FRUGAL LIVING CHALLENGE 2010, part 1. (Living on £4,000 a year)

Thriftkitten

Hahah!! made me laugh about the T-bags as my friend used to have a seperate tea caddy full to the brim with the cheapest of cheap T bags for visitors and used to keep the nice ones for herself, but used to go through my food cupboards for treats when she visited my house.. cheaky mare!!!

danielley wrote: »

Good Evening

Thrifty Lass - i hope you feel much better soon, what an awful time to be ill.

SlowlyFading - take care of yourself


Well, Carpet finally got fitted. The living room looks so nice and new and smells like a show home! The carpet is so fluffy and thick, my only concern is that the cats will like it a little too much and think it is special litter for them!

Unfortunately not a NSD; I had to buy a sandwich for lunch instead of going home as normal. £2 and it was tasteless and really unsatisfying. Im not making the same mistake again, so i am off to make some spagetti with smoked salmon, creme fraiche and garlic puree to take for my lunch tomorrow now.

Got a call from my mum; she had a takeaway tonight (she is like antithesis of frugal despite being very low income) anyway the chippy had given her 2 extra bags of chips in error. OH & I jumped in car and went to get them (we did need to go around to drop some other stuff too) Mum works at the Co-op and I have told her to keep her eye out for bargains for me. Anyway she had 240 Typhoo teabags for £2 for me too Im not sure what they are like as I usually have PG Tips, but they'll do for visitors

Hope you are all safe and snug. There is more snow forecast tonight; its getting quite scary, we got stuck on the way back from Mum's and some kind bloke pushed us!

x

glitter_sunflowergold

How do i add my name to the list. thanks

kez12

Hi all,

I am not new to the site but new to posting anyhting and would love to join this group and to be an active member rather than a constant spectator. I think it will make me feel like I am really dealing with my debts and as you can see there are plenty to be dealing with so, this year I want to join a number of challenges and be involved rather than trying to do it all on my own.

The support everyone offers people on this site is great and you never know I maybe able to offer something back to someone else so heres to 2010 :beer: and living a frugal lifestyle ( if you'll have me that is)
Kez12

Frugaldom

Good evening frugalers,

I apologise for my inability to get on here, read and keep up but I have now read everything and, as always, appropriate responses to each and every one of you. I have 5 newbies to welcome, from what I can see, so I'll get the names added as soon as I post my own little update.

Welcome Catznine, Thriftkitten, Warney27, Glitter_sunflower and Kez12

Temperature here hasn't risen above -7 today and the duck eggs actually froze to the straw! I made my first grocery spend of the year and have spent a whopping £17.93 including P&P on Approved Foods. I've ordered their bulk cases of savoury rice, cous cous, noodles, broth mix, mustard, cheese sauce mix and soya mince plus some gravy mix, evaporated milk, cereal and paprika. Anyone on Facebook, if you sign up to the Approved Food Discount Group, there's a members' code for 10% off all orders within 48 hours, so I took advantage of that.

DS sold some surplus eggs to a work colleague and used the cash to buy 2 bags of porridge oats, so that's cash neutral porridge for a bit longer - he's learning. :T

Got the bread made this morning before friend arrived for cuppa - we're on a stock farm here but she came from dairy farm and confirms that milk deliveries could be affected by the weather as the hoses on the milk tankers are freezing up whilst trying to pump the milk into the tank! :rotfl:I know I shouldn't laugh, but the lads were having to bucket hot water out to keep the milk flowing long enough to load the tanker! And I thought I was bad needing 2 extra tanks of hot water a day (extra £10 a week!) to keep the water supplied to the hens & ducks! :eek:

For dinner tonight, we had leftover roast with gravy, whoopsied potatoes and pony carrots. :rotfl: I chopped and steamed all the remaining carrots whilst boiling the potatoes, so that's another 2 tubs to squeeze into the freezer. It meant I'd to take another banana loaf out, but that's ok.

Big day tomorrow, hoping to finalise yet another master plan for 2010 before attempting to get DS and HS fully on board. It could mean tightening the belt further but I'm happy to maintain my £4,000 budget for 2010.

I now have a big bag of ribbons, bows and tags sorted out from Christmas wrappings set aside for next year and I have acquitred a napkin holder (to use for holding receipts and paperwork), a lovely letter rack and an over door hanging towel rail, all as a result of swapathon for duck eggs this afternoon. :T Rather a productive day, especially with 2 dozen meringues baking in the oven tonight to save wasting any of the egg whites from the recent lemon curd making.

