FRUGAL LIVING CHALLENGE part 3, July - Dec 2010

NualaBuala

Great to hear from you guys!

Candygirl, your love life sounds so exciting! Hope you're happy and being treated well. I know the feeling of trying to pay your way with non-frugal folk. It does Very Bad Things to one's budget! But at least you had fun by the sounds of it. Best of luck getting back into the frugal groove.

Hope your twins are ok rozeepozee, you must be worn out after being camped out in the hospital. Hope your can take good care of yourself.

Enjoy your break knithappens. Sounds like you've got the whole frugal living thing sorted. You're great doing the running - it's something I'd love to get back into when I'm well enough, have been thinking about it since Cheryl mentioned she's doing it. Well not running but a jog that's nearly slower than a walk in my case!

Have been trying to declutter a bit here today. Didn't get much done and it's neverending. I used to love getting stuff but now it I see it as a burden and just want rid. I'm getting there though.

Some frugal pleasures from today:

• beautiful wildflowers (aka weeds) from the garden brightening up the sitting room
• returning something unnecessary to the shops
• free parking at the shops cos we remembered to get the ticket validated
• a cheap but delicious dinner
• decluttering a little more
• knitting a little more of my teacosy
• free entertainment in the form of podcasts on my mobile phone
• a chat with my sister over a cuppa
• a beautiful sunny day with a cooling breeze
• having a good old read of MSE :money:.
• a refreshing jug of water with mint from the garden in it

Hope everyone has a lovely evening and hugs to anyone who'd like one.

cw18

NualaBuala wrote: »

You're great doing the running - it's something I'd love to get back into when I'm well enough, have been thinking about it since Cheryl mentioned she's doing it. Well not running but a jog that's nearly slower than a walk in my case!

I'm ten weeks in now, and have been a member of the local running club for the past 16 days.

Depending on the route (I prefer off-road with numerous gentle - and not so gentle - hills) I can now do 4.5 miles without stopping. On a flat road (which I tried on Sunday, as it's the course for a 5 mile race in October) I can only manage 3.5 miles !!

On either surface I'm managing to pretty much maintain a speed of 7 mins per km / 10 mins per mile, which I'm pretty happy with. On a shorter run (2km / 1.25 miles) I can almost hold up a rate of 6 mins/km





Had to dip into my contingency fund for the first time today

Car was booked in for service (over-budgetted by £2.70) and MOT (over-budgetted by £3), but also needed new plug leads which cost £30 (apparently the old ones were that badly corroded they disintegrated when the chap tried to take them off!) and I didn't/don't have a budget for car repairs.

I could have charged it to my 'anything else' (like I did the battery last year), but reckon that by putting it against my contingency I'm more likely to take it into consideration when setting budgets for 2011

NualaBuala

That's really impressive Cheryl! :T:T:T
What were you like at the start? I'm guessing you must have been fairly fit by the sounds of it. I have 2 good quality pairs of running shoes and I would love to give it a go again. But these days I struggle to walk distances that were no bother to me in the past and I end up in bits for days afterwards. I think I'll wait till I've seen the consultant re possible M.E. before I even attempt the jogging. It's such a great feeling though and I miss it.

cw18

Fit? Me? :rotfl:

I was told by people that I walked "pretty fast", but other than that I was a 'no exercise and heading for seriously overweight" person (weight wasn't yet obese, but was a major problem with my back issues). Since starting running I've lost 0.5lb/week for the first 8 weeks, 3.75lb in week 9 (far too much for one week, so I increased food intake last week), and put on 0.25lb in week 10 - giving me a nett weight loss to date of 7.5lb

I have two pairs of proper running shoes as well (both a big name in the running world even though I'd never heard of them before, but purchased from a sports eqpt discount store) - one for off-road, and one for road/track work.

I'm now keeping the cost of all this 'fitness stuff' outside my £8k challenge budget, as when I did calculations to work out what I could afford to increase my annual budget to (in order to include a 'fitness' category without using my contingency fund if possible), I discovered that my Tax Credits weren't in use for anything - which explained how I'd managed to end up with some cash in my savings account

So I now use my basic salary, CB and Widow pensions (WPA from state and private one from company scheme) for this challenge

Any overtime covers my 'social life' fund (all documented, but not declared)

And Tax Credits (which stops at the end of next month) has been put to one side for fitness. At the moment it's paid for shoes, a couple of tops, a couple of pairs of trousers and few other small bits of kit, as well as the running club fee (£20/year).

