2014 Frugal Living Challenge

Frugalsod

quidsy wrote: »

I have a slightly different approach as I am not looking to cut my families living down to as low as possible just get the best deals as possible. So my spreadsheet works out what we pay now, maximum food & other spending (clothes, presents, personals) budget per month & dates that any utilities end so that better deals can be found.

Excluding rent, council tax, childcare & travel for work (uncontrollable expenses) our maximum estimate is £10,680 per year, that is for 2 adults & one child of 7. £4,800 of that being food.

I'm not interested in us living on bare bones, we like our sky, mobiles & super fast fiber optic BB. But I plan to write the actual spends in monthly columns & when end dates come up attempt to cut the costs in some way. I would ideally like our ACTUAL spend by end of next year to be 9k or as close to as possible.

One of our biggest costs is food, OH isn't good at finding YS items & is one of those people who dislikes pre-planning, he likes to eat what he wants when he fancies it & often pops in to buy ingredients after work we don't have at home, even thought he fridge is stocked with other stuff. He also doesn't really eat English food either so we spend a lot on SE Asian stuff, which is usually imported & expensive. It may be better to set him his own budget & get him to buy out of that. When that's spent he can use his personal money if need be. Needs more thought!

It is not about living on a bare bones budget. If you get really good deals on most things then you will have more money for the luxuries in life. I have managed to really cut most of my bills so if I wanted sky or something else that was expensive then I could afford it. My normal expenditure is only around 10% of my income so I can save 90% of it if I wanted or buy something extravagant if I wanted. Wasting food is like throwing money away. It also gives you a lot more scope should incomes fall, which is very likely for most people considering the experience of the USA and Japan. You could use that extra saving to overpay the mortgage and cut years off the repayments. The point is to make much better use of your money.

alja

I think you have to have a life with your money whilst also being a little careful, it's all about striking a balance prepare for the future but enjoy the today kinda thing...


Really need to sit down and plan my budget for next year soon. Will cut back my spending where possible, e.g. I've stopped buying magazines even the ones with the free gifts as I really don't need any more nail polishes or mascaras at the moment etc etc!


I've still been selling the odd thing via the fb selling groups, it's been quite good for me lately. Selling another two items locally tomorrow, two items out, just £2 in but it gets me out of the house, gets me walking, things decluttered and a little bit of money in. So much easier than eb*y!!


I have a fitness class Christmas party coming up and had the idea of buying something new to wear, but thankfully I stopped and made myself look in my wardrobe first to see if I have an outfit to put together without spending a penny...and I do! I found a dress that I bought a few months ago in London, still new with tags! I have black tights already, a nice little black cardi and some lovely black shoe boots that I can pair with the dress. Just need to sort out a bag now, but I'm sure I'll have something somewhere that I can use.


I feel so pleased that I have managed to put something together without spending any extra pennies!!

Bobarella

cw18 wrote: »

the way I'm working zero budgets is in this post

Thanks CW. Interesting to see how you do it.

Bobarella

Thanks quidsy & frugalsod.
I have spent months trying to sort us out financially. My issue is self employment. My husband has a good job but I traded mine in to open my own business 3 years ago. Ever since then we've struggled with budgeting as I never know what I may earn. We try to bring our costs down to 1 salary so that anything I bring in is a bonus but it's hard. We don't use CCs to get by, our debts are mainly historic from home improvement & remortgaging costs so things the have helped us but we struggle to bring them down due to very little slack in the budget.
This is why I am interested in the challenge. I have spent most of this year getting us moved onto better deals, the mortgage was the biggest breakthrough this summer, we are now in the under 60% LTV so our repayments dropped by around £300 a month but it cost us £1800 to get that deal. If we'd had savings we could have just afforded that but unfortunately not.
So having done all the leg work on bringing monthly outgoings to the ground, 2015 will be a year of beefing up savings, paying down debt & trying to build up enough of a cushion that my variable income doesn't have the power to stop us in our tracks every so often.
its an inspiration to read the ways others are making their objectives possible.

cw18

Bobarella wrote: »

Thanks CW. Interesting to see how you do it.

I'm really hoping that part of my planning works..... really can't afford for it not to if I want any chance of keeping my house :eek:

I keep considering down-sizing, but I love this house (it's almost everything I ever dreamed of) and find even thinking of doing so painful

cw18

I've made a start on listing all the toiletries and cleaning items I have in the house - at the same as doing a tidy up of cupboards so that each item has a distinct home where I can find it (I think the lack of organisation is one reason I have sooooo much of some things). I know I'm nowhere like done yet, and it's already looking like there are a few things I need to avoid buying in 2015 and 2016 (and possibly even 2017!)

