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

JayJay14

Well my supprise from the bank this morning was a DD for OH's Associate fees - and annual thing which he swears he told me about last month, but as I would have written it down in my nice new filofax I think he is the one with memory problems.

Just found out he has 2 x old XDA phones so will sell them - should raise nearly £40.

grandma247

rozeepozee I have no idea because our boiler has no numbers just dots at 6,9,12 and 3 like a clock. 6 is lowest and working clockwise it gets higher. at night I have it at the 7 position or a little higher if it get really really cold. and I turn it anywhere up to the 9 position in the day depending on how cold I feel. In the living/dining room which is the biggest and coldest room we have a tiny electric tube heater in the bay window to prevent mould but it is only 120 watts.
We also have a backup electric heater with a dial to turn it up from frost prevention right up to max of 2kw which again we use if really cold during the day because we are mostly in that room.We do have a gas fire in there but it costs more because it is not as adjustable as the electric heater and our gas did not go down in price as much the electric did.

chika

Oh wow, I woke up to a winter wonderland here in Manchester. This snow looks amazing but all the St4gecoach buses are cancelled and there is no way I'm risking my ncb by taking the car out.

Frugal activities this morning = baking more bread. I was sure the two loaves I made on sunday would last the week but I've eaten them all already - in fairness they are small loaf tins... I might experiment with making a wholemeal type bread with seeds, I have sunflower and flax seeds that need to be used up. I don't think I'll be tempted to eat that as fast as the white bread too.

On to the subject of eating. I need to go on a diet - I was tempted to do one of the quick fixes like C4mbridge but the cost is so high and I really can't stand those milkshakes. I'm going to check out some frugal weight loss reciepes and figure out a diet that I can fit into my budget this morning. I'm not just being vain - I'm currently plus sized with a stupid amount of weight to loose. Therefore I can only buy clothes that fit from a handful of shops. If I manage to get to a "regular" size then I'l be able to save money by being able to shop in primarni or even pick up cheap bits and pieces in the charity shops. Wish me luck :-)

Edited to add, thanks for your advice on feeding guests. I had a lovely suprise last night when he popped back in on his way up the road with a bottle of my fave wine (I adore this but its £9 so way over budget) and some belgian chocolate cheesecake (so much for the diet!) Good deeds do pay off

knithappens

chika wrote: »

Oh wow, I woke up to a winter wonderland here in Manchester. This snow looks amazing but all the St4gecoach buses are cancelled and there is no way I'm risking my ncb by taking the car out.

Frugal activities this morning = baking more bread. I was sure the two loaves I made on sunday would last the week but I've eaten them all already - in fairness they are small loaf tins... I might experiment with making a wholemeal type bread with seeds, I have sunflower and flax seeds that need to be used up. I don't think I'll be tempted to eat that as fast as the white bread too.

On to the subject of eating. I need to go on a diet - I was tempted to do one of the quick fixes like C4mbridge but the cost is so high and I really can't stand those milkshakes. I'm going to check out some frugal weight loss reciepes and figure out a diet that I can fit into my budget this morning. I'm not just being vain - I'm currently plus sized with a stupid amount of weight to loose. Therefore I can only buy clothes that fit from a handful of shops. If I manage to get to a "regular" size then I'l be able to save money by being able to shop in primarni or even pick up cheap bits and pieces in the charity shops. Wish me luck :-)

Edited to add, thanks for your advice on feeding guests. I had a lovely suprise last night when he popped back in on his way up the road with a bottle of my fave wine (I adore this but its £9 so way over budget) and some belgian chocolate cheesecake (so much for the diet!) Good deeds do pay off

yes manchester is like a winter wonderland today, beautiful rom my window, not going out in it though.

I need to loose all my baby weight, but have started to since looking at portion size, so no fad diets, and real meal planning with snacking on fruit in between.

Kiwisaver_2

At this rate I'll never keep up with this thread. :eek: I'm slightly envious of all the talk of cold and snow, wish I could visit just for a day to see it.

My first day back at work so I did a very small shop tonight, just popped into one of my non-regular supermarkets as I was passing, to see if they had any good offers and came away with 6 tins of baked beans, a pack of whoopsied stir fry beef and 1kg of castor sugar.

