Living on $12,000 a year

Pandora123_2

Yategirl wrote: »

Just reading ceridwen's post reminded me of something ..... printers.. dh bought me a printer a year and a half ago for about £20 (nothing expensive as I don't use it that often) and I have now run out of ink... I now have the difficulty of making the decision of what to do - the ink cartridges (having looked around) will cost me £34 to replace (and this works out the same as having them re-filled) BUT a new printer WITH ink is only £20! I want to reuse my printer there is nothing wrong with it and because of that I cannot justify replacing it BUT money is tight and we need every penny so money-wise I can only justify spending £20 and chucking/freecycling a perfectly good printer.... :mad: tis ridiculous... what would you all do??

We bought a refill kit which fills the cartridges up several times (up to 6 times, according to the package) for around £15. Because we have an Epson, we also had to buy a chip resetter for a few quid for it to work. It seemed to work okay after we refilled the cartridges.

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calleyw

I have an epson and buy cartridges for about 99p each plus P+P.


Yours



Calley

Pandora123_2

calleyw wrote: »

I have an epson and buy cartridges for about 99p each plus P+P.


Yours



Calley

Where do you buy them from?

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Yategirl

yes.. where do you get the cartridges from?

ceridwen

Hi

I'm afraid I dont have any answers re printer cartridges - as I dont have a printer myself. I just laboriously write out by hand any info I wish to keep (currently busy making myself up a couple of folders on recipes for foods, cleaning materials, cosmetics that I find on the Web).

I too would welcome comments from people on very low incomes on how they manage on them - mine is low, but doesnt count as very low. I get about £1,000 net per month and (once the debt I have is paid off at last - end of this month I think:j then I reckon I will be using about £500 of that one way or t'other as disposable income - possible basically because my mortgage has gone).

What advice I could give re living on even lower income than mine would be things like:
- check you are being paid at least National Minimum Wage (currently £5.35 per hour)
- check your house is in the correct Council Tax band (i did myself - and I am)
- check whether there are any benefits you are entitled to
- read newspapers on line (rather than buying them)
- when buying a house in the first place it helps if it is in a convenient location (saves on transport costs)
- use Freecycle and LETS schemes
- meat is expensive (unless you live on Value sausages and burgers) - protein can be obtained much more cheaply with dairy products/beans/lentils/nuts
- keep work expenses to an absolute minimum (preferably zilch - not possible totally in my case due to work collections, etc - but try not to spend money on transport to and from work or on clothes specially for work).
- dont just assume that only people on the dole get help with Council tax (those on the dole arent required to pay any Council tax - but its worth someone on low income checking if they are entitled to receive a partial discount on their Council tax)
- dont just assume that only those on the dole get grants towards essential maintenance on their house (such as roof replacement). It may be that, even those on a low salary, might get a little bit of grant help towards costs on such items.

I am sure there are many people who can give a lot more - and better - ideas on this than I can - and I am looking forward to hearing them myself.

moanymoany

Dh and I are saving for our retirement - April 31st 2009, not that we're counting the days! So we're trying to get a nice little nest egg in savings to supplement the pension. Dh's company pension has moved the goalposts three times in the past 4 years, not to our advantage.

How to live cheaply - yes, ceridwen is absolutely right (I hesitate to say 'as usual'....but....) meat is expensive. We live mainly on beans, eggs and cheese.

If you don't have to buy it - don't. Newspapers are a good example. They are full of misery and not worth the money. If you have the internet, everything you want is there.

The library is free and has most books you will want. 40pence is how much it costs to order a book locally. My mobile had £15 put on it nearly a year ago and is still going. I use 1899 for calls and my phone bills are usually less than £7 a month. This includes calls to Australia. When dh is in the USA I can phone him for 35p for half an hour.

I do spend money on what is important to me, but even that is not much. However, Friday is my 39th wedding anniversary and we are going to Forest Row to an amazing butcher where all the meat is bio dynamic - one better then organic - expensive but delish! On the way back we are going to a chicken farm to see their point of lays - food and so on.

Reading through this seems a bit rambling - I can only put it down to the couple of glasses of wine I had at dinner....:D

Bogof_Babe

Moany, would you mind explaining about phoning "on 1899"?

moanymoany

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

Moany, would you mind explaining about phoning "on 1899"?

Certainly my dear. On the home page of MMT's you follow the link.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/home-phone-calls#alone

http://callchecker.moneysavingexpert.com/ukcallchecker/

The second link tells you about 1899. It seems as if a new provider gives something better, I'll have to check up on it.

We have a BT line and then the 1899 is 5p connection fee - the rest is free. A voice comes on and tells you how much a minute.

If you follow the 'utilities and phone tab' at the top of the page it will take you to the cheapest phone calls.

good luck. It has saved us hundreds of pounds over the 2 years we've had it. Our bills used to be £60 - 70 a month with telewest. Now - including the BT charge - it rarely goes above £20.

Gale_10

Hello HardupHester,

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this but I just wanted to take a moment to say that you can ask for an interview with a welfare officer at your local housing office, and that should help you with the forms for your husbands disability benefit.

I would have thought that if he has difficulty making a basic meal for himself, then he should also qualify for lower rate disability benefit. But I don't know much about it really, you need to speak to someone who does.

You said:
I'm not really sure why hubby's disability is so low, he gets it for mobility as he's not allowed to drive, he lost some of his eyesight in an industrial accident 14 years ago.

I am fairly new at this posting malarkey so I don't know if it should go to a different thread. Its just a thought anyway.

All the best

Gale

ceridwen

Just finished final "Dumped" programme on Channel 4 (as in living on a rubbish dump) and, surprisingly, it finished on quite an upbeat note and I promptly burst in tears. Well - that makes me a sucker for a happy ending.

Back to surfing - and one moneysaving idea a lot of people on this Board are already doing is growing own food. I only have this tiny backyard myself and anything I decide to put out there will have to go in pots. Anyway - if anyone has any useful websites to share with us re container food gardening - I'm sure that would be appreciated.

Kicking myself up backside I really must make more of a move on this than growing beansprouts and the odd tomato plant. Read a couple of books about vast amounts of food that can be produced by a determined person in even a tiny space. Still recall years ago watching a tv programme on permaculture - featuring people doing just that and was well impressed by a married couple managing to grow a large proportion of their fruit and veg on what was just a supersize balcony.

I know I really should get with it - particularly with companies like Monsanto busy trying to get terminator technology out there on the market (ie the genetic modification of plants to make them produce sterile seeds - so that farmers and ourselves have to rebuy seeds from them, rather than saving our own seeds). Obviously - the more of us have our own little supply going (and if we are feeling really virtuous - duly saving our own seeds) the better.

On the grow your own food theme - one of the things that is defeating me a bit on this having such a tiny little yard (rather than a "proper" garden) is that compost heaps are not possible with the sheer lack of space - so could do with being able to buy readymade bottles/packets of organic "food" for plants as easily as the conventional chemical ones I could just walk up the road and buy. Sort of defeats the object of virtuously not spraying chemicals everywhere on my tomatoes - but then having to use plantfood made of chemicals! So if anyone has any info. to share with us on where to buy this it would be appreciated.