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

phoebe03cat

Congratulations fishcake !!
Well inspired by you all, I'm going to have a go at growing too this year.(Food that is!) Don't have too much room, but will see how we go. Top_drawer:will be trying the lettuces in containers - unless someone tells me it won't work. Thanks. Put in a nice rhubarb crown over the weekend too. Will try the chard as recommended as its quick and we love it. DH going to do spring onions and beans and possibly peppers in the greenhouse. Well we all have to start somewhere am new to food growing so will progress slowly.
Had a smaller than usual shop in Costco this weekend thanks to this thread, but did some stockpiling of catfood which seems to be always on offer. Guess bulk buying will work out cheaper over time, but will have to monitor carefully and RESIST temptations - sooo hard in costco!
Spreadsheet up and running well now too, will start to fine tune it over the year.

taka

Awwwww... congratulations Fishcake and family!

Optimisticpair

I'm still here. :wave:

Sorry folks I've no time to read the latest. I hope you are all managing to be frugal and wise. Anyone really struggling come on, have a hug.:grouphug:

Spend today milk £3.30. Quite enough.

Planting potatoes, writing an academic paper, housework, updating budget for month. Oh and shaking fist. MIL got caught out by a "this is BT please give me your bank details" scammer the phone is in Mr Optimisticpair's name so why she gave her details I'll never know "but he knew my name and address and was so patient" Yeah! OH got her to go to her bank and stop her card.:mad: No damage done thank goodness!

Better get something out of the freezer next. Need to sow seeds indoors and transplant lettuce. The to do list gets longer the more I think of it!:(

grandma247

OP the trouble is they rely on people being off guard. Many of us are very trusting because that is how we were brought up. I have become very untrusting of people in the last ten or so years and question things a lot more now. I ask why people want to know if they ring and start asking questions. I nearly missed out on an energy saver extension lead because I was not prepared to tell a caller who said he was calling on behalf of British Gas what benefits we get.

Two plain clothes policemen called at my door a couple of weeks ago asking for some help with something as they saw we had cctv. one showed me his badge in a wallet thing.
I could not help them as I told them the camera was not switched on the night they asked about.
When they went I rang the local police because something about it bothered me. They sent out two policewomen and they asked if I had been shown the photo ID on the inside of the wallet but I had not and I told them I would not have known if it was a fake or not anyway. They stood and waited until they had confirmation that the men were indeed policemen. and they thanked me for being suspicious enough to question it as some things that were said by the men did not add up. It turned out to be for a reason I can't say here.
I am just glad they were real.
I have noticed they are around quite a bit in this area now. No idea what is going on.

rictus123

Hey everyone hows it going? Not been on in a few days and you could say iv been naughty! Budget for the month is done as spent every penny that il need to, £547.56 spent this month, mostly on my car, i have fairly treated myself though! And overtime at work does sort of make up for it! So total spent so far this year in the budget is £1,650.32 to date. £150.32 over what the average 3 months spends should be at £1500.

So far this year on budget spends, cost of buying my car, insurance, loan and credit card repayments iv spent a total of £3,099.78. Earning a total(from just my job) of £2,780.63. In the negitave by the looks of that. But iv paid off my ccs and since added £900 back onto them(0% ) And have £700 in a savings bond i cant touch until November, £200 in an Isa and £700 in my current account + about £60 cash in my wallet So doing well i think :T:T

Plans now are no more spends this month, maybe just some petrol for my car.
April and May im going to go for £850 spends(get me back on budget) and £3,210 earnings(means working at least 7.5 hour average every Saturday)

That will mean £2,360 difference :j Even if i gave myself £1210 for spends, still a £2,000 difference, will make a huge difference to me! Right now i have about £1,600 to my name, if thats £3,600 by the end of May il be on here posting alot of :j!

If i can save £1,000 in a month, dividing that by my current salary then timsing it by my new salary il get in July it means i can save upto £1296 after the summer :T Bring it on

Frugaldom

Good evening,

CONGRATULATIONS to Fishcake family

Apologies for not being around much but the longer days mean longer hours spent outdoors trying to prepare for growing some edibles. In the meantime, I haven#t been spending anything, so my signature is up to date. There's been a lot of LETS trading getting done, so I haven't even needed to buy any groceries recently.

Hoping to meet more frugalers tomorrow when they come to visit - weather permitting - and get to know them as my newest new neighbours to the area. Looking forward to that.

Made my third batch of washing up liquid today, so that'll see me through April, and just need to master the art of making frugal breakfast cereal bars now, so I have something handy to snack on at 6am when I'm starting on the outdoor jobs like seeing to chickens. Eggs in abundance here, if any of you lived close enough I'd be trading them left, right and centre!

Can I ask the silly question relating to CPN's - what are they? I'm guessing parking tickets of some sort from what I've read but £500? My last car didn't cost me that! Please pay ASAP if you can afford it, as something like this that's accumulating subsequent charges could cripple you financially if you suddenly lost your income. I don't even clear that amount in a month. :rotfl:

And I did notice the price of that bathroom - 3 x my annual house running budget would be £12,000 for a bathroom and a boiler? :eek: I've seen flats advertised for that and they have livingrooms, kitchens, walls, doors and windows for that amount. :rotfl:

New thread will begin on 1st April, if anyone's waiting for that to begin again or get on board with the challenge.

knithappens

Congrats Fishcake, she is absolutely beautiful x

phoebe03cat

Frugaldom: thanks for the directions to your blogsite. My goodness its certainly inspirational, will certainly be trying your clooty dumpling! Interested to hear you make washing up liquid and I think I read that you make washing 'gloop' for pence. I'm quite interested in trying this is there a link somewhere pls? Sorry to be a pain.........it's all the good ideas!
Another nsd today; inspired by frugaldoms dumplings will be trying a first shot at chicken soup tomorrow so will put some in it I think.

lynzpower

phoebe03cat wrote: »

Frugaldom: thanks for the directions to your blogsite. My goodness its certainly inspirational, will certainly be trying your clooty dumpling! Interested to hear you make washing up liquid and I think I read that you make washing 'gloop' for pence. I'm quite interested in trying this is there a link somewhere pls? Sorry to be a pain.........it's all the good ideas!
Another nsd today; inspired by frugaldoms dumplings will be trying a first shot at chicken soup tomorrow so will put some in it I think.

Phoebe if you go to the 1st page of the thread, there is a link to the Cleaning products resource.

The laundry gloop is super, I am a convert :A much quicker, easier and cheaper than the constant hunt-around for "the best deal" nothing can be cheaper than gloop, especially if you have soaps in the house sat around not being used.

BigMummaF

I am having a few computer-related problems at the moment, and have to be very careful with the wording of my posts or they are lost into the ether of time.

Please accept my Congratulations, Commiserations and other appropriate Salutations until normal service can be resumed!

Would anyone know if supermarkets are still offering vouchers to enable you to buy products on the offer price, if they are continually out of stock when you go in the store to buy them? Thank you.