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

cha97michelle

I've just been analysing my spends a bit for January with a view to trying to reduce the grocery budget a bit in the coming months. I have been looking at some threads on old style and was feeling a bit inspired.

One big shocker = MILK.

We spent a total of £32.34 on 88 pints of milk for the 4 of us. This broke down to 62 pints of whole milk had by the kids. 26 on semi skimmed for us. I thought i was improving on this as i had been using some skimmed milk powder made up with water for puddings and making food, but i can see there is a lot of room for manouvere in just this one area. :eek: Actually, the kids must drink a blooming lot of milk as they have been having porridge with me or toast, so i use semi skimmed and water 50/50 to make this. :eek::eek: I knew they were milk monsters. At least there bones must be strong.

Wow. Itemising everything really does make you think doesn't it.

JayJay14

Hi Michelle - I agree that itemising this groceries is an eye opener. I've been shocked that no matter how careful I think I am being I stil have loads of snacks and rubbish. If this challenge does nothing else it may make me cut back on those. This first year for me is probably going to be a revelation:eek:

Should have had an NSD today but ended up getting mushrooms when I took DS to asda, also bought some ibruprofen for my hip - I think I'm getting arthritic, will make an appaointment to see the doc. At least that is frugal cos I get free prescriptions for lifelong condition so might as well make use of them.

Hope everyone is well, and that the cold doesn't cause too many problems - lots of ice out there.

help_me_please_3

I have a friend who has her neices living with her and its 'kinship fostering' she says. If you ask social services they have to approve you first ie police check etc etc then you should get fostering allowance from them, which i believe is around £60 each child a week.

Skint_Lynne

meg72 wrote: »

No of course, looking after your own Grandchildi is not care in the community,
why would it be. but if you stop ranting and start looking there is help you can get. Although personally I have looked after two grandchildren for the past six years and not thought this should be a community obligation and Yes also worked all my life. I consider my self lucky, one to have been in good health to have worked and two to have been blessed with the Grandchildren to be looked after.

I know a couple of others have pointed out that Mooloo has got real difficulties going on Meg. She is really near the wire and having to look after the wee one is pushing her to the edge financially. She is a good mother and granny and trying her best to manage in a very tricky situation, so any help would be a great relief to her.

She actually does this out of love, unfortunately, love does not pay the bills. It would be nice if you could share with her the ways in which she could perhaps get some help from the authorities. Mooloo has tried lots of different avenues for help already.

Not being cheeky here, but this is what comes out of joining in a 'conversation' way down the line.:o

Skint_Lynne

I'm still here, and read every day. I am being as good as I can, thinking before spending.;)

I have just remembered that it will likely be a packed lunch tomorrow, so shall go down to the freezer and take some bread out, otherwise I will need to buy something to eat at lunchtime tomorrow.:eek: No chance!!

Speak later. xx

cw18

Just finished 'balancing' my freezer stock lists, and I've used £4 of stuff from there I hadn't tracked !! Must do better in February, as I don't want to have to do all the detailed balancing on this one again.......

So my spreadsheet looks like this with all January expenses in place



The figures under 'Budget' that are on a darker background are ones I've changed during the month.

Dog Expenses is down £24, as not as much food needed now.
Vets bills is up £72 for the pre-reported reasons.
Road Tax is down £12, as I'd got the figure wrong!! (And my replacement disk came today )
Groceries is up £26. This is due to now looking at an extra 3 weeks of elder DS being home during the year, but partially offset as younger DS is going away (at no expense to me) for this next half-term week.
Contingency is down £62 in order to retain the £8k bottom line after the other changes have been applied.

I've used £37 of groceries from stock, so my January grocery budget was reduced (from £131 to £94) and my Grocery Stock Pile Fund now has some money in it.

Also used some Toiletries & Cleaning stock (opened a couple of store clearance Eco toilet cleaners) on top of my £8 spend (toilet rolls, kitchen rolls, washing up bowl and scouring brush) - so a paltry £1 in the stock pile fund for this one.

Of the 5 categories I'm currently 'over-drawn' on, 2 are one-off annual payments (Road Tax and Car Breakdown Cover). A third (Council Tax) will be out of the red for the rest of the year (due to non-payment months in Feb & March). Vet bills probably won't balance until year end, but as the only other expected bill falls in October the over-spend should decrease until then.

Work related I'm fine about, and shouldn't need anything else for a while. This is my safety boots only, as I've taken the key I had cut back off my spreadsheet. It was too thick for the lock (had told them what it was for, so I would have expected them to be more careful when checking if they had a suitable blank) - so cost refunded.


Bottom line shows an overspend to date of £102.86 - but I'm quite happy with this.

