Frugal Living Challenge 2011 - part 1

seriouslyfrugal

Hi EVERYONE


Welcome NatNat13 to the challenge :hello:

today for me should be a NSD - will update figures later


have a good frugal day everyone :)

Lesley_Gaye

l.m.hart wrote: »

i have put on my spreadsheet £400 for food shopping for january,£100 a week but jans along month , i would love to be way under this so i have more to just pay debts off,

cheryl, have just set up your spreadsheet (great tool, thanks) and put in all budgeted figures and anything spent so far

I noticed that some figs in col 'D' 'Spent' were coming up in red. It seemed to be when the fig is larger than the 1/12th amount in col 'C', the amount budgeted for the month. So where I have paid for an exercise class, it has all been paid in Jan, but is budgeted over the 12 months. This is fine, but the red figs were not consistent.

I experimented by entering numbers higher than the budgeted figure for all regular payments to see which ones were coming up red all the time. It was on some of the extra lines I had added, so I copied the cell above, to take all the formatting with it, and that solved it in the main. However, there is one cell left which obstinately refuses to show anything other than red. I am an experienced Excel user, but cannot for the life of me see how you have formatted the cell to show a black number if it is in budget, and red if over budget

can you enlighten me - it's a good feature and I'd like to be able to use it myself?

l.m.hart - I haven't read all the posts here yet, so not sure how many in your family, or if anyone has said this before. I have been using lots of recipes from the 'feed 4 for £100 a month' plan on this site - http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/ (set up by the lovely Weezl) and have kept track of food expenditure for the 2 of us from March last year, it came in at £2.27 pppd over the year from March to December. If you are a family of 4 and spent the same pp, that would be £281.48 for a 31 day month, giving you an extra £118.62 to use for bills

Lily_The_Legend

NualaBuala wrote: »

Mmmmm, another one of my favourites!
Glad your phone is still alive! :j

Thank you!

rubytuesday wrote: »

Very well thanks Lily! Not long til your trip! x

Nope, five weeks to go! :j

itsallinthemind wrote: »

Lily_the_ledgent[/B] Ssoooo glad your phone is working!
Re Pine Nuts, be CAREFUL. OOD Pine nuts are toxic and will make you VERY ill. I do believe they were the feature of a very poor Martin's blog that I unearthed on google recently whilst looking for something else!

What does OOD mean? I only have a small amount of toasted pine nuts sprinkled on top of the pasta, and I think it's in the bought pesto we have, but it's never made me ill. And believe me I'd know if it had, I have IBS and a very sensitive tummy! I looked up Martin's blog, he said they caused a funny taste in his mouth for a while afterwards.

I'm off to carry on reading back now!

never_too_old

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

cheryl, have just set up your spreadsheet (great tool, thanks) and put in all budgeted figures and anything spent so far

I noticed that some figs in col 'D' 'Spent' were coming up in red. It seemed to be when the fig is larger than the 1/12th amount in col 'C', the amount budgeted for the month. So where I have paid for an exercise class, it has all been paid in Jan, but is budgeted over the 12 months. This is fine, but the red figs were not consistent.

I experimented by entering numbers higher than the budgeted figure for all regular payments to see which ones were coming up red all the time. It was on some of the extra lines I had added, so I copied the cell above, to take all the formatting with it, and that solved it in the main. However, there is one cell left which obstinately refuses to show anything other than red. I am an experienced Excel user, but cannot for the life of me see how you have formatted the cell to show a black number if it is in budget, and red if over budget

can you enlighten me - it's a good feature and I'd like to be able to use it myself?

l.m.hart - I haven't read all the posts here yet, so not sure how many in your family, or if anyone has said this before. I have been using lots of recipes from the 'feed 4 for £100 a month' plan on this site - http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/ (set up by the lovely Weezl) and have kept track of food expenditure for the 2 of us from March last year, it came in at £2.27 pppd over the year from March to December. If you are a family of 4 and spent the same pp, that would be £281.48 for a 31 day month, giving you an extra £118.62 to use for bills

Thanks for that i will look at that site, 2 adults and 1 child (16) at home. hardest thing i find to plan is healthy lunchboxes without bread dd doesnt tend to eat sandwiches.:D

itsallinthemind

Out of Date. They go toxic and it can last for up to two weeks in your mouth

minnie2

lynzpower wrote: »

Morning minnie and everyone else :wave:

Minnie- it sounds like a nightmare. Could you suggest getting a lodger in your new house to bring money in? Maybe OH might not like the idea that your privacy and your new home is at risk here unless someone cuts back! Cars are so expensive, although I love driving there is no way I need one here in london luckily,nor could we afford it! I feel so sorry for anyone who HAS to drive
.

we use our spare bedrooms for my 2nd job but i have said about a lodger before but we re out in the sticks!! been keeping an eye on every peny and so far its all going on petrol so we shall see.im not as confident we can do it but hubby seems keen now.we like in the sticks and work at funny times to each other plus i need car for 2nd job no way round that. but its something to think about.

i am hoping hes getting the message now.ive been telling him for ages but he thinks giving me £20 will fix it!! he wouldnt even know how much one bill is if you asked him!

weve spent £74.95 on petrol so far alone this month and its only the 10th and hubby has to put more in tomorrow!!

Lily_The_Legend

itsallinthemind wrote: »

Out of Date. They go toxic and it can last for up to two weeks in your mouth

Ahhh, thank you, just couldn't work that out!

Hopefully the last lot weren't out of date then. I've been ok so far. I'm sure they're the sort of thing with a long life on, and it hasn't been long since we had pesto pasta before.

It's something I can't worry about now, if I think about it too much I'll get really anxious as I have a phobia of being sick.

never_too_old

minnie2 wrote: »

we use our spare bedrooms for my 2nd job but i have said about a lodger before but we re out in the sticks!! been keeping an eye on every peny and so far its all going on petrol so we shall see.im not as confident we can do it but hubby seems keen now.we like in the sticks and work at funny times to each other plus i need car for 2nd job no way round that. but its something to think about.

i am hoping hes getting the message now.ive been telling him for ages but he thinks giving me £20 will fix it!! he wouldnt even know how much one bill is if you asked him!

weve spent £74.95 on petrol so far alone this month and its only the 10th and hubby has to put more in tomorrow!!

between diesel for dh and petrol for me we have put in £105 so far this year. dd 's db has now passed his test and picks his car up this evening so fingers crossed i might not have to put quite as much petrol in:)

Lily_The_Legend

[QUOTE=elly68;40046682_lily_stovies_is_a_bit__like_corn_beef_hash_but_usually_made_with_square_sausage__and_an_onion_,_with_or_without_an_oxo_cube_however_oh_is_ceoliac_so_corn_beef_for_him_,_all_parts_of_scotland_use_varying_ingredients_.[/QUOTE]

Ah, thanks for the explanation!

cw18

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

can you enlighten me - it's a good feature and I'd like to be able to use it myself?

drop me a PM to remind to look at this (and send you [strike]de[/strike]instructions ASAP)
About to head back to work for afternoon part of my shift, and may be out tonight as my chap crashed his van this morning (so mother hen instincts want to check up on him, as he's feeling bad enough to head to hospital for a check-up after a meeting at work!)