Mooooving Into 2010 - Bovine Adventures In Budgeteering!

moo2moo

Live on 8K a year? Are you insane? Good luck with it. You appear to have far more willpower and influence over Mr F-F than I do. Am still considering attempting it for the entire year but thinking 12-16K is more realistic but seems a bit insulting to those actually living on 4K.

Hope Mr F-F has worked out how to operate the vacuum in your absence.

mooomin

moo2moo wrote: »

Live on 8K a year? Are you insane? Good luck with it. You appear to have far more willpower and influence over Mr F-F than I do. Am still considering attempting it for the entire year but thinking 12-16K is more realistic but seems a bit insulting to those actually living on 4K.

Hope Mr F-F has worked out how to operate the vacuum in your absence.

Given that he slept through the gasman visiting yesterday I hope so too

The last person to post before me had a £12k budget. It's about living frugally not being a hermit (Or so they tell me!) I certainly couldn't do £4,000 for a year! I'll post my figures when (if?) I return to Edinburgh.

The roads here are apparently bad (High school is closed as the school buses won't risk icy roads) but Papa Fresian doesn't bother about these little things so we're trying to make it to Inverness. If I'm not online by 8pm one way or the other send a search party!

*straps on snow shoes*

:snow_laug

Silaqui

I don't understand that challenge, really. I've read it because it sounds like a good idea, but then people don't include rent, or bills, or whatever, and it seems really difficult to keep track of!
Isn't it just like giving yourself £300 quid 'pocket money' a month? I have less than that anyway for food and spends, I'm sure you do too FF??

Maybe I've missed the point lol.

Hope you have a safe journey back from the north and there is actually a train running... my mate is supposed to be coming up from southhampton but she's been stuck at the station since 6.30 this morning.

xx

Swinstie73

HI F_F,

Hope you made it to Inverness! I'm doing a £3K a year challenge for myself next year and like you Silaqui didn't understand the £4K thread so am doing my own version. I've deducted all bills etc., and just left 'extras' such as food/clothes/entertainment, which I will keep on a spending diary. I'm useless at keeping this up, so will probably fail miserably!

moo2moo

I thought it was an everything except your mortgage/ rent and debt repayments challenge.But then what do I know cos I failed miserably when I was playing at being frugal.

taka

It is loosely based on the sorts of amounts you may have to live on if you were on benefits and renting (and got HB and CT benefit etc). Things excluded are mainly rent/mortgage (+other home owner insurance costs), council tax and job related expenses eg transport costs only incurred relating to your job. Holidays were excluded too as they are not essential. Debt repayments are not included either if people had them.

Everyone did/does things slightly differently with different amounts - I excluded mortgage, Council tax, all insurances, TV licence (mainly because I forgot to include it! ) , bus pass and holidays last year.

I included groceries, toiletries, charity, broadband, christmas, birthdays, hairdressers, phone + mobile, gas, elec, shoes, clothes, going out, doctor/dentist costs and other spends. It doesn't sound like much but it all adds up!

I budgeted £5000 for this in 2009 (which I thought was going to be a struggle) and as long as I don't go mad in the last days of 2009 I'll end up ~£4k - I have £70.07 left out of £4k with a trip to the dentist (£23) and a birthday present (hoping to buy something in the sales) left to spend on...

Lots of people are doing an all in budget for everything this year - its really up to you what you include or not! Everyone is doing it on different amounts and for different reasons (staying out of debt, to pay off debt, living on pension/ benefits/ a tiny wage, to not get into student debt, to save for a house deposit, to overpay mortgage, save for renovations, save for other things...)

I'll be doing it too again but I haven't quite decided on the amount yet... :rolleyes:

mooomin

Have returned.

Proper update when Tartypuss gets off my knee (He missed me!)

[Deleted User]

flying_fresian wrote: »

I'm meeting the lovely Palema tomorrow for a coffee and to collect the S&G box she bought me. I'll also collect the other one I bought and courier it to mumof4. It's such a helpful MSE family here :T

Looking forward to meeting you tomorrow F_F for the S&G exchange!!
See you at 2pm
X

mooomin

moo2moo wrote: »

You appear to have far more willpower and influence over Mr F-F than I do.

Mr F_F has no money much of the time so if I say "No" he can't have it. Sad but true

Silaqui wrote: »

Isn't it just like giving yourself £300 quid 'pocket money' a month? I have less than that anyway for food and spends, I'm sure you do too FF??

I have around that much as I budget £200 for food/cleaning/toiletries/cats at the moment and £50 for going out. I will post tomorrow with information about what I'm going to include, for those who are interested.

mooomin

So, I left my folks at 8.30am and arrived in Edinburgh at 6.30pm :eek: There was loads of snow on the road between Skye and Inverness, lots of deer to watch out for as well. Sadly my camera was packed away as it was beautiful today. It took ages to get to Inverness as we were doing 40mph for most of the way.

I got on the train to Edinburgh at 12.47pm and it left on schedule. The heating failed in our coach somewhere around Aviemore, and it was minus 15 as we went through Dalwhinnie. So far, so normal for Scotrail around Christmastime (In my experience anyway) Then, not far after Dunkeld the train stopped and the announcement was made that, in laymans terms, the train didn't want to keep going as it was cold. It sat for 15-20 minutes and limped towards Perth then on the outskirts of Perth it gave up the ghost completely and we were stuck there for an hour waiting for another train to come and tow us. We were promised free tea/coffee after an hour but none was forthcoming :mad:

Eventually we arrived in Perth and were asked to change trains, which we did, and were grateful that the new train seemed to have working heating. Then came the announcement that we had been told to board the wrong carriages and we had to get off with all our luggage and move into different coaches. These coaches didn't have working heating either. Urgh.

The train arrived in Edinburgh a whopping 1 hour and 45 minutes late. Luckily, things started looking up from there.

My friend had been at the station picking up her boyfriend and had said to me to pop over to her car and say hello when I got off the train. She gave me a lift home :j £15 saved on a taxi She also had a bottle of wine and loads of Christmas cards for me from work.

I got home to a hug from Mr Fresian and one of our friends who we haven't seen for ages had popped in to say hello and said lovely friend then bought us Chinese for tea from the Tasty Chinese (The one near us is not as tasty but half the price!) so money saved from that too

I also had two weeks worth of post to open which included highlights such as:

• Birthday parcel from Mama Fresian containing £20 M&S voucher, massive socks with pom poms on them (Mr Fresian says they're horrible, but they look warm!) and some earrings
• £40 cheque for birthday from relatives
• ANCHOR BAKING SET!! Pictures to follow...
• Shopping bag from Anchor redeem containing voucher for free block of butter
• Whittards teabag samples including MOC
• Small Toblerone sample
• Earrings from ASOS which seem to have fallen apart in the post. I shall be checking out their refunds policy tomorrow. Gutted too as they're nice :mad:
• 2 books from Bangzo (Birthday presents for next year for friends)
• A gazillion Christmas/birthday cards
• Handbag from Accessorize from my brother (Birthday present)
• Amazon parcel (From my brother for Christmas so I'm not opening it yet)
  
• One of Mr Fresian's Christmas presents that I thought was NEVER going to arrive
• Free copy of money magazine from offer posted in the Weekly Email

I also got a lot of boring bills but it wasn't a bad haul given that I was only away for two weeks. I love how many things in my list are obviously because I'm a MSE person (Teabag samples etc!)

In the end, my journey was horrible, but I'm glad to be home and well-fed.

Mr Fresian hadn't put the Christmas tree up though :mad: so I'm off to sort that right now!

Ho Ho Ho!

:xmastree::xmastree::xmastree::xmastree: