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

Brighton_belle

I may not be gardening away like many of you, but you are clearly inspiring my new bedroom decor: walls are sage green, old wooden furniture given new lease of life in raspberry; bedding already aubergene, picture rail is stained saffron .
Annoying delay in plans by last 2 days written off by bad headaches but hopefully this weekend I will finish the bedroom and we can move in. Then I can then start reorganising our now bedless front room; I'm going to have a whole 'creative corner' to myself with desk and shelves. I've now had several clock/mosaic commissions and I'd love to have the space to focus on that. The big attic declutter means it can become a more accessable storage room for non day to day stuff. We don't want to be overwhelmed by stuff in our general living area.
Hoping to go to a free bike workshop tomorrow (I understand they are open to donations, so have baked a large cake). They will teach me how to check over/maintain my bike. After that I will feel confident to take my bike out. Every time I use it instead of a bus, I'm going to put the sum saved on a slip of paper in to a piggy bank ( though mine is a 'cowy' bank:D) It may take some time but I would love to earn back the cost of the bike in saved bus fares, even if it takes a year.

Am going to have to spend some money on clothes soon - the bits i have are slowly falling apart and I'm washing out the same 2 tops every coupla days. I don't enjoy clothes shopping, but don't have the gift some have of looking good in charity shop stuff either.

cw18

apparently I'm also supposed to get dividends for having C00p (and Sm!le) bank account - but haven't ever seen anything for them on my divi statements (of which I've only had 2 or 3 up to now). Had to call them about something just after getting the last divi (which was when I also just after I realised about the bank a/cs earning extra), so I queried this. They are supposed to have linked the accounts to my divi card now, but will have to wait for the divi to arrive to see if they've actually done it

Frugaldom

Hi SM, I'm thinking longterm - retirement - I'll have no income and my pittance of a state pension possibly won't cover the rent. I still need a back-up / contingency plan, IYSWIM. Other than that, I'm content to stay here for as long as possible. (Hoping I can keep my good neighbours all that time, too )

1274

Hello all. I've been off the MSE forums for the last 3 months but am now back again with a vengeance after having looked at my bank balances!

The edited high (in green) and low (in red) lights of my finances during my absence are:

• I need to find another £5K by January to forward pay the 2010-11 tax bill. I had set aside enough for this year's tax, but forgot about the instalment payment thing for the SE :shocked:
• I have managed to save £7K in an ISA since paying off my mortgage in Feb. I could use this for the tax, but I really don't want to touch it
  
• I should get a co-op divvi (thanks Nyk for reminding me to check) as all my bank accounts are with Smile but it will be less than last year since I have cleared my co-op mortgage
• I have completely blown my budget for food and clothes
• I have totally lost track of where I stand with the "all-in" £16K challenge so will be number crunching over the weekend

I can't catch up on the last 3 months of posts, so congratulations all who have bought or are buying houses, well done to those whose gardens are sprouting, commiserations to anyone who has had bad news and hello to the new members!

Skint_Lynne

Hi Frugang,

I've been for my interview and it seemed to go well, but we will just wait and see, you never can tell really. It was up in Edinburgh, that it one nightmare of a place to get round in a car, you've got to be careful to miss Princes Street as it is all dug up just now.

I had to pay nearly a fiver for parking.:eek: I have done some spending today, some good, some bad. Me and sisters have chipped in for a sat nav for dad's father's day present, he really wants one, so it made sense to get this between us rather than buy him another new shirt each.:rolleyes:

I'm going to bed early as I was up nearly all of last night dreaming about this interview, I hope I get somewhere cause I lost a nights sleep through it.:rotfl:

I'm going to price strimmers this weekend so that I can get one for my jungle veg patch and try and get it into some sort of order.

Speak later. xx

cw18

Younger DS seems to be buying into all this budget setting now...... though if I'm honest he's not really complained about me cutting back on heating, lighting and grocery treats at all

I had a pizza in the freezer from last week (bought 2 different offer ones so he could pick which to have when catering for himself on the Thursday night, and froze the other), so when out for food yesterday I bought one of the normal (larger but cheaper) ones we have. He'd have pizza every week given half a chance, but we normally only have it every 2 or 3 weeks - really only did them this week as I didn't have last week and I still had the one in. He was mortified to discover in a chat last night that it's one of our most expensive meals - so perhaps I can try making my own bases now, as he's more likely to eat them if it makes them cheap enough to have more often.

He was in my room a couple of hours ago, and picked up an old Mr T receipt - which he then scanned through while quizzing me on some of the more expensive purchases (but they were almost all DD's things). By the time he'd finished going through it he couldn't actually find anything on it to complain I'd wasted money on :rolleyes2

Had my spreadsheet open about an hour ago when he came back into my room and glanced over my shoulder. Far from mocking me for keeping track of everything to the extent I do, he started asking where I log various expenses - and he was reeling off a pretty comprehensive list of normal household bills. He was mildly shocked at how high some of them are, and asked for an explanation of how I calculate my grocery budget (he spotted that where I split it into monthly amounts there are vast differences, so I demo'd how it's all calculated around days in the month, plus how many days elder DS is home on leave and how many days I have each GD in the month).

