Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

Frugaldom

Kerfuffle wrote: »

Hi annie,

Take at look at the "Giving Up Smoking Thread" it's within the Debt Free Diaries section. Sue-UU there gives lots of good advice, tips and more importantly lots of encouragement. Hope it helps.

I'm pleased you've had your LBM where smoking is concerned, it's a start already.

:rotfl: My presence in there didn't go down too well and I felt obliged to leave rather quickly. :rotfl:

Welcome Rachelet, I love the sound of your home with the goats, sheep, ducks and hens. I only have the ducks and hens (and pheasant & quail & a guinea pig) but would love to be able to afford a piece of land some day, hence my continual challenges and quest for the good life.

CW, no problems with the mistake, work related expenses I refer to when explaining the calculating of household budgets relate more to those who need to run cars, commute and/or pay child care in order to stay in employment, none of which I need to do anymore because I work from home. However, as it affects our cost of living here, it's easier just to include it.

charlhrdy

Can you add me please, I am just about to work out the budget for the year

jane_manby

Hi there please add me
how do I know if I have been added
JANE MANBY
ADD ME
add me
ADD ME

rachelet

Thanks nyk. It is lovely here. We have 5 acres and to be honest are not using all the available space at the moment. We have plans for an orchard and a bigger duck pen area. Next year we may even get a couple of pigs to fatten up for the freezer. I want to be able to make the land work for us and use all the available space to be able to save more money. i am really looking forward to 2010 now and have loads of plans in place!

bails

Although I can't get excited about your animal rearing (I'm a vegetarian but a non-judgmental one ), your place does sound lovely Rachel, something I'd aspire to on a smaller scale...

Nyk regularly comes past and adds people Jane so your name will be on the list soon, if it's not there already

Kellylea

Hello all

Loving sitting and working my budget out trying to skim things off as much as possible. I've this weekend decided I need to leave my job (jump from a sinking ship to avoid certain death) and as we're trying for a baby any way I may try my hand at been a stay at home mom. This will mean this challenge for me is highly important for 2010.

My spending habbits in the past have been awful and I wouldn't think twice about prices etc. I am alot better since joining this site however 2010 is going to be the real detox, test and I'm sure I'll reap the rewards in savings and a huge sense of achievement. I hope to spend all of tonight reading through the old threads to get a good idea of whats to come and what I can do to help it.

Also if this thread wasn't on old style at some point in time I probably wouldn't have found it ever.

x x x

Kiwisaver_2

Righty oh, I've done my maths and roughly converted everything to pounds for context and decided on a budget for the year of £6,000. This includes all 'discretionary' spending for two adults and two fur babies; basically the cost of us staying at home: groceries, toiletries, cleaning, clothing and electricity. I have selected all the things that I have a degree of control over or which are not already fixed.

Therefore the items I am excluding are: mortgage, fixed charges for phone and internet, plus household rates and insurances. I have also excluded petrol and costs for my car as I see this as a fixed cost. My car is used solely for getting me to and from work and I only fill it once every two and a half to three weeks.

I still think it's a LOT and wish I could make it less, but cost of living for me here in NZ is much higher than it was when I lived in the UK, especially grocery shopping, utilities, phones and internet charges, as we simply do not have the competition or choices that are available in the UK. We pay a phenomenal price for anything imported or out of season and notwithstanding the ridiculous economics of food miles; which often makes things like NZ lamb, apples and wine cheaper in the UK than they are here. :eek:

Frugaldom

Hello frugallers and frugallers-in-waiting

I've updated post 2 of this thread with all the names collected so far for the beginning of the 2010 challenge. I'm currently juggling 2 threads, as the 2009 challenge is running over on the Debt Free Diaries thread, but it'll all be in the one place for new year and all the links work for anyone wanting to tackle the mammoth task of reading it from the start of 2008.

I'm glad so many new folks are finding us since our brief foray onto the Old Style boards, sorry we got moved but I genuinely did think OS was where we belonged. Still, we are all moneysavers and we are all fighting the battle to become and/or stay debtfree by living within our means. Cost of living can be controlled, we just need to prioritise a little and then make the most of what we've got. Good luck everyone. I'm currently trying to turn an uncomfortable wooden framed futon into a warm and comfy, everyday use couch to avoid the need to buy a suite. There are a few on Freecycle, but the cost of going to look at them and then hiring a van to collect them is more than the cost of brand new cut to measure foam! And this way, I still have a spare double bed for holidaying visitors. Frugaler and frugaler.

