2012 Frugal Living Challenge (Part 1)

[Deleted User]

Afternoon All. Today started with several frugal plans:

1. Find a birthday gift for a neice. Card already bought.
2. Plan birthday gifts for parents and BIL in Sept/Oct.
3. Cooking - HM tomato soup, raspberry crumble and brisket in slow cooker.
4. Go through pressie box to see what I have and what I will need.
5. Chill out and enjoy this rare expereince called sunshine!

However, not so frugally I have just spent £50 on easy yo stuff:eek::eek:. I went online to bulk buy the natural yoghurts and got sidelined and bought their ice cream kit plus 10 sachets of vanilla ice cream. I am actually really looking forward to getting it. If the ice cream is as good as the yoghurt then it will be fab! I did get my box of 12 natural youghurt sachets too!

Thrifty_Sister

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

Ohhhhh that's exactly the sort of thing I'm after - and the right colour too! (have seen a couple of beech coloured ones but everything else in here is dark wood (of varying types!).

Pity it's so far away - I have been keeping an eye on Gum*tree but may try e*bay too now!:T

Little tip for you rising - 'watch' it and when it ends you can do the option 'find similar items' and it may throw something up that is nearer to you. Keep it in your watch list and check every couple of days and as new things are listed it will bring them up for you. Its always brought several items up for me that I had not previously found as nowadays there is a listing system now that gives prefernces to certain areas. hth:beer:

[Deleted User]

Morning All. Todays frugal plans are:

Aim to keep electricity to a minimum. Avoid having the heating on (gave up last night and had it on for a half hour as it was so cold). Heating off all day today but had to use tumble dryer for towels.

Explore the MSE Boards for some more moneysaving tips. - Done

Have a look at the Fiscal Fast Challenge and see if I could have a go. - Done

Aim for NO car use today and NSD. - Done.

Make an 'Emma' file - for my wee neice. Whenever she comes to visit I have got into the habit of printing off colouring pages from the net (there are loads of really good free printables) but she rarley finishes them and we just recycle the paper. I am going to put her unfinished (and sometimes not started) pages in a file along with some other bits and bobs to save us printing out new ones every time she visits. - Done

Lunch and dinner all organised for today. Just need to make sure I take tomorrows dinner out of the freezer - some Chilli con carne from a previous batch cook. Done - chilli out of freezer for tomorrow.


Have a good day folks.

rising_from_the_ashes

Lezley307 wrote: »

Been laid up in bed the last week and have spent the time reading this thread from page 1. Have found it very inspirational, entertaining, emotional and picked up a lot of very useful and frugal tips.

Have immersed myself in snippets of other peoples triumphs and disasters and I don't know if it is because I read it all in such a short space of time but I have been really moved by the way peoples lives have been turned upside down and they have picked themselves up and just got on with life.

The one thing that has shone out of this thread is how kind and supportive everyone is.

My best wishes to you all.

Missed your post earlier agree with Lizzie what a lovely post - hope you're on the road to recovery .....

dizzy_lizzie wrote: »

Well today is Day 2 of The Cabbage Soup Diet. My huge pan of soup beckoned me but I really could not face another bowl of it, which is odd because on Day 1 I really enjoyed it. Anyway still ate just veggies as it said and my yoghurt. My tummy was rumbling. I thought 'that's it I'm having some hot buttered toast and stuffing the diet'...then joy of joys I remembered I can have a jacket potato today AND a bit of butter/marg on it :j

How's the cabbage soup going?

I started fat club last week - signed up online but 3 colleagues from work going to classes - unfortunately I can't make them as an hour after work & not long enough to get home for the dog & back again) - did do a bit of :money: tho' as there was £20 off if you joined for 3 months and got £15 cashback - so £25 for 3 months :money:

Getting used to it now (think I ate the same thing 3 days in a row last week as was struggling to get the hang of it :rotfl:) - I've sickened myself of one type of soup already (was lovely the first 5 days or so :rotfl:) so now onto a new one (tomato & pepper - and I stuck a courgette in as I had some lying around!) and it's no points!:D (until you add the creme fraise!

Thrifty_Sister wrote: »

Little tip for you rising - 'watch' it and when it ends you can do the option 'find similar items' and it may throw something up that is nearer to you. Keep it in your watch list and check every couple of days and as new things are listed it will bring them up for you. Its always brought several items up for me that I had not previously found as nowadays there is a listing system now that gives prefernces to certain areas. hth:beer:

I never knew that! Thanks Thrifty - off to do that right now!

dizzy_lizzie

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

How's the cabbage soup going?

