Live on £4,000 for a year - 2009, Part 4

FrankieM

Hi cw18.
I'm basing my weekly spending on £4k and CB.
Do you think the total that it gives me when I put my info in is because I have children? Would they give you more? The total comes up the same whether its Income Support or JSA. £182 odd a week.
I don't have a problem with the challenge being less, I was just curious and a little confused. More so now that you seem to get a different amount to me?

cw18

entitledto tells you what you'd get (including money for children) if it was all paid from DSS. But this is no longer the case, and you only get the money for adults from them (£64.30 for a single adult from 25 or single parent from 18) or £100.95 for a couple where both are 18 or over. The money for the children (£56.11 per child) now gets paid through CTC.

ETA: You also get higher rates if someone in the household receives certain levels of DLA.

andromache_2

nykmedia wrote: »

Ummm.... I'll pretend not to see this as it's illegal in my line of work. :eek::o

Aren't you allowed to photocopy up to 10% of a book before it infringes copyright? Or up to one article or chapter out of a longer book? Something like that, anyway!

You must be so excited, bails I think you're quite right to get married when you want to even if you won't quite have saved up for it - you know that you're good with money so you'll pay it back afterwards. Good luck with the preparations!

Frugaldom

Why I chose the figure £4,000 - Here's the link to an earlier post, hope it helps.

FrankieM, my figures were set at the start of my challenge several years ago, well before I added it to MSE. These were based on several sets of financial circumstances relating to families I was helping out of debt at the time. They are not based, at all, on my personal circumstances, as I am not in receipt of benefits, nor is anyone else in our household. I have been trying to find out exactly what the Government reckons is the true 'cost of living' but it is so difficult to assess, depending on circumstances, location, lifestyle etc. Also, as has been pointed out to me elsewhere, the cost of living isn't the same as the cost of existing. Not everyone wants to merely exist with a minimalist lifestyle, which is how many view mine.

Edited in - Andromache, in certain circumstances there are allowances for the purposes of research / education / journalism where we're allowed to quote parts of other works as long as these are attributed to the copyright holder where known and such like. There are also laws concerning what percentage of changes can be made but I'm not a copyright lawyer, so can't be sure what any of these are. I do know it's copyright infringement if we copy something for the sole purposes of avoiding having to pay for our own copy or if it's for selling/distributing for personal gain. Same goes for pictures, digital images, artwork, photographs, logos, designs etc... just search any news sites for court cases involving copyright infringement incidents involving well known online auction sites.

sophiesmum_2

Good evening frunchkins:D
Have been updating my totals and now have £846 .12 to last the rest of the year.Still a bit of leeway in the food budget and surplus elsewhere but have got car tax to remember for December plus insurance. Think I will just be able to scrape in under budget for 2009.

BUT (very big but!), we have spent quite a lot of money on non cost of living goods this year from our savings pot mostly in connection with the cottage, including carpets, furniture, new bathroom , two new cars,garden equipment,electrical appliances, electrical work, plus cash gifts to family etc etc etc.We have treated this expenditure as set up costs for our future life in frugaldom and as it hasn't impacted on our cost of living budget it hasn't been included in the challenge.The savings pot has been seriously depleted though:eek:
Real cost of living expenses such as food spends, contents insurances,tv licences and electricity/coal costs etc have been included for both properties. Fortunately for us fuel costs aren't charged on my work home so that balanced out the expenditure on the cottage, plus I managed to get cashback deals on the insurance so it cost just a few quid for the year. It will be much simpler though when we are just budgetting for one lot of household running costs.:rolleyes:
what the challenge has done though is to prove to ourselves that living on a restricted budget is very doable and it has given us the final encouragement to step away from the rat race asap

Okay that is enough waffling for one day:D
Enjoy the rest of the evening everyone.

slowlyfading

Evening everyone.

Just a quick one from me. Today is NSD no 5, so pretty pleased with that. I am meeting a friend tomorrow after school in Starbucks though, so I'll obviously have to spend there. Really looking forward to it, but can't believe another week is almost over! Eeek!

All this wedding talk is so exciting, I can't wait until its my turn!

Enjoy the rest of your evening everyone x x

sophiesmum_2

Well done on the no spend days sf, glad you are enjoying the training a bit more now too:D You sound much happier about it now.

slowlyfading

sophiesmum wrote: »

Well done on the no spend days sf, glad you are enjoying the training a bit more now too:D You sound much happier about it now.

Well, today didn't go as well but I am enjoying it I'm glad I chose to do this now, although that may change when I'm teaching full time! x x

andromache_2

nykmedia wrote: »

Edited in - Andromache, in certain circumstances there are allowances for the purposes of research / education / journalism where we're allowed to quote parts of other works as long as these are attributed to the copyright holder where known and such like. There are also laws concerning what percentage of changes can be made but I'm not a copyright lawyer, so can't be sure what any of these are. I do know it's copyright infringement if we copy something for the sole purposes of avoiding having to pay for our own copy or if it's for selling/distributing for personal gain. Same goes for pictures, digital images, artwork, photographs, logos, designs etc... just search any news sites for court cases involving copyright infringement incidents involving well known online auction sites.

I see... I'm obviously thinking of the fact that I photocopy academic articles from journals all the time and that's seen as OK as long as it's just the odd article and you're not photocopying the whole book - which might seem to imply that photocopying the odd project from a craft book from the library would be acceptable. You're quite right if you quote materials you need to give proper attribution but I think that's different from photocopying a couple of pages from a book for your own reference. And also you're quite right that if you photocopy the whole book so as to avoid buying your own copy that's not on either! Hmm hmm, there's a poster up in the photocopying room at my faculty with all the rules on; I'll have to check it out next time I'm there! I'm pretty sure boring beige would be allowed to photocopy the odd project page from a craft book, anyway, just as long as it's less than 10% of the whole book I'll check the poster and let you know if that's wrong!

Anyway! I have had an expensiveish week thus far as I needed to buy and post my mum's birthday present, and I have an expensive weekend coming up with lots of travel costs... I so need to update my signature as it's really not reflective of the reality

Hope all are well

bails

It's lovely to see you posting SM, I miss having you around x

Thanks SmlSave, I would really appreciate your PM of the budget.

Not much to report here at mo, sorry folks