Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

Hardup_Hester

My local freecycle is now Freegle & quotes same 'political wrangles' as reason for split, I only give stuff away, I don't ask for stuff.
Ceridwen, I did look at our local LETs scheme, unfortunately it's across town from me, £7 & 2 buses away, they don't seem to have a very good online presence, you seem to have to attend one of their social events & they only seem to be advertised retrospectively.
Hugs Hester

knithappens

amnyone in Manchester, I have 4 tickets four tickets for Aladdin at the opera house at 1, free to anyone who can go, i got them using my clubcard deals but kiddo 2 unwell, will have to be picked up from me ( failsworth) . Anyone interested PM me

TICKETS HAVE NOW GONE TO A GOOD HOME:)

cw18

Would have loved the tickets - sure my GDs would have enjoyed the trip - but both DD and I are at work this afternoon :rolleyes2

Hope your youngster gets better soon..... such a shame to have to miss a special day out like this

LilacPixie

What is LETS??

Our local freecycle is Freegal but there is also a new Freecycle group too. its not very good TBH lots of ebay/carboot traders who jump on anything and people posting wanted for LCD TV's and the latest games consols. Alot of pet posts seem to come up too which is a bit heartbreaking one poster always seems to have kittens free to good homes. I think i will try make better use of it in 2010 and declutter this place.

XSpender

Morning Everyone and Welcome to fellow Newbies signing up to the challenge.:hello:

First spends from my 2010 budget yesterday including £7.79 on groceries. It wasn’t a very frugal spend as I had driven 385 miles yesterday to attend a funeral and was too tired to make anything so we had pizza and oven chips. At least there is plenty left in case I get caught short again.

I will also include the £2.59 spent on meds and £2 put in the collection plate that I spent yesterday so yesterday will count as my first day of the challenge to keep things straight. All receipts stapled or expenses noted in my new 2010 diary.:T

I have set aside £300 for food, cleaning, toiletries and pet food this month as this is my budget but am expecting to be way under. I only need £20 of dog food as there is 11 days worth in the garage and I have 2 freezers bursting at the seems with meat for DH and other stuff. I will also have 1 lunch and 3 evening meals paid for by work this month.

DH is going on a diet next week as he wants to lose a stone by his 40th at the beginning of Feb so I will be buying fruit and veg to make a ton of WW and F diet soups this weekend. Will need to make some room in the freezer some how to squeeze it in. This is all I need until next weekend so I will be making a good start with this budget.:D

I also received a £10 off your first Mr S internet shop voucher with their baby club stuff valid until the end of the month so will make use of this for the first Feb shop and stock up on essentials then.

I have been given 2 big bags of books by my step dad to stick on green met that were going to the charity shop. Some will still go as I don’t think they will sell but he is happy for us to keep the proceeds if any do sell.

A colleague of my DH is going to stick an advert up at his scuba club for me of all my scuba kit which hasn’t been used for about 3 years. I have been meaning to sell it for ages but have never got around to it. I hope it sells as I will use the money towards the travel system we are buying for the baby.

Jobs for this weekend apart from soup making include:

• Finish creating my notebook 'spreadsheets' to record this years spends
• Meal plan until 10th Jan
• Load more books on green met
• Post parcel to music [EMAIL="m@gpie"]m@gpie[/EMAIL]. £10.00 earnt there:T
• List contents of both freezers
• Enjoy the meal with friends we have booked for tonight

I hope everyone enjoys their New Year's eve and a Happy and Frugal New Year to you all!

XS

danielley

Hello All

I have been working on my figures all week and I have them finalised I think!

First I’ll just tell you a little about me (in case you are interested; I personally love hearing people’s stories, but I am noseyJ)

I’m 31, live in North West England in a 2 bed terraced house. The mortgage is my name, but I have a lovely fiance who lives with me and contributes very generously to the bills. He has his own house (which unfortunately is in negative equity at the moment) so as we couldn’t buy together yet; he rents that out and lives with me. We also have 2 cats.

I bought the house in 2005 following a divorce and I lived there on my own for nearly 2 years. To cover the bills and to pay for luxuries (I love beauty products and holidays!) I did extra hours at work and also a couple of nights behind a bar. Now my fiance contributes I luckily don’t have to do that now.

The challenge to myself is to try and live on my wage alone, which I know won’t be much of a stretch compared to most of the fantastic challenges that you are all doing, (because I used to do it!) but I figure that if I just do that, I should have a decent wedge at the end of the year saved.

So my budget (excluding mortgage, council tax & water) is £9430. I do hope to make some savings on that as it includes contingencies for repairs to house, car, and teeth! Etc but I know what I am like and I didn’t want to set an unrealistic budget only to fail and feel miserable.

I know I am very lucky that I can still afford some luxuries , but we are hoping to get married in the next couple of years, move house (although I’m all for staying in the terraced and clearing the mortgage instead, my fiance is a snob and wants a detached!) and also produce some frugalmites, so I think this small step into budgeting will be a giant leap into planning for our future, and I’m sure once I really start looking into what I am spending I will be able to be even leaner in 2011.