:rotfl:) so now onto a new one (tomato & pepper - and I stuck a courgette in as I had some lying around!) and it's no points!:D (until you add the creme fraise!
QUOTE]

Ooh I love tomato veg soup rising . Good look with the diet/healthy eating. I bet you'll do great Keep us posted.
Oh heck yes the cabbage soup diet...got to day 5, weighed myself and I'd lost 5lbs! so thought enough's enough and called it a day. It's made me appreciate flavours in food more and I now love iced banana soya smoothies!
Just been looking at maybe doing a calorie counting diet though just to lose the last few pounds.
Managed to declutter my drawer too which is a relief, though it did take a few hours of stopping and starting
Hope everyone is keeping well
x

Kerry_Woman

Have managed to have done some more decluttering.

Trying to keep the food bill down. Must try harder and use up some of the food before it gets wasted.

Went on another course recently, which was funded for my voluntary work. Was really interesting.

Hope everyone is keeping well and hugs for those in need of one.

[Deleted User]

Not much to report for me for the last few days. I seem to be taking ages to get over a chest infection and, although that is now gone, I still feel completely wiped out. Fell asleep again after brekkie this morning and only woke again at 11am!

Going to try and rouse myself to get a wee bit of work done on my tax return this afternoon - even if I just look everything I need out to start with that will be progress.

This summer has not been great for my usual efforts to minimise heating (usually zero use between Easter and end of Sept) and electric bills. For the first time in years I have had the heating on a few times during the summer and today it is so dull and wet outside that we have a couple of lamps on in the living room. At least they have energy saving light bulbs in them:).

Erme

mcculloch29 wrote: »

Hello again. Pottering on as per usual.
Lola, good luck. Much better to end what is not right than live with it. But it is hard.
Erme, I live 5 miles from Darlington, in the nearest town northwards on the A167. Darlington certainly is a proper working class town - though it does have a few nice posh shops.
My town does less well for good shops as the town centre is privately owned with a history of high rents. Ald* are due to arrive later this year, I love seeing how progress is being made with building the store.

It's on a brownfield site, replacing nasty eyesore buildings that made for a scary environment. I used to pedal through there at high speed on dark evenings and happily ignore the no riding in the precinct rules as personal safety was far more important. I've since been given permission to ride my trike in the precinct, incidentally.
I fancy another trip to the cheapo greengrocers, I loved what I got last time... No more clothes though.. won't be able to fit them in the wardrobes! A trip to Southport is scheduled soon, I mentioned this to a friend and her response was "Oooh, great charity shops there, everyone's loaded.." I kinda wish she hadn't told me that, though as the X Catalogue shop is cheaper than most charity shops I'll probably be OK.

I did that yesterday(hope the bike is still okay)..traffic was mad on a diversion and no workmen on a partially resurfaced bit of road so I road straight over it. Don't know what would have been quicker though.....Pizza was cold by the time I got it home but still yummy

Frugaldom wrote: »

Hi fruguys, keeping a challenge thread going is hard work, as I;'m sure many of you realise. I've been AWOL for some time but am still as busy as ever with the original frugal living (Living on £4,000) challenge but I never seem to get around to catching up on here. I'll make the effort to squeeze in a good old browse to catch up with all the regular posters and hope everyo9ne is still frugaling away in an attempt to make life better.

But does frugaling make life better? All things in moderation. There's frugaling and then there's extreme frugaling. A bit like extreme couponing IYSWIM. Unless you're going to turn Amish (not my doctrinal stance personally). Everyone knows I have various issues with extreme frugaling. It varies from person to person. However...basic spreadsheeting/notebook skills and menu planning are a must else the household just isn't organised :mad: Even if as part of your menu plan you have the odd takeaway.

Nargleblast wrote: »

Hello frugallers, thought I would add my two pennorth!

I earn a reasonable wage but with debts being paid off and general cost of living rises, plus a OH and a DS with gargantuan appetites, I am furiously counting the pennies approaching payday! I do a big supermarket shop using mysupermarket (surprisingly enough, Mr Sainsbugs came out cheaper than A5d@ or Te$co this month!), get fruit and veg from the local greengrocer twice a week, and have started getting meat and cheese from a wholesale butcher a few miles away. We very rarely buy takeaways or ready meals, all cooking is done from scratch. Apart from payday, when I treat us all to fish and chips from a very nice local chippy. In between paydays shops like A1di and Home 8argain$ get my custom.