I also went to look around a gym this morning, and have enough left in my savings account to cover the membership as an annual up-front payment (which works out at £27.08/month instead of £40 for paying monthly). The local free swimming looks set to end on 30th Sept, so that would then cost me £3.25 (plus 20p for a locker token) each visit - and I can only get to one lane swimming session a week, which clashes with a running club session I'd like to get to. But there's a 'lane only and no under 15s' pool at the gym that's included, and it's open all day/evening, so this offsets some of the membership fee as I've been swimming once a week for the last 3 weeks. Then there's loads of classes (step, aerobics, spin, yoga, pilates, etc) which are included but would cost me £3.90 per class at the local council leisure centre (the other main reason I want to join), as well as use of the actual machines whenever I wanted.

It's actually working out to be the cheapest gym in the area of those with a pool, and isn't far off the cost of many of those that don't - plus it has the advantage of being able to use any of their gyms rather than being tied to one location, and it turns out that it's the chain my OH also belongs to (so we could go together if we wanted - though the latest plan is to start a Sunday morning run together as I'm now capable of doing his normal distance in the same time as him )

NualaBuala

Cheryl you're turning into a fitness guru! Good on you! It's very inspiring to hear that you've come so far since starting ... and you seem be finding it addictive (in a good way). Congrats on finding such a healthy hobby - worth every penny.

cw18

7 years ago I was going to a (very basic) workplace gym before clocking in every day - used to do about 3km on the treadmill, plus some bike work or rowing and some light weights work every day. I lost a lot of weight back then (most of which has since gone back on), but I - fortunately - still have all the smaller sized clothes I bought back then. I'm already getting into a lot of things one size down (actually need new/smaller trousers for work as I'm starting to be in danger of 'losing' the ones I bought last November), and own quite a lot the next size down as well.... so at least that's going to save a major hammering on my 'anything else' category for new clothes as I shrink :rotfl:

Not long since had an email come in from the gym (was registered for offers on the website) with a short-dated on-line only subscription offer. Another £30 off, but renewal is 1st July 2011 rather than a year today (which I'd assumed the normal would be, but didn't ask). Brings the equivalent monthly cost down by another 26.5p - so I've gone for it as a saving is a saving :T

Means my 'annual' fee is exactly the same as OH would pay if he were renewing today, and if I go for just one class and one swimming session a week (at different times, so I have to allow for cost of petrol instead of walking to swimming) I've saved money by the end of next June compared to using the council facilities And the gym's actually closer than the Leisure Centre that runs the classes, so I'll save pennies on petrol there as well. But if I do both on the same visit - or either more than once a week - then I'm really quids in

knithappens

Cheryl I am a bit slower than you , I run with little one in a Jogging buggy, and I average between a 11 min and 12 min mile, I am doigngthe Couch to 5K running programme, I went from not being able to run for 60 seconds without feelignliek i was going to pass out 9 weeks ago to being able to run 30 mins straight. If anyone is interested info is here http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml, and I also downloaded these podcasts http://www.ullreys.com/robert/Podcasts/page6/page6.html which made it so much easier to do, as I could put them on my Mp3 and i was told when to run and when to walk. More info and podcasts here for ipod etc http://www.c25k.com/

hope this is of use to someone

cw18

I used the Week 1 podcast for my first 2 weeks (was a real struggle watching that I didn't knock my back out), but wasn't that keen on the music on them. My intention was to try and locate/play with the version that's supposed to be available with just the signals for starting and stopping running (which you can overlay on your own music), but while I was thinking about doing that I just started going out using landmarks for distances (based around the running times the podcasts would allow) and my own music - and I've never gone back to using the Podcasts

slowlyfading

Thanks for posting all the info on running I am really keen to start once I've moved, but honestly, I have no idea where to start I don't even know if I have the right shoes? Plus, I'm unfit so I'm worried about looking stupid...

cw18

I used very basic 'casual wear' trainers for the first few weeks, and they were good enough to get a taste for running - and to see if my back would hold up to it.

But I noticed a huge difference once I had official off-road running shoes (the first pair I got, as I didn't start road running until I joined the local club), so a proper (and properly fitted) pair are definitely a worthwhile investment. Running shoes have all kinds of 'suspension' built into them, which means you're less likely to damage any muscles/ligaments etc.