Brand spanking new to money saving and to my MFW diary

MoneyQueen

Hi Penny Pauper,

We have a similar budget for groceries(for 2 of us).. £100 for a month but it also includes eating out once a month.

MQ

THRIFTY_GIRL

Penny_pauper wrote: »

Hi MoneyQueen

Attempting to do a weekly shop for 2 on £20 per week this month. Will check out the OS board for other tps.
Thanks

Hi Penny Pauper

Good luck with your quest. It is encouraging that there are alot of MFWs on this board in the same position (when will the recession end????). But we will not give up....

Now, I'm wondering how you live on £20 a week. My budget is £100 a week.....that includes nappies and DD, but clearly £10pp we should be spending £40 to £50:rotfl:. Theres my next challenge...I will be collecting my receipts for July.

Thrifty Girl;)

dial8d

MoneyQueen wrote: »

Hi Penny Pauper,

We have a similar budget for groceries(for 2 of us).. £100 for a month but it also includes eating out once a month.

MQ

!!!!!! ?

My weekly shop is roughly £100 a week, and thats only for 2 and 1 cat. I'll admit, there a few luxuries I still like to get, but i tend to avoid the premium brands and get tesco own brand for most things.

You must live on bread, rice and water ??

pammyj74

Due to using mocs last month I only paid £28!! and thats a me and two kids at home! I used nearly £300 in mocs but that was going almost every day after work to maximise them and spend as little as possible.

Good Luck
x

MoneyQueen

dial8d wrote: »

!!!!!! ?

My weekly shop is roughly £100 a week, and thats only for 2 and 1 cat. I'll admit, there a few luxuries I still like to get, but i tend to avoid the premium brands and get tesco own brand for most things.

You must live on bread, rice and water ??

No we don't live on bread, rice and water..

Have you checked the OS Board...

There are so many there who spend lesser than me but still eat healthily..

Following is my mantra

Meal Plan
Batch Cooking
Take Packed Lunch to Work
Buy Fruits etc. from Local markets
Freeze leftovers
Use a Slowcooker
Make dishes from scratch (I never use readymade sauces etc... you never know what all has been added in them)
Always shop with a list
Resist temptation (I generally get tempted with all the unhealthy stuff - so it is healthy to resist that temptation)
Use 2 for 1 vouchers when you eat out
Bake your own bread (though this is expensive if you already buy the cheapo one)

We both are Veggie so that also helps

Any month we don't follow the above, we spend much more than £100

MQ

Penny_pauper

Hi Money Queen
I pretty much follow a similiar mantra to yours and that's how we manage on £25 a week. The main thing for me is to cook everything from scratch and write a weekly meal plan so that if I'm buying coconut milk for a curry for example, I'll use up any left in the carton for a soup or a pudding etc later on in the week and that way nothing gets thrown out. Also I usually try to bulk up foods with beans or veg so that i can get at least an extra two portions out of whatever I'm making that can then get frozen.
I love cooking so I'm just used to making everything myself and due to being raised in a family where one member couldn't eat salt for medical reasons, I now find it very difficult to eat any processed food, far too salty, can even taste the salt in digestive biscuits!
I don't have kids so don't buy any snacks/chocolate/fizzy juice etc but this suits my hubby and i as we would just sit and wolf them down in front of the telly and get great big bums and tums:rotfl:. It must be much harder convincing kids they don't want eat them though.
Anyway just wanted to update you all on our progress. This is the first month of living on only my wage (typically our first month of trying to do this would have to be a five weeker :mad:)
Well, the shopping is in for the next week and a half, there's nothing on the credit cards, there's money to cover the commuting and maybe £30 quid spare. Fortunately we've nothing planned for next weekend and (touch wood) there will be no big bills arriving in the next week, all of hubby's wage is in savings.
It has not been easy, I was away with work for a week and seemed to be going through money like nothing on earth. Also July is the month of birthdays, no problems with gifts but it's the accompanying nights out that can be the issue (we're just too damn social for our own good ). Went out on a big night out and as the bill got higher and higher we had to bow out of the post dinner drinks as we had hit the ceiling of our budget for the evening on the food alone.
A bit rubbish waving everyone off to enjoy their night as we headed for the nightbus but I feel ok about it today as I know we'd have been out to three and that a lot more money would have been spent on the drinks and a taxi.
Feeling very proud of us for more or less making it through a tough month. Can only hope that it'll be much easier during a four week month!
PP

gallygirl

Well done, as you've said, you've managed it in a v difficult month, so it will be 'easy' from now on :T

Penny_pauper

Thanks Gally girl
Well got inspired by the Mortgage free role of honour thread and I went on today and asked Nationwide to round up my mortgage payments. £17.32 on the big one and £25.52 onto the 40k one. They'll come out at the start of next month and this will be our first official over payment! Sadly enough I am very excited about this!
Anything that is left in the 'pot' by the end of the month will be going in too.
PP

StuartGMC

PP
You are right to be excited; the whole point is you have had to look at and take ownership of the finances to do so and quite rightly should feel pleased at that first step. It gets easier thereafter and before you know it you'll be creating multipage spreadsheets, running a series of what-if scenarios and including all of this in your annual personal review at home with your 3, 5 and 10yr goals and then happily thinking it is normal, just like it becomes habit to watch Bloomberg for the news...

...it is, isn't it? :rotfl:

If you don't get some fun from all of this then you'll struggle to stay the course; enjoy!

Penny_pauper

Ah I spoke far, far, far too soon when I though a four week month would be 'easier'. Oh how the God's of budgeting must have laughed at that as they fired bills at me from all angles. Had to replace a dodgy car exhaust, get road tax (admittedly this had slipped my mind), birthday presents, wedding presents and buy tiles so that we could finish off the kitchen. The tiles were going to be our one big expense of the month (ha!) that would be taken from our savings and the last big thing we would do in the house before my OH gets made redundant but unfortunately it didn't quite work out that way. Suffice to say August has been a wash out and there will be very little to put by at the end of this month as had to resort to using the credit cards to try and spread everything over two months.

I do not appear to be very good at this budgeting malarky!:rolleyes:

Think I'll need to get some form of spread sheet from somewhere as I had no idea my OH's road tax was due. So I'm going old school this month. All the cash for living on has been totted up and divided by 5 (yet again we have a five week month, how is it possible there are so many of them in a year?:mad:) and have been put in envelopes, 1 per week. Going to try keeping a running total and writing down everything that gets taken out of the envelopes and why. OH thinks this is the insane behaviour of an obsessive woman but I need to see were all the little blighters are going. Feel like we start off with cash in our account but when I take a second look I discover it's all skipped off into the sunset to have a lovely time without us.
Here's hoping the envelopes of economy will help solve this mystery of the missing cash.
PP