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

lynzpower

Skint_Lynne wrote: »

Michelle and rozee,

I find that the best place for milk is farmf00ds. It used to be £1.00 for a 4 litre jug. Now, I have noticed that if you buy 2 jugs, you get them for £1.50, or 75p each.

This makes it just under 19p per litre. It is £1.50 for 2 hovis loaves from there. I'm not a fan of frozen foods, but I go there when DH is home for the milk, bread and lucozade for him on hangover days.:D

Hope this is useful.

I'm feeling a bit rough tonight, so am in my bed relaxing, will likely have an early night. xx

Lynzpower has also noticed good farmf00d milk prices - we posted at the same time. xx

when I popped in today, it was 2 hovis loaves for £1 !

There was only wholemeal and white though, no granary. But still!

We bought a value loafd the other day to use for toastie maker - it was dire. that was prob 49p!

mooomin

Evening all!

I'm typing this from my laptop, I'm in bed to keep warm even though the heating is on I must be getting soft! I'm going to turn the heating off in an hour though.

I have had a reasonably frugal day today - made HM chilli in the slow cooker and have fed myself and Mr Fresian with this, got three dinners for two in the freezer and have enough to take to work for my lunch tomorrow. So nine portions from about 400g of mince, is that good???

Spends today have been £1.60 on a Get Well Card for my uncle (Getting his leg amputated this week - eek) and £5.07 in Morrisons for which I got milk, bread, a bag of apples, eggs and two mini quiches for my lunch. Hurrah for whoopsies! So far this month I have spent £4.25 on whoopsies which were actually worth £14.34

I'm going to be overspent for Entertainment this month. I bought a concert ticket for £14.75 (Budget is £30 per month) and have a work night out on Friday, meeting a friend for dinner on Wednesday then have another work night out at the end of the month. Bah. I might just make the Wednesday night a quick drink after work instead.....otherwise I can see this category spiralling out of control quite quickly :rotfl:

Yesterday was my 14th NSD of 2010, which is pretty good for me as I am only including days where the only money spent is by direct debit not in supermarkets etc. I'm aiming to hit 120 over the year.

Hope everyone else is having a lovely day - hurrah for Wednesday being the Hump Of The Week!

astightascanbe

1. yes you can freeze full fat semi skimmed milk etc. when it freezes it turns a yellow colour this is when the fat content seperates. all you have to do is make sure you let it thaw out completely then give it a good shake and it tastes just as before try it for yourself.

cw18

lynzpower wrote: »

We bought a value loafd the other day to use for toastie maker - it was dire. that was prob 49p!

We used the value bread for years. The only thing DH and I weren't so keen on it for was sandwiches (though the kids were happy, so we 'suffered'), but it was fine for toast, cheese/egg/beans on toast, and toasted sandwiches.

But I discovered an alternative last year - and DS asked why we were suddenly on 'expensive' bread when I was cutting back wherever possible...... A!di do a 'cheap' white (normally within a penny or two of the value from Mr T), but it's sooooo much nicer. The only problem is it gets eaten much quicker

Haven't actually bought one of those in ages though. DS pretty much stopped eating toast/sandwiches 6 months ago, so I'm working my way through the range we do at Mr M - but what I buy to try depends on what's left in Whoopsies when the final reduction (to 19p) gets done

Skint_Lynne

It must have went down in price again for the bread there lynz, it does have fantastic prices. I love going in there for a mooch around. I make tablet and sometimes, they have condensed milk for very cheap prices.

Sometimes you get money off vouchers in the paper or throught the post for ff'ds, but I usually give them to my mum as I don't spend enough.

cha97michelle

Thanks for all the tips on milk. All helps. I did know that milk freezes and did do this with some before we went away at christmas. On a day to day basis though i try to keep my freezer full. If i go in now there are lots of portions of mince/chicken thighs/salmon fillets as well as cabbage from the garden in the summer, a bag of onion, lots of ready meals.

I just did a quick search and found a farmfoods at a shopping centre the other side of town to us, but we do go there for shopping needs. We went once in January. I think i will be popping in there next time we are in the area. Other than that, i will costco where i can, and perhaps try to use up som of the stuff in the freezer to keep at least one spare blue for the kids.

I tried to cut down their milk this evening and gave them one cup 3/4 full, but both then asked for more. I tried to ignore their request. But they ask so politely. Mummy i'd like more milk please. At least it was 1.5 cups each rather than 2.

I don't mind using the skimmed milk powder. I think DH might use this too. I will look at making small reductions where i can. I've been drinking boiled water myself today instead of some of the gallons of tea i have been drinking. I used to do this all the time and it is probably a lot healthier for me.

Spends today have been on a loaf of bread, and DH ordered some parts from ebay to repair our bike trailer for the kids before we go away next week. It is the brake cable bit so we can use it as a buggy as well as being towed on the bike, so pretty essential unless we want to try and squeeze in the double buggy as well. It works out ok as we will squeeze more food in the car rather than paying inflated parc supermarket prices.

