Frugal Living Challenge 2011 - Part 3.

natnat13

We pay £70 month in electric, plus a tank of oil £600 ish a year. So ours is about £4 a day if I have done my maths right, which I may not of as I feel extremely tired and ugh today!

slowlyfading

Evening everyone, hope you're all doing okay

I've had an okay day, just feeling a bit down today about everything. I need to stay positive, but today has definitely been a wobbly day. I just have to hope things will turn around soon.

purpleorchid

2wildthing2 wrote: »

Hi Guys n Girls Just a quick question regarding gas & electricity usage.

I have over the last few months been keeping an eye on our usage and obviously over the last few weeks it has increased due to having the heating on more often, I'm wondering how we compare to others on here. We are 2 adults and 2 teenage kids living in a 4 bedroom house, our average use is approx £3/day for both gas & electricity. Would be interested to hear what everyone else's usage is - should I nag the kids more to switch things off / turn the heating down?????????????????

hi wildthing

if you go back a few pages to 82, i have written a list of what i have done to save myself energy, although i do live alone, but there may be something on the list that you can do hun.x

mooomin

I pay £60 per month for gas & electric and have no idea of the breakdown of it. I do know that our provider tried to reduce my direct debit at the start of the year because of how little power we use but I kept it at £60 so I could use heating in the winter without panicking! We were over £180 in credit in September so hopefully that will help if we get snow again....:eek: I got a free energy monitor the last time there was an offer in the weekly email, so that's plugged in now and has made interesting reading. Mr F is away at the moment and when I'm in the house on my own I'm certainly not using a lot of power. I suspect it's different when we're both in the house and he's using the PC and I'm on the laptop and the tellys going....:rotfl:

My big purchase today has been from Amazon on their promotions page - a six month Lovefilm membership for £17.50. I used money from my monthly entertainment budget for it, so it works out at three pounds per month and should keep me entertained through the long winter months

dizzy_lizzie

That was interesting from Martin seriouslyfrugal. Thanks for that.
Clicked on one of the links on there and came across this, which I haven't seen before on here. Some great cheapie thoughtful handmade Christmas ideas all for a fiver and under link

Ruby love the term 'lilly livered.' Haven't heard that for 'yonks'

Cherryjack glad the link was useful. I love the one with the clothes pegs and using the paint sample cards from B & who Actually I loved all of them
Have you thought about learning to crochet or basic knitting. You could crochet up some gorgeous scarves, gloves, baby blankets toys etc all for the cost of a ball of wool and they make wonderful gifts for folk. If you go on you tube and add beginners crochet there are some excellent tutorials on there. I've got a few crochet hooks the same size, for some reason, I would gladly post one off to you with a ball of wool and a little crochet instruction leaflet. Anyway if you decide to have a go drop me a pm with your address

I've started a new money challenge which will be updated in my sig. Did so well in the original. But now of course I've used most of the contents of fridge and freezer and though I've still resisted a 'big' shop I can see I'm spending a lot more now as I've no food to use up. So just going to carry on as I am and buying it daily but I might end up buying for a few days ahead.
Called at the Co *p on the way home to get a few bits in and had a look through a Christmas craft edition of Prima. Oooh it was lovely, lots of gorgeous things to make and loads of ideas and then I thought...........I can get most of these crafts off google and if I'm honest I probably wouldn't have made anything from it! So saved the £3 odd. Now not that long ago I would have bought that and not thought twice. It felt good putting it back on the shelf :j
Hope everyone is well and keeping warm
Hugs x

Just seen the other posts. Slowlyfading wish there was something more I could do than offering just words.
Take care lovely x

FlyingFresian do you think the monitor will help you reduce how much electricity you're using, now you're more aware of it?
x

slowlyfading

dizzy_lizzie wrote: »

Slowlyfading wish there was something more I could do than offering just words.
Take care lovely x

Thanks, just been one of those days, you know? x

rubytuesday

slowlyfading wrote: »

Evening everyone, hope you're all doing okay

I've had an okay day, just feeling a bit down today about everything. I need to stay positive, but today has definitely been a wobbly day. I just have to hope things will turn around soon.

Sorry to hear that Slowly!

Anything in particular causing a wobble?

Sorry if I've missed anything in my absence?!

Just seen your post x

rubytuesday

Swam a kilometre today so very pleased.

Have a swim tag card which involves wearing a monitor and it updates lengths, speed, rests, calories burned etc went to update it when I got home when I realised I was still wearing the monitor which should have been handed back to the pool!

seriouslyfrugal

dizzy_lizzie wrote: »

That was interesting from Martin seriouslyfrugal. Thanks for that.
Clicked on one of the links on there and came across this, which I haven't seen before on here. Some great cheapie thoughtful handmade Christmas ideas all for a fiver and under link
x

Thank you for the link dizzy

Slowly : I hope you feel better soon

Ruby: to swim that distance is really good :T

paidinchickens

2wildthing2 wrote: »

Hi Guys n Girls Just a quick question regarding gas & electricity usage.