Just checked my results from January of 2009, and I had an overspend of £229..91 ( :eek: ), which came about as I overspent on NINE categories (of 23) against just 5 of 24 last month.

NualaBuala

Hi frugalites!

Big hugs pagangirl, that's awful about the window. Hope you're managing to keep warm! Fingers crossed they get it sorted quickly. Just think, you will feel so cosy once they have the proper window in.

A_fiend_for_life wrote: »

I've also found something called Ad Block Plus (ABP) for firefox - it blocks all the ads. If you visit the Guardian or other newspapers websites and compare the status bar with ABP turned on and off you'll get an idea how much is blocked.

That's interesting Fiendy, I have a sort of ad-blocker for Firefox called The DoGooder. It replaces the ads with green tips, and that sort of thing. I find it puts me in good form and I've picked up some green and moneysaving ideas from it.


I had an unexpected expense today. Although T0sh*ba were willing to fix my laptop as a goodwill gesture I decided to extend the warranty - €72 for 2 years:eek:. This is the second time the problem has occurred and I'm worried it won't be the last so I feel better knowing I'm covered. So hopefully I'll get it fixed and returned to me soon. I hadn't budgeted for this but I've done a big of juggling and I think I can claw the money back from other categories. Feb will be a very lean month though. Will have to cut back on food spending.

On the positive side:
- got a big bag of Maltesers from a lovely lady who picked up some stuff I freecycled. I had a friend over for dinner and they were a nice after dinner treat washed down by gallons of tea.
- have mustered up a bit of courage and asked for compensation from building society who keep sending my statements to the wrong address. :mad: So much for data protection - after a year, it's still not sorted! Customer service girl didn't think they would pay but I'm going to take complaint to Data Protection Commissioner if they don't show they're taking it seriously.
- some drug prices have been reduced in Ireland so I'm hopeful this might reduce the cost of my prescription; will find out tomorrow *crosses fingers*
- paid bin charges and they were a lot less than I budgeted for :j

Hope everyone's ok and frugalling along nicely.

lillibet_dripping

Morning peeps:j
I am struggling to keep up with the thread:o and haven't posted as much as I would have liked.
I am almost too embarrassed to reveal my January spending. I am waaaay over budget in some categories and was on the verge of giving up the challenge. HOWEVER..... keeping a spending diary/spreadsheet has been a real eye-opener. I have kept a very detailed groceries spreadsheet combined with a price book and am shocked at the amount I thought I 'needed'.

So, if nothing else, I am now aware of WHERE the money goes. All I have to do now is control HOW it goes:T.:T

I think I will look on this year as a 'training' year and track all the spending. Then next year I can start with a proper 'do-able' budget. I have stemmed the flow of finances out and will work now towards keeping it in:T
Thanks to all you lovely peeps who continue to inspire me....
Lilli

cw18

lillibet_dripping wrote: »

I am almost too embarrassed to reveal my January spending. I am waaaay over budget in some categories and was on the verge of giving up the challenge.

I'm glad you're not giving up, as this challenge is certainly an eye-opener......

As I said a couple of posts back, I was £230 over-budget at the end of January 2009 - though some of this was on my Road Tax and Car Breakdown cover, so knew from the start that these would be clawed back through the year. But even with these being paid again in January 2010 I'm only over-spent by £103 this year - and that's after some unplanned spends at the vet. The vet bills actually came to almost £130, so without those I'd have been under-budget by around £27 - even having paid the two annual bills - so that just shows what a difference 12 months can make :T

I think I will look on this year as a 'training' year and track all the spending. Then next year I can start with a proper 'do-able' budget.

And you'll probably be pretty accurate with your budget next year as a result, so a much better choice than giving up in my eyes :T

I have stemmed the flow of finances out and will work now towards keeping it in:T

And you'll probably find it gets easier to stem the flow even more as the year progresses

lillibet_dripping

cw18 wrote: »

I'm glad you're not giving up, as this challenge is certainly an eye-opener......

As I said a couple of posts back, I was £230 over-budget at the end of January 2009 - though some of this was on my Road Tax and Car Breakdown cover, so knew from the start that these would be clawed back through the year. But even with these being paid again in January 2010 I'm only over-spent by £103 this year - and that's after some unplanned spends at the vet. The vet bills actually came to almost £130, so without those I'd have been under-budget by around £27 - even having paid the two annual bills - so that just shows what a difference 12 months can make :T


And you'll probably be pretty accurate with your budget next year as a result, so a much better choice than giving up in my eyes :T


And you'll probably find it gets easier to stem the flow even more as the year progresses

cw - I LOVE YOU TO BITS:D