Cleggie's frugaltastic journey to financial freedom!!

Suffolk_lass

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

You made me think of the cost of filling my car .... it's got a teeny fuel tank (35 litres) and when I got it, it would've cost £35 to fill - that's now jumped up to £48.65:eek:.

:eek::eek:my old car had a 60 L tank and I went through one a week .... OMG that's £83.40:eek::eek::eek: I really feel for people that have no option but to use loads to get to/from work.

When we moved here (to a village) at the end of 2004 fuel was not a concern. We commuted in separate cars without a thought. Now we car-share (100 miles a day) and the car cost £69.50 to fill up last week (diesel - does just over 50 mpg if I'm careful) and the old land rover cost just under £100 to fill (and does about 25-30 mpg). If I thought it would be worth something I would trade it in. Fuel's gone up from £1.189 on election day in 2010 to £1.459 here today. On a 50L tank that is £13.50 in 20 months.

Cleggie - you might find this advice I heard about fuel economy useful:

Don't keep loads of "stuff" in your boot - you are paying to carry it round
Drop your speed by 5mph on a run and use the trip meter to see what it does to your fuel economy. It increases my mpg by about 3-4 miles per gallon for every 5mph I am slower - this won't work in a town but if you do a run on an unrestricted A or B road it should help - 50-56 is meant to be the optimum speed for economy.

You're doing better than me - well done
SL

cleggie

Thanks SL.
I will empty my boot tomorrow, as its jam packed with stuff, and slow down a tad. Thanks for those tips!

If you dont see me about for the next week or so,its because my dissertation and essay are due in in 2 weeks!!!ARGH!!!

weeclick

Hi Cleggie, Have just spent the last hour reading through your diary and have now subscribed - I wish you all the luck in the world!

Couple of wee things I wanted to comment on.

Breakfast - I am not a breakfast person either and have only started eating them recently to try and lose weight (have lost 3 stone so far!) I actually find because I am now eating breakfast I dont snack as much during the day so making savings on biscuits etc! Pancakes are the best for a quick but filling meal. I always make the mixture the night before and leave in the fridge (you actually get better results by leaving to rest) and takes little time to make in the morning. Better still I always have all the ingredients I need in the house so costs nothing extra in the weekly shop to what I would be buying anyway!

Snacks for the kids - Theres loads of good biscuits recipes online but my personal fav is oats and raisins (could change to choc chips if kids dont like raisins) x1 batch would only cost a few pound and I make about 2 big lunch boxes worth of them! Also from a weight point of view there are less than 60 cals a biscuit and taste lovely, I will try and get the recipe if your interested. Once you get the basic recipe you can always change what you put in it so if the kids get bored of one thing you can always try something else!

Clothes - I buy ALL my jeans and tops on ebay now. A pair of jeans in Next costing £35 I can get on ebay for around £5 all with tags on! I am quite fussy when it comes to second hand clothes (I know I shouldnt be but its my only trait!) so making an average saving of £30 per jeans and just as good savings on tops is great. If your not fussed about labels then plenty of people list tescos clothes on ebay most starting at 1p bids and again most either have tags on or are in as good as new condition so worth considering especially as kids constantly grow out of clothes!

rising_from_the_ashes

cleggie wrote: »

Thanks SL.
I will empty my boot tomorrow, as its jam packed with stuff, and slow down a tad. Thanks for those tips!

If you dont see me about for the next week or so,its because my dissertation and essay are due in in 2 weeks!!!ARGH!!!

Can I be nosey and ask what your dissertations on?

Just curious (I did mine last year....) - still have a year to go to finish my course but I've run out of funds ...... and with the fees going up I can't see me getting to do it anytime soon!

cleggie

Hi Weeclick
Thanks for popping over!
I would love the recipe for those biscuits please, i hope they will be a success as i am rubbish at cooking biscuits!!:o

Thanks for the tip about pancakes, since i have started making them for breakfast, i feel better about sending the kids to school having had someting hot.
In regards to the clothes- i will keep my eye out for eBay bargains!

Rising- what degree have you been doing? Mine in a psychology degree. My dissertation is about how emotions can influence decision making. So i prime my participants with a certain emotion (i used the emotion of disgust) and then get them to play a game that is based on decision making, and compare their answers to those participants in other groups who have been primed with happiness, anger and there is also a control group who have not been primed with any emotion.
Sounds boring, but honestly its quite interesting!!:D

weeclick

Hi Cleggie,

I just wanted to stop by with my biscuit recipe - dont worry they are very easy to make and you put your own twist on it so you can never get it wrong because you have nothing to compare it to

ingredients -
Egg x2
oats
flour
butter
sugar

method -
mix the butter and sugar together before adding your flour and oats. If you want you can add any other dry ingredient at this point (raisans, chocolate chips, dry fruits). Use the eggs to bind together.

Roll onto flat surface, and cut into small biscuit shapes. I average around 50 biscuits for the ingredients above but depending how thick you like your biscuits you could probably get 60 if rolled thinner.