Leftover quiche for lunch, so nothing too frivolous going on here and shamed by you all into doing a bit of tidying around the house this evening. Checked the bank and no DDs paid out just yet.

Cw18 Loving the spreadsheet thank you and I'm going to have a go at keeping itemised grocery spends for a couple of months (at least) to get a better handle on prices. Also glad to hear you didn’t get the worst prognosis for your wee doggie and hope the pills do the trick for him.

jtb2412 well done on handing in your notice, must be a great feeling and I wish it were me, your plans sound very exciting. Makes me wish I could justify being a SAHM to my fur babies.

shaz_mum Your quiche looks amazing compared to my piddly little one.

FrankieM

Morning,
We have no snow here...I have a theory that cause I'm australian it never snows where ever I live!!

All the children are back today so I'm going to do a general tidy and get some washing done.
I'm doing the pie for tea tonight and have got loads of leftover veg out of the freezer to put in it too.

I was hoping for a no spend day but I have noticed that Alsi are doing peppers and swede on their super 6 so I think I'm going to pop out and see if there are any left in my local.
I also have a game to send off that I sold on Amazon.Once I've paid postage and fees I'm going to use that to offset a b'day present I bought on the weekend. Just to need to sell a few more now for the rest of the year!

Apart from that it's a quiet day for me. Hope you all have a good day.

homegrown_life

lots of snow here, we hardly ever get that much snow where I live but have had loads this winter :T

Have updated my sig after shopping last night. Did quite well with whoopsies. I wanted a join of meat I could cook and use for sandwiches so was thinking about some gammon (even though I've never cooked it before!), but then for the same price I managed to get a whoopsied Taste the difference beef joint that serves 8-9 people! Should have been £15 something and I got it for £3.99. It's in the slow cooker just now, hoping it will come out ok. Means we can have a roast beef dinner on Sunday as well probably, plus have enough meat for a stir fry on Thursday too as well as sandwich meat. Well that's the plan anyway!

Rozeepozeee - think you said you were in Sheffield? Approved foods are nearby in Worksop an apparantly you can pick up your order so might be an idea. I haven't managed to try it yet, but one day!

Ok need to do lots of washing up and find my phone charger... and then maybe build a snowman... hoping today might be a NSD as don't want to go out in this.

Hope everyone has frugal days!

glendam

I live half way between Manchester and Liverpool and in the 26 years I have lived here I have never seen this much snow. I always say weather like everything else by passes this town.

I have been out taking pictures but will now stay in and keep warm.

Love this thread I actually managed to save £3.500 last year because of you lovely people. Not set a budget but will try and keep spending diary past May as last year. But I now query every purchase that isnt food and thats really good.

Glenda

LilacPixie

Frankie - swap ya. I haven't been able to see the roads or pavements for snow since the weekend BEFORE Christmas. Forcasting another 4 inches in the next day or so too. Might get another NSD as i simply refuse to drive if I don't need too and I don't need to go out if I am working from home.

Plans today are bake another loaf of bread, find out what uses power, at night we seem to be using around 0.34kwh with only the fridge freezer,central heating timer, alarm clock and baby monitor actually switched on. Seems a little high to me. Now with the same still on plus tv/sky box and a load in machine we are at 0.61kwh.

Also wanting to look at what to plant out come april, need to decide on seeds vs little plants for value for money and time then star aquiring the nessesary containers.

lyndasharp

There's only a tiny bit of snow here, mostly just ice. Be careful if anyone is going out in the proper snowy areas - and the icy ones too! I'm supposed to be driving to Telford on Friday, hoping for an improvement in the weather by then but somehow I doubt it.

It took me 20 minutes to pump up my bike tyre this morning as the valve seems to be crooked, and every time I took the pump off it caught the valve and let all the air out again. I was about to give up and take the bus, had one last attempt and finally managed to get it at the right angle. If I can't get that sorted out then I guess it's a new tyre / inner tube, though in reality it could probably do with those anyway!

It's going to be expensive today as I'm off to the bank to pay the invoice for the wedding. They invoiced early to avoid the VAT increase, and I got a nice surprise as it's £2 plus VAT less per head than I was expecting. We're paying for the people who have replied - there's likely to be another 20 or so to pay for, plus a bit more wine, but at least that will be the majority paid at the cheaper VAT rate.