Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

savingfortravel

taka wrote: »

Ermmm SFT did you mean to miss out clothes and shoes too? Sorry if this was intentional.

I'm still playing with my numbers (as we speak!) and trying to finalise it. I've decided to do an all in except my mortgage (as I plan to make overpayments) and holidays (as I still don't know what I plan to do). :rolleyes:

Hi Taka
I take clothes/shoes out of my spending money of £100 per month but felt that I shouldn't include spending money as its not essential.
If I did an all in except debts (paying M and D back for roof)/Mortgage/Holidays it looks alot of money. I'll just work it out...it is for 2 of us.


Annual
Eon
600
Food
960
Coal
204
Contingency
900
Hairdressers/Dentists
312
BT/Internet
432
House Insurance
336
Water/Sewerage
360
Christmas Club
480
Car and Petrol
2808
My Pension
660
Mr SFT's Pension
696
Clothes/Shoes
900
Total for challenge
9648


sft


That's better...I think..xx

savingfortravel

Ches wrote: »

My OH and I don't 'share' money. He gives me £80 per week for bed and board and pays for all car costs (I don't drive) holidays and entertainment for both of us (but only if we go together). I pay all household bills (the house is mine so I have always had the bills in my name). OH is good with money and doesn't even have a credit card. I luckily have paid off my mortgage and have no debt so its not all bad. The reason for joining this challenge is because I have always frittered away money that could be saved. After bailing out a family member (again) my meagre savings have gone and I have booked to go on a cruise with a friend next year. As OH is not coming with us he isn't paying so I have a lot of saving to do.

Congrats on the mortgage..your cruise sounds an incentive to save..sft

Frugaldom

Thanks, SFT, was a bit worried that you were going to attempt the whole food self-sufficiency thing next year without a trial run or two first.

Spurred on by everyone's budgets, I have completed my own as best I can for 2010, so here goes, yet again! This is for a household of 3 adults but DS and HS pay for their own cars, mobiles, clothes and hobbies:

Groceries £1,095.00
Toiletries £75.00
Cleaning £15.00
Electricity £1,095.00
Coal £150.00
Logs £160.00
Internet £240.00 - MUST try for a better deal on this
Mobiles £30.00
Telephone £145.00
TV Licence £145.00
Clothing & footwear £45.00
Gifts £350.00
Extras £50.00
Travel £260.00
Household Insurance £45.00
Miscellaneous £100.00

TOTAL £4,000

I know that some of these things aren't technically 'needs' but we need them in order to work from home, as that's what we want to do. The amounts stated include all business use and my travel budget has been grossly increased owing to a particular project I have in mind. I've based the figures on this year's results but know that I'll need to work much harder next year to make the garden much more productive and be far more creative in my gift making project. If I succeed in reducing the Internet costs, the amount will be transferred to the miscellaneous expenditure column. The garden project will need to be self-funding or, at worst, supplemented by LETS trading and any extra cash earned by way of cashback, winnings and egg sales.

I like to think of my cost of living/running the household as inflation beating, hence the reason I haven't changed the amount for several years.

savingfortravel

nykmedia wrote: »

Thanks, SFT, was a bit worried that you were going to attempt the whole food self-sufficiency thing next year without a trial run or two first.

Well I do want to put all £960 in my money jar..and I've been blessed with gifts of vouchers/quidco payments but I want to earn more from ebay etc too...

Got to have a challenge haven't I?

SFT

Fishcake_Random

Hey all,
Just a quick one to ask your collective minds. What can I do with a bar of soap other than use it tradtionally. I've been given a lovely bar of christmassy soap but I don't really like to use soap to wash with as I prefer shower gels, can I turn this soap into a shower gel? or are there any other funky frugal uses?
x x x x x

Tesco_points_addict

Please add me to start in January 2010


TPAx

purple_angel_3

Hi all,

Thought a lot about this budget, going to set my budget at £6816.40.

Car running costs /petrol £3952.32:eek:
Groceries/Toiletries/Cleaning £1200.00
Mobile Phone £360.00
Sky £364.08
Contact Lenses £120.00
Contingency £520.00
Haircuts £100.00
Birthdays £200.00

Total £6816.40

A bit about why I have set my budget as I have;I live with my partner (in his house,) I pay towards bills.I have a DS aged 14 who lives part of the time with myself, my aunt and his dad.I give my aunt money for his board each month.I also have a property I rent and I pay some of the mortgage and insurance on the property.I have debt of £4500.00 which I will pay within the next 18 months.

My car as you can see is my biggest expense, I roughly spend £3000 on petrol a year. :eek: I live 45 miles from work and I drive to see client when I am in work. I get petrol allowance for this however I want to put this towards extra debt repayment.

I am looking to make saving where possible and learn to live within my budget.

pa.

shaz_mum_of__2

Just made my first saving for 2010 have transferred my fragmented phone /bb/phone calls to my bb provider saving £12 pcm (£25pcm for first 3 months) and getting a free wireless router which i need which would have cost £50 .....result

Not sure there is anything else that can be trimmed as yet but could save £200 if i can find somewhere to store my caravan for free.Unfortunately our drive isn't big enough ...........MIl's is though :Dbut need to check with the insurance company if we would be adequately covered

Need to open a halifax account each (the free fiver a month one) too for all the mortgage payments to come out of and any over payment holding.

need to get back in the habit of scratchies and free clicks too

Shaz

cw18

shaz_mum_of__2 wrote: »

...... but could save £200 if i can find somewhere to store my caravan for free.Unfortunately our drive isn't big enough ...........MIl's is though :Dbut need to check with the insurance company if we would be adequately covered

Shaz - you'll also need to check MIL's deeds to see if keeping a caravan on the property is allowed. I'm in my third house, and none of them have allowed the keeping of a caravan, boat or work vehicle (though they clearly can't tell unless it carries company livery). I've seen people keep them on their property for longer than loading/unloading before, but just 'cos they get away with it for a short while doesn't mean they won't get in trouble in the future.... especially if someone reports them.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Paulgonnabedebtfree

I put my name down last year but got badly distracted when a few things went wrong in my life and I stopped recording on the spreadsheet. No idea what my outgoings were but they were vastly reduced.
I would like to live on less than 4k in 2010. I exclude mortgage and debt repayments (mortgage alone is well over 4k). I include everything else except as stated below. Some items are part business and part personal (vehicle/phone etc). I will exclude business proportions of these items.
One personal thing I will exclude is the spending money for one week of holiday. This is partly because it would affect others unfairly but also, I feel that I do need just one week where I can switch off from this stuff. My friend usually pays for the accommodation and I pay the other stuff (travel, eating out, fun stuff etc.). It works out pretty fair IMO. I will keep a separate record of what I spend when I go on holiday and hopefully all of this will still be below 4k.
On reflection, I wasn't quite ready for this challenge a year ago as I still had too many bad habits to change. However, I know my living costs were still vastly reduced.
Roll on 1/1/10