Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

BigMummaF

Iheart2poundcoins wrote: »

Good Luck with the blogs, going to look back and try and find you all! xx :rolleyes: hmmm..me too!
....parsnips and sweet potato....both are an accquired taste & pretty strong IMO
It might be cheaper if we ate fresh food but we eat different things and I am currently on Weight Watchers frozen meals. Of course, there's nothing to stop YOU eating the same as your bubbs That way you will know what the food actually tastes like, practise your recipes & save a fortune on commercial ready meals. I can understand why you're using them & have you also looked at the supermarket ranges for dieters? Not sure how ww works, but just compare the calories/ fat/ carbo amounts on them....

knithappens wrote: »

ohh and just to add, i decided that enough was enough with us all eating different . it was costing to much, I thouht my son was a fussy eater ,(my eye), he was eating different because I let him get away with it.

I have to be disciplined myself on this too though. I have found by us all eating the same , there is less food wastage, and my shopping bill is lower.

I am fairly lucky I suppose; one is very strange with refusing point blank to even TRY cream, custard & gravy--perhaps I brought the wrong child home :eek: Nah! No chance :rotfl:My biggest :mad: is their blanket dislike of stews & casseroles whereas I luv'em
We are however, totally supportive of a certain thick sticky brown condiment that ma might like to the point of mutiny if the jar is almost empty & unfortunately the same can also be said of those luscious, calorific puds like treacle sponge & spotted Richard :drool: Apologies to those among us who are struggling with the Demon Dieting but I suggest portion control is a lot better than abstinence on these occasions, if only to protect one's sanity

mardatha

:rolleyes: Oooh yes I totally agree ! sanity is worth far more than smugness !
(says the bad granny who has just licked clean a HUGE tupperwear bowl that she made sweeties in...):xmassmile

skint_chick

Morning fellow frugallers

I've finalised my budget for 2010 for me, Mr SC and Daisy the hamster;

£1000 food
£155 toiletries and household
£300 electric
£600 heating
£60 haircuts
£143 TV licence
£400 landline, TV and broadband package
£120 mobiles
£500 petrol
£150 clothes and shoes
£120 car tax
£100 home insurance
£200 social life
£152 presents and extras

So a grand total of £4000 plus my mortgage, council tax, life insurance and car insurance. Mystery shopping money should cover council tax, car and life insurances, home improvements I need to finish and holidays. This budget will allow me to repay my loan in full, reduce my mortgage balance to under £140,000, save for a new car and continue my emergency fund.

mardatha

You MUST tell me how you manage on £20 a week for food !! I am struggling to get us two under £40 !!:(

ellemm

Morning all from a very foggy central Scotland! Have to put on another jumper (rather than the heating :rotfl:) I think.

Nykmedia - I was greatly impressed with your post above and it rang so many bells with how I lived years ago in the west of Scotland when my children were small. We also had hens, ducks & geese, a huge veg plot and a distinct lack of any decent supermarkets!

And only got a watchable TV picture when the river beside the house was in spate bizarre but apparently the signal from the mast bounced off the water!!?? or so we were told.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Really looking forward to the start of the challenge and following everyone's fortunes.

cw18

BigMummaF wrote: »

My biggest :mad: is their blanket dislike of stews & casseroles whereas I luv'em

I have that problem too..... so I tend to batch cook stews & casserole, freeze them in individual portions, and then I have one of those on a (normally) Wednesday night when DS has curry (which I can't stand - to the point it's as much as I can do to be in the house with the smell, and definitely struggle making it!)

skint_chick

mardatha - we eat a lot of meals made from scratch - I cook in bulk and freeze meals in portions to bring to work for lunch and for when Mr SC is working. We've been bulking out meat with lentils in chili and spag bol for example. I've given up Diet coke and drink sugar free squash made with filtered tap water. I tend to shop for groceries in the evening when things are reduced and then make something from them immediately to freeze. We also use all the value type range of basics in tinned products. I rarely eat desert as I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to lose weight.