That's about all my news, don't worry if you feel swamped by the mass of posts on here, you have all year to read them and many here haven't managed to read from the start of the challenge yet (December 2007) :rotfl:Please read it all and then feel free to ask questions. It cuts down on repetition. If it's personal chit chat, please try to make use of the private messaging facility so we can keep the thread on topic. Much appreciated when time is short. Thank you.

Edited in - I've just put food out for the creatures of the night (fat off the roast) and our thermometer is reading -9C

gilligansyle

MushyPeas wrote: »

All I've tried to make are some biscuits and I've discovered the following that cookbooks don't tell you:
* rubbing butter into flour by hand is really hard, takes ages and then later when you think it's like breadcrumbs bit lumps of butter appear! (is there an easier way?)
* flour gets EVERYWHERE
* when you have your hands in a bowl two things will happen a) the phone will ring and b) you'll get an itch on your nose
* trying to figure out how to cook three things at once is almost impossible

Oh dear... I think I need more practice :o:o

I always had problems with the 'rub the marge into the flour' thingy, until read in Delia a really good tip. Freeze the butter and then grate it into the flour, saves all the hassle.

rozeepozee

bails I had to laugh at your "lady of the manor" comment and I composed a long and philosophical response explaining a little about my situation, as I suppose my own frugal situation is quite unusual - but then I was obviously not giving my little boy enough attention as he switched off my computer and I lost it. So maybe that story's for another day.

Not to bad a day today. 20p on parking and £10 on petrol. I've already blown my petrol budget though - I've budgeted for £25 monthly and spent £35 in the first week.... I've had some long post Christmas journeys though so I'm hoping it won't be like that every month.

Thanks again to Cheryl for sorting out my spreadsheet mishap. I'm back on track.

RP

Kittikins

SlowlyFading - take care honey, I don't understand why you have to drag yourself into school if the years you teach aren't going to be there? And....as you've hurt yourself so much, surely you could justify taking a sick day (or will that count against you for the PCGE?). Hope you feel better in the morning

SFT - thanks for asking about my back, the painkillers and DD's magic healing hands (she's only 4 but says she wants to be a doctor and likes to get practice in on me and my stupid back) have worked a lot of magic and I was off crutches this morning

catznine

Just worked out my budget which is subject to tweaking:-

£4200 per annum or £350 per month:-

Food (for 2 of us and visiting grown up kids) £200.00
Toiletries and cleaning products £10.00
Dog Food - lg bag lasts3 months (she is small) £10.00
Mobile contract with orange and ins £16.00
Charity donations - 10% £35.00
Petrol £20.00
Presents £15.00
Vits/supps (have cfs) £15.00
Pocket money (£5 a week) £20.00

Total £341.00

Any money I can save from the £200 budget for food I try to put towards a 2-3 times a year shop at costco. This stocks up on some cleaning products, some vits, meat for the freezer, dog chews, loo rolls etc., I grew a few vegetables last year, courgettes, tomatoes, salad leaves, french beans, runner beans and spinach beet, so want to do that again. Also have an organic veg/fruit box delivered twice a month and am reluctant to stop that as I want to try to eat as healthily as I can.

I have plenty of pulses in store but not very confident on using them, still getting to grips with lentils tbh, so that is one area for me to concentrate on and reduce the amount of meat we eat.

I don't use much petrol and could really give up the car but dh likes the fact that I have it there if I need it. I don't work but don't claim benefits as tbh with cfs it is a minefield and I wanted to avoid the stress, besides with a bit of effort we can manage on dh's wages. Big problem is that I haven't made any nat ins contributions towards my pension since giving up work a few years ago and the last statement asked for over £1000 to make up the shortfall!:eek: Also dd getting married next year - exciting but ouch financially even with the kids paying for most of it.

Anyway enough waffle, I now need to take action!

Catz x

batcatz

flippin36 wrote: »

Goodness how did I miss this post. This could be a post written by me! I feel exactly the same when giving up things. My habit over 2009 was going to Boots when I had finished my jobs to 'treat' myself. As a result I have more makeup, creams and showergels to last a year (seriously).

Haha, me toooooooo! I've had 2 NSDs and I feel I should treat myself to something nice. DOH!

I used to spend £60 everytime I went to Boots..... this was years ago and I still have stuff left I haven't used yet. :rotfl:

poorbutrich

HI everyone
I wanted to wish you a Happy New Year but I subscribed to the wrong thread and now see you are 50+ pages in!

Still working out the finer points of the budget which I said would be £8,000, but realistically needs to be upped to £10,000 to incorporate our wedding later this year.

There are some great tips on here and I am so touched at how you look after each other. Hope you're all keeping warm....keep safe

pbr
xx