Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

skint_in_skirt

I'm a forumphobe so please bear with me (and forgive me if this isn't the right place for me to post this question about the 2010 challenge).
I've learned so much from MSE and the frugal stuff in particular.
Two years ago my life changed (ill-health) and I've been on a budget ever since, so the living on £4,000 challenge seems sensible.
I will be working part time in the coming months so my pay will be halved (this is voluntary), so after all my outgoings are deducted such as bills, mortgage, insurances, car, fuel etc, I will only have £293 per month to 'live on'.

I follow the posts on the thrify one - so I have a slow cooker now and I'm managing to stockpile and make savings on dinners. I've also 'downbranded' to supermarket value brand for just about everything and can see no way of making further grocery changes.

Is this £293 per month at all possible? Before I had the lightbulb moment I easily spent £150 weekly on food/nappies etc.

I've a toddler, a teenager, a husband and three dogs to feed, so is it a possibility to feed a family this size on such a reduced amount?
Any helpful answers would be very gratefully received

cheerfulness4

WELL DONE china tea on the degree! :T:T:T

Am very interested in the electric monitorings that people have done. I have to plug mine into the appliance and so haven't done my cooker as its hardwired.

If anyone has any number crunching figures for an electric oven (just to give me a ball park figure) I'd be really grateful.
I'm not fantastic at working out the numbers manually by reading how many kw my oven uses. (Not even sure if thats the right term. )

Likewise, someone mentioned the grill and the hob light. Would they still remember any figures for those? (think it might have been cheryl).

Our leccie bill is huge so I'm really going to target that area in 2010 with a passion!

cw18

looking at reading before turning on each individual appliance (which fluctuates slightly due to fridge and freezer motors kicking on/off) I see the following increases this morning

extractor hood - light only - 0.07kw
extractor hood - extraction mode only - 0.03kw
extractor hood - light and extraction - 0.11kw
grill - on 4 out of 6, as I turn it on so from cold (drops once at heat and just maintaining) - 2.62kw

grandma247

skint_in_skirt wrote: »

I will be working part time in the coming months so my pay will be halved (this is voluntary), so after all my outgoings are deducted such as bills, mortgage, insurances, car, fuel etc, I will only have £293 per month to 'live on'.



Is this £293 per month at all possible? Before I had the lightbulb moment I easily spent £150 weekly on food/nappies etc.

I've a toddler, a teenager, a husband and three dogs to feed, so is it a possibility to feed a family this size on such a reduced amount?
Any helpful answers would be very gratefully received

It might be helpful to break the amount down to see how you intend spending it.
The dogs could be the budget breaker. What does it normally cost you for them ? Do they have normal food or special food ?

grandma247

CW thats quite a jump isn't it? Have you thought about a mini oven ? I can get four chicken legs or four large baked potatoes in mine and last winter it was a lifesaver on the electric when it went up so much which is why we bought it anyway. My gas oven was expensive to use for some reason but I noticed that the new one dd1 gave us uses much much less gas no idea why.

cw18

skint_in_skirt wrote: »

Is this £293 per month at all possible? Before I had the lightbulb moment I easily spent £150 weekly on food/nappies etc.

I've a toddler, a teenager, a husband and three dogs to feed, so is it a possibility to feed a family this size on such a reduced amount?
Any helpful answers would be very gratefully received

Is that £293 just for groceries (and emergencies)?

I've managed 2009 on an average of £1.55 per person per day for food (myself and 18 year-old son), which equates to £3.10/day (or an average of £94.30/month).

Toiletries & household cleaning have added on a further £142 for the year (approx £11.80/month).

My actual dog food bill (for one large Yorkie and one 'average' Dalmatian) has come in at about £27/month on average - but this includes moving the larger dog onto a special diet at the start of October (which increased his cost from £10/month to £50/month :eek: ). The larger dog is on 500g dried food a day, and the smaller one is on 125g of a much cheaper dried food/day. (They were on the same until October).

I don't include eating out or take-aways (have had one take-away for me this year, and my Dad paid for the one meal we've eaten out), and it doesn't include alcohol (don't feel the need to have a drink, so have chosen to 'do without' rather than spend money on it).

It also doesn't include lunches for my son on the days he's at college (4 days/week Jan thru July, 3 days/week Sept/Dec) as he pays for these from his EMA - though I did give him the option of taking a packed lunch, which he declined.

