Frugal Fresian's 2010 Adventures

MellyB_2

flying_fresian wrote: »

Morning all!

I have been quiet this week as work has been poo and I've been back and forth to Glasvegas so have been knackered by the time I have reached home! I haven't done my maths for April either as I wasn't feeling too well last night when I got home Better now though

I was a BAD FRESIAN and spent £93 yesterday on two dresses, a pair of leggins (never worn leggings in my life!) and a bling ring. I think I'm going to wear one of the dresses for my interview though so does that make it ok?

Better run - Maw and Paw Fresian are visiting this weekend and I need to go and get dressed and meet them really soon.

Happy Saturdays to all! :j

Hell yeah - it's classed as work clothes so they don't even count!!

Where did you get them from?

Happy Saturday!

mooomin

MellyB wrote: »

Hell yeah - it's classed as work clothes so they don't even count!!

Where did you get them from?

Happy Saturday!

I got them from Evans, which is always good as in the Evil High Street Shops I'm a size 18, but in Evans I'm a 16

MellyB_2

flying_fresian wrote: »

I got them from Evans, which is always good as in the Evil High Street Shops I'm a size 18, but in Evans I'm a 16

Ha - tell me about it! In most shops I'm a different size - I range from an 8 to a 14 for some reason?! Big Hips!

honeybear_2

Hi Ms Fresian :wave:

Just catching up on your diary & read one post as follows so was very worried about your cooking!

flying_fresian wrote: »

Mice taken out of the freezer as I'm planning on making shepherds pie tomorrow

:eek:

Clearly it said mince really :rotfl:

mooomin

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: Yes, was really meant to be mince not mice :eek:

Well, I have been a Bad Fresian and realised how much I have been spending of late. I have a plan though (Don't I always?!) I have paid a good chunk of this months rent money onto my credit card, and once I know what the final credit card bill is I'm going to take it out of my Pay Off The Loan fund and repay the whole blessed card. I think I'm going to have about £400 to pay off it, even with the £150 I paid off today

Still, what is done cannot be undone, so it's onwards and upwards. I'm off into town to buy a birthday present for a friend and also to buy some concert tickets - Florence and the Machine on Wednesday and I have managed to get some tickets from Gumtree. And I'm paying for them with the rent money that should be going to the Loan Account Still, better that than overdraft.

Full confessional post will be along later.

mooomin

mooomin

The previous post shows where I am currently standing year to date in my crazy £6,000 challenge. As you can see, I'm below budget up until the end of April, but there are some other things to be considered - I didn't include any of my clothes shopping in this budget on purpose, and have spent a wee bit on clothes recently. I also didn't include anything I spent out of my bonus or Mr Fresian's birthday (Over £200...)

So, what has gone well? At almost £80 under budget for the year, my groceries savings are keeping us out of the red, although I did go £11 over budget last month. I plan to amend this in May by doing a weekly shop in only two supermarkets - Morrisons and Aldi. They seem to be where I get the best prices for the things I need. My toiletries spending is slowly being reined in, but it will be a few months of low spending yet before I'm on track for my annual budget of £240.

I only noticed today that my union took the wrong amount of money from me, so I'm going to email them and ask for a refund of the additional £5.

Now the bad - my Anything Else is double what it should be, meaning that many things are mounting up. My two big expenses were the membership to Nutracheck and a boredom purchase of some books when my train was late (£17!!!) I need to really work on reducing the amount of tea and snacks I buy too. I suspect that I haven't noted everything down either...

From May, Frugal Fresian returns!! I'm going to be better than ever, new and improved! I need to pay down the money outstanding on the credit card, but keep the focus on the big picture of paying off the loan at the end of the year too. I have done some overtime this month already and have 7 hours of double time coming tomorrow as well. All the money I make from this will be a big PAD and there will be no extra treats for me unless I can squeeze the money from the budget.

I'm back

mooomin

Money

Purse - £22 I'm back on the Weekly Spend Challenge again, and this is to cover all non-grocery for this week, including one gig, one coffee after work with PointyPenguin and one night out on Friday. It's going to be tight!!

Spends/PAD - £95

Groceries - £170 as I've bought nothing this month yet. I may well be going to Aldi this afternoon though for cheap fruit

Entertainment - £30 and anything I spend on my night out will be transferred out of this account as a PAD

It's time to spend more of my time paying for things with cash and thinking about the value of money. Speaking of which, it's double time today so I had better get ready for work

Silaqui

Hey FF,

Congrats on the maths - I am going to admit that your spreadsheet is WAY more complicated than mine and I don't understand a word (number?) of it!

You seem like you are doing well to get back on track though, I had to do a similar thing last month as my spending was gradually creeping back up again. I think it's easy to get used to the extra cash that frugality brings and get back into bad spending habits.

I do my own version of the spending challenge where I try not to get any money out during the week, I have to last on whatever is left in my purse after the weekend! It's shouldn't be too difficult this week as I've got £15 and nothing really to do, I'll try and make my pads out of that too though.

Well done anyway, this has turned into a right ramble!

xx

mooomin

Silaqui wrote: »

Hey FF,

Congrats on the maths - I am going to admit that your spreadsheet is WAY more complicated than mine and I don't understand a word (number?) of it!

Right, here's how it works:

Column 1 - annual budget for the category, so using the Council Tax the budget is £1280 for the year
Column 2 - year to date budget. The spreadsheet works out what month it is and divided the annual budget by that amount.
Column 3 - Amount spent so far. I'm vastly under budget for Council Tax as I had the two free months. I have set it so that if column 3 is more than the month to date column it turns red!
Column 4 - shows the remaining budget for the year

I did not pull the spreadsheet together, it came from someone on the Frugal Challenge board. I do like it though and as long as I remember to update my spends it works well. The groceries section is awesome though as I can figure out how much I have saved from whoopsie purchases - I'm changing it this month to include the amount saved through BOGOF/2 for Blah offers. I think this will be a fair amount, especially for cat food etc.

Right, have figures to input then an evening of prepping for my job interview tomorrow. Woo!