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

meg72

edaniels1983 wrote: »

hi ya all. had a few bad days, mother in law dies suddenly on friday and with my hubby being an only child it falls upon us to sort out and arrange everything

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didnt realise how expensive funerals are!! does anyone know about what financial help is available??

on a lighter note, had the council inspector in today because when i moved in i complained that the bath was too small for my larger frame!! well he turns up in the snow! and looks at the bath and says its a very slim one and that would i like an over bath shower fitted or a bigger bath?? guess which one i chose!!

in 6 weeks ill have a shower woohoo. thats 500.00 i have saved as thats the quote i had from a plumber as i would need a complete install and new fuse box/rcd to accomodate it!!

cherrio for now xx

Sorry about your mil, I have just lost my Son, like you I did not realise how exensive funerals were. I have been given forms to get hel from the
Social Fund. If you are on benefit Havent been through them yet too much in shock the funeral director gave them to me so maybe yours have
them too.I think he said it covers about half the cost.

lyndasharp

Yikes, two days behind now and lots for me to read!

Good news as there will be a tenant in H2B's flat tomorrow! We only had confirmation yesterday, so had an hours drive each way yesterday evening to remove anything that we didn't want to leave, like the vases of flowers and some other bits. Also had a good clean round, as we hadn't bothered cleaning the oven before and it does seem to be gaining dead flies in the whole flat. The letting agent asked if their fee was at the 8% introductory rate for 6 months, to which H2B quickly replied 'yes'. They'd quoted us 10% before :-)

knithappens

edaniels1983, meg72, i am so sorry for your loss.

meg, my heart hurts for you because it is the wrong order for a child to go before, i know when my sister died, my mum was distraught, and i cannot even contemplate loosing one of my children.

It also pains me how much they try to sell you for a funeral, i learnt this first hand when my mum died, but i found a nice company who were wonderful, but if someone would not have recommeneded them i would not have known about them, it is the one service that is seldon talked about, but when you need the service, it is the one place we are often at a loss - sorry for waffling.

edaniels1983

meg72 wrote: »

Sorry about your mil, I have just lost my Son, like you I did not realise how exensive funerals were. I have been given forms to get hel from the
Social Fund. If you are on benefit Havent been through them yet too much in shock the funeral director gave them to me so maybe yours have
them too.I think he said it covers about half the cost.

sorry to hear about your son xx i couldnt believe how they even charge for death certificates! its all money money money!!!

she was a pensioner, 70 to be exact, and lived in a council house so we am hoping she qualifies for help. i am on income support and my hubby on incapacity benefit so hopefully it should be ok, and my father in law is also a pensioner but does get some private pension, so that may be a problem.

she had always said she had the money to cremate her if anything happened, well it turms out that money was £200.00 dont think she had any idea of the cost in reality!.

rozeepozee

cha97michelle wrote: »

rozee great story about your DS and the locker. They love doing stuff like that don't they, and it must have been nice to get ready without any whinging of 'i'm hungry'. My 3yo DS says to me all the time 'My belly is rumbling' even if he has just eaten.

If I'd have known he was happy to eat his lunch in a gym locker, I woulda knocked the cafes on the head much sooner! :rotfl:

knithappens

well the person i emailed on ebay for the cot instructions, kindly scanned them for me and emailed them to me this morning, how amazing is that restores my faith that there are some kind people left in this world, so i can now put my cot up, have also sold the very large unused cot bed i have so that will fund the new matress i need for the bedside cot.

have managed to do a big clear out of cd's dvd's even got my 13 year old in on it when she realised she could make money on the things she never look at, and £30 is a fortune for her. - teach em while there young lol

mooomin

edaniels and meg, I'm sorry for your losses. I'm rubbish at knowing what to say in these situations, but I hope that you get through the situation. You're in all our thoughts.

So, today I'm on holiday - I came back to work on the 5th of January and decided I needed time off. I am having a horrible time at work at the moment, and need a break I have uploaded my CV onto a couple of websites though, so hopefully something will come of that. I need to jump ship soon as I can feel my confidence being sapped on a daily basis.

Enough of that!

Today I have signed up to do my energy bills online with Scottish Power (I think I will get a discount for that) and submitted my first online meter readings. When I got the last bill through, before the cold snap I was about £20 in credit, and today I submitted the readings and saw this legend...
Your account has been successfully updated and your new account balance is £63.26 in credit.

Clearly my good work in unplugging every appliance I can get my hands on and following Mr Fresian around turning off lights is doing some good (We were also away for a week in December and the last bill was only an estimate!) :A

Frugal plans for today are:

Forage in the freezer for dinner
Aim for a NSD
Send Mr Fresian up the Icy Hill Of Doom to the Post Office so he can send off my MusicMagpie sales
Start clearing out the spare room

Mr Fresian's sister was round last night and we have agreed that she will pay me £300 per month including all bills when she moves in. She will also help me take old things to the tip/charity shop that I need to throw out before she moves in! I plan to use all of the money as savings towards my loan repayment.

For those of you not aware, Ebay is doing a free listing day on Sunday - taking photos of all my [strike]tat[/strike] quality merchandise is also on the cards for today.

Have a frugalicious day all (Sorry for the megapost!)

FrankieM

Morning All,
Hugs to all who need them.

Kinders had their first Snow Day yesterday so I didn't get a chance to update. Didn't get much done, but managed to make some chocolate concrete for lunch boxes.

We went to see Avatar last night in 3D. Really enjoyed the film but the evening turned into a bit of a drama that ended up costing us more money than planned and we didn't get home till 4am.

I've got an appointment this morning. The coal mans coming at some point and DH's campervan is getting dropped off. It's all go here.
I'm going to have to really clamp down on spending in February. DH is away the last for 2 weeks soon so that will help.....!

Hope you all have a good day.

Kiwisaver_2

Sorry to hear of your losses EDaniels and Meg there's never a right time and it's never easy to deal with, so just go with the flow and do what you can. ((Hugs)) Dealing with and being strong for one's grieving partner/spouses etc at this time is also testing on one's strength and energy, so take it easy when you can.

I spent an incy wincy bit of money today, just sausages from the butchers which went straight in the freezer and some milk. Done my mealplan and shopping list for main shopping tomorrow and there's not very much to get at all.

Tonights dinner was the scrapings from the bottom of the fridge, assembled into a rather pleasing Frittata / Spanish omelette affair. I had some concerns that himself wouldn't be best pleased with the main ingredients; sliced potatoes, onion, pepper, mushrooms and tomatoes. So I dug some frozen spinach out and chopped it finely and added some crumbled feta cheese. I should have stopped there and would have had it just been for me, but we do sometimes get complaints if there's no meat. :eek: So I chopped up a tiny bit of ham and sprinkled it on the top so he could see it. :rotfl: It was declared as being 'bl00dy luvverly' and the plate was fair licked clean.

I am incredibly pleased with the way the grocery budget is going at present and I reckon by the end of the month I will be about a week in hand against my planned grocery spends. That'll be a first, as usually I am robbing the following week's money and trying to justify balance sheet items as not real costs, but additions to stock. :T

Looking at things as a long term goal for the year, rather than the week to week and monthly outgoings I did before, has helped me stop thinking in terms of the week's allocation as a limit and not a target.

lyndasharp

Sorry about your losses Meg and EDaniels x