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

Frugaldom

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

Do you give your plants heat at all Nykmedia?

I have no heat to give them other than when the sunshine reaches the kitchen windowsill. :rotfl: My lettuce seeds have been in since November and they are big enough to use as perpetual salad leaves but I'm going to thin some out for growing on for summer. Here's box 1, which sits at the back door with a mini-greenhouse/cloche made from a plastic bag and coathanger wire. I ran out and took this picture about 10 minutes ago - neighbours must think I'm daft, as it's pouring rain.



These are planted in one of the coloured plastic stacking boxes that I rescued.

Andromache - could you just swap the sim card in your existing mobile phone for a freebie PAYG one? Most networks offer freebies, including Orange that gives you 2 for 1 Orange Wednesday cinema tickets

thriftylass

Good evening to you all!

Definitely no NSD for me today . Since my laptop is well aged now I thought I'll have a look for a new one but I never saw a good deal for the one I wanted. Today I did. It is usually 399 from D3ll (plus usually 29 for the colour I want - I know unnecessary luxury so I wouldn't have bothered) but I saw the exact same in T3sc0 for 349, plus I got it through a cashback site, found a 13 quid money off voucher and will get clubcard points too. It won't count towards the challenge either since it's a work expense and paid from savings. Well chuffed :j

lyndasharp

You're a bad influence. One dress for £79.99 - paid for by the washing machine sale...

Washing machine has also covered £15 to add H2B to my car insurance, but not quite the extra £39.90 for H2B's car as off the road cover - but it was so much cheaper than carrying on with his insurance policy while we rebuild her!

shaz_mum_of__2

Just a quickie for those who don't know already

Weezl has had her baby boy ....yay

Shaz

savingfortravel

Linda-Well I'm getting married on the 27th and have got 2 dresses from ebay..both Monsoon...one was £35 the other £111 (which I've chosen to wear). I'm not sentimental so looking forward to getting some money back for both after the event.
We are having a low budget, quiet event..Our venue cost, a country house-£500, our regrstrar £300, OH is buying a nice shirt (don't want tie and suit) from Debs (using vouchers)-he has new trousers and shoes, my shoes were £20 and my hair will be about £25, his hair was a free haircut from Daily Mail. I'm getting small bouquet of white roses from florist (about £10) and 3 button holes (for OH, his dad-best man and my mum-giving me away), we have a 6 track CD of songs from our collection..walking in to 'Come fly with me..' (apt for us travelaholics) and walking out to Proclaimers 'I would walk 500 miles'. Everyones bringing their digital cameras for photos. Few other bits (undies for me/dress for niece)
Reception for 16 guests (set lunch with wine/champagne for toast) at lovely restaurant approx £400.
Good luck with YOUR PLANS..we've stayed strong to have exactly what we want.
SFT

Just seen you bought it Linda..well done!!!!!!!!

skint_chick

andromache - if you don't "need" a new handset I just went sim only with vodafone - £10/mth gets you 100mins 500txts with £60 cashback on quidco it works out £5/mth -it's a 12mth contract tho. If not Orange for £10/mth PAYG gets you 300 free texts and o2 have some good deals- I had to leave them coz there was no signal at my house- and I live in the middle of an urban area!

silkbeast_2

Andromache - we have a new O2 sim card for payg if you want it - pm us if you want us to send it to you ....

(goes back to lurking .....):cool:

Frugaldom

Yeah! :beer:Please pass on my best wishes to the Weezls and Weezlette from me, I'll try to find the thread again to leave a message, but I'm not much good at landing in the right place and often get very distracted en route.

SFT I can't belive you're getting married this month!! :eek: It only seems like a few weeks snce you were telling us! You must be REALLY excited between the wedding and potential house move!

Thrifty, well done on the laptop deal! Sounds great, especially if you can sit back and know it's bought & paid from savings, even if it is a work necessity - deductibles next month, savings soon recouped, hopefully! :j

Lynda, well done on deciding to buy the dress, I think you made a very wise and very frugal choice.

savingfortravel

Nyk-Yes its not long now..on the house front we continue to have viewers but feedback has commented on small bedrooms which is true..I mentioned to the Estate Agent that we would take a bit less ..if we lose the cottage the next best thing woud not lead to a reduced mortgage..some other current properties we like would mean an increase although of course our quality of life would improve.
Trying not to become obsessed with cottage however, so we are viewing 3 more properties tomorrow and 1 more on Sunday.
So want to follow that dream..love the countryside and walking. OH loves a garden and a view.
Wondered if you had visited www.downthelane.net
Great website about a downshifter..great info about chickens I believe. Love the chick by the way..has a look of our budgie about him/her.

Loopy-Good luck with the arrival

EVERYONE-Live those dreams...

SFT

Skint_Lynne

SFT, downthelane.net is a great website. I've not looked at it for ages, so I see that he has revamped it quite a bit. There's a lot of good tips on there.

I was in the borders today, Melrose to be exact. What a lovely place, I drove past the abbey, next time, hopefully I can go and have a mooch around it.

They have a fab butcher there, I bought a hot pie, it was really nice (although not very frugal):o . It was 80p.

Before I joined this thread, I would have went in and spent a fortune. He had sticky toffee pudding for sale, my mum loves this and usually I would have bought one, £6 for the large size and £4 for the small, but I thought that I would just have a bash at making it myself. I will go in the next time I'm there though and perhaps buy some nice sausages and black pudding as a treat.

I didn't buy much more today, paid my savings club and that's it I think. I am going to study how to do the coupon thing, I might have a go tomorrow night with it and see what happens.

Back later, xx