Last week's food;

Milk 90p Tonic water £1.20 3 bottles
2 bottles squash £1.80 Kidney beans x 2 tins 38p
Large packet of turkey strips (almost 900g) £5.00
2x large organic yoghurts £2 Cherry tomatoes 65p
Baked beans x 2 58p Granny smiths £1.57
Golden Olive spread 58p Bread 99p
Salami 78p Tinned tomatoes x2 64p
Crunchy salad 60p Hummus dips £1.18
Wraps £1 Bulgar wheat 88p

Total £20.73
I've made a huge batch of turkey chilli with the tins of tomatoes, kidney beans and bulgar wheat -8 portions, and had turkey or salami salad wraps with hummus for lunch. The bread and baked beans made OH's beans on toast on work. I used the milk for muesli I already had, and also had the yoghurts for breakfast with seed mix (made from various remains of linseeds, pumpkin seeds etc) I've been trying to eat the apples and cherry tomatoes as snacks rather than resorting to the vending machine at work as its 50p for a chocolate bar:eek: It takes a lot of organising and planning to decide what to buy to maximise meal options and eat a varied diet on this budget but I enjoy cooking and love writing lists so I find it easy:D

cw18

Did my latest (!) round of number crunching for my 2010 budget yesterday, and having looked over it again this morning I've decided it's probably as close as I'm going to get for a starting point

My spreadsheet currently looks like this




I've put my original 2009 budget figures in (these changed constantly over the year!), and also have my 'final' spends - though there are a few that will still see an increase, which are those in red.

The spends highlighted in blue are the categories where I under-budgetted for the year...

Phone & B/band was mainly due to me mis-calculating what I'd owe my old ISP when I changed provider in Jan 2009. The budget for 2010 has been set to allow for the fact the new ISP will be charging more from Jan 2010 - both due to my 'discount' disappearing (applied for the first 12 months of the 18 month term) and the inclusion of the new 50p/month 'tax' from the government. This is still cheaper than in 2008 though, as I was paying £20/month for the b/band, £11 for my line rental, and an average £3/month on top for phone calls (so £34/month)

Vets bills was due to having an emergency with both my dogs. The smaller one 'only' cost me £84, but the larger one cost me £573 - and has also ended up on a special diet costing just under £12/week instead of the previous food at around £2.40/week :eek: (He's been on this since October, so not quite sure how my dog expenses category - which includes the food - actually came in under budget )

Toiletries/cleaning is also over budget for 2009 (and still can't guarantee I'm finished with this one), but I'm not actually surprised as my budget was a very wild guess - didn't have a clue as to how much of anything I was likely to get through as I've never monitored use (or purchase) before


