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

Frugaldom

Good evening

Don't worry, I am not disheartened, just dis-gustingly pigged out on cakes, crisps and biscuits and about to make dinner. :rotfl:

Liked the Guard!an article, although I did G00gle 'Catford' and it turns out it's in tropical London/Kent area, so nowhere near as chilly as the north. :rolleyes: Can you imagine all the Guard!an (and Financial Times) readers giving up their heating in favour of an extra jumper? :rotfl: I may need to rethink my stocks and shares portfolio, possibly add some Pr!ngles, and I don't mean the 6 packs for £1 variety from Appr0ved foods! :rotfl: Perhaps a nice line in cashmere or handspun alpaca scarves with matching gloves and hats is in order, with a catchy designer name tag, like 'Frugarmants' and a catchy slogan, like, Frugarments - Saving the planet without joining Greenpeace, it's the 'right' thing to do. :rotfl:I'm up for that company formation if anyone else is. (Small print - The aforementioned branding has been adopted as an official company trademark. The slogan is copyright NYK Media. All rights reserved worldwide. :rotfl:) Ooh yes, my fru-brain works in some mysterious ways! Now back to my half price chicken and LETS traded tatties whilst I await the supersurge in shares prices.

Brighton_belle

great article Lingo. I tend to read the grauniad on line, but had missed that one. We're slightly stymied with the CH as with a lodger, they are always going to want it one more than us, who ever they are. But we have our living area upstairs, so never have the heating on in our bedroom and only sometimes in our front room even if on 'downstairs'.I've got thermal tops on and double thick sock on today and we won't be putting it on as lodger is away for weekend. But then we do live in the sarf so we're a lot better off with mild weather.

House work done, Chopped veg roasting in oven and lemon cake cooked and all washing up done.
Since we thoroughly cleaned , decorated and reoganised downstairs when long term lodgers went, we seem to have found it easier to keep the house clean and tidy.
Like hearing about your house sorting/organising plans Skintchic.
Not having 'solid' walls Bigmamma sounds a bit of a mare. I love reorganining and planning how to maximise storage, but putting my ideas into practice can be difficult through lack of diy skills sometimes, so I sympathise. I acn drill andput stuff up, but as you say, a crumbly or difficult wall is beyond me.


SM I think if you love baking and are a foodie, the whole weight loss issue is always a very difficult one. Glad to hear BB doing well. I always prefer being up high myself - hence livingroom upstairs:D.

SFT nearly forgot Mr Tenant tonight:eek: so thanks for the reminder. Can't get my head round it being on a Sunday.

Blairweech

Nyk - As the resident llama (and alpaca) farmer-to-be, I could supply all your wool needs I hear ya on the supermarket never having what you want thing, makes me so :mad: at how they monopolise everything!
Bails - Hope you get your lappy fixed asap
SF - Get well soon, glad you have taken some time out for yourself

Had a fairly lazy day, stayed in bed til midday Then went for a walk round one of the local villages - saw some good hawk action and explored an old tin mine (they are ten a penny round here). OH is going back home in a bit, then I will attempt to do a bit of sorting out of my house. My uni interview is on Wednesday aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh

savingfortravel

Nyk-Just catching up with your blog-We're getting a log store just like yours for Christmas. Can't wait to start collecting our own wood when we are out and about.
SFT

Frugaldom

Hello

Blairweech, that's excellent news about the alpaca & llama wool, we only have 2 breeders about here that I know of so far.

SFT, the log store is great but I want to make a cover for the front of ours as we've had so much rain recently the logs have all got soaked! I have a tarpaulin for going over it but have never got around to attaching it.

SM, dumpling making on the cards for you soon, too? Please DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to cook it in a pressure cooker; the dumpling swells quite a bit during cooking and we don't want to hear of a nasty explosion next door that could need eating clean! :rotfl:

Off to bed to watch more Will & Grace and hope that the silly cockerels keep their beaks firmly shut until at least 6am tomorrow, 7am would be even better! Never believe anyone who tells you cockerels don't crow in the dark, oh yes they do, and the cows moo and the sheep baa and the owls hoot & screech and the dogs bark... :rolleyes: But it's still miles better than hearing traffic.

Skint_Lynne

Hiya,

Just a quick visit, I'm up at 5.30 tomorrow:eek:. I've just remembered, I done a bit of bird spotting myself yesterday. There was a hawk sitting on a temp motorway sign, at Newhouse roundabout Nyk. I thought it most unusual to see a hawk there, DH laughed at me and said that the hawk would not know where it was, I just thought that they would be country beings. That said, I see foxes all the time now, probably cause all the fields they used to roam in are being turned into housing estates.

I spent £6 today, £2 on socks and £4 on a step stool thing in anticipation on my cleanathon.