Also been looking at my zero budget categories, and have decided that I am going to work Whoopsie savings into them the same way as vouchers (I was undecided on this). I'd forgotten about anything I get from survey sites as I've only recently restarted doing those (after almost 2 years without bothering), and am going to allow myself 100% of anything I get from those. I have enough to claim a £15 Amaz0n voucher on one site (had a decent credit balance I'd forgotten about ), but am going to hold off until the new year to claim as that will kick start my zero balance budgets I might even just scrape in with enough for 2 vouchers by then if I can continue at the rate I have the last 3 weeks

It's also a while since I used a cash back site, after I went through a phase of checking before I bought anything on-line only to find nothing would earn me anything. I intend to get back into the habit of checking even though a quick glance indicates I'm still unlikely to actually get much, but I need to decide on my rules for how I handle this. The few sites I've spotted that I might get something from are ones I'll be spending zero budget money on, so in that case 100% of the cash back will be credited back to those categories. But there's a chance I might get a few bits (mainly presents) from some, so that's where I need to have a think.....

My parents will almost certainly give me money for Christmas and my birthday (January), so I've been trying to decide what to do with that. Last year I bought myself an e-reader, a compact digital camera and several pairs of running/exercising leggings - all of which would have fallen into zero budget categories, so I was debating dumping it into there.

But my built in fridge/freezer really does need replacing desperately (been on the way out for a good while, and I've been telling myself I'll replace it for at least 3 years now!) which isn't going to be cheap, so I think it'll have to go to one side earmarked for that. Hopefully I can find the rest by selling stuff on eB@y as I declutter (after taking a percentage of the money from this for the zero categories).

I'm hoping to have completed my 2015 budgets by the end of this month, which then gives me a month before year end in case anything else crops up that I haven't previously thought of - other than the argument I'm likely to have with DS1 when I tell him I'm putting his keep up by £5 a month from January He either pays up or moves out... his choice, but I'm pretty certain I know which it'll be

Frugaldom

Interesting posts on the reasons for frugal living, so I am just clearing up my own in the hope of encouraging others. An expensive divorce, loss of the bulk of my business (son had accident that meant being home 24/7 for him and I made a very bad choice in who was put in charge of business dealings in my absense) plus accumulated debts and my share of a mortgage on a house with negative equity that ex kept while I had to rent elsewhere. It took me nearly 10 years to sort all of that lot out while trying to remain sane. (Probably writing about it kept me sane)

In 2007, I could see over the debt pile, as it was almost gone, and I started my new challenge here on MSE. And here we are... approaching the 8th year on here. I may not post much, as I have all the other sites, forums, blogs, social media and the chat room to keep up and running, and there may not be any of the original posters left, but we have had so many people pass through on their way to debt freedom that it is impossible to mention them all.

We each have our reasons for doing this.We each have our own ways of getting to where we want to be. I love my tiny budget and the freedom it gives me to do as I please with whatever is left over. I am debt free, mortgage free, self-employed and I doubt I'd change my spending habits even if I won a £million. I might, however, get around to investing in a couple of those towel rails!

Do it for you, because nobody else will. Take advantage of the virtual support offered and feel good about having had the guts to do something about beating the bugs of consumerism, selfishness and greed.

Soapbox washed(in homemade cleaner) dried (with rags) and now back to being a coffee table.

his_missus

I think the main reason I want to live a more frugal lifestyle is really so we can start looking at overpaying the mortgage. We'd love to have it paid off by the time we're 55 so we can then look at saving for a comfortable retirement. Dad was made redundant when he was 55, he paid off the mortgage with his payout, took a job which he basically considered spending money and mum's wage covered all the bills. They could afford to go on holidays and spoil us (he bought us a decent boiler one Christmas as ours was on its way out and we could only afford a cheap one) and they enjoyed life - that's how I want to be one day. I don't want to be like my Auntie, still working at 70, not because she wants to but because she has to.


I don't see being frugal as going without things. I see it as making savings to afford other things.
I'm going to:
- reduce my water, gas & electricity usage
- spend less on groceries
- waste less food, water, gas, electricity
- look for good deals and bargains
- earn money/vouchers through cashback and surveys.


I'm not setting a specific target to live off/save up because that almost always guarantees failure for me and then I give up!

sparrer

This year my total budget less rent was £3500pa/£67pw (just me and dog, then two mogs who joined us two months ago). Unfortunately the dog has cost quite a bit so it ran over and he's now on a special diet so I've pulled my own belt in to account for that. 2015 will be the same figure, I've got my utilities down to gas/elec £58pcm, water £9pcm, very happy with that. I'm now shopping for essentials in @ldi, very impressed with the quality of what I buy there, ans my local top-up is done at Morries who now price match @ldi.

