2016 Frugal Living Challenge

peony40

Hello All,

I need to put my debit card under lock and key! Just purchased online some slippers and leisure trousers for hubby, they are needed so I must not feel bad. In theory it should work out cheaper hubby having more than one pair of leisure trousers as I won't need to put the central heating on to get them dry in time for the evenings.

Menu planned today, although my pantry is a little bare at the moment. I keep wanting to top it up, but I am holding off until my bank account is healthier. Have planned meals for the next week, although I will need some potatoes and butter this week.

This month I am going to concentrate on menu planning, portion control and cheap to make meals.

How is everyone else doing?

Wombatchops

It was my birthday recently, and I am a friend of a doughnut shop with a similar name to Crispy Cream (am I allowed to call it that?) I also am a member of the cake club for a French bakery called Valerie. They had both sent me emails offering free goodies to celebrate my birthday, so my frugalling today was picking up a free birthday cupcake from Valerie, and a free doughnut of my choosing from the doughnut shop.

After being reminded by boboski, I have also just taken the survey for Mr T for the loyalty points, and the survey for Mr S for the chance to win the money.

FunBrum

Hello Peeps.

£10 DD went out of the bank today, so that's the first deduction from my budget. £3000-£10=£2990 left.:)

Another NSD and I'm still eating from stock and HM soup for this evenings dinner.:T

When I get back home from my sister's, I plan to sort out the seed packets I have for this year's planting. I've thought about mixing flowers with veggies in my front garden so that it's pleasing to the eye as well as tasty. It may take a bit of planning but I'm sure I can download a free kindle book or watch a YouTube video.

TTFN

Cutcostsandsave

Hi everyone
I'm new to the forums but I've already found lots of challenges that I think will really motivate me to cut my cost of living and to save.
Myself and my husband are real 'foodies' and we currently spend far too much on groceries. I do enjoy finding bargains, have grown my own food in the past and I enjoy cooking. I'm sure this frugal challenge would really help motivate me. What I would like to achieve is a total grocery budget for the year of £3000 or less. Can I join the challenge please?

Wombatchops

Hi Cutcostsandsave, welcome to the challenge. There are links via the second post which help with cutting grocery costs. Good luck.

Savvy_sewing

So today was my first spends.
£16.66 on foods, well marmite, Mayo, Worcester sauce etc.
£11.94 on things for the home including a new loo brush and curtain hooks and foil containers for the freezer.
£1 on postage to Eire.

But I was gifted 2 individual pots of jam and a keyboard as my laptop has jamming letters.

I contacted Sky, and downsized my package, which will save me £29.90 ap a month. Although this month it will be £31.02 and after 8 months it goes up a bit. Doing the maths I will save £338.87 over the next 12 months.

For my business I managed to get my DD for electric reduced by £28 a month, clawing back £224 between now and Augusts next review.
So I am a happy bunny.

bmma

Home made soup for me tonight and I have also been thinking about what to grow this year
one large tub washed and saved to grow some kind of seeds
2 insides of toilet roll kept-helps the peas start off straight
wonder if the price of fruit and veg will rocket because of all this rain?
off to have my soup x
ps where do I find the edit signature?

DawnW

bmma wrote: »

ps where do I find the edit signature?

'user cp' on top green bar, then list on the left of the page

Frugal_life

Thanks to some poor planning, won't be making it a 6 NSD week this week ran out of bread, went to the shop, £7.25 later... :eek:

Live and learn, I guess! Certainly makes me more determined to achieve a 5 NSD week and go for 6 next week!

bmma, I click on "profile" --> "your settings" and then the edit signature button is on the toolbar along the left hand side

skint_chick

I've just sat down with OH and done our 2016 budget - he was working NYE and the last 2 nights so this is the first chance we've had to discuss our plans.

£860 gas and electricity
£488.64 life, critical illness and income protection
£90 buildings and contents
£505 TV, broadband. landline (he signed us up to a Sky contract at £30 a month just before Christmas grrr plus TV licence)
£565 car insurance, tax, and petrol
£320 clothes, shoes and haircuts
£200 social life
£1800 groceries, cleaning products and toiletries
£204 mobiles
£240 birthday and Christmas presents for friends and family
£127 rabbit supplies and vets
£5,400 total

not including mortgage, council tax, holiday, university fees as these are set amounts outside of the budget that I have no control over - apart from the holidays. Last year we went camping in Germany, visited family in Switzerland and travelled within the UK. This year we've booked our first package holiday, all inclusive to a Greek island for two weeks.

I have already secured two contracts for my consultancy business, which should make enough to cover the holiday and half my uni fees, and I am hopeful about gaining a new contract later in the year to cover the rest of the uni fees and half of next year's. My regular job pays for my £5,400 plus mortgage and council tax, any income OH makes is going to repay the debt then straight into savings. His job has transferred to another company and they owe him wages from the last two months plus he has unpaid wages coming from the government at some point, all of this should just about repay my credit card debt.

Things are a lot better for us since I started doing this challenge back in 2009, when we were around £16k in debt. Despite a big change in my life with returning to studying and changing to part-time working we are significantly better off because we have our budget most under control. This year I would like to control it better to get our savings up to £5,000 by the end of the year.