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

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Wow! Fingers crossed Sophiesmum
We'll all be inviting ourselves for 'frugal - learning how to be more self-sufficient holidays!" Only joking! Am not the stalking type!

It was DH's last day at work today as an employed being.... have got his leaflets and cards printed now tho, website set up just a flash page tho so it looks the same as the leaflet. He's got to go and meet a chap tomorrow, might possibly be getting 8 weeks work sub contracting for someone else so fingers crossed - please send good luck and vibes our way.

Daisy's doing well, growing very quickly. Hasnt got alot of room left in her carryout that clips on to the 3 wheeler pushchair base so MIL bought her a biggy (brand new off ebay - bargain tho), if anyones interested google or look on ebay at OBaby Vintage rose pushchair. :D:D:o
Lovely!! Very bright pink and girly, you get lots of comments (nice ones) pushing it around!
Hope everyones okay x

cha97michelle

O loupy i like that. I love my pushchairs for the boys. I've always gone for the mcclaren techno's as they are so easy to push and fold, although not as much now they are so big and heavy.

Hope you are making the most of her. My DS is going to be 1 in a week and a half and i don't know where that time went. Enjoy it.

I did enjoy the kiss i got when i picked him up from nursery. (Put his head against me, mouth open and full of slobber, and a big ahhhhhhhhh.) And he also made me smile today because he was trying to do the actions to twinkle twinkle and drank some of his bedtime milk from a sippy cup tonight. He really is desperate to be like his brother. Today's favourite word was also cake. Nice to see what his priorities are. :rotfl:I love all the 1sts, and can't wait for his 1st steps which i am hoping will be in the next few weeks.

lyndasharp

I've been doing lots of travelling over the last couple of days, so haven't kept up to date. Just stopping by to say hello before I go and pack for my next trip (Cambridge tomorrow). I got a nice surprise as my A&L switching money has arrived, so £100 for that, plus £20 for ING, and got I paid today, with my nice pay rise giving me an extra £50 per month! Took me a while to work out where all the money had appeared from...

H2B has won a pair of tickets to the Radio 1 Big Weekend, which is being held just down the road. I'm going to see The Prodigy, which will be entertaining at least, even if they're not a particular favourite!

I've turned down the chance to apply for the job at my old uni, but have been unofficially told the two others will be retiring in 3-4 years time, which would be ideal. I've offered to do a guest lecture there, so they don't forget about me after 3 years, and I get more experience in teaching. Hopefully they'll agree, and so will my current boss!

andromache_2

Hi everyone! Lovely to read your posts. I've been doing work experience as a barrister in London for the past couple of days. It was really fun! I'm still not 100% sure what I want to do but I think I'd enjoy being a barrister :cool: they were MOST unfrugal though, no-one brought packed lunches to work at all It was a good experience but I need to stop worrying about jobs and get down to my revision for the next month and a half now.

I've now seen OH for probably the last time before exams are over am feeling pretty despondent about it to be honest but we both need to focus on getting good grades. The other piece of bad news is that my laptop battery has stopped being recognised by the computer... I'm worried that this will be an expensive problem to fix; the battery life has been falling drastically over the past few months so I suspect I'll have to buy a new one :rolleyes:

bails, fingers crossed for your OH! When I was in Laos last summer I met someone who was looking for a social work placement there having just finished one in India working on HIV prevention. I don't know what your OH's field is but he made it sound fascinating. It's an amazing country too - very beautiful and unspoilt (unfortunately one of the reasons for this is that it's still so riddled with landmines that the land can't be developed very easily) and the people are very laid-back and not concerned with money at all which I don't think is altogether positive since the quality of life in a material sense isn't high, but at the same time it gives you a great insight into the non-materialistic lifestyle and a different kind of view on the world. Anyway, I hope he gets a placement, and I'm sure you'll have a great time wherever you end up

sf, MrDT has replied already about the student loan thing with all the details, but really don't worry about it; there's no point at all in paying it back early. It sounds like you might have made a mistake with the interest as well; the highest it's been in the last few years is 4.8% and even that was really unusually high. Even if (as seems likely) the rate is 0% from September rather than -0.4% I'm still not fussed as they've already cut the rate this year for post-1998 loans in line with falling bank interest rates which I wasn't expecting them to do - and 0% is still pretty good tbh! There's no advantage to you in paying it back early so you might as well just forget about it and pay the minimum out of your pay each month; MrDT has already told you all the reasons why it's debt which isn't going to cause you problems. Your holiday in Greece sounds brill

sophiesmum, how exciting!! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you too for Monday!

Have a lovely weekend everyone xxx

Vixstar

I've been updating my spending diary and spreadsheet and I've gone over my practice budget again - I thought I was doing better. Thanks to my diary I can see where I've overspent. I'm going to develop a more comprehensive spreadsheet to make sure I can identify an overspend before it happens. Although I have got a friend's wedding and a couple of formal events next month so I may go over again. If it's ok I'd like to join the challenge properly in June as I'm sure a six month budget would be easier to manage than a month by month one.

BigMummaF

Skint_Lynne wrote: »

What great news sophiesmum!!.......so I can potentially kill 2 birds with 1 stone!! I hope it all works out, fingers and toes crossed for you. xx

:eek: Don't think Nyk would be very welcoming......

Frugaldom

Good morning

BigMumma, I thought the [STRIKE]exact same[/STRIKE] similar thoughts as you! SL, am no want deid chooks, so ye cannae kill them, ye hiv tae be awfie careful when yer visitin' oor gairden in Frugaldom! (It's code in frugal-old-scots language and means, when are you visiting?):rotfl::rotfl:

Hope everyone has a great weekend, The sun is shining from between the clouds here and the garden is looking greener by the minute. I saw a bluetit come out the nestbox in the front garden, so it would be nice to get chicks. And now I need to go check my next batch - the duck eggs are looking like they'll hatch very soon.

cw18

Not very nice here today -- they were forecasting rain for the weekend, and it looks like it's on the way !!

Fortunately we had a damp feel yesterday morning - so I believed them. This means rather than mowing the lawns over the weekend (as I'd planned), I did them yesterday morning. Wouldn't normally do them again after 5 days, but we have various grasses and loads of dandelions - so it was already starting to look wild and uneven. If we get downpours for a couple of days, then by the time it dried out enough to tackle again it would look have looked dreadful !!!

Still sorting and dejunking here. Have just done 3 boxes of kids toys in the last couple of hours - and it beats me how (when they're clearly marked Lego, Playmobil, cars, etc) each one is a total random mix of stuff..... including socks :eek:

DD phoned this morning to say younger GD has got into her first choice of primary school for September :T This is a huge weight off our minds, as she was waaaaaay down the admissions list, even with having an elder sibling there. The top 3 criteria are (can't remember the order) attend the connected church (or other local Christian church), or in local authority care, or have special needs the school can cater for. Then it's those who live in the catchment area who have siblings there followed by catchment without siblings. Only then do we reach my GD as she's out of catchment with a sibling, which left only out of catchment without a sibling below her !!! To be honest, we're still surprised my elder GD got in as she was bottom of the pile..... and from what we've heard it sounds like not everyone who wanted got in then


As we're into the final week of the month, I've just been and plugged the last few direct debits into my account spreadsheet (even though they've not actually gone out yet) to get a feel for where I'm likely to be at month end -- and it's looking horribly healthy !!!

sophiesmum_2

Glad GD got her choice of school Cheryl, could have made life difficult if they were in different schools .

cw18

If younger GD hadn't got into my local school, then DD would have been trying to move elder GD into whichever the younger one was shoved into -- no way any of us wanted to cope with two different primary schools !!