Live on £4000 for a Year, 2009 Challenge, part 2

bails

Hi all. Went to Mr M yesterday and spent a small fortune,well for Frugaldom at least, but it was planned. I've decided that now I have my health back I'm going to get really healthy again :j Sardinia inspired me with lots of simple and lovely foods so I'm planning lots of yummy stuff! I've also spent wisely on some new clothes (all at sale prices of course ) as I've basically been living in PJs/trackies for the past 4 years. It feels wonderful to be enjoying life in so many ways these days! :j:j
The plastering was much cheaper than expected so that's a real bonus and the house is really started to get there now :T
The dog is pestering me for a walk so I'd better go, see you later x

patchwork_cat

Couple to add to the potato list :

Bacon, onion and potato layer bake , yumm
Peasant's breakfast
Sauteed
Moussaka ( I make this with potato instead of layered aubergine)
Cheesy potato

DdraigGoch

:wave:

Hello frugals & fruguys

It's confession time - I've overspent in a major fashion ... except it's all down to the fact that a] the laptop I bought on my son's behalf which arrived WET!! :eek: and, oddly enough, didn't work :mad: :mad: and they haven't even had the decency to refund the money [as, very rudely, agreed to last week] and I know they got the laptop back as I paid *takes deep breath* £20.65 for Special Delivery and signed for .... *staggers back in horror* yesterday. They're refusing to answer their 'phone. Am tempted to drive all the way to A********** just to hammer on their door, but I'll wait a couple of days and THEN Heaven help them ... Oh, that, and the bank refusing to move money to cover bills, and also taking over a week to transfer money between one bank and another :mad:

all of which left me at Mr A's with a non-flexible debit card and a full tank of petrol Oh, the mortification of it all

If I hadn't bought my much saved up for handbag, a cookbook for my OH's present for Father's Day from DS, a present for a friend I'm seeing for the first time in yonks this weekend and a folder for work then I'd have been ok, .... ok, so I should have rung the bank first .... my phone was dead ... and I THOUGHT the money was there - not LOTS of it but certainly enough to pay for everything and still have some left over ....


Right, that's got that off my chest and I still feel silly - but at least my DS has volunteered to come with me tomorrow all the way to Mr A's [nearly 20 miles each way, I only went because I was already there doing something else :mad:] and pay the bill for me :T Hoorah for DSs

I've also just discovered that the lawnmower, brush cutter/strimmer and tiller are all irreperable - local very helpful man, he say "don't bother, it'll cost you more to buy the parts, even if I didn't charge you for doing it up!" So, that's a lot of saving to do.

fingers crossed

Hugs, commiserations and congratulations in equal measure to everyone who needs/wants them - I just can't keep up these days Frugalian is a very chatty language, isn't it?

all the best to everyone,
a less grumpy than I was before I started this rant!
DG

cw18

App Foods order arrived this morning - so I've now fully updated my May figures, and am ready to declare


Spreadsheet looks like this



The green column is the annual budget for each category.

The grey column is where I should anticipate being at the end of May for each category, based on 12 equal payments in a year for everything except groceries (which is done by how many days of feeding which people) and toiletries/cleaning (which I do by numbers of days)

The blue column is what I've actually spent, with the figures in red being the categories I'm currently over-budget on (though I'm still in the postion of none of the red figures scaring me as they should all balance out by the end of the year - possibly with the exception of presents, as elder DS's birthday cost me almost twice what I'd budgeted and I forgot to add in extra due to younger DS turning 18 in July :eek: )

The 'salmon' colour is what I have left for the rest of the year by category, and the yellow column is the percentage of my £8k budget that each category represents.


According to the totals at the bottom, I'm currently £609.94 under budget (this was £461.13 at the end of April )

Of this :-

The category names in red are my 'one off' payments. For these categories alone my budget to date is £470.63 but I've only paid out £189.50 - so £218.13 of my under-spend is money in the bank towards the rest of these.

And I then need to take into account that another £137.00 is due to the two 'payment free' months from Council Tax (and as such is more cash I should have in the bank to help out over the rest of the year).

And I should also have £40 in the bank towards the cost of getting my gutters and eaves cleaned.

So deducting the money 'in the bank' would bring me down to 'just' a £151.81 under-spend.


Of all the other categories, my largest under-spend is petrol - currently by £100.59 (last month this was £98.93, and I've since filled the tank but am still approaching half full). I'm still not planning on adjusting the budget for this category just yet due to total lack of a budget for any repairs/parts the car needs at service/MOT which is due at the end of July ([strike]possibly[/strike] probably in need of brakes, tyres and battery).



BUT, I then looked at my overspends on items that aren't one-offs - namely b/band, mobile and presents - and I'm currently showing as having a total overspend of £94.44 on these :eek:

If I were bang on target for these (they should balance at the end of year due to changes in my suppliers), then my underspend would be a total of £704.38 - or £246.25 after deducting the 'banked' amounts listed above. (The latter of these figures was £176.24 at the end of April, so I've somehow managed a £70.01 underspend in May!)

