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

HH62

Morning everyone!
I managed NSD yesterday, and also today will be NS too.
I'm just writing about tomorrow now, as the board will be down not sure how I'll cope without it actually!
Anyway so tomorrow will NOT be NSD, I'm meeting a friend for coffee. So there'll be petrol used and the coffee money. She'd suggested lunch but I don't think I can justify eating out on my budget ATM.

My heating has been off during the daytime for the past few days, but my living room is very chilly in the evening.It's a north facing room, so it never gets any sun whatsoever. I haven't got a separate heater in there so I've been having to put the heating on for a couple of hours at night.
The warmest room in the house is the back bedroom. This room is a spare room, and I was thinking about getting a TV aerial socket in there and using it as my living room when I'm on my own at night, I wouldn't need the CH on then...or maybe I'm mad??

Have a good day and a good weekend everyone and fingers crossed that the board's back by Sunday night!!

blueberrypie

Spent a whole £3.12 this morning, on a bottle of tea-tree oil. I started to clean the conservatory, which had developed a bit of mould over the last couple of years - I had a little bit of the Dettol mould remover left, and a little bit of my own tto solution. Started with the Dettol, thinking it would be stronger, but when I ran out and started to use the tto solution, it turned out that did a better job. Had no more tto to make up more solution tho, so when I went out to fill a prescription for one of the kids, I bought another bottle.

Conservatory is now looking good, and I've even cut the grass (with a new-to-us lawnmower, acquired via freecycle). Making up for doing nothing at all for the last week while I've been sick, I think!

sophiesmum_2

Didn't manage a no spend day today.
The first of the vets bills came in for (not so )frugal pony, decided to be nice to my DD and not make her pay it out of her savings so have used most of the balance from my extra earned income pot. Bill was £127.15:eek: - the actual medication only came to about £18 of that:rolleyes:

Which leaves my extra income pot looking like this:

Extra income generated £250.43 /spent £245.34.19 / left £5.09
ITEMS BOUGHT WITH EXTRA INCOME:
tortilla press/flour £33,
boots pressies £18.35,
hanging baskets and brackets x 6 £17.88,
planters £20,
blueberry bushes/compost £12.99,
gardening book £10,
grow bags £5.97,
Vet bill for horse £127.15

Think I had better start getting some books on amazon etc and get it looking a bit more healthy. At least the money was there to use without blowing the £4000 budget out the water

purplevamp

buzzbox - thanks for the link, I did it last night!

Today we had no power at work for about 2 hours then it came back for 10 minutes, then off for another hour! Apparently it wasn't just us, but the surrounding area, don't know what caused it though! Fortunately I managed to get all my work done as I'm off for 2 weeks jury service.

I've spent a teeny bit today. Had to buy more b/day cards for DH as I can't find the ones I bought last year in Woolies sale :rolleyes: , eggs and sweeties for a birthday cake, wine for tonight and some cupcakes for the children. I also put a bet on the Grand National, only £1 each way, and if it comes in the top 3 I win, fingers crossed.

We're out for dinner tomorrow night which will be a big expense but I'm only paying for me and DH, my sister is babysitting.

I'll update my totals later when I collect up the receipts.

See you all on Sunday :eek:

bails

Hi everyone!

It is great that you have that extra income to soak up costs like the vet's bill SM :T I love the contingencies we have in place thanks to this challenge and MSE :j
Congratulations to Natalie too, it's lovely that the thread has inspired you to take control in other areas of your life too :T In the time I've been part of this challenge (since its start on here in Jan 2008) it's been wonderful to see the changes people have made in their lives, not just around money but in all areas. I love being part of this thread!

I thought it was about time I did a little update of life in this corner of Frugaldom. As you may have guessed, everything is pretty wonderful! :j We're waiting to hear back about placements still so no news yet as to where we're going in July/Aug but it's all v exciting! Depending on where we go I'm hoping to find some conservation work to get involved in, as it's something I've always wanted to do. Because we're going away we can't really grow our own very much this year, but I have been drawing designs for next year's garden renovations I'm planning a wild area with a pond to attract wildlife which we can watch from a seating area in the sun at the bottom of the garden. I think I'm going to redo the raised beds so we can maximise the remaining space and will put my fruit bushes and trees round the fence we'll put up. It's all very exciting so I'm trying to allocate a budget for it so we can get straight on with it when we're back. In other radical home improvement news, I've decided to build an extension on the back of our house, so we can have a utility room/area for the animals and extend our kitchen with a larger dining room overlooking the garden :j I'm going to use some of the house deposit to do this (and also pay back my mum and dad) which'll mean a small increase on monthly payments but in the current climate this will be no problem (we have a variable :T) I'm confident about the longer-term impact of this as I'll definitely be going back to work soon :j:j:j I can't tell you how excited I am to be getting my life back (although I'm sure those of you who know me understand ).
In frugal news, recent highlights have included: doing so well with the Dream Pot; getting organic Cheddar blocks for less than half price due to a store error; another £10 from scratchcards; up to £40 on TAB so need to go through the palava of withdrawing it; £50 from A&L deal; OH selling on Ebay and getting excited about how much he's saving :j; lots of £5 vouchers off dog food, for me and Mum; savings pot meaning I was able to donate £250 to Comic Relief ; the list goes on...
We've also got a fairly frugal holiday coming up We've booked bargain flights to Sardinia and we'll be spending a week (or 2 weeks for OH as he's sailing it over) on a yacht there so accommodation is free, just food money to find :T
The dog is doing really well and providing lots of frugal exercise for me We've had to calm it down as she was speyed recently (free :T) but she's almost recovered so we'll be back out there properly over the weekend. We've been using my gym more too, playing tennis in the evening etc so extra entertainment with the lighter nights to enjoy!
Anyway, enough waffling! Hope everyone has a lovely weekend and can last without MSE til Sunday! Stay frugal peeps and enjoy! x

