Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

Savvy_sewing

Help, 21 pages and were not even in to the new year yet!.
Not sure when I will be able to get back on, as computer has died. Borrowing my daughters at the moment while shes nipped out to get her bread and milk.
Just wanted to say hello, and hope that everyone is fired up and ready to go.
I am currently not.! But hope to visit my BF this afternoon, and have a break from taking care of DGD, and recharge my batteries by having a possible lie in in the morning.! Then perhaps I will be ready to start 2010 afresh!.
Cant be worse then 2009 for me surely!.
So onwards and upwards, and into frugaldom with gusto. Nothing short of that will tide me through. And now, I am going to go back to the begiining of the thread and see how far I can read while I have access to the internet.
I am note taking!. Longhand!. My budget will have to be on paper as no computer.
I really have missed my MSE, and everyone here who usually keep my spirits up, and my spending down.!.

NualaBuala

I love, love, love this thread! It's in an odd place though. IMHO I think Old Style would be it's natural home, where people would most easily find it and get best use out of it. After all, Martin describes OS as all about Thrift and you can't get more thrifty than this! I'm not having a dig at our board guides for moving it - I for one would not have the time or energy to do all that they do!

I haven't read it all yet but I as I'm sick at the moment and not going anywhere, I have the perfect opportunity to catch up.

I'm very tempted to join, but hesitant at the same time as my circumstances are changing so much these days. And often I don't have time to read/post. I'm currently doing up a spreadsheet to work out my 2010 budget so I'm sure you will inspire me to be more frugal.

Best of luck to all taking part and thank you Nyk for starting this.

moo2moo

Could you add me please. moo2moo I'll be biting the bullet and aiming for £20K to cover a two adults, two children, a large dog with hollow legs, a semi feral self feeding cat, a chinchilla, several dozen electricity gobbling tropical fish, yet more electricity hungry pond fish and 16 chickens.

Having given this a trial run and failed miserably by budgeting for three months but doing it over a period of four I have a very rough idea of how things look. I'm including absolutely everything as I'll confuse myself if I don't, I've also rounded everything to whole numbers so things look a bit like this each month:

Interest….................................... 80
Council tax................................. 103
Electricity..................................... 60
Gas.............................................. 60
Coal and logs................................50
Water rates.................................. 15
Telephone, mobiles and internet.... 30
TV Licence.................................. 12
Groceries and pet food…............ 250
Clothing and shoes....................... 40
Petrol/diesel............................... 260
Road tax...................................... 20
Car Insurance.............................. 45
Car maintenance………….......... 70
Dental.. ……………….….......... 25
Pet insurance/vet bills................... 40
House insurance........................... 20
Entertainment.............................. 100
Children’s Savings Accounts. ......110
Riding Lessons............................. 80
Fags............................................ 100
Pension........................................ 80
Endowments............................... 110
Chicken feed…………………....25
Anything that I’ve omitted….........62

Total monthly expenses......... 1667 x 12 = £20,000 per year

Fishcake_Random

Moo2moo- Just seen your post and noticed you havent included rent or morgage. Thought I'd mention it just in case you had overlooked it. h2h
x x x x

cake21

cw18 wrote: »

:rotfl:

That made me chuckle

Hopefully means you've not written it off as too complicated

I love it, especially the gizmo that shows how much "allowance" you've accrued to date

(I have simplified it hugely though, I almost never buy non-whoopsies, don't want to scare myself by seeing the full price :rotfl:)

cw18

Like I said, it's open to being adapted for personal use -- and I guess that's one section quite a number of people may ignore.

I've personally found it useful precisely because I rely very heavily on Whoopsies - it gives me an indication of what I'd have to set my GC budget to if I lost access to them

larmy16

:mad:

I just spent ages posting my budget but the computer timed out and the whole lot disappeared.

My fixed outgoings came to about £14,000

We are a family of three adults, two on lowish wages and one on a part time wage. We all contribute to the costs of running the house. I am guessing our combined income would be in the region of £25,000 give or take a thousand.

This includes rent, council tax, water rates, elec, gas, house ins, pet ins, bank loan, phone, broadband and sky tv. Tax and NI (self employed), savings and TV licence. It also includes car insurance, tax and MOT and hopefully NOT any repairs!!

I plan to live on £100.00 per week. This has to include, food, petrol, PAYG phone.

I have no CC debt
My bank loan should be cleared in 10 months.

It is my aim to not buy any clothes, cut down charity shop visits and avoid any unnessary spending. I am also committing to no Ebay or Amazon purchases.

My one problem is I am supposed to attend a wedding abroad which is going to cost as I don't have a passport and have to cover the fares and accommodation for one week. Much as I would like to go, I don't know how I am going to get by.

I also desperately need a new fence in my garden.

How will I do it all. I can only try.

My whole amount for the year is around £15,000

We plan to start our own bank this year! As we don't have to pay council tax for two months we decided to use this as our deposit. This way, if anyone gets short, we can borrow from ourselves instead of going overdrawn.

mooomin

cw18 wrote: »

I've personally found it useful precisely because I rely very heavily on Whoopsies - it gives me an indication of what I'd have to set my GC budget to if I lost access to them

I'm going to be trying to use this section as otherwise I think I would be on the "value" meat, something I'm not too keen on if I can avoid it.

I piled my trolley high on the glorious day that I wandered into Tesco and they had reduced loads of organic mince to 70p a packet

Likewise for "proper" Sunday dinners of roasted lumps of meat. If I didn't get chickens etc on offer or on whoopsies I wouldn't have them. I think the savings are going to be really interesting.

LaDiva_2

LaDiva joining the challenge!!!

Aril

Hi fellow mad frugallers:j:j
Starting with today I'm going to try and get into the habit of posting here regularly as I read every day but am not very good at logging in:o:o I've set up an old diary to record all my spends.
I've had a really tough day today having to sample all the different homemade wines OH has currently got on the go and giving him my verdict:D:D Homebrewing is a new venture for us but one I have often fancied having a go at. We got most of the stuff off freecycle and from car boot sales so the start up costs haven't been too much. We've so far made one kit very successfully and have also got demijohns on the go with strawberry [bought in season and on offer], blackberry [free], rowanberry [free] and grapejuice [again bought on offer]. OH is like a dog with two tails as my parents bought him a corking device and a couple of kits for Christmas. We have 36 empty bottles sitting in our garage that we've collected over the year and these are all neatly stored in wine bottle carriers that Mr T were giving away a month or so. I wonder how much of 2010 I shall see sober:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
We've enjoyed a frugal stroll into the town today and OH and the small person spent their book tokens. My purse was snapped shut:A:A. I am enjoying having my new presents and really don't feel like adding to it for now- plus there's a jumble sale next month that I always splash my 10ps at:D:D Have hit freecycle today and got rid of 2 batches with another 3 to go. I have freecycled so much recently that I do begin to feel like I am making real progress and gaps are beginning to appear in my home:j
Enjoyed a scrummy tea tonight which used up all those leftovers from Christmas- pasta mixed in with it all. I even persuaded my Mum to add the leftover veg from Christmas day into the Boxing Day soup she made rather than throw it. She seemed quite chuffed not to waste it.
If you don't see me around holler at me as I'm determined to be a bit more high profile this year!
Aril