2015 Frugal Living Challenge

optimistic-mummy

macwah97 wrote: »

Hi everybody, hope you are all doing well.

Been absent for a while but later on today I leave all employment, big decision, long time thinking, short time decision.

This last week has been the icing on the cake. DS in hospital for biopsies, DH has eventually agreed to seek counselling for his PTSD and all the ramifications and fall out in the offing and my fibromyalgia has kicked in big time with all the stress, and really trying to go to work even for three days a week and worrying about the remainder of the family is not possible, plus lack of sleep!!!

At the minute I can just about see a flicker at the end of the tunnel and that's a positive.

So the only income I bring in is carer's, however I really should apply for DLA for myself and DS. DS will be having therapy for the forseeable future and I have never claimed for Fibro despite having it for 10 years.

Hey ho - gripe over. I have been batch cooking and big shopping and we as a family are enjoying this - just need to get back into the gardening. Being at home will not only permit me to look after DH better but to get all the little things repaired etc that have fallen by the wayside - you never know I may even manage to get a bubbly bath without the phone ringing or someone looking something - wot about 3am.

Off now to read all 33 pages on here and catch up. Nearly spring time and I have potatoes to chit and plant.

xxxxx

hugs to you and your family hun. its worth applying the worst they can say is no hun, you wont know until you apply. I hope things start looking up for you soon

optimistic-mummy

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Hi all,


cant sleep, I am like we willie winkie around the place..


I won a £40 freezer meat pack on FB from a local butcher that rears their own meat.. I did laugh though as most of it is pork... and we have a freezer full of our own lol. but I am not complaining.. its free, plus I know this butcher is having rave reviews, so they will prob have gained a customer even if I don't buy their pork in the future ..


so well worth entering cometitions, even on FB... I have also won a pair of oven gloves with 'I love pork' on them. and our eldest won a bike form the usa,( that was just about to be on sale in the uk) that was worth well over £1000...


I have signed up to shopitise and checkoutsmart on my mobile, to make use of money off things via using my phone...


so fingers crossed I will be able to make/save a few pennies there..


are there any other apps that people use to save/cash in on deals etc??

Topcashback
quidco
shopitize
couponshop.co.uk
supersavvyme
snap and save - through top cashback
clicksnap grocery - through quidco
that's all I can think of right now ill let you know if I think of anymore

optimistic-mummy

we haven't had a bad few days been trying to keep spends to an absolute minimum had a company phone this morning offering me much better and cheaper tariffs for my gas and electric I accepted and realised when I got off the phone I could of done it myself through uswitch and earned cashback through tcb
would it be naughty to cancel and then find the same tariff on comparision company through tcb I do have a 14 day cooling off period

lynnejk

optimistic-mummy wrote: »

we haven't had a bad few days been trying to keep spends to an absolute minimum had a company phone this morning offering me much better and cheaper tariffs for my gas and electric I accepted and realised when I got off the phone I could of done it myself through uswitch and earned cashback through tcb
would it be naughty to cancel and then find the same tariff on comparision company through tcb I do have a 14 day cooling off period

Sounds very MSE to me
Lx

his_missus

Well, we shall be living frugally until payday. Hubby took over the shopping list last week and spent far too much money. It certainly opened his eyes, hopefully he now understands why I menu plan and write a list.


So we have £40 to last us to the 20th (£10 of that will be used to feed the cats), probably not a challenge for all of you serious frugalers but it has my Hubby fearing starvation .


Don't worry, I won't let him starve but the things I have to go through to prove a point to him

cw18

figures for Feb are all compiled for posting, but I'm currently without home internet (my ISP switch went belly-up yesterday).

currently on my laptop in a shopping centre doing urgent bits before my battery dies - beats paying for a dongle for 24 hours (had to come down here anyway for yet another optician appt - major probs with the glasses I got in Jan, this is the second time of fetching them back!)

lynnejk

Hiya everyone :hello:

Still haven't had time to do budgets for February but hope to get done tomorrow

It's our 5th wedding anniversary today but we are not going out as I'm working and DH is on earlies. So we will probably go for a drink at the weekend and then put the monies to our holiday meals-out as we go on Monday

It's also my last day at work as we have decided I should take early retirement. I am starting to find it a bit too much now working five out of ten every fortnight.

It seemed a good time to give my notice as only have to work this week and then away for the other three weeks anyway. So not really decided what I will do after my holidays but will worry about that when I come back and just enjoy the time away.

