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

Brighton_belle

Hi Taka - great budget. I know I've said it before but I think you are quite right to allow for socialising in your budget: it's important to have quality of social life when you are living on your own and that means having fun with others.

Good luck to all hoping to lose a few lbs this year. I've just rejoined sw after a year's break from classes doing it myself. I've lost bit of focus and know I need help to lose the 10lbs I've put back on (Lost over 2 stone originally). I blame buying my remoska:rotfl: .
Not intially very mse but I reckon the max 10 weeks it'll take me(£45) is more than offset by the new clothes I would need in the next size up if I don't do something now! The sooner I reach target, the less it'll cost me. My own mini challenge is to see how far under £45 (10 weeks)I can come in reaching target asap.

sophiesmum_2

Skint_Lynne wrote: »

Happy new year everyone,

I've started today as I mean to go on this year. Spend as little as possible and try and avoid waste.

I've not been over the door yet, so no spending today and I have recycled the leftover mushy peas from last night, it has been transformed into pea and ham soup. I am really pleased with myself as I have been transforming leftovers a lot lately, and it is stuff that is perfectly okay, except I would usually have binned it due to ignorance/laziness. This is my new hobby, so I am throwing myself into it in earnest!!

Leftovers are a major foodgroup in this household SL:rotfl: :rotfl:

dND

Blairweech wrote: »

Hello all,

Hope you all had a good new year and are ready for the challenge!

I spent mine curled up in bed with flu, so I will miss out on 3 days wages this week (one day was treble time) Oh well. I did consider going in, but I feel so rough it is a struggle to get out of bed to go the loo.

So, not such a great start for me - unless in terms of NSDs . Got 17p interest on my current account today, so I have transferred that over to savings - every little helps!

Do hope you are feeling better soon and thanks for reminding me to check my accounts - I should have had a few pence added today as well:D

gillst_2

Happy New Year to all - wishing a speedy recovery to those feeling under the weather. My dad was supposed to join us today, but he is not feeling very well at all. Have spent quite a bit today, but hopefully long term it will mean a savings. Spent £25 on a box of goodies (apparently worth £150) on the ArtyMiss web site so I can try and make birthday/christmas cards etc this year. Never done anything like this so hopefully not a waste of money. Got a big shop from Asda (£80) coming on Saturday, stocking up on cans and non perishables, so hopefully these will last some time. Popped to our local shop to get some meat for dinner today (forgot to get something out of the freezer!!!!!!) and found an offer on HP baked beans (4 for £1), so bought 28 cans!! So quite a big spend day, but hope this will save us in the long term. Going to go through all my christmas cards and cut out bits i can use on home made cards for next year. Had some lovely ground coffee for a present which we had for breakfast this morning. Unfortunately did not have any coffee filters, so used a double sheet of kitchen roll instead, which worked remarkably well. Made a large jug and put in a thermos flask to last during the day and put the coffee grouts in my composter - I AM LEARNING!!!!!

JennyBee_2

Am feeling a bit odd...my sister has just been round and given me a very large cheque for no reason....


Now I know this isn't a problem but it's left me a little dazed... Basically my Grandad died when I was 3 months old and he left her a chunk of money and didn't leave me anything (as he was only 54 and not planning on going anywhere for a while). I never thought anything of it to be honest, it was just one of those things....Anyway, she's had it sitting there for the last 27 years and it's basically doubled with interest etc so she's given me the same as he left her.

which is £4k

Jesus

sorry it's off topic but it was completely and totally unexpected and I had to tell someone!

wandering off to go and look at the cheque now....

Pips_Mum

redglass wrote: »

Pip's Mum, a Janssen's Temptation (sometimes called Mr Janssens' Temptation) is a (Danish? Swedish?) potato casserole with onions, cream and anchovies. It sounds like a weird combination but the result is a savoury, salty, creamy dish and it's very more-ish. JT's were quite trendy a mere 40 years ago (showing my age a bit here) but they are genuinely good. There are lots of versions on the web so just pick one you fancy.

Oooooooh that sounds yummy!
I guess you can use up other leftovers you have?

JennyBee - I can see why you may be a bit bewildered. Lovely surprise with the baby on the way though

sophiesmum_2

What a lovely sister you have JennyBee:A , and a lovely new year surprise for you. Hope you do something special with it:D

savingfortravel

Wow JennyBee!!!!! What a wonderful, unexpected surprise.. maybe it will bring on the baby!!! SFT

dND

Oh JennyBee how lovely of her. Now the difficult bit, deciding what to do with it

JennyBee_2

It's an absolutely amazing surprise and such a nice way to start the new year! To be honest, we're going to put it in an ISA until I've got my head around it!! We've got our budget anyway which we're going to stick to and I think it's best to ignore it until we need it. Makes our conversations about whether I have to go back to work full time a whole lot better though.