2015 Frugal Living Challenge

Frugaldom

Happy Holiday Monday, fellow frugalers!

End of month accounts all done for the challenge and I have also submitted my annual tax return, which has to be a record for me, getting it away in April. But I do like it done and dusted. Not expecting any tax rebate this year as I haven't earned enough to pay any.

Annual spends to date on housekeeping £2,174.80, which means I have only £1,825.20 remaining to see me through the next 8 months! :eek: It helps that the year's house insurance and phone line rental are paid up front, electricity meter topped up with credit, fuel in stock and kitchen cupboards/fridge/freezer full. The household is 2 adults + whoever happens to be visiting + complications. ROTFL


My spends are all recorded in spreadsheets to include the following for the full year:


Groceries (£520)
Toiletries, Laundry & Cleaning (£100)
Electricity (£700)
Coal (£290)
Logs (£160)
Misc. (£227.31)
Mobile Telephone (£10)
Telephone & Internet (£425)
TV (£145.50)
Footwear & Clothing (£75)
Gifts (£250)
Transport Costs (£400)
Postage & Deliveries (£120)
Home Insurance (£112.19)
Household Pets (£100)
Life assurance & NI contributions (£365)


1.) I have a zero tolerance on food waste and have cut back a great deal on the amount of meat consumed. This year's grocery challenge at Frugaldom is £5 per person per week for all meals. I buy in bulk when I can, make the most of discounted items, batch cook, preserve, swap and barter.


2.) We buy only the barest essentials in toiletries - soap, shampoo, shower gel, roll on deodorant, toilet rolls, feminine hygiene products, toothpaste ... there are no luxuries such as cosmetics, creams, lotions, potions, hair products, perfumes etc (It helps that I've almost no tolerance for most of them now.) I make my own laundry cleaner - see links in post 1


3.) Electricity meters are read every week and readings charted. (We don't have central heating and we can't change our suppliers - already explained.) This year I am trying to drive down electricity use while we save for some solar panels.


4.) Coal is extortionate, so I try to use as little of it as possible, but the main heating in the house is open fire with back boiler heating the water and some radiators.


5.) Logs are equally expensive, as I don't yet have the capacity to cut and store them - no burly hubby with a chainsaw here! Foraging for free wood of any description and now about to start making the most off all the timber that's lying about the field at the Frugaldom Project.


6.) Misc. is what's left over out of the £4,000 annual challenge budget and is meant to cover everything else. Eg. I'd to buy a wash basin and frying pan for the caravan, some new bedding, buy flowers for funeral, treated myself to a new watch, etc.


7.) There's no mobile signals at the house but I do have signal out here in the caravan at the Frugaldom project, so only £10 allocated for that for emergency contact only.

8.) TV - paid monthly for house and included in site fees at caravan. I can happily live without TV but house-sharing means it isn't solely my decision.


9.) Footwear and clothing - the minimum required and I have no qualms about visiting CS, swapping, buying cheap and accessorising.


10.) Gifts are my downfall as I tend to prefer buying for others, so I need to be really strict about this. I also do all shopping I can through topcashback, then transfer the amount into Amazon vouchers, which get used for extra gift buying.


11.) Transport is for anything to do with travel. I don't own a car, I have a pedal bike but pay fuel when car-sharing and go by bus & train when venturing further afield.


12.) Postage & deliveries cover things like mailing stuff out and the delivery costs when buying anything online.


13.) Home insurance paid up front in a lump sum, usually through cashback, just got my £22.50 through for this year's house insurance, so that will get used for extras and gifts.


14.) Household pets - cat food, rabbit food, bedding and wormers. Anything else has to come from contingency and I appreciate fully that pets are luxuries, hence the reason I no longer have horses. The pets' diets are subsidised with home made and/or homegrown. The hens are not included in this total, as they are part of the Frugaldom Project, which needs to be made cash neutral.


15.) Insurances - this should drop by almost £145 next year if the Government stands by its word and abolishes Class 2 National Insurance. The rest is a savings bond with life assurance to cover funeral costs, as I would hate to croak it suddenly and leave my kids with a huge unexpected bill.


