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

sophiesmum_2

Still waiting [STRIKE]im[/STRIKE]patiently :rolleyes:

Pips_Mum

Its not a frugal wedding but I have just finished arranging a frugal naming ceremony for Pip for this Saturday.

• Printed invites and order of ceremonys myself
• Family member to be official photographer
• Negotiated hall and ceremony room to be free if we had their catering, again £35 per head
• If you ordered a 3 balloon tier it was £8 :eek:if you ordered 3 balloons and tied them together yourself it was £3 Cant believe they can rip people off like this but thats another story.
• Balloon weights were £1 each :eek:, I bought packs of 10 gold cake boxes from Mr Ts for £1, filled them with gravel and tied blue ribbon around them like parcels.
• Friend making cake
• 1 big flower arrangement for ceremony and then for on top table.
• Flowers for other tables are little 50p vases from Ikea with 2 flowers and a bit of greenery all in all £2, proper posies were £12:eek:
• Gifts for godparents are mugs with a picture of the person with Pip on, made using snapfish using a 20% off voucher code and pigsback cash back.

All in, including new outfits for the 3 of us, its cost us £2000 for 40 people to have a 4 course sit down meal, drinks after ceremony and with meal and for the room to be decorated nicely :T

Blairweech

SFT - I use them again.

Pips Mum - that sounds like a wonderful ceremony, good work on the frugalising!

Thankyou all soooo much for your replies re Bath and West, I think I will go after all (frugal beau has agreed )

As for Bank Holiday...well, I am considering taking up a certain Legoland offer Could go down to Windsor on Friday after work, and see the castle etc. Will have to see what frugal beau has to say on the subject (when he turns his bl00dy phone on!)

Spent £14.65 on a DD for T'Internet today. Also got sme freebies from work so I don't have to make lunch tomorrow

lyndasharp

Morning! I'm just wondering whether to spend £3.20 on a bus ticket or whether to try cycling to work. Very silly accident yesterday - slipped off the edge of a kerb when walking to the shop, and my ankle hurts :-( Grr.

For evening entertainment, I'd love to have my favourite local band there, called Big 10. I am going to make an enquiry but I expect they will be way out of our price range, so it'll probably end up being a DJ. One of my friends has recently split up with her DJ husband, so I can't ask him to do it!

Pips mum, the ceremony sounds lovely!

Frugaldom

Hi fruguys and gals, everyone sounds pretty upbeat at the moment, it must be the end of month, new beginning of the next month and things starting to take shape in gardens, wedding plans, naming ceremonies and all sorts of exciting events. Lynda, hope your ankle is alright - I'd get the bus rather than risk making it worse.

I love the agricultural shows and have worked at several on the stalls. The best ever was The Royal Highland because we were there all week and it is an absolutely MASSIVE show with many famous names, if you're into anything agricultural or horse-related. Friend and I also worked the Harrogate show and the Royal a few years back, which was fun. Our local show is certainly the highlight of the year here.

Just about to check my spreadsheets and complete April in my electricity meter readings page. I don't think I'm doing too badly, apart from the groceries, but am slowly getting that back under control by planning to make the most of every single square inch of available garden, windowsills, greenhouse, posts and rails. I WILL manage a partially self-sufficientish lifestyle this year. We're only one third in and I haven't bought eggs for over 3 weeks :j and haven't bought lettuce this year at all. :T

Back soon, have a good day everyone.

Edited in: OK, I now have my end of month figures as I have no intentions of spending anything today.

APRIL FIGURES
Groceries - £94.63
Toiletries - £1.84
Electricity - £75
Coal - £23
Internet - £19.99
Gifts - £63.68

Total household spend for April 2009 - £278.14
Total household spend to date 2009 - £1,439.39

8 months remaining, giving an average budget of £320 per month.

cw18

I've got a busy long weekend ahead of me, so I've just done what should be my final grocery shop of April and checked all my Direct Debits have gone out. Spreadsheet is now all up-to-date, so I can report my status as of the end of April

Spreadsheet looks like this



The green column is the annual budget for each category.

I've had to do a minor tweak to this today, as I've received the renewal notification and payment schedule for my Central Heating cover. I had budgeted £210 for this, but due to the fact we had a problem on the system in the last year I've not got a 'no call out' discount - so the actual payments are £212.99 (which I've set to £213 for a nice round figure, but at least I wasn't far out with my estimate). The £3 I needed to add to this has come off my 'Anything Else'!!