I have over the last few months been keeping an eye on our usage and obviously over the last few weeks it has increased due to having the heating on more often, I'm wondering how we compare to others on here. We are 2 adults and 2 teenage kids living in a 4 bedroom house, our average use is approx £3/day for both gas & electricity. Would be interested to hear what everyone else's usage is - should I nag the kids more to switch things off / turn the heating down?????????????????

Here goes lol

We pay £64 a month for gas and leccy and we get £100 a year back for having the online tariff so in my maths head that is 64x12-100 / 365 = £1.83 a day. There are two adults and three boys who live permanently and one DD and one DGD who live here part time (always visiting :rotfl:) plus four cats.

Every room is set up so that one switch at the plug switches everything off at night or when we go out. This does not include freezer, alarm, boiler etc. The thermostat is set at 19 deg so if it falls below that the heating comes on but we refuse to put it on until November. We have also put valves on all rads. The house has full loft insulation, cavity wall and newish windows. There are thick curtains at every window and fleece and curtains at the front and back door. Every window is opened for an hour a day to air the house out and dry any damp. I have a large Dyson washing machine which does three loads for the price of one and DH has built a gazebo/pergola type thing with a roof so I can hang my washing out there most days without having to use evil Edna (tumble dryer)

The slow cooker is used where possible as it is cheaper than the oven but if the oven is used I also put in some cakes to make full use of the leccy being sucked dry :rotfl:

I am quite sad though. One day I sat in the front room watching the iplayer through the playstation and realised the dvd player and the wii were both on standby so I made DH wire round so I only flicked the switches on that I need. We rarely use anything but the same principle has been applied to the boys rooms so they only put on what they are using without having the whole room on standby :rotfl:

We also have solar panels so what we don't use we get paid for which only really works out at £13 a month which I have not included in the sum above. The gain to the solar panels is mostly down to the government money and what you produce which is totally separate to your bill and comes as a quarterly cheque, so have not counted this in either.

We have recently been given a solar panel battery charger so I am now looking round for nice/cheap battery lamps even though we are on energy saving bulbs.

We don't go without and if we are cold we turn the heating up but I do not want to pay the bloodsucking devils a penny more than I have to. It has been a gradual process to get to this point and found once I started looking into it there was no stopping me :rotfl:

We also have an energy monitor (free) but would like one that has a screeeeetching alarm when we have too many things on at once

slowlyfading wrote: »

Evening everyone, hope you're all doing okay

I've had an okay day, just feeling a bit down today about everything. I need to stay positive, but today has definitely been a wobbly day. I just have to hope things will turn around soon.

Some days are just less bearable than others. I really feel for you on the down days and hope you soon feel better.


I have to wait in today as the Cat pen for the fostering arrives today. Apparently it has not been looked after by the lady who had it before so it will need pressure washing and staining before any moggies can move in I am going to pressure wash it on the drive and leave it a couple of days to drain and then my lovely next door neighbour who is equally as cat crazy is lending me her garage so it can dry, get stained and dry again.

I am going to call the pen Prozac Palace after my little man who had to be put to sleep a little while ago. He was a baby rescue cat who lived to nearly 17 so may his memory live on by helping others.

DH and I decided not to get each other anything for xmas and buy a second hand porch instead, this arrived yesterday so I have a thousand pieces of pvc across the lawn :eek:

and someone has given us a shed :j

Well if nothing else it will give the snooty neighbours something to talk about " oh darling have you seen steptoes yard what what " :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

On first name terms with all the Mr Ts express staff now and they actually wait for us to come in before they do their final reductions :j:j how fab is that:T

Tumpty I am reading Sucking Eggs what your wartime Granny could teach you about, diet, thrift and going green. I have only just started it but it looks quite interesting and thought of you when I started reading. Picked it up in the library so it was free :j:j

Finally (and then I promise I will shut up boring you )

Virgin let us change our mobile contracts four months early??? so we now have

unlimited virgin to virgin calls, 1000 mins unlimited text and internet with free phone and delivery on mine and DH phone and all three boys get unlimited v to v 100 mins and unlimited text all for £30 a month. Now I know £30 a month but it was the best deal for five phones and we never use the house phone. The boys will never run out of minutes to ring us so it is less of a worry than when my DD was at home and she was always late and never rang as she was out of mins.

Love to everyone

PICx