It's snowed here today, and settled. I'll have to venture out in it tomorrow as i have some overdue library books. I want to take the boys to the surestart group at the library tomorrow afternoon (£1 for crafts and a story, with a free book each.) I also want to pop and see my sister as she had 2 teeth out today (one of them was a wisdom tooth) so i want to make sure she is ok.

liloandstitch

Hi everyone, I have been reading rather than posting, as I dont have much to say at the moment - budget is ticking along quite nicely, and I am meeting my aims so all is well at the moment.

I just wanted to add some information about milk - neither of the cheaper options listed are available to me - too far away (and Ive never heard of farm foods) but a shop that is on most high streets - Iceland, sell milk of all types at £1 for 4 pints, which I think is pretty good. Thought I would add it as most people can get to one of these. Hope this helps someone!

Lilo

SavvyStudent_2

Evening all! Glad to see people are doing so well , hugs to those who need them

Stressful day today at work so I'm happy to be home and sat in front of the fire with the laptop and a cuppa lol. Not a particularly frugal day, I left my pack lunch in OHs car so had to buy food at work! I would seem OH ate both packed lunches so I can't even take it tomorrow lol :mad: Also bought a few bits & pieces in MrS on the way to the bus home and we made HM 'chinese takeaway' lol.

2x cheques recieved today from work totalling £155 so that'll go into savings when I get a chance :j

Hope everyone is well! xx

rozeepozee

Feeling smug as I've sorted out loads of admin today - applied for Maternity Allowance and HiP grant - I'm not going to fail to claim for what I'm entitled to like I did with my last pregnancy because I was too busy chasing my tail pre and post pregnancy!

Also reorganized my savings to get the best rates but now need to sort out ISAs.

grannynise wrote: »

I've just reviewed my planned versus actual spends for January (thanks to Cheryl's lovely wonderful amazing spreadsheet). It was all guess work when planning it as I'd never done a home budget before and some of my estimates are astonishingly wrong - some too much and some too little.

:o:o:o:o:o:o

I can see that it's going to take me the whole year to get it right. But I'm using all the wonderful ideas from you clever people so eventually I can reduce spending as well as monitor it.

I've just reviewed and updated my totals page and I will do a proper revise when I reach the quarterly stage. I'm mainly overestimating groceries and underestimating petrol,

Skint_Lynne wrote: »

Michelle and rozee,

I find that the best place for milk is farmf00ds. It used to be £1.00 for a 4 pint jug. Now, I have noticed that if you buy 2 jugs, you get them for £1.50, or 75p each.

This makes it just under 19p per pint. It is £1.50 for 2 hovis loaves from there. I'm not a fan of frozen foods, but I go there when DH is home for the milk, bread and lucozade for him on hangover days.:D

Hope this is useful.
Lynzpower has also noticed good farmf00d milk prices - we posted at the same time. xx

WOW! Very. Thanks *off to google where local Farmfoods is located*

Frugaldom

NualaBuala wrote: »

...Nyk, do I remember you saying you are saving to buy a house without a mortgage? Might be getting you mixed up with somebody else.

That would be me! It's my masterplan. I have another thread running on MSE for it. Savings were put on hold back in June 2008 to pay for DD's engagement part, then move house, then save for DD's wedding, which was in September 2009. 2010 sees me back on the savings bandwagon.

I had to share this with you guys - I just love the sound of it! I found it while searching my library's online catalogue for books on frugal living. It's the title of a pamphlet published in 1788.

"The economist, shewing, in a variety of estimates, from fourscore pounds a year to upwards of 800l. how confortably and genteely a family may live with frugality for a little money together with the cheapest method of keeping horses and carriages, by a gentleman of experience"

Would love to read it, anything that involves keeping horses within budgets is OK by me! :rotfl: I've been there and I've done that, it was a fun challenge and one that I'll never forget. (I challenged myself to get a horse onto the racetrack.)

flying_fresian wrote: »

... Yesterday was my 14th NSD of 2010, which is pretty good for me as I am only including days where the only money spent is by direct debit not in supermarkets etc. I'm aiming to hit 120 over the year.

I don't subscribe to any the 'No Spend Day' challenge threads, mainly because it's easier for me to count spend days than NSD. But I decided to post my January ones, anyway. I had 11 days with spends in January, so that gives me 20 NSDs. 5 of the spend days could have been avoided if I had topped the electricity meter up at the start of the month, but I really didn't expect to get through over £200 worth of 'leccie' in one month. :eek:

For the benefit of anyone who is skim reading or has just joined our challenge for the first time, I've been doing financial challenges for what seems to have been a very, very long time. I am a true believer in making life work for you, even when the chips are down. You just need to be in control of every penny and accept that life, itself, is outside of your control no matter how hard you try.