Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

Wobblydeb wrote: »

:rotfl: That reminds me of the year ours helped himself to the remaining half of the turkey on Christmas Day. No leftovers for us that year....

:rotfl:

Wobblydeb wrote: »

I wonder if your lurcher had been a worker? Neither of ours would return anything edible to us!

We have no idea about his background - he was picked up as a stray by the dog warden and was destined to be one of their "black bag dogs" as no one wanted to rehome him from the council kennels. Luckily a local animal charity took him on but he was still with them for several months before we spotted him. He was well trained and well mannered (except for the food stealing of course!) so someone had obviously looked after him at some point...I sometimes wonder if he has another family looking for him but it's been 3 years now.

Swampmonster

White_Iris wrote: »

:rotfl:


We have no idea about his background - he was picked up as a stray by the dog warden and was destined to be one of their "black bag dogs" as no one wanted to rehome him from the council kennels. Luckily a local animal charity took him on but he was still with them for several months before we spotted him. He was well trained and well mannered (except for the food stealing of course!) so someone had obviously looked after him at some point...I sometimes wonder if he has another family looking for him but it's been 3 years now.

He is very lucky to have you :T

White_Iris

As it's the first of the month DHs wages have been paid in to the appropriate accounts and I can start moving money and paying things off. £140 has already gone off the credit card :j and I've paid a little bit in to the conveyancing pot as part of my attempt at the PAD challenge. I've also moved around the interest we've got on our savings (a whopping 20p) - we have accounts with ING and can have 10 (I think) different savings 'pots'. As part of our emergency fund I've started a separate pot to cover the excess on our insurance policies. I'm aiming for £500 which would cover the car insurance excess (the biggest), so as long as we don't have a leaky pipe which causes the ceiling to fall in and injure the dogs, then we crash the car taking them to the vets, there should be enough in the pot to cover any claims we make. :rotfl:We're nearly there, only £75 to go - I'm currently adding any Quidco money and interest earned, on top of the £25 we usually add to the savings, to the pot so it should only be another month or two before the pot is full.:T

White_Iris

Ooh, I've just check my bank account and the cheque for recycling a broken mobile (dropped it in a cup of coffee :mad:) has cleared, so that's another £19.05 in the conveyancing pot. :T

White_Iris

Wobblydeb wrote: »

Hmmmm I'm not sure pictures of things that are about consumer spending are necessarily a good idea. You would be doing the advertiser's job for them! Would it not tempt you to splurge on something the second you have any spare cash? I think the idea of a vision board is a great one, but how about pictures that show fun stuff you can do for free, or yummy recipes you'd like to try making?

My 'vision' for the future is to have a secure, happy home for my children and I think that will be the focus of my vision board. We're currently trying to sell our house so that we can move to a less costly area and be near family and a good school. So I'm going to find pictures of the kind of house I'd like, the kind of garden I want and things that represent the life we'll have once we've moved.

January20

White_Iris wrote: »

My 'vision' for the future is to have a secure, happy home for my children and I think that will be the focus of my vision board. We're currently trying to sell our house so that we can move to a less costly area and be near family and a good school. So I'm going to find pictures of the kind of house I'd like, the kind of garden I want and things that represent the life we'll have once we've moved.

And you could put a link or two on here for your [STRIKE]nosey[/STRIKE] interested followers to see :rotfl::rotfl:

LianneH

White Iris

I love reading your diary - you are doing so well, you are so focused and inspirational!

patman99

Have you tried 'Approved Foods'?. Their stuff is close to the sell-by date, but as food can last for over a year when stored correctly, this isn't a problem.
I know it is a bit late now, but seeds are cheap, and you can feed a lot of people for a few pence when you grow your own.

You really are stuffed as far as heating your home goes, Having an oil-fired system really eats the budget and lowers the saleability of the house. Think I'd be looking at saving-up to replace the oil-fired system with a wood-chip fired boiler (and a wood chipper to chip the wood I find as I walk through the woods). Or look at making a home-made solar water heater to at least raise the water temperature enough to take the strain off the oil-powered system.

As your DH does as many miles as me, has he considered a diesel?, these are more efficient to run and the older ones can be run on WVO/diesel mix, so reducing your running costs even more.

White_Iris

Hi patman99, thank you for your comments.

patman99 wrote: »

Have you tried 'Approved Foods'?. Their stuff is close to the sell-by date, but as food can last for over a year when stored correctly, this isn't a problem.

I vaguely remember reading about them on another thread but never tried them - I'll definitely give it a go though, thanks for jogging my memory!

patman99 wrote: »

I know it is a bit late now, but seeds are cheap, and you can feed a lot of people for a few pence when you grow your own.

We do try to grow some of our own food - we've got potatoes, onions and courgettes on the go at the moment and I'm on the look out locally for some nice healthy tomato plants. The area we live in is so dry - we've had hardly any rain since February and my water butts are running dry already.:eek: The lettuce, beetroot and carrot seeds I planted bit the dust (literally) when our local sparrows decided to use that part of the veg bed as a dust bath. peas and beans never seem to do well - I think either mice or pigeons keep stealing my seeds.:mad:

patman99 wrote: »

You really are stuffed as far as heating your home goes, Having an oil-fired system really eats the budget and lowers the saleability of the house. Think I'd be looking at saving-up to replace the oil-fired system with a wood-chip fired boiler (and a wood chipper to chip the wood I find as I walk through the woods). Or look at making a home-made solar water heater to at least raise the water temperature enough to take the strain off the oil-powered system.

Oil heating is really quite rubbish. If we weren't trying to sell we'd certainly look for something more sustainable. The other problem is that the boiler is relatively new (about 6/7 years) so it seems wasteful to replace the system just yet - we'd probably try to add other things (like a wood-burner in the living room) to reduce the amount we use the system as you say.

patman99 wrote: »

As your DH does as many miles as me, has he considered a diesel?, these are more efficient to run and the older ones can be run on WVO/diesel mix, so reducing your running costs even more.

We do have a diesel and although the cost of fuel is more we have found it be more economical to run than a petrol car. It's an '06 and hopefully will last us for quite a few more years (although it has got nearly 90k on the clock:eek:).

White_Iris

Well I've managed to add a bit more to the conveyancing pot as my ebay profits have arrived from PayPal - nearly 1/12 of the way there! Also had the estate agent back round to take some nicer pictures of the house to try and encourage some viewings. It's a good job we don't need to sell as we've had no interest at all in the last 6 weeks :-( We have been spoiled with our previous house moves - the last 2 times we've moved was during the housing boom and we sold within 2 weeks of the house being on the market. We realised it wouldn't be anything like that this time round but we thought we'd get maybe one or two viewings...I'm expecting to see tumbleweed blowing through the living room it's been so quiet!