Frugal Living 2011 - the preparation stage

cw18

we had about 3" of snow yesterday evening / last night, and I've just spent the last 2.5 hours shovelling enough off the drive to allow me to get the car out and back - only to discover cars are struggling with the entry road, and a few of us had to push several up !!!

Had already decided last night that taking the car to my one an only Christmas party (tonight) wasn't looking likely - and I've definitely decided it's a non-starter now. Don't rate my chances of anyone being around to give me a push at 1:15am tomorrow

So it looks like I could be Cinderell@ tonight - stuck at home while everyone else is out having fun Would walk to the do (less than 1.5 miles from home), but not keen on the idea of walking through town to get home on my own after 1am

knitwit67

The snow is coming down thick and fast here.

I have a budget to start but may review as I now know I have no idea how much I spend :eek: or how much I need to earn . Now my son is 18 and spending most of his time at his dad's it has been all change for me. This is going to be an interesting year and will put me on the right path for the future.

budget 2011 £5000

food etc £2600
car tax, mot,etc £ 600
petrol £1040
prezzies £ 500
optical £ 200
phone £ 300 (mine and DS)

It is more than £5000 but hoping to reduce some costs but will also have to add some not thought of. I will keep a spread sheet and see what happens. I am having money for clothes for christmas, and socialize mostly at home cooking for friends and going to theirs. Also we use tesco vouchers for meals out, films, m.o.t and RAC.

Any comments welcome

cw18

knitwit67 wrote: »

Any comments welcome

Categories not on your list that I have on my spreadsheet....

Insurances (buildings and/or contents)
TV Licence
Internet access / landline (unless these are included in the 'phone' category)
Council Tax (if you have to pay it and aren't excluding it from the budget)
Water (if you're not excluding it from the budget)

and Pet related expenses (if you have any)

I see you've included 'optical' as a specific, but nothing for 'dental' or prescriptions (I lump these into my anything else at the moment, although I don't have to pay until July anyway)

I assume your food etc includes toiletries and cleaning?

cake21

Hi all, also looking for a bit of budget advice please:

For holidays booked and paid for (frugally of course) in 2010, but to be taken in 2011; would people include the costs in 2010 or 2011?

I'm torn either way...which is silly because it's not a huge amount of money we're talking about here!

knitwit67

Hi cw18

DH pays for water, elec, tv etc . I did go through all bills and have reduced the costs by switching supplier, he now pays far less than when he lived here alone, so he is a happy man

We have 3 cats, I have grouped this with food. (anything I buy at the supermarket is included). I do need to get insurance for them so that will be added later.

I am lucky to be healthy so don't have medical cost. I have not been to the dentist since moving here . Once again I am lucky with healthy teeth but yes I do need to try and get into an NHS dentist for the future, not much hope I know but private dentistry is a business and they need to make profit I have little trust as they can always find work to do. Sorry any dentists , not personal but how do you know who to trust?

cw18

Had a letter from a pension scheme a couple of weeks ago, to say they're winding up the scheme and I have 3 choices.
The first is to transfer my 'pot' into a current scheme that accepts transfers, but I'm not currently an active member of a scheme.
The second is to move it to a personal pension scheme, but I don't especially trust them after a lot of stuff I've read in the last few years (and I only have 15 years until I'd want to start looking at taking it if I went for this option, so guess a lot of it would be swallowed up in charges as I can't afford to add anything else to it).
The third (and final) choice is to take a lump sum payment, of which 25% would be tax free and I'd have to pay tax on the remaining 75%

The third option is the one I'm planning to take, though I need to get in touch to make sure I understand the value of that lump sum properly (it seems a lot considering how little I paid into it as I was only a member for 18 months, during which time I didn't pay anything in for 6 months as I was on Incapacity Benefit and paid a much reduced rate for another 6 months as I was on half pay)

As such this gives me some additional flexibility with my budget for the next few years (even if it's less than it reads), so I've been back over my 2011 budget which I thought was a bit tight on some categories - especially the vets bill one, as I've had unexpected expenses there in both 2009 and 2010

I've also 'uncancelled' my monthly scrapbooking kit and included that as a separate category (craft kit), but have set the budget for that at a level that won't allow me to purchase (m)any optional add-ons or special offers. I've had to stab a guess at the cost though, as it's billed in $US. I've been back through my records for the last 12 months and totted up the £UK it actually cost me, then added on about 80p/month to allow for currency conversion fluctuations - but if we start to get back towards the £1=$1 rather than the £1=$1.50 it's averaged out at during 2010, then I'll have to consider cancelling again.

As a result of a few tweaks and the additional category, I've now increased my overall annual budget from £9K to £9.5K


In order to try and ensure the budget for each category is closer to actual spend than it has been for the last two years, I pulled together a comparison spreadsheet which looks like this.....



Where I've blocked out columns against a category, this means that particular category wasn't included for this challenge in that year or was included elsewhere - eg. garden spends came under 'Anything Else' in 2009, but had an excluded budget in 2010 which was funded by additional income.

My 2010 petrol spend is looking a lot higher than it did a couple of weeks ago, but I decided that I was going to include the fill-ups I'd previously charged to my excluded 'social life' budget as this will give me a clearer picture of how much I may need for 2011 (I now have further to travel to see GDs and they're just up the road from where my ex-OH lives so the mileage is about right, and I also need the car to get to some running club meets and almost all my races)

The red figures under my 2010 spends (column G) are the categories I'm still going to have to add additional spends against before year end, so the 'over/under/change' columns against those aren't yet accurate either.

The change column after 2010 (column J) is the difference in actual spend between 2009 and 2010, with a red negative figure indicating a decrease which is a good thing

The change column after 2011 (column O) is the difference between my 2011 budget and 2010 spends - and this one again isn't yet accurate where I'm still spending in 2010.