Place onto a greaseproof baking tray and put into oven for 10 mins. Temp is usually around 200c.

The above calorie wise works out at 47 cals per biscuit. If your not so health conscience then as a treat get a mars bar and cut into very small subes - it tastes amazing!! Let me know how you get on!

cleggie

Thanks for the recipe weeclick,
do you have the weights to go with those ingrediants please? I really struggle with biscuit making, so the more help the better


I got my car tax through the post yesterday, so i will apply for that online today- £130 for a year. NOt too bad i guess. I am certainly seeing the benefits of saving my CB every month, as i normally would be worried about where i would pay for the tax, but now its ready and waiting in my ISA. The only downside now is thats the last of my savings so far But its OK, i will just have to start saving from scratch again, i managed £500 inbetween Jan and March, so i am sure i wont have too many problems saving again!

I am still waiting on this bursary from uni, hopefully it wont be too much longer! As soon as i get that, i am going to buy passports and book a holiday. Hopefully i will have enough left over to get the kids new beds too as they desperately need them!

Not going to the SMs today, in fact i dont plan to leave the house! We were going to go for a nice long walk in the woods, but its rainy and terribly foggy out there today, so we are just going to get ready for the week ahead instead. Sunday is always bedding washing day, so i will strip the beds and wash the bedding, then put fresh bedding on.
We always have baths on Sunday too, asi LOVE the feeling of getting into a clean fresh bed after having a nice warm bath, with clean PJs on!
Anyone would think i am 82 not 32!!!

cleggie

Today i will:
AVOID SMs
Check OLB
Have left over lasagna for dinner
Defrost baguette porions for us to have for lunch
Have a NSD (apart from car tax)- am aiming to have 3 NSDs next week. Wed, Thu and Fri are the best days as Monday i will have to put petrol in the car to get to uni, and Tuesday i have to take the cat to the vets for her 2nd lot of jabs.

rising_from_the_ashes

cleggie wrote: »

Rising- what degree have you been doing? Mine in a psychology degree. My dissertation is about how emotions can influence decision making. So i prime my participants with a certain emotion (i used the emotion of disgust) and then get them to play a game that is based on decision making, and compare their answers to those participants in other groups who have been primed with happiness, anger and there is also a control group who have not been primed with any emotion.
Sounds boring, but honestly its quite interesting!!:D

Sounds much more interesting than mine!

I'm doing Business - really as I already had a lower qualification in a related subject so got quite a lot of exemptions:)

I had a unit on Decision Making which went into a whole host of factors that can influence this - it was actually really interesting:)

My dissertation was on the fiasco that's otherwise known as the Edinburgh Tram project - it's quite funny as I did it around a year ago and one of the "solutions" I came up with is in fact what they've now decided to do!:)

I've been having to do it the long hard slog way - I did my HNC (2 evenings/week for 2 years at college whilst working full time & part time:eek:) and I finished the HND around a year ago (18 months whilst working full time).

I did look at OU but got less exemptions, it was going to take 6 years:eek: and was more than double the price of the route I've done:eek::eek: (and at least I have been able to get "proper" qualifications on the way).

I'm totally stuck now tho' - I have the final year to do (2 years in Scotland as degrees take 4 years here) and if I went full time, I'd get the fees paid ... but would have to give up work so not feasible.

I could get £500/year funding as I'm on a low income but this can only be used at a Scottish Uni ... and none of them do the degree by distance learning.

So .. the only option seems to be doing it by DL through an English Uni ... but I'd get no funding and the fees are around £3.5k:eek: and that's before they go up.

So .... I'm stuck and probably going to be until I win the lottery!:)

Have a great Sunday & happy writing!

Suffolk_lass

Hi Cleggie,
Like you, I had been squirreling away for emergencies but I think the fact that I have 4 big things this month that wipes it all out, may be behind my uncontrolled spending yesterday - that and the attitudinal change from my hormones.

I'm not sure if you're totally up to date but there was a basic biscuit recipe (shortcake) posted on GC last week - I copied it as I'm fine with baking cakes but have never really tried biscuits. The crucial piece of advice is that it is 3 portions of flour, 2 portions of fat and one portion of sugar, and a little water to bind. I also add a tiny pinch of salt to anything I cook to bring out the flavour, but many don't (I think it's better to put one pinch in than several on afterwards - one per plate!).

Anyway, here's the recipe for shortcake

150g Plain flour, 100g butter, 50g caster sugar.
Sifted flour into bowl with sugar and rubbed in butter to make a crumbly mixture. Added in tiny bit of water to make the mixture into a dough-like ball, then rolled it out and cut out shapes using a pastry cutter. Cooked in oven for about 12 minutes at 180 degrees.

Good luck with your dissertation. I'm sure the fact that you have different control groups in your research will earn you extra marks. Do you know what you want to do after the degree?
All the best
SL