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

cw18

sorry - meant arrived 2nd Dec. She was 2 weeks early, which I was told is very common with "Christmas babies".

Buffythedebtslayer

OOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo

exciting!

meant to be going to bed, just finished my Christmas cards! so glad I am already on the list cheers Nykmedia!

I will at some point over the wkend work out the budget and post but for now I shall subscribe so I don't lose you all xxxxxx

I am utterly determinded this year!

xxx

Pips_Mum

Not common enough for my liking Cheryl!!
2 weeks early is just a faded dream!!

sixteenthofjune

Hi all,
I have been lurking here (and on the 2008) thread for a while, mulling over the possibilities and I have decided to go for a £3000 challenge. This sounds pretty scary, but I have worked it all out and the figures seem to balance as far as I can see. I should probably point out that it's only me and a dog, no kids, no tv, no car, so not as many essentials as most families have. My £3000 is to cover everything except rent, council tax, water. To be honest, if I went for a £4000 challenge that would just be pretty much what I earn anyway, with no spare. By going for £3000 I'm hoping to be able to have a holiday and also claw my way back up my overdraft by perhaps £500 (of £2000).

Good luck to everyone else doing a challenge. I'm quite excited at the moment, but I'm sure this will wear off!! I have made the first steps tonight - as well as planning out my budget, I have requested a slow cooker from Santa.

sophiesmum_2

Welcome on board sixteenthofjune, your budget sounds good to me. Slowcookers are great for saving time and cash:D Hope santa remembers to bring you one.

sixteenthofjune

Thanks for the welcome, Sophie's Mum! So does your sig mean you have succeeded in 2008's challenge (assuming you don't spend more £140.50 in the next two weeks!)? Because that is seriously impressive. Reading through the 2008 thread has been so inspiring - well done to everyone who took part.

sophiesmum_2

Yes, surprisingly still have money in the budget but intend to spend every penny before New Year:j So it can be done, Nyk is still on budget too:D and few of others around and about.

JAMIEDODGER

having just looked at the child benefit figures for 2009 (thanks SM) I have figured out that my total challenge amount will be £7099.20 for the year. this works out at 136.52 per week. This is 163.80 more than 2008 because of the increase in child benefit, so I will be using this for a contingency fund.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Well I'm going for the 4 grand but I'm doing it as below:-

INCLUDE

1) Gas and electric - £720 . I pay a DD of £60 a montn currently. The estimated readings were marginally low last time but with my increased frugality and a likely decrease in bills next year, I'm aiming to keep at £60 a month.

2) Water and sewage £200. I'm billed separately for these as they are two different companies. The bills were in the low 90s last year so I'm estimating £100 for each. I'm not on a meter. I want a meter but the pipe layout makes this property unmeterable. I'm in the process of applying for assessed charging. Will get on their case early next year if I've still heard nothing.

3) Leasehold management & service charges, buildings insurance, ground rent - £500 These come in a bill lumped together and billed half yearly. It's never easy to estimate this in advance but I don't believe any major works are planned. Normally I would expect to pay about £300 for the April bill and £150 for the October bill. They do it this way to cover themselves. £500 should cover this OK so long as not too much unexpected work crops up.

4) Contents insurance. £120 will be a fair guess for this. I'm a bit restricted with provider as a lot of companies won't cover items that are used at home for business purposes. The lower competition means a premium that is a bit higher than for many people.

5) Vehicle. £600. Tricky one this as I have one vehicle that I use for work and leisure. I need a largish van that carries weight most of the time and there is little room for compromise on this. I offset 85% of the usage against tax so my figure is the remaining 15%. It includes tax, insurance, MOT, repairs, servicing, and diesel. There is some largish maintenance coming up in Feb/March. I estimate 4 grand for the whole vehicle which equates to £600 if using my 15% marker.

6) Telephone and mobile. £294. Again I need to apportion business and personal usage. 60% of the total is fair for personal use. I'm on a reduced rate contract with Vodafone at the moment which will have those reduced rates for nearly all the year. I'm with BT for landline. I save by having paperless billing and by routing most of my calls via 18866. The downside is that I need to divert to mobile a lot and you can't route those calls via a piggyback provider. However, I do pay £1.50 a month to use their "mobile favour" service which only saves me a small amount. I also have my own mobile number as my best friend number (how narcissistic is that LOL?). The whole bit is about £490 a year allowing for the small bills from 18866. 60% of that is £294. So £294 is my phones usage. I know I can get a cheaper deal but I desire the flexibility I can get by sticking with BT.

7) Broadband. £216. It's £18 a month. Again, I know I could get it cheaper but this service comes via fibre optic from Virginmedia. Although I'm not too far from the exchange, the copper around here isn't so great and doing BB via a BT line gives a pretty flakey service. I have enquired about getting a cheaper deal from VM by rolling all under one roof but itr turned out that the savings would be small and I would lose my flexibility to use my 18866 service. It looks like swings and roundabouts. I can't afford unreliability as I need part business use so pay a bit more.

8) Television. £66 . I pay £5.50 a month to Virginmedia for a fairly basic package. I could go Freeview but would have to miss out on certain programs that I like. I don't have much leisure activity so I reckon this is a bit of very cheap entertainment.

9) TV license. Can't recall the exact number now but I pay by DD. Say £150 for the year.

That little lot comes to £2,866. So that leaves me nearly £100 a month for food, bogrolls, toothpaste, soap etc and the occasional cinema visit or day out somewhere and clothing. I walk around the streets naked so that's no problem. It all sounds doable to me so long as I practice self discipline..

NOT INCLUDED

I like to get away once a year for a week or so. I'm not extravagant but work pretty hard and need an occasional break. It could cost as much as 4 - 500 but I can do a week in Spain just by cheap flight and a bit of food money (my friends have a spare room in a cavehouse over there).

Life/health insurances. To include these in my 4 grand would cause me unnecessary suffering. I have more insurance than most as I'm self-employed. Also, I have heavily loaded premiums due to past medical issues (since resolved but insurers don't like people like me).
Early in the New Year, I intend to take a fine toothcomb to the small print in these policies as there may be a possibility that some are of limited use and it may be possible to cancel without putting myself at financial risk in the event of problems.

Council tax. This would be paid if I were on benefits so is excluded. I do get the lone occupancy discount.

Mortgage. This alone is approaching 9 grand a year so obviously is excluded.

NoDebtDiva

Hi

I would really love to join this challenge! There's 4 of us in my household so I'm going to try and aim for £6,000 which doesn't include mortgage, council tax or nursery fees - don't want to set a target that we'll fail in our first year!

Right, shooting off to put the budget together!