At the end of April I was on target for an annual underspend of £528.72, but I'm now on target for £591.00...... and I'm quite relieved about this as it gives me some 'play' for car maintainance and (more importantly) a decent 18th birthday present



The App Foods order blew my grocery budget for May - I initially set that at £119.50, but after my son came home on leave this should have been increased to £132.10. I managed to spend a total of £138.71, but some of this was stock-piling while making the most of the Mr M vouchers. My 'year to date' budget is actually still in the black though - by a 'whopping' £5.14 :rolleyes2



Am now off to declare on the May GC thread, and to change my signature over to the June one - plus update my s/sheet with the few spends I've had in the last 3 days.....

I'm then going to do some number crunching on my g&e bills - just had my latest since I started generating them every 4 weeks (running this alongside using i-measure and monitoring usage on the 'challenge' thread on MSE) - and at a quick glance I have a strong case to reduce my D/Debit by around £9 a month. However this is working on payments made between (and credit balances as of) May 2008 and June 2009 - but I need to do some extra number crunching using their current 'standard' prices as I've been on a fixed price tarriff since last July, and that ends in September.

Pauper1

Wow cw18 - that is a lot more organised than I could ever hope to be! That's very impressive, I'm sure you will end up on/under target!

slowlyfading

just wishing everyone a good morning, and to have a good day

sf xx

Frugaldom

Good morning to all, :hello:

The sun is still shining here even although it does get a little overcast at times. I think it's a frugal summer, so am making the most of it whenever I can. Washing's ready to go out now. :cool::D

Bails, sounds like you're bouncing with good health, long may it continue

BB, don't forget to show us a photo of the bike, I don't think I have ever seen one.

Ddraig, I am beginning to think you are joining Janey's team of the catastrophe stricken. Hope things improve for you and at least you can always come on here are share the traumas and dramas that are everyday life. Nice to see you back with us.

Mama, thanks for starting the potatoes list - always handy to know what to do for a change when it's the same ingredients every day. It will be if all my potatoes grow. :rotfl: The first potatoes are starting to get flowers now On;y one tub got knocked over but that was a sheep, not a chicken, that did that - farmer thinks we didn't notice but the sheep imprint in the wire mesh I had put up to keep the hens out kind of gave it away. :rotfl::rolleyes: Glad it didn't decide to bring the entire flock with it! :eek:

Whilst on the subject of livestock, did I mention a cow tried to eat the lid off my compost heap? We'd to retrieve it from the field yesterday. I don't know how to keep the livestock off the garden, perhaps I need a garden in a bubble, like the Eden Project.

SM, we need a better plan! :rotfl:You bring yourself and Mr SM round here tonight, I'll bake some biscuits for munching (I'll also chill the Bailey's) and we'll see what we can come up with by way of stock-proofing. Excuse me, for now, whilst I retrieve my chicken from your front lawn.

Edited in - I just noticed that it is exactly 30 weeks until 2010 :rotfl: That sounds like such a spaceage number to me!

lyndasharp

Morning everyone! Very excited as cat should be arriving soon. We decided to get one from Cats Protection rather than take the farm cat from my former landlady, as with Philip's cat allergy we need to be able to wipe the cat down with Petal cleanse as soon as it arrives, and one that's a bit nervous already wouldn't be ideal.

I don't really know anything about new cat, haven't even met her, only that she's an older female. She needs to come in to CP as an emergency, so we will be fostering her to start with to see how it goes, and will officially adopt her if it all goes well.

whitewing

sf, sorry about your tough times x

lynda, looking forward to hearing about your latest addition.

nyk + sm, very jealous of you being neighbours. It all sounds so cosy, and great for keeping on track.

I've been a grumpy grouch for the past two days, for no particular reason except 'ladies' problems'. I did enjoy The Apprentice last night and am looking forward to the final on Sunday.

I am more cheery today. Eon has just written to say they are reducing my monthly DD by £27 a month. That'll be partly due to us having our loft and cavity walls done, so I am most delighted. I like it when good news comes without having to chase it up. Sometimes I get so fed up with having to keep tabs on it all.

Got blood doning later so I think we're going to pick up DS and do something nice afterwards. Looking forward to that.

DH is doing an extra shift at the weekend so that will help with cash flow. (That's good as I bought some new bras in the week and consequently spent a fortune. Good news is that I can now wear half my summer wardrobe again as I have a cream bra to go under the white stuff. But it probably wasn't actually cheaper than buying a load more coloured T shirts, which was how I justified it to myself, lol)

mama67

patchwork_cat wrote: »

Couple to add to the potato list :

Bacon, onion and potato layer bake , yumm
Peasant's breakfast
Sauteed
Moussaka ( I make this with potato instead of layered aubergine)
Cheesy potato

Haven't had bacon,onion and potato layer bake for eons as Dh didn't like it when I made it for him when we first got together some 18 yrs ago.