All in all, life is pretty ok, we survive. In a couple of years or so we will be debt free, and I will look into paying some extra off the mortgage each month.

It is just a pain in the neck, seeing prices go up all the time, and not being able to afford lovely expensive holidays etc. Still, our back garden is a nice little oasis of greenery and sunshine, we have parks and countryside nearby, and the coast is only a half hour or so drive away. Life is what you make of it, I suppose, and we all do the best we can do with what we have.

Yeah I think deffo live within your means. I have learnt this the hard way as have many folk on MSE. But what I might deem a necessity other's might deem frivolous and vice versa.

Anyhow on bed not keeping Sabbath very holy as have no energy having had a lot of stress recently and some eejit workmen is outside banging about so I have to get some relative peace and quiet. :T. Just to say even including the carryout (I was feeling mega pants with stress. Believe you me it was the least of evils. the other two being harming self - no!!!! or 1 oz of tobacco - nooooooo......... Praise God I binned my self harm iron the other day and might well bin the other now am using the dryers again downstairs. I can always press craft items at volunteering :T or even the hospital) I'm going to be debt free in 2 days time :money::j

Admittedly it would have happened about 6 weeks sooner if I'd not gone and whoopsied a new kenwood chef. But still. I figure being debt free is as much a mental thing for me. I had to be truly ready for it.

My tips and tricks.

• Have your lightbulb moment (well you're on here so here's hoping you've had it). DON'T CONSOLIDATE...- JUST LEADS TO MORE DEBT!!!!. If you're on here looking for info re consolidating no offence but please look elsewhere.....It's really not a good move and just leads to denial and denial is not LBM Better to have a high interest rate and get it down sooner than have a low one and take the next 50 years to clear it!!!!
  
• If one method doesn't work try another. - mine these last few years have included Dave Ramsey (he's US); CAP (free Debt Management Program) and a debt snowball (got the macbook paid off. Similar to Ramsey)
  
• It's not going down that's the crime but staying down (i.e keep adding to your debt). It's not even about not being debt free. It's about trying :T.
  
• Bankruptcy is only necessary in extreme circumstances and not to be viewed as the easy way out. It really does affect your credit rating and that affects everything from what current account you can get to even your utility bills. I had almost 10K of debt (it started at 8k) and like it may have taken me about 4 years to get it clear (not including LBM) on a modest income but I'm almost there.:D

Hope that helps someone...

E

LolaLemon

Well done Erme on being dept free! As you say, find something that works for you.


Been a little occupied lately. Fell out with my mum, not so much as in us not talking or anything, she doesn't like me controlling my own life so we have quiet a lot of arguments (I'm going to be 30 soon, I have my own mortgaged house, a 5 year old son, my own car) so the only thing I rely on her for is to watch my son when I go to work. 2 nights a week. To teach me a lesson she has stopped taking him. One of my friends has been helping me out but I can't ask her to do it long term. His dad hasn't been too bad, but I know that won't last for long either. More than likely going to need to quit my job, just when no place near here is taking anyone on, with big companies letting people go, timing is rubbish to say the least.

I'm now on level 3 of my skiing lessons, which I'm really excited about.
Got most of sons school uniform in, he starts in two weeks. I'm soo going to have a tear or two lol. Just got to get the blazer, at £70 :-(

We are having a charity day in the pub, I'm off to make banana cupcakes and apple n cinnamon ones too.

Have a great day, hope everyone is well and big hugs available here :-)

silvasava

Been AWOL for quite a while so just been catching up on the posts. Well done Erme - may have taken a while but you've got there under your own steam & stayed focused.
Dizzy- your cabbage diet sounds a lot like the old WW 'no points' soup - its great for shifting a few pounds quickly. Been reading in the SM about fasting being good but I think its a bit too extreme for me - I'd rather a few very low calorie days each week to maintain a healthy weight but how do you shift the spare tyre????
My 'Frugal Mojo' is at an all time low for some reason - my 'Get up & Go' has got up & went leaving me in a very CBA mood. Note to self: SNAP OUT OF IT & MOVE YOUR A***