Live on £4000 for a Year, 2009 Challenge, part 1

taka

:T :j Congratulations PipsMum :j :T

The film was fab yesterday! I really enjoyed it! (Milk)

Another boring day today - another late day at work again :rolleyes: - One of the newish people I'm looking after only works part time so we are trying to share some work. Unfortunately it take soooooooooooooo long to set up (she's only learning how to do it so it takes much longer) Its just annoying that I could have set it up, done the work at the timepoint and been finished and home by nowish. As it is I've still got another 1.5 - 2 hrs or more before I'm finished. *Sigh*

On better news the tickets to Canada have finally been booked for the conference and it looks like we are going to have a couple of days free to spend ski-ing or seeing a little bit of the area etc :j Woo hoo!! I'm glad my holiday budget is not included in my [strike]4k[/strike] 5k challenge. It sounds like most of the others that are going are likely to want to go out every night. :eek: I hope I survive... I barely drink these days so me + a couple of drinks = either carnage or more likely me asleep in a corner! Our last lab trip to a conference involved 1 night stay - we all ended up out till ~5am... including my boss!! Ermmmmmm... :rotfl:

ilovetea

Hello:hello:

Congratulations to PIPS MUM.Hope you and the baby are doing well.x

Haven't posted for a couple of days as nothing of great importance has happened,and this thread is getting very long without my drivel;) .
Having trouble keeping up.
Since starting this I've really thought twice before I buy anything.Admit I have been using stuff from the cupboards and freezer,but some of the things have been there a long time:eek: .
Confess today I bought a loaf because I needed one,and some Aniseed
Imperials because I wanted some.
Thanks for all the inspiration,tips,and for keeping me on the straight and narrow.
Off to read the last few pages of this thread,

ilovetea x

dND

Expensive day as I said but not out of the challenge money. I had a rather large vet's bill for the alpacas plus I had to buy a 6m pipe to make a bridge across a ditch (147€ :eek:) plus I've ordered 166 trees for the next stage of the wood I'm planting.

I've blown the 'everything else' budget for this week but in my defence it's for a two year subscription to a magazine, (Permaculture which I'm hoping will help me with my growing here), as it was a good saving over 2 x one year and is inflation proof. Oh and I've just realised that we're just at the end of the second week so that's OK then:j

Other spend over the weekend was on 2 dvd's and 3 books. I always buy a couple of dvd's in the sales and the book I'm counting towards the challenge, a Terry Pratchett one is to rebuild my collection as my ex got the last collection. The other two book will probably come out of the farm budget as they are a polytunnel handbook and a reprint of the Penguin wartime guide on 'Raising Rabbits and Poultry on Scraps'. So the damage there is limited to 17€47 from my entertainments budget.

Budget Spent Remaining
Electricity 610 610
Oil - heating/tractor 1300 1300
Logs 300 300
Parafin 100 52.29 47.71
Foodstuff 2200 42.31 2145.83
Toiletries etc 100 3.19 96.81
Cat food 400 400
Entertainments 400 17.47 382.53
Gifts - not family 100 100
Diesel - work & pleasure 1350 1350
Everything else 1040 41.33 998.67

Totals 7900 168.45 7731.55

The spends look OK at the moment but expenditure tends to come and go, for instance I will find my fuel and food costs rising over the summer when people are here so I must remember to make and allowance for that.

Ok, enough waffle on budgets and a quick question. Does anyone else cut their sheets of kitchen paper into 4? I've been doing it for a while - not all the sheets but I keep a stock - as quite often I only need a small piece of paper for things like greasing pans or cleaning the chicken eggs. It makes the roll last a lot longer plus there is less going into landfill.

Shaz: I went through a relocation firm and to one of their estate agents. It's possible to do it yourself but at the time I was still recovering from my breakdown and still having difficulty reading complicated documents.

Deborah
PS just how do you get tables into these posts, I carefully spaced mine out but it's collapsed it when I post.

In_Search_Of_Me

oo caught up again but need to see if my dire brain remembers whats what! Congratulations pips mum! mind you owwww!! Hope you all settle in and get lovely sleep, lots of support and endless offers of washing, food etc...
mum re the spending diary...can relate to probs as I'm shocking but do think I do better when I keep track...I get a recipt for everything or write it down there and then in my little diary (cheapie from waterstones last week) and then daily enter my spends on spendingdiary.com which creates lovely graphs for you of what spent on what so thats added incentive!
Hope people survived the weather...just rainy in cardiff but usually is this time of year! re the suggestion of a page on facebook I can really only say please take pity on us new to the challenge - its hard enough getting to know people and keep up with the threads on here!!
A third nsd for me today which I'm chuffed with - esp as had an awful day in work and was seriously tempted to buy a bottle of wine on the way home but didnt!!

mumzyof2

Forgot to ask if anyone if they know any cross stitching sites where i can get a wedding themed cross stitch one from?

i ordered the how to live off £1 a day it should come tomorrow

Brighton_belle

that's a great tip dND about the kitchen paper - will start doing that, coz as you say, sometimes I only need a little bit.
Skintchick - oh dear, I can feel another of my loves rearing it's head everytime you mention chicken wire and papier mache:rotfl: . Struggling to manage the ideas I already have. Tomorrow I need to prioritise creativity.

Thanks for the reminder about links in post one Nyk.

In_Search_Of_Me

I get my cross stitch here - reliable and cheap!

http://www.sewandso.co.uk/

mumzyof2

in search of me are they in america?

skint_chick

Brighton_belle wrote: »

Skintchick - oh dear, I can feel another of my loves rearing it's head everytime you mention chicken wire and papier mache:rotfl: . Struggling to manage the ideas I already have. Tomorrow I need to prioritise creativity.

Ok I won't mention it again til you're in desperate need of creative inspiration . I put an ad on freecycle for tiles and got 5 offers already so collecting some on thurs and so excited I rang OH - he didn't really understand how someone could be so excited about broken tiles! Now all I have to do is get some MDF cut at my friendly diy store to make the mosaics on.

I got a job! It's self employed doing research but suits me perfectly as I can work from home/library and won't affect my current sick pay. It's only a few days a month and can fit round a new job so I'm really looking forward to it. Have to ring them tomorrow to organise training. :j :j :j Will be able to repay my loan by the end of the year - sooo relieved and glad

lyndasharp

Sewandso are UK based, i get most of my cross stitch kits from them too. I do get the threads from Tandem Cottage though, as they come prewound onto bobbins (well, bits of card) for no extra charge, and it saves so much time and effort!

Had a spend day today. I bought a coat, reduced to £25.50 from £85 in the sales - but even so I have now spent almost my entire 'everything else' budget for the year in two weeks!!!! Good news is my other budgets are doing really well so far....

Congratulations Pipsmum!