He asked if I'd built anything into the grocery budget to allow for the fact he's now off college for 3 months - which means potentially higher bills as he's not buying some meals at college from his EMA, which he won't get again until he's back after the Summer break. Told him I haven't, so he'd better not eat me out of house and home - and better hadn't start increasing his milk intake (we're currently getting through a litre a day, whereas on my own a pint will last me over a week :eek: ) So he's told me to buy him some cheap orangeade instead !! Not sure that this would actually save me much, as the milk is 49p a litre and the pop is £1.20 for 3x2 litres - and I'm sure he'll get through a full bottle of pop instead of an extra 0.5-1 litre of milk

sophiesmum_2

nykmedia wrote: »

Hi SM, I'm thinking longterm - retirement - I'll have no income and my pittance of a state pension possibly won't cover the rent. I still need a back-up / contingency plan, IYSWIM. Other than that, I'm content to stay here for as long as possible. (Hoping I can keep my good neighbours all that time, too )

You need to have minimal savings under the housing benefit threshold , basic state pension as income, currently topped up with pension credit, and you would then get all rent(obviously not if ridiculous levels) and council tax paid leaving you to "manage " on the state pension which is set at higher rates than job seekers allowance, and some low incomes etc. If you are not a homeowner it does not pay to have savings when you retire as many of my oldies have found out.

Frugaldom

We're fast approaching the halfway mark of this year's challenge and it's rather scary if I double up on what's already been spent on groceries! :eek: I'm hoping that it's nowhere near the same in the second half of the year, what with homegrown veggies, eggs and fruit, plus the stockpile to fall back on, so I am still quietly optimistic that I can live on 4k for our household of 3. (That's today's analysis, tomorrow's, next week's or next month's might be different. :rotfl:) Of course, with DS now being 20 and looking at the possibility of being transferred out of this area, the household may drop to 2, but he's adamant that I don't convert HIS room into any form of foodstore, larder, pantry, office or workroom.:rotfl:

Welcome back 1274 - excellent news on being mortgage free! :T

Good luck, hope you get your new job, Skint Lynne

sophiesmum wrote: »

You need to have minimal savings under the housing benefit threshold , basic state pension as income, currently topped up with pension credit, and you would then get all rent(obviously not if ridiculous levels) and council tax paid leaving you to "manage " on the state pension which is set at higher rates than job seekers allowance, and some low incomes etc. If you are not a homeowner it does not pay to have savings when you retire as many of my oldies have found out.

Hmm... isn't it just awful when you spend all your time trying to make ends meet so that there's savings and then find out that your savings are useless on two counts? :mad:
1 - they'll never be enough to buy a house at the rate I save,
2 - they're more than enough to exempt me from any form of state benefits, so where will that leave me in 20+ years?

Maybe I'll have a big win on the Premium Bonds

I also wonder how it works when you house share as opposed to live with a DH? Will speak to you about it over a cuppa at the kitchen table this afternoon. :rotfl:

Summer solstice tomorrow, so make the most of the longest day. (Why'd it have to be raining?! We could have been garden partying with a BBQ, otherwise! :rolleyes:

Have a great weekend, everyone.

shaz_mum_of__2

nykmedia wrote: »

I also wonder how it works when you house share as opposed to live with a DH?

It is quite straightforward if the contract states you are both equally liable for a half share ,then you get benefit for your share ...........i have to say though when sharers are of the opposite sex it tends to around supicion around the nature of their relationship in my experience

Not sure if it is the same for a more informal share arrangement


Half way stage soon ................still feel like i am playing at this but my way is helping us save ...........we could manage on less but would start to "suffer" slightly if we cut back any further.

My none challenge spends are higher due to the changes in the garden but are long term(unless we move to our dream house) investments and i have almost enough seeds for next year too! the rest will be bought in the wilko 75% off sale which should be soon either that or at netto/lidl next year


Feel our way has been a success for use which is all we wanted really everyones goals are different.


Shaz


ps Cheryl well done on getting DS trained up financial management ought to be taught at school it is such an important skill to have

savingfortravel

Hi Everyone
Still without great internet access.
Hope you are all ok. Will catch up with posts later.


Today's Plan

• Walk to local shop across footpaths. Take wildflower book with us. Buy Daily E*press as they have a coupon for C*rpetright in it and we need a new carpet.
• Sort out 2k challenge for rest of year.
• Start new budgeting plan.
• Write last lot of comments for school reports.
• Go shopping for Father's Day picnic around ours. Going to set it up so we can all look out onto the fields. Hope its a nice day.
• Mr sft is going to finish painting lounge.
• Get phone number for chap who is going to put in new bathroom for us.
• Relax. Read a bit of book for month.
• Look at blog and write list of objectives for this month.

sft