build a bit of it

I had a most peculiar talk with my bank today... My savings account associated with my main current account didn't get any monthly interest added at the end of September when it was due (A whole 4p was due I think :rotfl: ) Asking why this was had about 4 of the staff in the branch shrugging their shoulders and looking confused :eek: Its always worrying when they haven't got a clue either :eek: Apparently its now been referred for investigation. God knows what they have done now - they completely c*cked up opening the thing in the 1st place (and changing my current account at the same time) and I ended up putting in a formal complaint about the chaos that ensued. I so hope I don't need to do this again :eek: Anyone know a good reliable (solvent :rotfl: ) bank where they actualy do what you ask them to?