Will have to have a re-think a little on the budgets now

Hope you all have a super Thursday
Lx

cw18

Home internet is back on, so I've spent the last 7 hours catching up on loads from the last 60 hours - and am now here to post my February figures

Category - Anual Budget - Budget to end Feb - Spend to end Feb
Council Tax - £1212 - £140 - £140
bang on target. rest of year depends on what increase (if any) the council applies. I've allowed for small increase but change to 12 payments from April, and have seen they're hoping to keep bills the same as last year.
Gas & Electricty - £900 - £150 - £30.90
totally messed up thanks to my provider having introduced a new policy of refunding a credit balance at annual review if the balance is more than 1 months payment or £100 (mine was more than both as my payment is under £100 and balance was over). I wasn't happy as it's taken me 13 years to get to that balance and maintain it pretty consistently! They've now set a flag on my account to stop this happening again (can be done at customer request), but it meant my payments would leave me with a debit at next review as they'd set them taking into account the >£100 balance!!! swapped to a cheaper tariff which means leaving payments 'as is' should build me up to around the £100 credit by this time next year, but means I'm going to show as under budget for this for the rest of the year.....
Water - £288 - £48 - £48
standard monthly D/Debit
House Insurance - £270 - £0 - £0
due in Decemeber
Central Heating Cover - £240 - £40 - £38.80
standard monthly d/debit, allowing for an increase at renewal later in the year
Phone & Broadband - £264 - £44 - £167.90
initiated a switch of provider, so had to make first payment to them. and I opted to pay the years line rental up front (means no calls included, but I make so few chargeable calls that the saving for doing this far outweighs any calls I may have to pay for) which means I've totally skewed how the payements are going out. Hoping to be around (or even under) budget by year end.
Mobile - £150 - £25.00 - £25.00
standard monthly d/debit
Windows - £78 - £13.00 - £5
I was out when he came for paying so will have to pay double in March - which will get me back on target
Vision (glasses and contacts) - £300 - £50 - £164.80
this is going to show as an overspend for a while, and possibly all year. I haven't yet decided whether or not to stay on the contact lens scheme - I didn't budget to do so, but it still appears that if I take the max 6 payment holidays each year the savings on new glasses (if I continue to need at least every 12 months) just about covers the cost of 4 momths worth of lenses over 6 payments - and as I don't wear them every day that may well be enough for me.
Dental - £72 - £12 - £18.50
hoping to manage until August for next visit (due July), so should be in credit at end of March until then.
Prescriptions/Flu shot - £48 - £4 - £0
not needed anything
First Aid - £24 - £4 - £3.90
over budget at end of Jan, but pulled it back in Feb
Vitamins - £144 - £24 - £50.80
no new spends in Feb, so working on balancing out now
Presents - £480 - £80 - £48.80
still picking bits up for later in the year - mainly GDs Christmas and OH's birthday and Christmas
Gym - £480 - £80 - £80
standard monthly d/debit
Lottery - £372 - £62 - £22
have had a few small wins over the two months, but also purchased a couple of extra tickets from winnings (my rules on that say I can buy extra when there's a big rollover or special draw, but only if I'm in credit because of wins)
WLR subs - £96 - £0 - £0
subscription to a website I've been a member of for years. pay in 6 monthly instalments in June & Dec
Car Insurance - £480 - £0 - £0
due 1st Aug, so gets paid late July
Petrol - £864 - £144 - £93.70
this one's always a bit of a finger in the air when estimating - which has been harder to do since I put DS1 on the insurance as I can only work on his commute accurately, with his leisure mileage varying wildly month to month
Breakdown - £78 - £78 - £77.50
annual payment due in Jan
Road Tax - £132 - £132 - £130
annual payment due in Jan
MOT - £48 - £0 - £0
due in July
Service - £132 - £0 - £0
due in July
Repairs - £600 - £100 - £127.00
had to pay £75 excess for a new windscreen (chipped) and £10 for new wiper blades (turned down the windscreen chaps offer to provide a new set at a much higher price, and nipped down to my local garage). could use month or two with no repairs to pull back on this, but it's not looking promising (DS1 reports a fault starting to show up that his mechanic friend reckons will cost about £250 to fix!)
Groceries - £2980 - £481.70 - £442.60
shop spend for year so far is actually only £182.10, but I'm including replacement cost of stuff from stock (which I had in before 1st Jan) and not discounting for offers/whoopsies (the money saved gets used elsewhere - see later)
Toiletries - £180 - £30 - £25.30
calculating the same way as groceries. shop spend to end Feb is £9.28
Cleaning - £120 - £20 - £9.00
calculating same way as groceries. shop spend to end Feb is £6

Totals - £11032 - £1765.70 - £1749.50
under target, but only because of the refund from gas/electricity!