Brighton_belle

HH62 wrote: »

The warmest room in the house is the back bedroom. This room is a spare room, and I was thinking about getting a TV aerial socket in there and using it as my living room when I'm on my own at night, I wouldn't need the CH on then...or maybe I'm mad??

quote]
Sounds a really good idea to me - we don't need to be tied to 'conventional' use of rooms - we choose to have our stting room upstairs in what would be the main bedroom, as we get more light and sun in there as well as 'rising heat' and because it's the largest room in the house as it is the full width of the hse, where as downstairs, the 'sitting room' is smaller because of the hall passageway. The sitting room downstair would be our bedroom (except in our case we rent that to lodgers as a bedsit)

Just had a friend round delivering a huge box of goodies from their allotment and I made them a cake in exchange:D . We might do this regularly:T .

Nyk - I've never checked my premium bonds as I always assumed they would inform you by post?

cha97michelle

Hi frugang.

Just slipping in before the switch off.

Frugal speaking, spent £1 yesterday on taking the kiddies to the group at the library run by surestart. Totally worth it as the kiddies got a free bag each with a gardening kit, a spray bottle, a paint with water book, a paintbrush, a jigsaw and some stickers each. The baby is a bit young for this, so i plan to give it to a friends 2 yo as an Easter present instead of some books i had bought, so i will save them for his birthday or something.

I also sent a large cheque for DS2's child trust fund as we appear to have sufficient funds to fill it and still play around with other stuff we want to do which i have here to thank i believe.

Then i was at work today, and spent nothing. I actually gained 9p and a pack of crisps as a girl walked out and left it. Another 5p went in the bin, but i drew the line at ferreting in the bin for it. I might keep track actually of the pennies the kids drop and i collect. I avoided the trip to the pub with the rest of the department as they went on Wednesday after ofsted and i didn't really fancy it. Instead i came home for a couple of hours without the kids and got the beds changed and bedding washed so one less thing to do at the weekend.

I've just claimed a free memory card for our camera with some survey points i have collected over the past few years.

Plans for the weekend could be costly. Saturday we are off out with another couple for my 30th birthday, a curry. My sisters kindly offered to babysit, and we haven't been out together since last August so that should be nice.Then on Sunday i have a ticket for dancing on ice with my mum and sisters. I've offered to drive, so i guess food out and petrol/parking there. I got £80 out the ATM for both events, so that is my top budget.

We will also need to do some house tidying and get some more gardening done as another 4 mini fruit trees were delivered, and my courgettes have gone mental and need repotting, and my lettuce are looking sad because i forgot to water them unfortunately, but i am hoping i can save them.

Enough of my mad ramblings. Have a lovely fun filled weekend. Tell us about it next week. Take care x

cha97michelle

forgot to say i also see the sense in the upstairs living room. I think i am going to put the kiddies toys in their room as it is massive and really warm compared to downstairs (laminate/carpet also makes a difference) so would save on the heating and also have less mess downstairs with their toys.


And also, Shaz, totally relate to the problem with too much food. I really do need to stop buying it as we have now filled our huge understairs pantry, and have moved on to filling the garage. Not necessarily bad, but i think i could use some money on paying into ISA's/trust funds/paying mortgage off. I am getting a bit bored with our meat options of mince or chicken thighs though, so i can't wait till something else is on offer at costco. Although i did find a thread on mince recipes so it might help the boredom.

andromache_2

Hi everyone! I've been enjoying catching up on the posts - it's especially nice to hear from bails and 2TR - I'm glad you're both doing so well . I'm still just revising at home though I haven't got that much done in the past couple of days - I need some more motivation from somewhere!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend & cope OK with the site being down! It's my & OH's 3rd anniversay tomorrow (how did that happen already?? ) and his parents are away so I'm going over to his and he's cooking dinner I'm bringing a bottle of nice wine I was given as a thank-you gift for some work I did, have made a card for free, and got him a professional studio photo session for the two of us from buyagift for £6.95 inc postage since they're on special offer at the moment down from almost £40... trouble is he knows me well enough now to know that I will have bought it on offer since I never pay full price for anything so he probably won't be impressed by thinking I've spent lots

See you all again on Sunday night :cool:

slowlyfading

I spent £105.64 today :eek: :eek: :eek: