Floozie does Frugal 2010

moo2moo

Blagh. You've just reminded me the toy Land Rovers road tax is due on the first swiftly followed by an MOT and insurance in the middle of Feb. Must start harassing OHs friend for wonga to cover this and then start sourcing a muchly cheap quote with lots of cashback. Unfortunately this will be much more than last year as Ohs friend had to make a claim on his car thanks to some numpty doing a hit and run on it whilst parked outside his house a couple of months back. Might not have been on this car but they hike up the policy cost anyway.

Have until April before my car tax is due, suppose I'll need to start thinking about that although as March is a council tax free month that will cover it nicely. No chance of being sub 15K by Easter at this rate. It seems to be spend spend and then spend some more.

Intergalactic_Floozie

Intergalactic_Floozie wrote: »

(I have 15 adults to buy for, and about 7 kids not including my own).

Make that 8 kids. My brother rang me to let me know I am gonna be an Auntie for the first time!!!:beer::beer::beer:

Intergalactic_Floozie

This is Sunday's update done late...

Days to payday: 30 (BAH!!)
Money in bank : £416.17 + £107.91 (I want to try not touch this latter money)
Money in purse: £40.20
Grand Total: £456.37 + £107.91

Money spent since last update:.£52.19
£2.45 - 5 x rolls of Xmas wrapping paper (reduced)
£5.50 - groceries (Saturday night)
£44.24 - groceries (Sunday)


Grocery budget: £280.00 / £209.76 remaining
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £60.00 remaining
Everything else budget: £147.00 / £136.05 remaining

Intergalactic_Floozie

I've had to do a bit of budget tweaking since yesterday, I always get hideously confused after payday for some reason but I'm pretty sure this is correct!

Days to payday: 28
Money in bank : £340.21 + £107.91 (I want to try not touch this latter money)
Money in purse: £33.70
Grand Total: £374.21 + £107.91

Money spent since last update: £44.91
£1.50 - tea fund
£3.00 - given to my dad to buy some fruit from F&V Market.
£10.97 - present for my friend's daughter's 6th birthday
£2.00 - sent to DS2 school along with the termly begging letter for extras in class.
£17.95 - forgot to include this in my budget, it's my WW weekly pass so transferred back to bills account.
£9.49 - returned back to bills account as I took this much too much because my Virgin media bill doesn't arrive until today and I under budgeted AGAIN
£55.00 - had accidentally account for this twice when I shifted money over from the bills - boo hoo!!

Grocery budget: £280.00 / £206.76 remaining
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £60.00 remaining
Everything else budget: £147.00 / £107.45 remaining (UH-OH)

Frugalising:
1. Managed to get a Metro newspaper (perk to having to get an early bus)
2. Two books I had ordered from the library had arrived so I picked them up, and got the 'spending buzz' without actually spending!
3. Then my mum gave me two books when I got to her house that she'd finished with.
4. Had a reduced price lunch today, a tub of chicken & bacon pasta salad from Morrisons that was half price reduced to 65p
5. Re-did my budget and realised I don't have that much 'everyday money' left sooner rather than later.
6. Pretended I didn't read the begging letter that came home from DS2's school asking for parents contributions of £15 towards building funds. (Catholic Voluntary Aided school) although I do feel horribly guilty.
7. Did a 10p survey on One Poll. Balance is now £4.85
8. Am thinking of shopping about to see if anywhere is offering 0% BT for CC that I don't already have.

Not so frugal

1. Had to send DH to Asda to buy some bulbs as the ones I got yesterday were wrong. They were £3 per pack of 3 for £5 so he went for the fiver option.
2. Didn't make any use of the tea-fund at work.
3. Did my budgeting wrong in the first place! Now I'm short of money.
4. No new mystery shopping jobs posted.

One of my colleagues was saying that her mum had accidentally opened her CC statement and was horrified to see she owed £2500, so she's done her a budget so she can have it paid off in just a year at £200 per month. I wish I could afford to pay my CC off at £200 per month and still have £100 for holiday savings, £100 for 'emergencies', £50 for petrol and £250 left over for socialising! (although she didn't tell her mum about the £5000 she's got on a 0% card).

On the socialising front, another colleague is having a 30th birthday party on 27th Feb with a fancy dress theme - Animals! I have a zebra print coat I have never, ever worn (even though I love it) so I thought I would wear that and go as an, erm, zebra!!! But it's gonna cost me about £20 in taxis (if not more) plus drinks so I'll need to budget for that out of this wage and next. It will need to be a very, very frugal month for me

Intergalactic_Floozie

Days to payday: 27
Money in bank : £340.21 + £107.91
Money in purse: £30.70
Grand Total: £371.21 + £107.91

Money spent since last update: £3.00
£1.20 - hot chocolate
£1.80 - 2 scoops of ice-cream for DS1

Grocery budget: £280.00 / £206.76 remaining
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £60.00 remaining
Everything else budget: £147.00 / £104.45 remaining

Okay so I had a cheeky little spend in the ice-cream parlour next to the dentists after a visit to the dentist.....

One Poll - 2 surveys, 1 screened out of but one done for 10p, balance now is £4.95. Also did two prize draw vouchers but the only luck I have is bad luck and no luck so that'll probably be a waste of time.

Mystery shopping - nowt new.

Bad news for my mileage claim that I recently submitted as they've just brought a new rule that says you have to have business insurance if you travel to work anywhere other than your usual place of work! I'm not sure if that's standard practice elsewhere but it hasn't been standard for my work, so I'm really miffed if I don't have business insurance (which I am pretty sure I dont) or else I'm going to lose money every time they decided to send me on training courses or to meetings! Going on bus is an option but it takes 2 hrs to get back home, which is a pain in the butt.

moo2moo

Its really not as bad as it sounds.

your car insurance will either be :

third party (possibly with fire & theft cover)
or

Fully comp - this then sub divides into social, domestic, pleasure, commuting (single place of work), business 1(different sites), business 2 (business use but not door to door selling), business 3 (door to door selling including Avon reps and the like)

A standard fully comp policy will be s,d,p &c (abbreviated from above) adding the extension to business use at renewal time is simply clicking an extra box and paying a little more money for the insurance policy. Think it works out at around a fiver a year on OHs policy.

Intergalactic_Floozie

Oh and sods bloody law, I have to go scratting about in the only un-decluttered cupboard in the kitchen looking for my bloody car insurance documents.

maman

Do check this out IF because this isn't something your workplace has invented. I believe that if you go anywhere for work that isn't your usual place then you need this cover. I think it could be that if something happened if you were on your way to training then you might not be covered unless you had the sort of policy moo2moo describes.

Ring them!

Intergalactic_Floozie

Days to payday: 26
Money in bank : £330.21 + £107.91
Money in purse: £20.00
Grand Total: £350.21+ 107.91

Money spent since last update: £21.00
£5.40 - bus fare to training course. (reimbursable but not this pay period)
£5.00 - reimbused DH for lightbulbs.
£5.00 - reimbursed DH for petrol (he put £55 in last week, and I only gave him £50)
£1.50 - bottle of cherry coke and a chocolate bar
£3.85 - breakfast
£0.25 - unaccounted for.

Grocery budget: £280.00 / £206.76 remaining
Petrol Budget: £110.00 / £55.00 remaining
Everything else budget: £147.00 / £88.45 remaining

I was not very frugal today at all. I had to go on the world's most boring training course (yawn) at HQ in Wakefield. Due to the fiasco yesterday where they now wont pay mileage unless you have business insurance (still haven't checked) I refused to chuck any more money away so I went by bus. There were two buses that would get me there for the requisite 9am but I wasn't sure if my connecting bus would meet the bus from home, so I made a bargain with myself that if I did get the early bus (which would get me there an hour early) I would buy myself a breakfast at the canteen. Well, I did make the early bus so I had breakfast.

Training course was dull, dull dull, so at break time I went to the canteen and got myself a bottle of pop and a chocolate bar to treat myself for not falling asleep. Now I'm only left with £88

DH went to college last night and really wants to entrol so I said I would support him in this. He has to go tomorrow to enrol so that will be £65 (or thereabouts). Something tells me I am going to end this month with a VERY LARGE NUMBER IN RED! (although being a bit melodramatic, as having savings means I wont have to go overdrawn)

Gas bill came today (meter got read at the back end of last week) and at my last bill I was £38.33 in credit (29th October), and now I'm £59.24 in debit (14th January). They are very kindly keeping my DD at £110 per month. Total bill for 2.5 months inc VAT was £338.57 so much better than the nearly £500 I worked out. Cost of gas per KWH seems to have gone a minute fraction! Last month was 3.056 per unit, and this month's is 2.994 per unit!

One Poll - 2 surveys, screened out of one, but did the other for 5p. That's a nice, round £5 now (still a long time off til £40 pay out, but you never know I might make it for Xmas) and it's not like they're difficult to do is it?

DS2 has been invited to another sodding birthday party on Saturday morning so that's another sodding fiver I'll have to give the birthday boy - GRRRR

Got another book finished today but it's a library book, so it's not something that I can declutter from the house: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beautiful-Game-WAGs-Tale/dp/0755318269/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264000013&sr=8-1

And if anyone's interested about my decluttering, I haven't done any for a few days but I did get my pan & cutlery drawers sorted last week.

Mystery Shopping - getting worried now as Saturday's report has still not been processed are they reading over it and thinking I'm lying because it was such a bad shop so they wont pay me? No new shops either.

Frugal tea last night: Sausages, chips, beans and fried egg. I think this works out at £2.05 for the whole meal for four of us! Doing Fish Pie today.

Metro Newspaper frightened me to death yesterday by announcing because inflation has gone up, the interest rates will have to go home too = bigger mortgage payments.

Intergalactic_Floozie

Update: Have rang car insurance company - oh, amazingly it was in my new filing system and NOT the undecluttered cupboard!!! - anyway I AM covered for use in connection with my business blah blah blah so I will be SMUGLY brandishing that to the finance department tomorrow!

.....and now it dawns on me that I was subjected to hell on wheels (ie the bus) for over two hours today for nowt. GRRRRR

Also asked how many years no claims bonus we would lose because of DH's at-fault bump last year, and they said nothing because my no claims was protected (which I knew) but I didn't know if that meant just at renewal time with them, and they said no, they would send out a certificate to say that we had 5 years NCB.