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

KarrieBee

Frugalling happily here.
2TR - I hope you find the support you need in caring for your mum, I know that neither mum or I would want her to have to go into a home - she insists that she would far rather be looked after at home. I pray it will be many a year before she is in that position though.

Fishcake - CUTE elephant! Glad your knitting is going better than mine, I was part way through a mitten when i realised i'd read the pattern wrong and had to unravel and start again. patience is a virtue and sadly i'm not virtuous!

Managed a full week of taking lunch rather than buying and used up every last bit of the veg box last week - including some fridge soup which was yummy.
A combination of snow and work has kept the socialising budget at zero but with a lot of birthdays in the next 2 months i think that i'll need the wriggle room.
Whoopsie salmon and watercress tonight with HM chocolate fondants for afters - much cheaper than buying them ready made.
Long walk tomorrow and trip to the Farmers market to stock up. It feels so good to get out of the house again and into the fresh air!

ChinaTea

Have so far had 11 NSDs in Jan and the grocery spend for the month so far is £13.44:j. Only other spends aside from cat food, petrol, gas and electricity are DDs that I've not included in challenge budget. It's been a lot easier with not being able to get out because of the weather and have also started with a full freezer and store cupboard. But an encouraging start to the year.

Have sorted a load of stuff to go on ebay that should sell for a decent price and some books for amazon. Just got to photograph them now. Really don't like this part of it, the photo's never turn out that good but to make the free listing day tomorrow need to get on with it. Other than this I have some knitting to finish and the 1940s house DVD to watch this weekend.

Does anybody know if the BBC are doing the Dig in free seeds and newsletter again this year? haven't seen anything about it but almost missed out last year so want to get going earlier this year. Have got my potatoes sprouting, going to grow in tubs this year, had them in bags last year and found they were difficult to get enough water into them.

Frugaldom

HI fruguys and gals, I mentioned pineapple, but only in reference to the 6 slices I had in the fridge needing used up after having opened a tin. They're now baked into a pineapple upside down cake, though.

3 tier dinner tonight with cabbage and ham being steamed over the potatoes. SM popped in this afternoon and between us we managed to prepare the pheasants, which are now in the slow cooker with garlic, onion, red wine and a spoonful of brown sugar, as recommended by chef friend. I jjust need to hope there's space can be found in the freezer for all this, as it looks rather a lot.

Not likely to be spending anything this weekend, so that will make it 8 spend days out of 18 by Monday, including direct debits, a log delivery and Appr0ved F00d order. Total amount spent to date - £272.32.

Hoping not to use as much electricity now that the log store has been filled up again, I think one week of £50+ was enough for me, thank you very much! :eek: It certainly bumped my weekly average up over the £20 mark, so work needing done there to counteract that.

Don't forget that the average amount of money you 'have' each week/month is for everything spread out over the year, not the amount that you can safely spend. If you have extra left over, it's only because it's not yet gone on it's allocated expense. eg TV licence costs approx £144, so we budget £12 per month over a full year to pay for it. We have seen a few problems with this over the pasts couple of years, as some people forgot that's WHY they had money left over at the end of each week or month and spent it or locked it into sealed savings.

grandma247

Nyk someone else also metioned they had three pineapples.
I hope the cake turned out ok. I like upside down cake.

lynzpower

Yeah it was me with the 3 pineapples. Im still a bit confused really.I could have sworn Ive seen loads of recipes, however now I look I can only really find upside down cake ( which is fine but wanted to try something new )
Now wish I had a dehydrator as dried pineapple is so very expensive in the shops and a great daily snack.

Has anyone done this with pineapple ( i saw bananas & apples being dehydrated earlier in thread)

grandma247

yes I have done dehydrated pineapple and it is very good. The more ripe the pineapple the better.

Frugaldom

lynzpower wrote: »

Has anyone done this with pineapple ( i saw bananas & apples being dehydrated earlier in thread)

I borrowed next door's dehydrator and tried the pineapple - it was delicious and didn't last long once DS and I started on it! :rotfl:

Also have this link to pineapple recipes after I was looking for something to do with mine.

savingfortravel

My Mum was telling me that the owners of Approved Foods are now Millionaires…Good on em I say.
Just come back from Mr T…we’ve not been to our nearest one at whoopsied time before and it was very funny struggling back along our lane laden with heavy bags and without any street lighting. The store itself was pleasantly empty.
We picked up 20 more tins of BBBeans (now up to 60-think the offer ends in the next few days). 3 bags of value potatoes for 60p and 3 loaves of bread for 46p each. Also got 4 tins of value curry sauce 16p Value frozen pies 98p FR eggs £1.46. So total cost was £6.78.
Getting back into the MS frame of mind..it wasn’t that I was wasting money, more that I was feeling down about the weather.. Feeling more in tune now ..done my Menu planning up until the end of February. Tomorrow is supposed to be a lovely day so a walk or a trip to the gym are definitely on my list.


2TR-So glad I made time to read the posts I’d missed. How brave and lovely you are. We’ll be here to support you this year. Great that your back and that Paul is with us this year.
Jtb-Well done on OH’s bonus.
SF-Hope it is free listing on ebay tomorrow as that will be helpful. I remember taking the Numeracy and Literacy tests when I did my PGCE. In those days you could repeat the tests as many times as you liked.
Nuala-Thanks for the slow movement website
Lynz-Also thanks for the cook for the eldery info. Will also be trying to grow the veg that will save us the most money. Good news about the expenses.
Lingo-Sorry to hear about your slip
Jay Jay-Hope your OH gets more work soon
Cha97Michelle-Glad your boys had fun with the box
Welcome Interglatic/Happy MrSh/Pagangirl
Gillian-Well done on eeking out that washing powder. We’ve bought 6 p*rsil small and m*ghty for this year for £1.10 each and I hope they will last (we do 2 washes a week) for 2010.
Bails-Thanks for the PM. Will send one back soon. Glad to see you’ve set the wedding date./Glad you’re working everything out and the cottage seems a go! Wow!
JAMIE-Your breakfast meeting sounded lovely-can’t remember the last time I had lunch or dinner out. Must do that once a month with Mr SFT
Rictus-Sounds like you’re making great progress so far.


Have a great evening all.

SFT

lynzpower

You ladies have sold me on the dehydrator- OMG cant believe how expensive they are! I don't really eat enough dried fruit ( I know id eat more though, If I had one- this does look fabulous) to justify the prices.

I guess Ill have to look out on ebay for one. cheapest one is 100 oin amazon ( i have a 20.00 voucher though)

lynzpower

Getting back into the MS frame of mind..it wasn’t that I was wasting money, more that I was feeling down about the weather.. Feeling more in tune now ..done my Menu planning up until the end of February. Tomorrow is supposed to be a lovely day so a walk or a trip to the gym are definitely on my list.

I went to the gym today for the first time this year and I have to say I really really enjoyed it. I had a feeling of what could only be described as pure euphoria in my aqua class. It was hard going, I really pushed myself, but I feel fantastic for it now.

It was busy though, I didnt stay as long as I would have liked as there were people waiting on the machines and I always feel guilty for hogging so I left.