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

taka

whitewing wrote: »

Budgeting takes rather a long while to get used to, lol! (Mine's going thro its teenage phase at the mo).

Not sure my budget has been potty trained yet :rotfl: Lots of horrible mess... A definite must try harder... I think my £1000 in 100 days for the 1st quarter of 2009 savings pot may become a bail out the rest of this year pot :eek:
Hello new people!! :hello:

Price_Charles

Good day to you, peasants

My mother says if you all manage this final quarter on budget then she may well mention you in her speech on christmas day.

She also told me to pass on her top frugal tip - one ought never to carry cash, as it would prove too tempting when one is passing a chip shop or when one fancies a curly wurly. Also, when one must pay for something essential, ones attendants are then forced to dip into thier own pockets to pay for one! guffaw guffaw!

Toodleoo

cw18

Well, I've started as I mean to go on......

Costed up Frontline and Drontal for the dogs while at the vet (so I knew what I was trying to beat in terms of price), and it came to £154.48 a year :eek:

Have just spent a couple of hours surfing sites that were recommended a while back (to someone else on another forum, but I remembered seeing it so went back for a look), and the outcome is......

not worth using a cash back site. Only one of them was registered there, and if I pay it all up front and then get 5% back in a couple of months I'll be a grand total of 11p better off than placing the order with another site that has a special offer on 3 of the 4 items I wanted.

Grand total -- £71.33

So I've just saved myself £83.15 over the next year -- which equates to almost £7 a month.

And if we can get the larger dog permanently onto the cheaper dog food, that's another £16/month saving

£23/month saved = £276/year.

On my rough calculations from last week, that equates to roughly what I though we were on target to 'overspend' by each month. So if I was right in thinking we could have survived 5 years before zero balances, this buys us another 5.5 months :j

1274

Hi all - day 1 of my last 1/4 all-in challenge and I've spent nearly a grand on 1 day! OK so most of it's the DD's which all go out on the 1st (mortgage and utilities, CT haven't taken their yet for some reason). My budget over the last year has behaved like a toddler: it refused to settle down for a quiet nap from January to March, was brilliantly behaved in May, pestered me like crazy in June and July and then threw a full-blown screaming fit in August and September which ended up with three tantrums (mine) in Tescos, Waitrose and when I got my gas bill!

Top tips I have learned in no particular order:
1) water down the milk - it not only doubles the amount you get but keeps you out of Tescos so you buy less other stuff on impulse (see tantrum above)
2) update your spreadsheet/spending diary daily. My worst slippages coincide with times when I don't update for a week or two
3) ask for money back when there's been a mistake by a company (I've just been given £15 by my mortgage co for mixing up the DD, half of my internet bill in Aug for a bad connection and had £5 off my mobile bill for the year and a further £20 in Jan for not informing me of a change in their t&c)
4) use the vouchers on MSE for "free" money off stuff
5) throw little bits of money into savings/debt payments/mortgage payments. I started 2008 with a six figure mortgage and it's now a third of that. Some were big payments, but I was also paying £70 a week for some months (very nearly what I used to spend on lunches before MSE)

slowlyfading

:hello: new thread!

PrincessAnn

Big Ears,

I think you'd better join this last quarter. I've just been chortling at The Sun's website. Remember back in June when they published that yours and Camilla’s two-week official visit to the Caribbean in March totalled £275,625? They were outraged, whilst daddykins was teasing you about 'slumming it like the peasants'.

Marru

Hello all,

My three best money saving things have been: leave purse at home, make HM sandwiches from HM bread into freezer, update spreadsheets at least 3 times per week. And new one: learn to cook from frozen and dried stuff then if I don't feel like cooking there is nothing going off in the fridge (can you tell today was "the bin men day"?) Which reminds me, any good recipes for leeks? I love leeks and have some in the fridge and fancy doing something yummy from them.

As today I did have my purse with me to get petrol (yes I did make it and light even didn't go on this time) I ended up buying: sandwich for breakfast (despite having yoghurt with raisins and seeds at home earlier), three chocolate bars (offer), two cups of coffee (I was tired ) and pack of crisps. Oh well.

Nothing else really to report from here. I need to go shortly to get DD from nursery.

Catch up with you later...

Marru

Brighton_belle

Shiny shiny new thread. Today I have transferred my cash ISA to NAt west curtesy of martin's email last week. If I suceed in not touching it for a year, I will get £39 more interest than I would have got leaving it where it was.
I also bought 'magic liner' for my baking tins & remoska for £1 rather £4.99 in kitchen shops and sourced cheaper lentils than I have been paying: £2.00 for 2kg (74.75p per 500g):j . I closed an old ISA that I had a £1 that has been untouched for several years and got £1.07 added in interest:j . So I asked then to pay me with a £2 coin so now I have 3 in my beach hut 'piggy bank':j .
I have a friends 40th at the weekend & have decided to make a pressie with stuff I already have (ceramic paints little jewel beads & small terracotta flower pots ) . I'm joining her and friends for a meal and will eat before i go and just order soup. Being there is what's important. ('fortunately' most in her circle are skint too, but she's been very poorly and deserves a birthday outing). We're having pudding at her place after. And I have sorted a gift for my 8yr old un-god-daughter as I remembered I bought one last year and then realised she was a little young for it and it's in the attic. Will post it early so it can go 2nd class. I may even save on the postage and post her mothers xmastime birthday pressie at the same time, which is something else I 'made':A .

My top tip from what I've learnt in the last 3 months - don't be over whelmed by the enormity of your budgeting/frugalising task, tackle one thing at a time and slowly you get hooked and it snowballs

bails

I love the tips! Will have to think of mine...
I've had a very busy day - spending lots of time with a good friend who understands my situation (after a very lovely email from another good friend last night ), popping into Working Links again and then into school to discuss my options. I'm going to start tutoring GCSE for 2 hours a week and then if I can manage it with my other commitments, I'll stop that and take on my own project with another year group :j To earn my £20 a week, I'll either do some supply or home tutor a sick child from the hospital. There's also the Masters to think about so I'm still juggling all the options until I know all the info and can decide what I can manage and what I need to hold back on just now.
I also got the number for the Lets scheme so will look into that as a way of making our money stretch further :T

lyndasharp

Lets looks like a good thing to join, I'll sign up for that when I move!

I've got a cold :mad: Trying to work all day with a respirator on and a drippy nose is NOT FUN. I've just done some ebay bidding on useful house bits to cheer myself up.