I shop in supermarkets and filling stations on my cc as my bank gives interest on my spend. I never use the cc for anything else - ran up huge debts some years ago and learned a very expensive lesson, now I'm older I have more self-control - and the bank also gives interest on my current a/c for utility/phone etc., dd's. I also get nectar points for fuel which this year is more than enough to buy the food for a pre-Christmas dinner for 8 people. I never seem to see money off coupons but probably because I don't buy newspapers or magazines, I can read those on line if I have time.

My biggest 'extra' is my holidays but I'm fortunate to belong to a fellowship which has foreign conventions on a regular basis, they're mostly just 2/3 day weekends but the hotels always give the same discount if I stay a week or more. Last year I went to Croatia, Hayling Island, the Birmingham Hilton and Oban, all half board and the total cost was less than £800 which isn't too bad for 4 separate weeks.

I need get my petrol bill down, most of my family lives 100+ miles away and as they all work and I'm retired I visit them. I've started to plan more carefully doing round robins once or twice a week, will see how much difference it makes to the fuel consumption. One bonus was buying a new-to-me car last June, it tells me exactly how many mpg I'm using so I'm not driving nearly as fast as I used to .

During the 80's recession I, like many others, went through a horrendous financial loss, losing my job, home, holiday home, rental property, car etc. It took more than 25 years to climb back up but now I don't owe a penny to anyone. The worst part (I thought then) was losing my home and having to live in HA property, but now consider myself so lucky as I have a lovely little semi in a square of 12 houses, I don't have to pay for the majority of maintenance and upkeep, and the small HA is always contactable if something does go wrong. Not ideal for many people but for a single retired is a godsend.

As his missus says 'I don't see being frugal as going without things. I see it as making savings to afford other things.' What was once a constant slog to get on my feet has become a challenge I actually enjoy and am always learning new savings through these pages.

[Deleted User]

Such diverse reasons for living a frugal lifestyle and the ways of doing it. Although my reason for trying to do it isn't the same as other people's (in posts that I've read so far anyway) I can still gather so many helpful ideas and tips, not to mention enthusiasm and motivation, from reading about how others are going about things. So a big 'thank you' to all posters and especially to Frugaldom for starting this thread in the first place:A.

My reason is relatively simple but nigh impossible to achieve:o.
I have mountains of unsecured debt which is going down at a reasonable pace thanks to StepChange and a DMP I bit the bullet and set up last spring. My biggest regret is not asking for help sooner. Being perpetually optimistic has been my downfall:o

However, having the part of my brain that makes rational decisions missing (not physically but you know what I mean) I totally miscalculated my essential budget costs when drawing my DMP up. A massive underestimate of the cost of my basic needs (worked out pretty much off the top of my head) meant I committed to a larger proportion of my available income than I can possibly afford. This means every month is a constant struggle just to eat and put the basic amount of petrol in the tank. Being in a very rural area my car is an essential and a lifeline.

I know the sensible thing to do (and I'm becoming more sensible rather late in life) would be to contact StepChange to renegotiate the terms of my DMP and to pay my creditors less per month. This is probably what they would suggest, the last thing they advocate is for clients to still be struggling to survive once on a DMP. Foolishly, at my last annual budget review with them I told them everything was the same and we agreed to keep things as they are. The reason for this is that I won't be debt-free until August 2019 as it is and I just can't contemplate it going on for longer than that, given my age.

So my problem is that I need to be more frugal(and goodness knows what else I can shave off anything:eek:) plus make extra money in whatever way I can to build up an emergency cushion. I have no access to credit whatsoever and not a penny in savings for any emergencies like when my car needed a new exhaust this summer after failing its MOT. I was in desperate need of the money to pay for it. I was back to the bad old days of robbing one pot to pay another, desperately hoping expected payments would be in my bank account in the nick of time to replace it so I wouldn't incur bank charges.

This mess is totally of my own making, I have no-one to blame except myself. It's not all doom and gloom though:j as I'm finding innovative ways to make a few extra pounds here and there and am enjoying the challenge in a strange kind of way. And the help, encouragement and camaraderie on this and other threads on MSE has been magic:T

Sorry to ramble on but it certainly helps. Being massively in debt (totally unknown to all who know me) is such a difficult and lonely place to be sometimes.

Thanks, everyone:grouphug: