Frugal Living Challenge 2011 - part 1

chika

Hello frugal folks. Just saying hellp as I've not been posting much recently as nothing major to report and the first week back at work after half term has finished me off!

Minnie I have my fingers crossed that the leak isn't anything major. Cheryl, you seem so busy. I think you should go out with this bloke too and see what happens. I have a male best friend too, he is much more important to me than most people so if any potential blokes dislike him then I start to dislike them. Wrenlegs, red wind is much much cheaper in France. I shared some lovely stuff with a mate the other day and it only cost her 1.75 euro a bottle. We really do have a raw deal here.

Talking of blokes, I dusted off my glad rags and went on a date last night, it was nice and he paid (bonus!) I've been rethinking my decision to be carless though. I was late yesterday and had to get a taxi and then needed to go fetch some things this morning so another taxi. I've spent at least £40 on them this week already and it is mounting up.

I need to find a cheap to buy, run and insure car soonish. I'm a bit against taking out a loan to get one (and I doubt the bank would be willing to lend to me) so I need to save up. I'm probably looking to spend £1000 max as the insurance will be well over £1000. Hopefully with a car I can do a bit more tutoring work as the people who have tutors for their children tend to live in the posh places, far away from here and not on a bus route! If you have any ideas about cheap little cars I'd be glad to hear them!

The focus this month is on making money as well as saving it! I've listed some things on Amazon today and made £60 already which I'm pleased with. Also spent what feels like years doing 15 ebay listings so they should hopefully make me a bit more to add to the pot too. Fingers crossed!

cw18

chika wrote: »

Cheryl, you seem so busy. I think you should go out with this bloke too and see what happens.

Have agreed to meet up.... but at least I've got a lot of work hours this week to stop me thinking about it so much I change my mind

I have a male best friend too, he is much more important to me than most people so if any potential blokes dislike him then I start to dislike them.

You won't believe how relieved I am to hear I'm not the only one who thinks this way, so thanks for sharing

23rdspiral

EFC - i'm so pleased the Jam Jar Appeal is working! and that is soo very kind of your bus driver, i cant believe it!! :T

CW - best wishes for the date, i think it's a good idea to keep your options open and just see. (i have to add that my fiance is my best friend and was for 2 years before we started dating - during which time we dated other people, even long term!, and we were both fine with it untill one day we both decided life would just be more fun and much nicer together. and it is )

good luck with the house news tomorow youngmummy. (we're also waiting on house news tomorow!)

oh Minnie - i'm so sorry to hear about your leak, and you OHs attitude. *hugs*

hi Barros, I hope you are feeling better soon. it's a long month and there's nothing we can do about that.

Redglass - thanks for the Formil tip - we use Eco stuff too, but OHs gym kit needs more oomph and asda's seems to be more expensive and i'll need some soon. how much roughly is Formil please?

Ruby - I Love to hear other peoples dreams, and love trying to guess what they mean... in the past i've spent hours replying to lots of question posts on Yahoo Answers asking what they mean. (not all in one go, and when i wasnt working)

well done on the financial overhaul Wrenlegs. good luck with all your plans, and keeping the mobile bill down. re Wine & France - Calais is ok but the supermarkets expect it so they are a little more pricy than if your parents can get to Dunkirk, the huge Auchen hypermarket there is amazing. my dad just got very nice Bordeaux on offer at c. 1.50 a bottle! (buy one box of 6, get one free). I didnt notice wine boxes though i'm sure they had them - they did have large plastic containers like what they use here for farm house cider though!!

23rdspiral

well, i was suposed to have a frugal money-Earning weekend... doing some rare overtime and seeing a friend. But i got to the office to find it closed! due to 'unforseen circumstances.':mad: i was fruious.:mad: i'd booked in so they knew i was coming and no one had phoned. it wasnt worth my petrol to drive home only to return later (50 min round trip), so went and shopped:o.

Only Home Bargains ect, and got some things i did need, just didnt expect to get them sat, spent 8.00 but also bought Thorntons Misshapes, wine and Red Sky crisps... comfort food or what!?! But at least our movie night went well!

My mate was so impressed with the chocolates that we went today for her... and i spent 18.00!! :eek: BUT that does include a carpet sweeper i'd been hunting there for for ages, and she spotted it in the storage isle, not cleaning, so i'm glad of 10 of the spend.:D Quite why i needed 5 Ginger cakes and a huge jar of gerkins and a massive box of stuffing i dont know:o. oh well. at least i avoided the stationary, moisturisers and cupcake shaped kitchen stuff (the previous not-really-even-useful subjects of many pre-FrugalChallenge splurges)

~~ oh and we also went to a World BOOK Swap Night event and i took copies of 3 of my faveourite books to send out into the world and brought 3 new-to-me-ones home and met lovely people too. :T

minnie2

l.m.hart wrote: »

minnie2

can you describe roughly whats above the leak i.e chimney , just a tiled roof , slate roof, flat roof and i ask dh what could be the problem ( hes a roofer)

the leaking is next to the chimney on one side ( I am assuming this as the massive stain in the bedroom is by the chimney bit). We are not attached to anyone there.

ceridwen wrote: »

How old a house have you got? Have a lot of other roofs in your road clearly been replaced?