The grey column is where I should anticipate being at the end of April 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 none of the red figures are currently scaring me as they can all be explained very easily, and 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 £461.13 under budget (which is why I've been in a flap about it looking toooo healthy over the past week or so )

However, this isn't as impressive as it looks. The category names in red are my 'one off' payments (though vet will actually be 2) through the year, and a lot of these aren't due yet. For these categories alone my budget to date is £376.50 but I've only paid out £189.50 - so £187 of my under-spend is money in the bank towards the rest of these.

And I then need to take into account that another £156.57 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).

Of all the other categories, my largest under-spend is petrol - currently by £98.93. But my fuel tank is almost empty, so that's roughly another £36 that if I were planning on heading out anywhere near a filling station today (which I'm not) I should be spending to give a more accurate picture of my position (as I started the challenge with a full tank). So I'm really only looking on this category as a £63-ish underspend. However I'm not planning on adjusting the budget for this category just yet (even though it currently looks like I could drop it by around £180 for the year) as I don't have a budget for any repairs/parts the car needs at service/MOT which is due at the end of July (and I suspect brakes, tyres and battery will be 'suggested' at that point).

And I should also have £32 in the bank towards the cost of getting my gutters and eaves cleaned - I've put my name down for this with the window cleaners, so am now just waiting on them getting enough of a list on the estate for them to come and spend a whole day doing this work.

So deducting the money 'in the bank' and the cost of a tank of fuel would bring me down to 'just' a £49.56 under-spend.


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 £90.68 on these :eek:

I reckon that if I'd balanced these properly over the year, I'd actually be looking at an end of April underspend of a whopping £140.24 So if I can balance these out over the year (though I reckon 'presents' will be a tough one as previously mentioned), then I'm on target for a £420 underspend by the end of December :T

However I'm not going to get complacent about this, as I'm sure there could well be some unexpected surprises in store over the next 8 months

Brighton_belle

Afternoon everyone. Here's my April figures. As you can see I have £2,869 left for the rest of the year. Anything I can comfortably shave off that will go towards my 'reasons for doing the 4k': namely being able to afford, despite a low income, to continue my mosaic classes/pilates/ buying a bike and general life enhancing stuff like that, and as the summer progresses, a few more day trips. The BB version of getting chickens and roosting in self sufficiency land in terms of quaility of life and happiness:D.

High spends on buses this month is due to spending £30 online bulk buying cheaper 'all day tickets' that should last some months. Food monthly budget is incorrect - have just upped it to £200 but hope to re-work at ways to bring that down where poss but we both do better eating lower carb, higher protein. Biggest expenses for us are free range meat & eggs and fruit I think. 99%meals cooked from scratch though.




Food is for 2, hsehold essentials (loo rolls & cleaning products) for 4 & utilities for 2.


From the rest of my income, I budget and record in the same manner for:

• h/cuts
• clothes (£80 so far this year)
• petrol (mainly for OH work at the mo)& car costs
• unessential house extras (very reduced now)
• bus/taxi for work (going through a good walking in phase at the mo:j)
• mtg
• c.tax
• water rates

The more I can cut down on these, the more is left for savings for:

• hobbies
• other life enhancing ideas and projects
• & outings

All done as frugally as possible and enjoyed to the full.



Today I have finally been paid the £50 for opening the A&L account through quidco last autumn: it's been an invaluable account to have for syphoning off my monthy ddm's and helped me to control and understand my budget better. So this will go to bike fund. As will the £50 cash stash I had forgotten about under the proverbial mattress I found the other day and the £40ish I've saved in £2:j and just remembered.

andan

Hi guys, figured i would post, although not really anything to report. Still continuing with the challenge and spends in my opinion are looking good. Currently spent £1352 this year.

Just really working on keeping heating low and not spending as much on the food budget and bulk buying where possible Still enjoying the challenge and especially enjoying not spending money which is always good!

sophiesmum_2

YIPEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

As you can see I am just a little bit excited , frugal plans now come to fruition officially, I am now like a dog with two tails .



Nyk - book me in for half of the pig

whitewing

sophiesmum,

I haven't been able to read this thread for ages. What frugal plans? Do tell....

AND WELL DONE anyway!