Across various categories for year to end Feb I used
stock (groceries) £206.46
stock (toiletries & cleaning to be replaced) £15.25
vouchers worth £32.08
and saved
from offers (half price type) £6.44
from multibuys £6.31
from whoopsie purchases £23.05

giving me £289.59 to play with, of which

£144.80 has been put aside in case some of my budgets get blown out of the water
and
£144.79 has been allocated as available for my zero budgets

I've also made £47.84 selling old bits on eB@y, which has been split
£23.97 for budget 'cushioning' and
£23.87 for zero budgets
(I split income from each item rather than as a total, so will never be a 50:50 split)

So zero budget income is
£20 from DS1 (his contribution, in return for which I do his laundry)
£45 from surveys
6p from roadkill
£7.99p from presents stock
£3.44 value of toiletries/cleaning I won't be replacing (only used up because I had in the house)
£3 from purchasing bits from non-zero budget (presents) using loyalty points
£6.30 from cashback (on grocery purchases, via an App on my phone)
£144.79 from the savings made across categories with budgets
£14.48 from grocery budget to cover items DS1 and OH paid for but didn't get paid back by me for
£200 gifts (my Christmas and Birthday cheques)
35p loose change from regular bills (rounding d/debits up to next 10p)
£3.37 loose change from groceries (rounding up each spend to next 10p)
24p loose change from toiletries (rounding up each spend to next 10p)
9p loose change from cleaning (rounding up each spend to next 10p)
5p loose change from vitamins (rounding up each spend to next 10p)
£23.87 from eB@y sales

giving me a total income for zero budget of £473.03 - meaning I added nearly another £100 to this in Feb which has surprised me.

of that I've spent £296.13 as follows

Books £24.92
CDs £9.00 (actually 3 albums on vinyl, but I don't have a category for that!)
DVDs £25.84
Footwear £22.99
Fitness £25 (annual membership fee to running club)
Household 'bits' £34.51
Houshold Repairs £143.00 - this has been my big hit in Feb and covers almost half my zero-budget spending for the year so far, with £48 for my combi oven, £45 for my tumble dryer (now working much better and quicker, so saving on electricity ) and £50 for my washing machine which is due to go back as it's still not totally sorted (but won't cost me any more)
Everything Else £10.87

his_missus

Gas and Electric readings done yesterday and we've used less gas and electricity on a daily basis in the past month Should start to drop even more now the weather is predicted to get warmer.


I may even get to hang some washing out over the weekend

cw18

Just had to have an online chat with my water company. I got an email notification there was a new bill available this morning, and on checking it I spotted it covered just over 3 months but included 4 payments. Because I'd gone £20 further into credit since the last bill they'd dropped my monthly payments by almost £5, but I wasn't convinced the maths held up to keeping me in credit by this time next year (or even next official bill in 6 months). So I've got them to re-instate my previous payments - something I seem to have to do after every bill gets produced !!! It's not like I'm in credit by a huge sum with them either - currently equates to a single monthly payment of £24.

I love some of the figures they give on the bill

Apparently my houshold's daily average useage for the last 12 months has been 120 litres (2 of us during the week, 3 at a weekend), while the average PERSON'S useage is 150 litres a day. And I'm at home almost full-time, so would expect mine to be higher - we must be terribly dirty :rotfl:

Over half of my bill is standing charges (£37.08 of a £72.67 bill)

For this billing period (101 days) you have used 12 cubic metres of water (12,000 litres).

What do you get for 1 cubic metre?
To give you an idea of where your water goes 1 cubic metre would give you all of the following.

1 bath (DS1 may have had a couple of the 12 they've suggested)
and
3 washing machine loads (so they suggest I've done 36 in 14.5 weeks - might be close, but probably under)
and
6 showers (giving us 72 - this we've gone well over as DS1 showers daily and I have at least 3 a week, so we've done a minimum of 140. don't know if their figures are for a power shower, but ours aren't)
and
32 toilet flushes (giving me 384, or an average of almost 4 a day. this probably isn't far off.)
and
49 cups of tea or coffee (hmmm.. so that's 588 cups of tea in total or just under 6 a day, but they're basing it on a standard mug and I use a pint mug for tea. reckon I've used slightly - but not excessively - more on this category)
and
3 dishwasher loads (don't own one!! hand wash the pots no more than once a day unless I have a major batch cooking session, and often once every 2 or 3 days - especially on the days DS1's at work)
and
Other general use (I'd love to know what this covers as it's set to almost an eighth of suggested use - I suppose it includes washing the car and watering the garden, neither of which I do)