Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

cw18

DTG21 - most people send me a PM with their email address (but I'm not sure if you need a certain number of posts on this forum to use that facility or not?). If you click on my name you should get an option to send a Private Message to me

grandma247

Sausage trifle is good and before anyone reaches for the paper bag:rotfl:, it is Just a casserole of fried cut up sausages,tinned tomatoes,onions, seasoning and mixed herbs or chilli if you like and topped off with mashed potato.

Also bacon on top of layers of sliced onion and potatoes with oxo stock and seasonings. Cook in the oven on low for a few hours. Test with a fork.
the beef can be made into all kinds of meals with different ingredients and seasonings.

Kittikins

Yumm-o (as DD says), I think veggie sausage trifle is on the menu soon....

LilacPixie

sausage trifle sounds good.

we tned to have bolognese, lasagne, chickencurry/sweet and sour, chilli, sausage and mash pasta with mushroom sauce,mac cheese and a slowcooker stew in a rotation gets a bit boring with a maximum of 10 days between meal repeats

pink_numbers

Thank you cw18 for emailing me your wonderful spreadsheet, within about a split second of me writing the pm!!

Redtop

Please can you sign me up to the challenge too - Redtop
I know that I fritter money away and hope that this challenge will keep me in check. I'm feeling really inspired already after reading through about 20 pages of the thread (will have to read through the rest tomorrow!)

cw18

*** Possible problem with spreadsheet ***

I had a query yesterday, where one person was getting an "inconsistent formula" error message. This happened on the 'Totals Page', and was coming up on cell D24 (ie. Groceries row, Spent column)

I wasn't seeing the error, so I suspect it will only be happening for people using the backwards compatible version (the attachment file name will contain '97' rather than '2007') on a version of Excel below 2007 - though the inconsistency is actually in both versions I've sent out.... oops!


The formula in that cell does (for some reason) differ slightly to those in the rest of that column, but I'm surprised it's causing a problem......

If you look closely it says

=IF(SUM(F24:Q24)=0,"",(SUM(F24:Q24)))

But to match the others in the column it should be

=IF(SUM(F24:Q24)=0,"",SUM(F24:Q24))

ie. there's an extra set of brackets around the latter part


Doing a copy/paste from D23 should fix it just fine (I hope) - or you can edit the formula in the cell and remove the extra brackets.



I have rectified this in my blank versions for sending out, and anyone who's received the spreadsheet since midnight will have the new version.





If anyone else has had any problems/niggles with the spreadsheet, then please feel free to let me know.

If it's something you've managed to sort, then it may still be worth letting the others know about (I think I've now sent out 31 copies, hence posting this here rather than sending individual PMs/emails).

If it's something outstanding, then I'm more than happy to look at it for you (though it will almost certainly not be until tonight, as I'm out to work within the next hour - hence up and posting at this 'unearthly and very cold' hour :rolleyes2 )

rozeepozee

It worked for me - thanks again Cheryl. That spread sheet will make life a lot easier and therefore help keep me motivated for this challenge.

RP x

ChinaTea

Thanks Cheryl for the spreadsheet. Going to play later on so bang goes the post christmas clean up again.
Just realised I've had 18 NSD in December, don't need anything so will be 20/31

mumtoomany

My budget for 2010 is at the moment as follows:

Gas/electric £1200
Phone/internet £600
T.V. £145
Christmas/birthday £1200
Road tax and Insurances/house/car £800
Food/household/dog £2600
Petrtol £600
Holiday £1500
Other £295

Hope I can stick to this!

I am getting ready to cut fuel bills. I have been given a monitor by DD1 and am sat here in new thermal long johns (Xmas gift from DH, how romantic is that!) with the heating turned off. Yesterday I turned the fridge up by 1 degree. Now on 4 degrees, but I think the kitchen is colder than that. Will turn it back to 3 if the weather gets too hot or stuff starts going off. Also removed the bulb from the fridge. I know its only a bit but every little helps.

Food (without dog food or cleaning etc) came to £2874.69 for 2009. won't shop again this year. Works out at £1.15 per head per day. Hoping to shave a little more off that this year. We have enough food in the house to feed an army!

I'm getting all exited about this now. Right of to see who has left stuff on standby. See you all later,

mumtoomany.