I've also analyised my 'Anything Else' spends for 2009 and 2010 to try and get a better estimate for 2011. These broke down as

Books, magazine & newspapers : 2009 - £141.82 : 2010 - £44.09
(good to see this one has come down, as I'd realised it was a problem area in 2009)

Car expenses : 2009 - £55.80 : 2010 - £3.99 (plus a repair charged to contingency)
(2009 included £55.09 for a new battery while the repair charged to contingency in 2010 was £30 - so these aren't as unbalanced as they look)

CDs : 2009 - £74.03 : 2010 - £30.55
(another area I'd identified as a problem in 2009, so good to see this one has come down too)

Clothes : 2009 - £47.27 : 2010 - £235.40 (plus some additional ones billed to excluded 'social life' and 'get fit' categories)
(huge costs in 2010, due to having lost a lot of weight in a short space of time. pretty certain it's going to be a big spend area again in 2011, which is one reason I've raised the budget for my 'anything else' category as much as I have - though I'll keep spends as low as I can manage to)

DVDs : 2009 - £42.65 : 2010 - £35.63 (plus a large spend 2 weeks ago which was covered by my sealed pot savings)
(my sealed pots were fed with my C00p dividends, any small change from every shop to round up to the next 10p value, the equivalent of any vouchers/gift cards I used against a spend, and any staff discount I received on spends. I deducted the value of these from the relevant categories - hence no odd pennies showing on my 2010 spreadsheet - which means the blow-out I recently had on DVDs has actually been funded by all the categories on my s/sheet, but been a totally guilt-free spend for me )

Entertainment : 2009 - £12 (blank DVDs and plastic sleeves for them) : 2010 - £61.94 (accessories for my iP0d)

Household (batteries, cookware, freezer bags, lightbulbs etc) : 2009 - £72.73 : 2010 - £405.29 (:eek:)
(The 2010 figure includes £75.71 on curtains, tracks and additional hooks to insulate my front and back doors, £17 on a replacement external security light, £73.50 on new - and much needed - bedding for one single and one double bed, £25.96 on tools to allow me to do some house repairs instead of calling in tradespeople, and almost £70 on pots and pans to enable the most efficient cooking now I'm home alone - ie. smaller pans and individual 'serving' dishes for batch cooking cottage pie / lasagne / enchilladas etc. Whilst this makes the figures look a little more balanced, it still appears this is the one additional area I'm going to have to monitor really closely throughout 2011 !!)

Medical (over the counter medicines) : 2009 - £12.53 : 2010 - £19.15

Travel (bus fares) : 2009 - £6.10 : 2010 - £8.70

In 2009 I also had £15.75 that would have come under groceries in 2010, £17.87 in garden costs that was an excluded budget in 2010 and £64.04 which would have come under 'work expenses' in 2010.

There are also a few other bits-n-bobs both years, but not the sort of thing I'm likely to buy regularly or of significant value.

knitwit67

WOW cw18 that is some spread sheet! I have a long way to go, back to budget with A4 pad

cw18

cake21 wrote: »

Hi all, also looking for a bit of budget advice please:

For holidays booked and paid for (frugally of course) in 2010, but to be taken in 2011; would people include the costs in 2010 or 2011?

I'm torn either way...which is silly because it's not a huge amount of money we're talking about here!

I'd include them in my 2010 spends, as they've been paid for from income in this year (hopefully). I've already booked my place on a few races for next year, but the entry fees have come out of my 2010 'get fit' fund (which was excluded from this challenge). Any 2012 races I book a place for during 2011 will be charged to my 2011 'get fit' category which is now included in the challenge.

cw18

What you do/don't include in your budget for this challenge is totally up to you as an individual.

The important thing that we should all be watching is that our total out-goings - those we exclude as well as those we include - is no more than our total income

This is why I've opted to include additional categories this year (garden, gym, weight loss website membership, general 'get fit' expenses and my craft kit), as during 2010 I funded them with additional income I'm no longer getting (or not getting as much of) such as CB, CTC, WTC, WPA and overtime.

Lily_The_Legend

:hello: Hi everyone! I need to read back still, but I'm here with my provisional budget for 2011. :j

I'm not including my mortgage or utility bills in the budget. I'm hoping by sticking to the amounts I've allocated it'll allow me to build up a contingency fund in case of redundancy, overpay on the mortgage and have some money for decorating as the place is looking a little tired!

DH is under threat of redundancy next year, so that's one of the reasons why I really should start sticking to a budget. Everything below will come out of my money, me and DH split the food shopping and petrol between us and buy presents for our own families. I realise that sounds a bit odd as we're married, but that's just what we do at the moment. One day, I'll get in control of his money too mwah ha ha! :cool::rotfl:

I haven't set aside any money for clothes, make-up or toiletries, because I may have enough to keep me going for the year! :eek: Also, in some categories, I've rounded up moneywise, so there may be a few pounds each month in contingency.

If I'm lucky enough to get any money or vouchers for Christmas or my birthday, it'll probably get spent on real treats. What I've been wanting to buy for ages is new towels. Exciting, eh? :rotfl:

So, here goes, with the amounts being per month and per year:

Food/ £120/£1,440
Cleaning

Petrol £100/£1,200

Phone £30/£360

Dentist £15/£180

Car upkeep £20/£240

Hair cuts/ £10/£120
Hair dye

Birthdays/ £40/£480
Christmas

Entertainment/ £50/£600
Treats

Medicines £5/£60

Glasses £10/£120

= £400 per month/£4,800 per year

I hope that makes sense! If I've missed something obvious, please tell me! :)

Lily x