Kiwisaver, £6,000 or equivalent apparently is not a lot of money these days. Think about it, the upper earnings limit before hitting basic rate income tax threshold is £6,475 EACH for under 65s in UK for 2010/11. You are budgeting to run your household of 2 on less than that! :T I have a household of 3, so that's a bit like saying there's £19,425 allowed into this house without us earning enough to even qualify to pay tax... I find that quite scary because I can't begin to imagine how we'd spend all of that, even if we all had cars. :rotfl: I just realised that, as a combined household, we're rich! :rotfl:

charlhrdy

I think I've cracked the budget! And am as amazed as ever that I have so much money coming in and never any to spend. How does that happen?

Having taken out all regular fixed payments :rent, council tax, water rates, childcare, utilities, phone and pet insurance I'm left with about £3600 to work my budget on.:j I have excluded car costs as I try and pay yearly for both insurance and tax, I plan to do again next year with what I save this year.

I've not made any attempt to skim to bottom level to start with as I know myself too well and if things are hard to start with I will give up easily. So I've set myself a budget of £2750 or £52.88 a week, I get paid weekly so have worked everything out to a weekly budget as well:A

This includes:
Food £1,200.00 £100.00 £23.08 One adult/one child
Travel £520.00 £43.33 £10.00 Car on biodiesel work use mainly
Son's PM £26.00 £2.17 £0.50 Pocket Money,absolute necessity!
Clothes £100.00 £8.33 £1.92 Possibly not enough for two?
Hair £20.00 £1.67 £0.38 Cut by students locally £4
Gifts £300.00 £25.00 £5.77 £10 a head xmas/bday
Lottery £52.00 £4.33 £1.00 Syndicate at work, unnecessary?
Cleaning £30.00 £2.50 £0.58 Not sure is enough yet
Sundries £502.00 £41.83 £9.65 To cover unplanned things
Total £2,750.00 £229.17 £52.88

With a month till new year there may be more work needed. Any comments will be gratefully recieved

ChinaTea

charlhrdy wrote: »

I think I've cracked the budget! And am as amazed as ever that I have so much money coming in and never any to spend. How does that happen?

Having taken out all regular fixed payments :rent, council tax, water rates, childcare, utilities, phone and pet insurance I'm left with about £3600 to work my budget on.:j I have excluded car costs as I try and pay yearly for both insurance and tax, I plan to do again next year with what I save this year.

I've not made any attempt to skim to bottom level to start with as I know myself too well and if things are hard to start with I will give up easily. So I've set myself a budget of £2750 or £52.88 a week, I get paid weekly so have worked everything out to a weekly budget as well:A

This includes:
Food £1,200.00 £100.00 £23.08 One adult/one child
Travel £520.00 £43.33 £10.00 Car on biodiesel work use mainly
Son's PM £26.00 £2.17 £0.50 Pocket Money,absolute necessity!
Clothes £100.00 £8.33 £1.92 Possibly not enough for two?
Hair £20.00 £1.67 £0.38 Cut by students locally £4
Gifts £300.00 £25.00 £5.77 £10 a head xmas/bday
Lottery £52.00 £4.33 £1.00 Syndicate at work, unnecessary?
Cleaning £30.00 £2.50 £0.58 Not sure is enough yet
Sundries £502.00 £41.83 £9.65 To cover unplanned things
Total £2,750.00 £229.17 £52.88

With a month till new year there may be more work needed. Any comments will be gratefully recieved

I have spent the weekend going through my budget and thought I had it sorted at £3795 for me and 3 cats. I left out much the same things as you, the car is on the mobility scheme so no car tax etc just petrol that I have included in my budget.

I really need to shave this down a bit, looking at it the cats are a big expense so going have to find alternatives that they will eat. I have one with a sensitive tum so generally get what I know won't upset him. I haven't included cat insurance but have included frontline/worming/boosters and any other vet costs.

Back to drawing board for me, I need to save some serious money for work on the bungalow etc and possibly full and final settlements on at least one of my debts.