Frugal Living Challenge 2011 - part 1

redglass_2

Thanks, Cheryl, I could use all of your suggestions and they are along the lines of the sort of thing I do at the moment (when disciplined) except that I eat more vegetarian stuff. Perhaps the solution is to incorporate more of Weezl's super-economical recipes but not try to follow the entire plan, since it doesn't really fit a household where there aren't 4 hungry bods to feed, only one. I find that if you live alone it's often a question of adapting and altering the usual model to get something that works for you, but when you do find the right solution it's very satisfying. I'm still open to suggestions from frugalistas...

And that word reminds me, since it always sounds female to my ears: are we all female frugalistas this year? I get that impression from the posts so far, but we have had a few gentlemen in the past.

Mogan6, here you go. This is the first time I've inserted a link - what a wuss :rotfl::rotfl:You learn something every day
http://http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/index.html?opt=rcost

wornoutmumoftwo

Having sat here for two hours, I have now got all my receipts entered in the spreadsheet so bang up to date.

In January I spent the grand total of 1446.94 which includes the hoover I had to buy, £100 deposit on our holiday and the full years tv licence.
Spent a whopping £346 on food (and the anything else is higher so will work on that area). I still have a full freezer and storecupboard so expecting it to balance itself out.

Going to update my sig now.

Laushappy

Well so much for NSD Popped into my local O*e st*p on the way back from picking up my eldest from pre-school and spent £3.26 this included a l*to scratch card (i havent bought one of these in years, so not quite sure why i did today) anyhow worked out ok as it cost me £1.00 and i won £2.00, not alot but still quids in :rotfl:

I still need to work out a proper budget for each month, at the moment i am just being very frugal with what i buy/spend and it is paying off, but i know i need to work on a more detailed budget.

Today i put another £50 into my savings pot and £1.00 into my sealed pot (only put pound coins into this, with quite a few in there already :T). Does putting money into savings count as a spend???

Next thing on my spend list is to book my car in for a service, this will cost me around £120, i have allowed for this in the budget for this month, i should book it really but December and Jan has seen approx £700 :eek: fly out of our bank balance to cover car upkeep, new tyres, car tax, repair work and now a service which will take the grand total to over £800 :eek::eek:

At least that should do us for year as far as the cars are concerned, i hope

Going to take the boys to see my Grandma this afternoon, she lives approx 20 miles away, so will cost me a bit in petrol, but worth it as she really is a diamond, completely inspires me with her sheer determination to manage with help and her love for life and family

Bye for now x

Edit: was meant to say without help, not with!

Kerry_Woman

Seem to be doing alright with my budget at the moment. Still managing NSD's. The food bill for January is down compared to January 2010 by £94. Got 2 free tickets for the Ideal Home Exhibition thanks to MSE. Taking my Mum along. Booked a day trip to Clacton on Sea in July, going with my Mum. I think the electric bill is going to be high due to the cold weather, do not have gas in the flat. I would put on extra layers, but had to put on the heating for my Mum. She said she would help with the bill as she gets the cold weather payment.

SandraScarlett

DH and I are in a state of high excitement! :j Our letters arrived today from DWP, and we are getting a combined pension increase, from 11th April, of £10 a week!:T That's made me feel better about the Letters of Impending Doom that must be en route (my Heating Williams! :eek: :eek:), so I don't feel so bad now.

Whilst clearing out the freezer, I found some a couple of packets of Wild Salmon ready meals, that I'd bought on special offer. They probably won't be very filling, so I'm bulking them out with jacket potatoes and broccolli.

I've felt a bit fragile this week, so couldn't contemplate going to the market for veg tomorrow, and bought from Mr S - what a difference in price!

xx

Erme

Laushappy wrote: »

Good morning all

Just wanted to pop on quickly to say Erme hope you do really well in your carbooting, cant wait to here how you get on :j

Aiming for a NSD but we shall see :cool:

Disaster...twas badly advertised (something stupid about saving trees so they couldn't fly post uni) and a bad location. Wifey next door to me made £25. I made something like 50p....But the GO game I got from the charity shop last week for 50p sold for £2.50

And I've also blown money on web domain registeration for my new business...home made crafts....got what I wanted though for 2 years (2 domains) for £31 and have free hosting and a free site builder...

So much for my ebay profits :eek:...ebay fees (all £10 of them ) will have to come out of next mths budget .....unless I sell the retro stuff that didn't sell at carboot on ebay this next week...

Why am I having such a pants money week ...I think £20 of domain monies will come out of paypal balance and like £10 out of savings... or something...have no more money for this week...simple..

Have to go to bank tomorrow anyway to put back float money cos it was too cold and I was too tired to do it today...

Blessings

E

PS. It has cost me £32 to set up in business btw plus £15 stock...that's mega cheap isn't it :j

mogan6

redglass, thanks for the link. I think someone else mentioned this site somewhere way back on the thread but I didn’t realise it was the same one. There are certainly lots of good recipes on there and I’ve already used a couple in my meal planning for this week.

My shop at Mr M this afternoon cost me £18.66!!!!! :j
This should last until next Thursday with the exception of eggs which I get from a local farm. I am really pleased with this. I know that every week will not be like this but it’s a big incentive to carry on. (That and the fact that we don’t have the money we used to!)

Mo
Xx

Kerry_Woman

Erme - Sorry to hear about the carboot sale. Hope all goes well in your business venture.

SandraScarlett

Just to say our Wild Salmon ready meals must have been made with such wild salmon, that they swam away, leaving just a salmon memory ....... you needed a microscope to find it.

xx

Lesley_Gaye

cw18 wrote: »

Thanks


will have a look at this as an improvement for next year. would you want it to show red if (for instance) you spent more than a months allowance for something in June but were still under budget for the year-to-date at that point?


Will have to ask DS2 next time I see him, as he's the one taught me how to use it. I'm sure he showed me how to use it for ranges, but I've not been able to get it right that way myself since he moved out

yes, if I overspent in June, but was still underbudget, I would like June to show red. What I have been doing is setting the cell for the month to be red if it is greater than Bn/12, and that works fine, I have stopped formatting as I got tired of doing each cell one by one