And I obviously don't have nappies to contend with either

I do rely very heavily on Whoopsie items (reduced to clear), and have also worked very hard on portion control - particularly of meat. Although my spreadsheet shows an awful lot of snacky/treat foods being purchased, almost all of them were Whoopsies and it's still a much smaller quantity than a couple of years back.


So I'd be pretty confident (in my position, and with my access to the Whoopsies) on feeding the family of 4 for around £190/month (balancing the smaller portions for the baby against the lunches I've not been providing for DS). Toiletries/cleaning would push this up (excluding nappies) to probably around £210 My food for 2 dogs now works out at around £53/month, so (assuming none of yours are on a special diet) I would have thought it possible to feed them all for that, given what I used to spend on the larger one (£10*3=£30, so £53 is way more than it would have cost me). This would see me budgetting around £270, which leaves £23 for nappies etc. - and I've no idea how feasible that is as I've not costed them up in a long time, and don't know how many you get through.

So I'd say it's possible if your dog food bill is lower than mine, and if you can hunt for Whoopsies and excercise portion control. But I'd also say it could be tight......

cw18

grandma247 wrote: »

CW thats quite a jump isn't it? Have you thought about a mini oven ? I can get four chicken legs or four large baked potatoes in mine and last winter it was a lifesaver on the electric when it went up so much which is why we bought it anyway. My gas oven was expensive to use for some reason but I noticed that the new one dd1 gave us uses much much less gas no idea why.

That was just my grill - still haven't plucked up the courage to try my oven :rolleyes2

I need to get my combi-oven repaired (think the thermostat went a while back - just before the August B/H), and I used to use that instead of the main oven. I do have a mini oven, but am ashamed to admit it's not even been out of the box yet Was thinking only last night that I should really try it out, but the problem is finding work surface to put it on..... By the time I take into account my combi, slow cooker, bread maker, toaster and kettle (no cupboard space to store any of these when they're not in use) I really don't have much space left even for prepping veg and such

oystercatcher

I am fascinated by this thread but too scared to join in just yet.

I can't understand how you can predict the cost of things for the whole year. The council tax and water rates will change in April and food costs go up. Power increased dramatically in cost last year....

It all seems incredibly sensible but I just can't predict what will be going on in my life so far ahead ....

That being said I can predict huge changes in my income as I strongly suspect I am going to have ill health retirement in a few months which is a third off our income (roughly) and then come June when DS turns 18 my very generous maintainance from ex will stop which is a further third off our income :eek: .

So I am working on cutting down expenses but just can't get my head round all the predictions. It doesn't help that my illness makes it hard for me to read print and figures for long so I don't think I am capable of working out a spread sheet.

So how do you allow for price increases and 'the unexpected' ?

cheerfulness4

cw18 wrote: »

looking at reading before turning on each individual appliance (which fluctuates slightly due to fridge and freezer motors kicking on/off) I see the following increases this morning

extractor hood - light only - 0.07kw
extractor hood - extraction mode only - 0.03kw
extractor hood - light and extraction - 0.11kw
grill - on 4 out of 6, as I turn it on so from cold (drops once at heat and just maintaining) - 2.62kw

Thanks cheryl. Were these figures for a set amount of time each?
I'm still not sure how I turn this into a pence translation. With my monitor it just plugs in and tells me the pence its used since I set it off. Sorry for being thick.

I'll have to really watch the extrator light being left on by the family. I'd love to hear when you do pluck up the courage to do the oven.

Grandma247 - have you got a standard mini cooker or one of the halogen ones? Finding it confusing between these and ramoskas etc. I'm not sure how much power I could save with each.
I'm low on surface space but if it really helps then I'd make room somehow.
Would you be able to fit a pizza into them?

Fishcake_Random

Oystercatcher- I think the simple answer to your question is that I can't be sure my bills etc will go up but my personal reasons for doing this challenge is to have some rainy day savings. My budget of £100 a week is just under half our income. So if I do need an extra £5 for the gas bill etc then I use those savings towards it. For me its all about preparing for the unknown rather than letting it sneak up and throw us off course. Knowing that the car can blow up tomorrow and we could replace it without issue gives me a very nice safe feeling.
Also when I do a months budget I over estimate. For example my water bill is just under £100 every 3 months which is £33.33 per month, by rounding this up to £35 a month and thus £8.08 a week. So I budget £8 a week for water bills and I already have a little moving room.
H2H
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