Sorry this is such a lengthy post but when I saw CW list all of her expenses, I thought I would update on mine. I am into extreme frugal living for the sake of saving to invest in bigger and better things. I have had many years of practice (I celebrated the 17th anniversary of the successful completion of my first big moneysaving challenge this holiday weekend) and it is now normal habit for me to live like this.


I LOVE IT!

parsniphead

Wow frugaldom

I'm new to this challenge and don't have accounts so far for theyear but think I may do a may to may challenge. I really need to look at my costs almost forensically.

I was really inspired by your post. Thank you.

his_missus

I really need to get Hubby back into a more frugal way of thinking. He's half way there in that he's happy to "cut back" in some places but then thinks as we've saved there we can spend here instead!


I suppose his way of thinking is "we're not in debt now so we can live a lot" whereas my thinking is "We're not in debt now so we can live a little and save a lot"


Will need to be frugal until payday so let's see how he manages

Frugaldom

His missus, it does seem to be a common problem trying to get other members of a household on board when they can't quite get the gist of why they need to cut back in the first place. I think it's a simple case of that lucky penny just not having dropped yet. It also seems to drop much more slowly for males of the species, as they do tend to be rewards driven. My suggestion would be to set up a special 'training exercise' to find out what his lifelong dreams really are or were and then look at ways of making at least part of those become a reality. It doesn't matter how small the end reward is, as long as it's a reward and it's carved into the frugal budget.


Spend a little, live a lot - there are ways of achieving most things once we have our spending under control. Good luck. (My "cottage in the country with white picket fence" is a mobile home with wooden decking, sited next to a row of trees. My 'own a smallholding with woodland' is a marshy field where we are now planting trees and fencing off areas suitable for growing foodstuffs. It's all in the multitude of small steps that accumulate over the years to help you climb from debt to heights some may previously never thought possible.


I like the new layout of the forums! Nice seeing post 1 at the top of the pages, it may encourage more to read it and check back over previous years.


For newcomers, my username was NYKMedia when I started this challenge in 2007 but I requested a name change to reflect the ultimate goal - frugal freedom! Frugaldom is now the name of my wilderness project and we already had the website up and running to show how much can be done with how little - it's just changed slightly over the years to accommodate many more smaller steps needed to get to where we're now at, if that makes sense.


To those who haven't yet found your debt freedom, it is coming! Just keep on plugging away, one step at a time, saving where you can, chipping away at outstanding bills. I got rid of everything that charges interest and the more interest it charged, the more I hated it. No catalogues, no credit terms, not even interest free credit, as they have their hidden charges that can be haggled down by paying cash.


Waffled enough... you know where I am if there are any questions and I do read the daily email updates.


Frugal living is a lifestyle choice for life - even some of the richest people follow our path so never judge anyone on their supposed financial worth. At the ultimate end, we are pretty much all worth the same.

his_missus

Frugaldom, what's annoying is that my Hubby has plenty of achievable goals and dreams. He wants to be mortgage free before we're 60 so We've redone the mortgage to pay it off in 15yrs instead of the 23yrs term previously. My wage rise will cover the increase in mortgage repayments. He wants to landscape our back garden and has designs on a new bedroom. We have a "bucket list" of places we want to visit in the next 10 years.


He is a man of many dreams


And they are all achievable but, without a huge windfall/lottery win, require a more frugal lifestyle.


I will win though - I achieved my Debt free date months before he thought possible

optimistic-mummy

hi all, i haven't posted on the forum for a while,

i need a true mse frugal kick in the right direction

tomorrows plan :

nsd
check freezer see whats in there
print off SFE application
list 10 things for sale

i will try and post each day and hopefully it will help me keep on track

Frugaldom

His Missus, I think you sound like you have your head screwed on the right way and are definitely heading in the right direction. Maybe OH will realise this as soon as he sees his own goals met but it might mean you leading the way. I reckon it's in the genes - we find it natural to make ends meet from week to week and learn quickly through not wanting to lose the roof over our heads or starve but those male genes, well... they may be trainable but unless it started from an early age, it could be a bit like teaching an old dog new tricks - possible by slow and repetitive work!