Speak later guys. xx

savingfortravel

Nyk-Just found that we do have a local LETS group and that Mr SFT could offer Computer support for credits. He is going to call the group leader tomorrow. That would be fantastic!

Stupid question time-Where could we get tarpulin from? We are quite exposed here at times and it might be handy to keep wood dry. Your logs look very professional. Not sure ours will look anything like that.

I noticed you have grown garlic. Quite fancy that as we tasted amazing garlic in France. What was your's like?

Also is it worth growing lettuce like you have? I always find it very expensive to buy so tend not to.

SFT

BigMummaF

savingfortravel wrote: »

meant to write apple crunch...would you still like it?
sft.....

Yes Please Me muvva used to make something called Apple Snow for me dad but she can't remember it now I didn't bother with it as it looked to be similar to lemon meringue pie & I've never liked that. Got a feeling it was stewed apple stirred through a meringue mix & baked a bit like a rice pud..it would have had a few drops of liquid sweetner in it as dad was a diabetic then, if it's of any help to someone

nykmedia wrote: »

Forgot to say about sweet chicken stock - was there anything on the chicken before you boiled it down for stock and did you add any salt?

Three times now I've had a bash with chicken stock & each time there's been a definite 'twang'. The chook has been roasted with the skin on without any additions & the carcass bubbled in water for a few hours. I did think it was because I hadn't diluted the stock on the previous occasions so made sure it was at least 70:30 in favour of added water last time....
Spent the weekend re-organising my plans for financial tracking &--fingers X--I have a workable method of following my money trail. When I began the Grocery Challenge, absolutely everything I bought was included as I figured there was only one budget for it to come from, but you guys have shown me The Way. On my current spreadsheet I have various sections for different food groups but there's Miscellaneous & Other too. In the first I tend to put H&B & bits like tortilla wraps cuz I don't buy them very often but they're essentials, then in the second goes things like prezzies & the window cleaner. I have surprised myself at how little of the grocery challenge amount has actually been spent on basic keeping-us-fed food!
In order to get some figures sorted, I thought I would add up the various bits then divide by three to get an average of monthly spends SIZE=1]cuz I've only been keeping detailed records for three months![/SIZE then multiply by 4 to get an annual budget. Is that how you folks work it out? But then what do you allow for inflation & which goods are effected by the VAT rising back up to 17.5% come 01/10? Methinks I am going to enjoy the 4k beginning again in SIX WEEKS :eek:

bails

Hi everyone, still no laptop (hopefully OH will have good news about it in a bit) and not managed to catch up on everyone but Hello! Hope you're feeling better SF? My landlady, colleague and I all have colds out here too. Good luck with the interview Blair. I'm all for the Frugarments, sounds great. And I'm a Guardian reader Nyk, so not all of them wouldn't put an extra jumper on This bit from the article made me laugh: I have just discovered that you can wear both tights and leggings under trousers for a dual-body-fuel-capture. As long as nobody works out the carbon cost of Canesten manufacture, we should be laughing.:rotfl: I generally like Lucy Mangan's articles.

On the subject of heat loss, I am determined to get my own yak wool coat to send home with OH's parents so we can both wear our respective yak garments next winter and have no need for heating And if it gets really cold, we can always wear a couple of cats each :rotfl:See, my frugal head is still firmly on I would take the jacket with me (apparently it is entirely possible we will get -40 after all :eek:) but the warmth to weight ratio is simply too poor. Luckily OH met a very experienced expedition leader on his course who's done Everest several times and works in the Antarctic lots, so he's given us lots of useful info. The slightly concerning thing? He thinks we've planned a proper adventure...:eek:
lots of love from the Slightly Crazy It Would Seem Bails x

cw18

BigMummaF wrote: »

In order to get some figures sorted, I thought I would add up the various bits then divide by three to get an average of monthly spends SIZE=1]cuz I've only been keeping detailed records for three months![/SIZE then multiply by 4 to get an annual budget. Is that how you folks work it out? But then what do you allow for inflation & which goods are effected by the VAT rising back up to 17.5% come 01/10? Methinks I am going to enjoy the 4k beginning again in SIX WEEKS :eek:

I did a rough 6 week "meal plan", costed the ingredients, divided by 42 (days) and multiplied by 365. That gave me a basic starting position for my food budget.

As to VAT..... if you're cooking true OS style, then very little of what you buy actually attracts this (meat, fruit and veg are all VAT exempt). If I recall the argument some years back on whether it should be applied to J@ffa Cakes or not, it's applied to biscuits but not cakes. Also on crisps (I think) and definitely pop (but not tea and coffee I don't think). Not sure about cordial and pure juice, but think the latter possibly does Baking ingredients have always confuddled me though, so not even going to try guessing on those

For things like car/home insurance, petrol, water, gas and electricity, I took the previous years figures and added 10%. In most cases I've managed to shave these back down (due to using less than anticipated rather than the prices remaining lower than used for budget calculations).