Anyway sorry about the waffle, I wish you all the best for 2010 and I can’t wait to hear how you are all getting on, I have learnt so much already!

xxx

Type of Expenditure Annual Cost
Drs Prescriptions £40 - Just in case
Dentist £50 - Just in case
Charity Donations £100
LoveFilm £120 - Because reducing Sky Subs
TV Licence £144
TV Rental £150 - Halved with Fiance
Life Insurance £180
Mobile £180
House Insurance £204
Sky £240 - Brdband, phone & tv halved again
British Gas Boiler cover £360 - Includes plumbing - will shop around
Loan repayment 0% £360
Petrol £380 - might walk to work, so may save
Electricity £396
Hairdressers £400 - budgeted 7 trips for the year
Contact Lenses £432 - wear acuvue dailies, may downgrade
Gifts £450 - both birthdays and xmas
Beauty prods & clothes £480 - hope to make savings here
Car Costs £600 - have budgeted for MOT, Service, Tax
House Costs £600 - conting for repairs / decorating
Gas £624
Socialising £840 - meals, drinks, cinema
Holidays £900 - hen party in June, Greece in Sept
Food £1200 - my half of the household budget

As I said, there are loads of places I can make savings, I just wanted to be realistic with myself, if it goes well in 2010, 2011 will be the year I get super frugal!

x

grannynise

I'll stop lurking and join please ... I've got CW's spreadsheet and am SO excited to be using it from tomorrow. I've practised this last couple of weeks and my spending is :eek::eek::eek:

I'm leaving a well paid job in April, choosing to retire a bit early with the consequent massive reduction in income. I realise that I'm incredibly lucky to be able to do this but I am a little worried about my ability to monitor/control my spending. It's never been necessary, well not for the last 20 years or so.

Whilst I've been lurking I think I've learnt a lot, thank you to all of you. I can't set a budget yet , not experienced enough (and based on the last ten days spending it would be hugely higher than my expected income for 2010) am I still allowed to be here? Please.

ChinaTea

Well here we are at last the final day of 2009. Pleased to see the back of it but have been some good stuff as well as the bad. But, I'm not going to dwell on the bad stuff, after all tomorrow it will be what happened last year. The main thing to come out of 2009 is that despite all the bad stuff I'm actually content and happy with my lot.

I started this year needing a change in lifestyle. A bit of background about me, I'm 53 and have lived alone with my 3 cats since my DH died suddenly 7 years ago. I have 1 DS aged 35 :eek: and a DGS who is 5 and the light of my life LOL.I am disabled, use a wheelchair have a list of medical complaints inc. ME that I won't bore you with. My health has taken a toll on me the last couple of years although I'm very independant and do all the usual stuff just not in the same way. ME saps my energy at times and I learnt the hard way that at those times you have to accept it and make the best of the good times.

So, in to 2010 with a new challenge, to live as frugally and simply as possible. I want to be able to save a small amount just as a safety net and keep digging away at the debts. I'm going to carry on with the OU for another year and upgrade to a honours degree, a massive challenge in itself. This last year I've rediscovered my love of cooking especially baking, knitting and crafts. Hopefully this year my attempts at gardening will be better than last year. I started off well but just as everything was growing well a fall resulted in a foot broken in 2 places and a fractured ankle, 8wks in plaster meant I couldn't get into the garden.

I'm still working on my budget but I think it will be around the 4000 mark. Still playing with Cheryl's spreadsheet but will post budget later.

Wishing you all a Happy and frugal 2010.

PS sorry for the long post

Frugaldom

Good morning to all, I've just updated the challenger lists again, so everyone should be listed. Little-lou-pink I have included your name but the lists are kept alphabetically, so there are no challenger numbers because these can change every time someone new joins our merry project.

Thanks for the note about the post numbers, Ddraig, handy way to quickly find previous posts. I hope the bump in the night that woke you was just snow falling from the roof and not your Velux window!

LETS - This is the Local Exchange Trading Scheme, they have them in many different locations. There's a link to the UK info site in the list of handy links on post 1 of this thread, along with many other links we've found informative or useful in the past.

This really is the final countdown to the challenge! :j I don't think we'll be doing much after midnight, as dawn starts don't stop just because there's a celebration and there aren't exactly many people about here to throw a big party. :rotfl: However, I had best go and get a few bits and pieces out of the freezer, or there'll be no New Year's Day dinner. I have haggis, turnip and potatoes for tonight and DS has requested roast chicken dinner for tomorrow, so it'll be steak pie dinner on Saturday IF the parents manage to travel here. (They've have blizzard conditions this morning.)

Hope everyone is well prepared for the new year and the new challenge. Don't forget to plant your garlic for next year and I believe it's almost time to start planting the fruit bushes & trees. I have my fingers crossed that Ald! will have their special offer again as the £7 ish I have remaining from this year's challenge could be enough for 2 more apple trees!

:T Grannynise, I'm glad you've decided to join us for 2010, that's great news! Let's hope there's health and happiness in 2010 plus heaps of fun frugalisation that will help you through any bad days.

grandma247

DdraigGoch wrote: »

I found it handy to check up which thread I'd posted something on, without having to check back through ALL my posts. Anyway, another techie bit which a] you probably all know anyway and b] aren't interested in!

Hope it helps someone, all the same.:rotfl::beer: :j :j

I wish I had that info last night err .. this morning, I trawled through loads of my posts to find 2 I needed.