On the subject of No Spend Days (NSD) I have never really counted them because I always found it much more helpful to analyse the spending than - more a case of how I spend and on what, rather than when. I can go a month with only a couple of essential direct debits but then blow a small fortune over the space of a few days. I haven't become mean over the years, I prefer to think of it more as wise and shrewd, looking at every penny a long term investment. Food is investing in your own health, so I don't mind not buying takeaways, alcohol, cigarettes or fancy cakes. I bake, cook from scratch, have leaned how to make equivalent oriental and Asian meals and in summer, make homemade champagne style fizz that lasts all year. I find it more fun in finding ways of making life fun from pretending to have no 'mun'.

My biggest outlay at the moment is site fees for the mobile home I recently moved into, but they include equivalent of council tax/rates, TV licence, Sky, WiFi/Broadband, fishing, swimming, golf, owners' breakfast once a month or so and regular free to attend cheese & wine type parties, so it's a pretty good deal, in my opinion, at average of just under £39 per week, which gets paid annually in advance. I still read my electricity meter every Monday and all I need to assess now is how long a big bottle of gas lasts for the cooking, living room fire and hot water. Loving it! (Caused a bit of a setback on the house renovations, of course, but it's great being able to just walk half a mile to work on the Frugaldom project. )

Got frugalers coming to stay next week, so that should be fun, then we have a frugal fitness boot camp in the planning for this summer, so it's all go.

Aim for further than you want to go, aim higher than you want to climb and aim deeper than you want to dig, that way you have succeeded in achieving your real goals no matter what others think.

alja

Just caught up on this thread after a crazy busy few weeks! As always this thread is really motivational.

I've pretty much moved into my first home now, so I've had a very expensive few weeks. I've got a holiday to pay off in the coming days, so that'll be another £200+ out the door.

I've got plenty of basic toiletries that should last me into next year and possibly beyond, so I'll only have to pick up the odd few bits here and there. Food shopping is something I'm new to and will have to watch my spending on, but I'm happy to buy from the basics ranges here and there to keep the costs down. I have a banana in the freezer at the moment, trying out banana ice cream for the first time!

I'm aiming to keep present buying costs down this year too. I managed to use my tickbox points to get a lovely notebook set for a friend's birthday next month. I also found a pretty photo album in sainsburys for just £1.05 alongside a matching print memo block for 90p - these will go to a friend who has a birthday in september, nothing like being organised! I have boots points etc that I may use too

I also have a guy friend whose birthday is in july, last year he got me a voucher, so I just got him one in return, which meant me spending much more than I usually would! So I'm on the lookout for something cheaper this year! Just hope I can find something he'd like...I find guys very hard to buy for!

Serendipitious

Hello! Just been browsing the thread and am impressed with all the hints and tips. Looking at your expenditures, Frugaldom, I can now feel reassured that I am operating in the right direction even though there's still a bit of debt-busting to do.
Based on your categories and like-for-like expenses, my figures come in at only 10% above yours for the year, and that includes car insurance, tax and petrol. I don't have logs or coal any more, as my new habitat is a small urban flat (with amazing views, fortunately!) And I don't bother with TV.

Your lifestyle sounds amazing, I hope for something similar on retirement. Thanks for the inspirational thread. S x

parsniphead

Finally I have finished reading this thread from the beginning again as have thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope to find time to read through the previous ones someday.

It's definitely given me some food for thought and made me realise that I really need to get back into the frugal way of living fully. I have been reasonably good at this in the past but have slipped in recent years.

At the moment the garden has a good amount of veg in it but still had room for more. I need to be this sorted urgently so as to make the most of the space I have. It will only make a smallish difference but it will cut down costs and hopefully the little one will catch the bug and be interested in his environment.

One change I have made is starting to food shop monthly rather than fortnightly and I seem to be building up a nice little reserve of food. I know if I have a very lean month just a small spend will see me through. As stressful as it is with a toddler in tow I'm definitely keeping this up.

I do feel that one area I'm falling behind on is getting s fixed budget in place. This is something I need to work on over the weekend and hopefully will have something to post on here and stick to soon.

Off to bed now. I'm a bit pooped after my 4.30 am start.