You need to check out the "state of play" on neighbours' roofs to work out the likelihood of it being just a small solvable problem (ie replace a few roof tiles and thats it - done:)) on the one hand OR whether neighbours tend to have modern era roofs but yours is still the original one on the other hand. Fingers crossed for you that yours is a "modern era" roof - because, if it ISNT, ummm....errrr...ummm...dont know how to put this - but it will likely be a case of "a small repair now - and the whole roof is likely to go in only a year or two time". Don't ask me how I know:(:(:mad::eek:

oh dear!!!!! its hard to say according to my neighbours as all the houses have just been done up and put up for sale etc weve been in just over a year the ones opposite are in process of being done up and ones to the right people have started to move in. Houses are 1970's. The people doing them up have repaired roofs that needed it. I know ours has got new wood work in the attic as the aerial guy said so - so i dont know. All the houses havent been lived in since 2006 and they started being done up in 2009

fingersxed

Hi Everybody

Quite pleased with myself. Just knocked up 2 tuna and pasta bakes for very little money. Both will feed all four of us. One for tea 2mo and 1 for the freezer. Also done some Rocky Road, museli bar and Banana n choc chip muffins so thats the goodies for pack ups this week sorted.

Been trying v hard to be frugal but seem to take 1 step forward and 2 steps back! Must try harder but there always seems to be something we need.

cw18

minnie2 wrote: »

the leaking is next to the chimney on one side ( I am assuming this as the massive stain in the bedroom is by the chimney bit). We are not attached to anyone there.

When we had water running down the chimney breast (in the middle of the house) at the last place, it turned out to be due to the flashing around it needing replacing

We had to get all the ridge tiles re-attached at the same time, as there was wet all along the ridge under those as well !!!

never_too_old

minnie2 wrote: »

the leaking is next to the chimney on one side ( I am assuming this as the massive stain in the bedroom is by the chimney bit). We are not attached to anyone there.




oh dear!!!!! its hard to say according to my neighbours as all the houses have just been done up and put up for sale etc weve been in just over a year the ones opposite are in process of being done up and ones to the right people have started to move in. Houses are 1970's. The people doing them up have repaired roofs that needed it. I know ours has got new wood work in the attic as the aerial guy said so - so i dont know. All the houses havent been lived in since 2006 and they started being done up in 2009

dh says if its a dirty stain thats appearing its likely to be lead flashing or broken tiles around stack. if its a shadow stain that feels damp but not runniing waster then the water is running down chimney and would require a chimney cowl.
chimney cowl roughly £150 -300 depending if it can be accessed of a ladder or scaffolding required,
chimney flashing roughly £ 450 with a bit of scaffold ( a health and safety required)

obviously thats only a guide, it could be just a few tiles broken.
hope that helps in some way:D

rubytuesday

23rdspiral that's great! I have a dream book somewhere. I often start the weekend with a rendition of my daughter's dreams - last night I am quite sure they were fueled by too much alcohol!

So what did you make of mine -do I feel life is caving in on me or something? Or is it something more positive?

Well today did not go as planned but I had a lovely day. I had planned to finish sorting the bedroom, putting clean clothes away and turning more compost but the only housework I did was another load of laundry.
It ended up being very spendy - I went to M and S to collect my pancake pan and ended up splurging on cheese and crackers (but still no pie d'angloys!) and chocolate florentines (ssh!) Then I stocked up on some seeds in H and B as I want to finally get round to making that delicious sounding granola someone posted a while back.

I'd asked my daughter if she wanted to go for a roast and initially she said no, as she wasn't feeling well but later changed her mind. We agreed we'd meet at the shops as she wanted to have a bath. She took for ever and a day and by the time we got to the pub it was packed out as people were watching football, we didn't fancy that, so tried a nice cafe but they were closing, so I was quite cross. In the end we went to a pub that OH sometimes goes to with his friends after badminton and moans about it being so packed and trendy. I've never been there before and it was quite pricey compared to the first pub but absolutely delicious - we had burgers in a kind of pitta with fries and rocket and tomato on the side. With drinks it came to eighteen pounds something but we are both now so full; I won't be bothering to do the sausage casserole til tomorrow.
The pub was nice and not packed at that time and my neighbour was in there so we had a nice chat with him but there were quite a lot of trendies!:rotfl:

minnie2

cw18 wrote: »

When we had water running down the chimney breast (in the middle of the house) at the last place, it turned out to be due to the flashing around it needing replacing

We had to get all the ridge tiles re-attached at the same time, as there was wet all along the ridge under those as well !!!

thank you!!

l.m.hart wrote: »

dh says if its a dirty stain thats appearing its likely to be lead flashing or broken tiles around stack. if its a shadow stain that feels damp but not runniing waster then the water is running down chimney and would require a chimney cowl.
chimney cowl roughly £150 -300 depending if it can be accessed of a ladder or scaffolding required,
chimney flashing roughly £ 450 with a bit of scaffold ( a health and safety required)

obviously thats only a guide, it could be just a few tiles broken.
hope that helps in some way:D

thank you so much!! its a yellowy stain and feels cold but not damp. oh dear scaffolding is going to be a prob as its right where two of my dogs are and a fence!!!

Im going to have to claim on my house insurance arent I?!!!! !!!!!!!!!