So, for 2010 (and based on the 2009 actual spends), I've

• increased Council Tax (no control on this one)
• decreased water (metered, and account is in credit so currently paying <£17/month - but now using more due to having to keep work uniforms clean, which means an extra couple of washloads a week!)
• decreased gas & electricity - based on actual useage over the last 12 months, but hoping that will be more than enough as should have elder DS home a lot less plus won't have GDs here like I did (so have some room to play re: extra use of washing machine). I'm also out of the house an extra 30 hours or so a week due to work, so less use of laptop and TV
• increased central heating cover - by a similar amount to the increase I saw between 2008 and 2009
• increased building & contents insurance - not sure if by enough, but increase from last year to this was around 5.8% on my renewal (I then saved £63 by closing the renewal and taking out a new policy with the same company via their website) and I've allowed an extra 4.3%
• increased phone and broadband (see above regarding overspend)
• increased TV licence (no control, but best guessed actual payments due)
• decreased (vastly) mobile phone - contract finished in August, and a got a good deal on renewing (with less 'perks', but more than I need and for pennies more than I expected PAYG to cost me). This is due for renewal again in August, so could be out a bit (depends on what they offer me, but still have the PAYG option)
• increased endowment even though it will be exactly the same - it was easier to work with 'round' figures (and Nyk will be happier to see them )
• increased windows - to allow for a price rise part way through the year similar to this years increase
• increased dog expenses - to allow for bigger dogs special diet, based on the cheapest I can find it on-line (and also for the VAT increase in January)
• decreased vets bills - please no more emergencies, but have allowed slightly more than I did for 2009. This also includes worming and flea treatment which I buy on line (at a huge saving compared to the vet)
• decreased presents from last years budget, and kept in line with current spend (which may still increase a few ££s). main reason for decrease is dropping 2 people off my list !!
• increased car insurance - not a lot of control on this one either (unless I sell the car), but may well repeat what I've done the last two years (same as Bldgs/Contents - cancel renewal and take out new policy). Have also factored out the cashback I got last year (no guarantee I'll still get it, plus plan to save cashback in a seperate pot alongside my final category)
• increased breakdown cover - purely to get rounded figure (have already had letter saying cost will be the same for next year)
• increased road tax - based on info I could find (and to get a rounded monthly figure)
• increased MOT - no idea what local garage will be charging come July, but was cheaper than expected in 2009
• increased service cost - ditto above
• reduced petrol from 2009 budget, but increased from current actual spend (at least one more fill-up to go, so potentially another £50 spend to be logged here). as I don't have GDs as much (used to pick them up 5 mornings a week, now only 2) I shouldn't be doing as much mileage - which I'm hoping should cancel out the increase in cost per litre
• removed gutter cleaning - been here almost 8 years, and 2009 was the first time they'd been done. don't see the need to have them done again in 2010
• added in work related due to having started work in November. Have spent £72-ish this way since then, but have included it in my 'anything else'. Only needs to cover shoes and trousers, so hoping budget should be more than enough (debating trying the £7 safety shoes via work, rather than my normal £55-ish shoes next time. can't get cheaper 'normal' shoes due to odd shaped feet and back problems)
• groceries looks to have decreased from 2009 budget and increased slightly from actual spent. This is the case, but not quite as simple as it looks. No longer have to cater for GDs (was providing snacks after school) and ended up with elder DS home for 11.5 weeks instead of originally anticipated 4 weeks - so decrease in actual spends definitely in place on these. Also originally budgeted at £1.80 per adult per day, but have reduced this over the year to £1.55 to try and maintain as close to the original budget as possible while having to feed more people. Have set 2010 budget at £1.65 (and assumed that elder DS will be home for 5 weeks).
• toiletries/cleaning was a tough one to set for 2009 (see above re: overspend), so have substantially increased this for 2010 - and added in extra for the extra washing I have to do of works uniforms
• anything else - this covers my clothes, newspapers (mainly for coupons, CDs or DVDs), CDs, DVDs, meals out, over-the-counter medicines (currently have exemption for prescriptions), anything I have to pay towards glasses (above NHS allowance), and anything else not included in the previous categories. By the time I got this far down the list for my 2010 budget setting I had just over £900 left, which seemed ridiculously high if I want to kerb my impulse shopping :eek: So I've set it slightly lower than my actual spend (so far) of 2009 having looked at what my 2009 money has been spent on
• added 'contingency' category - I wanted to get this as close to £500 as I could, but just can't decide where to trim back the extra £17 :rolleyes2 I'm hoping that, with this in place, should I hit an emergency (such as vets bills in 2009) I won't then spend several hours trying to rejig all my other budgets to find the money to pay the bills Ideally I'd like to have all this money left in a savings account on 31/12/2010 (whilst not overspending on any others) - which will mean I've come in considerably under budget :T

ceridwen

Steps back in amazement time again time at your meticulously-costed out budget cw18:beer:

Only one thing that struck me here - the money spent for central heating cover. I guess that means you have a gas central heating/water heating system of some description? I used to have that - but decided it was getting rather expensive - so found a little "man who can" and it costs me £60 for a once a year service and then, on top of that, there is the occasional "fix something in it" added expense. I have just had to spend £25 for a little "fix-it" session and there will be I anticipate somewhere between £10-£50 extra on my forthcoming gas service because of "unexpected expense" stuff connected with my "fix-it" session. But most years I manage not to have any extra costs there. Even with the couple of extra "bits" over the course of the current year - its still a lot lower cost than paying for a "central heating cover" thingie from a gas supplier.

Just a thought - which may be helpful...

cw18

ceridwen wrote: »

Only one thing that struck me here - the money spent for central heating cover. I guess that means you have a gas central heating/water heating system of some description? I used to have that - but decided it was getting rather expensive - so found a little "man who can" and it costs me £60 for a once a year service and then, on top of that, there is the occasional "fix something in it" added expense.

Yes, it's service (and maintainance/repairs) on my boiler and whole system (radiators, hot water tank and controls) with the 'big' gas company. It shot up in price a few years back, and looks a lot when viewed as the annual total - but it's not something I'm happy to be without, and I've not found anyone else I trust (and haven't managed to get recommendations from anyone either).

In the past my thoughts have also been along the lines of....

The 'man who can' is fine, as long as he doesn't disappear just before a breakdown.... and as well as my service I've also had 2 replacement pumps (or control for pump) in the last 18(?) months or so. At our last house we had them out very regularly, and seemed to need the pump (pump control) part plus the room thermostat and the timer replacing at least once a year :eek:

At least with my company I know they're on the end of the phone 24/7 (instead of having to phone expensive mobiles or try and catch him at home) and that there's always someone available to come out (no sickness or holiday abscences). Plus I'm finding I normally get someone within 24 hours, though I think the promise is 48 hours.