2016 Frugal Living Challenge

sheba

Hello fellow frugalers ( or frugal ears which my spell checker wants to call you snarf snarf).
A good month all in all, was very frugal in my shopping and cooking methods and used up a lot of stuff in my freezer. I am not much of a spender other than this area anyway, but hubster helped by being more mindful of spending on tools and fripperies and we only succumbed to the one takeaway of fish and chips last Friday for 4 at a cost of £20.25, but it was a payday treat after a long month plus I've had a cold for the longest time, not severe but as I am a type one diabetic its just worn me out, so a treat for me not to cook.

So the scores on the doors:

Maintained EF at 5K

Increased savings for weddings/extension fund to 2K from 0 (as 1K invoice came in this morning, the cut off point of my reckoning up, - so 8/100th of the way to desired total.

Buffer fund that hopefully covers areas such as Vehicle maintenance, christmas/hols/birthday, business expenses, gas and electric bills, is at £237.85.

All good as in the black, but I wonder if I am getting ahead of myself with excitement and should have put less into the weddings/extension fund and more into the buffer fund as many of the things the buffer fund covers are expensive. All non emergency vehicle costs are not due til about May/June same as business expenses and hols (we camp in our vw van so costs there are minimal), but business advertising is 240 when its due and the electic/gas bill will likely be about the same when it's due- and I am not sure when either of those ARE due. Obviously it won't be a problem so much financially as psychologically if I have to take from the EF. But I am hoping the fear of touching the ring fenced EF will keep me on the frugal path.

So aims for February are:

maintain EF in full,
increase weddings/extension fund to 2.5K
and,
either extend or replenish buffer fund as required with a hope to build this up to a total of 2K in time.

Plans to achieve these aims:
much I can't control -such as my husbands earnings, therefore I will do what I can by meal planning and being mindful of off-plan spending and also by trying to raise some revenue by selling off some of the carp (undiscovered treasure) currently in the attic.


Anyhoo, Happy February to you all, and I'm off to update my signature. Talk soon x x x x

Frugaldom

FunBrum wrote: »

Your food budget is good though, so keep it up!:T

LOL This is my added luxury this year, it's normally £1/person/day and last year we did £5/person/week so it is no longer much of a challenge after all these years, but I do try to keep improving on how I budget as I'd love to be able to retire by the time I reach 55. Still sticking to my original £4k per year budget, so it's creeping ever closer.

evuka

Hi Frugallers and Frugal Ears (hilarious! :rotfl: for me the option is forestallers), thanks for all the encouraging words re flatmate.

I had a talk with her. She's been convinced she had been tidy and clean and said she was trying so hard... She wanted me to remind her every time there is something needs to be done. I refuse to do so and I told it to her. She's a grown-up, she should notice and incorporate cleaning in her schedule.

She asked about how we can save on energy bills. I mentioned the lights: maximum one to be switched on, in the room where you are, appliances not on standby but switched off. Three days later I'm coming home from work and the flat is illuminated... hall lights are on and they're in her room with bf, lights on as well. W(ednes)T(hurs)F(ri)?! Today is sunny and bright and one of them is taking shower at 11am - with lights on in the bathroom! :eek:

On the bright side though, I made my summary for January and it came out really well! :beer:

Food budget £60/58.28
Fun budget £10/7.17
23 NSDs

No savings for travel or hairdresser or EF but managed to pay my council tax arrear fully and changed it to fortnightly payments from April through 10 months. I hope this would work better with my weekly salary.

The fuel bill is so high I can't pay the full amount and Sc0ttishG@s arranged a monthly DD for me with spreading the current amount due over a couple of months together with the coming months. I'll be still submitting my readings quarterly as I did in the past so they can adjust the figure to show the actual usage. They were very nice on the phone and arranged this change immediately, I was pleasantly surprised.

Plans for February:

• £60 for groceries
• pay at least £100 back to my friend
• cover OD £86
• save min. £10 (well, have to start somewhere)

• 7-day winning streak on SB
• foregarden cleanup, spring bulbs and sowing indoors
• continue selling stuff
• batch cooking
  
• contract with 02 comes to end - switch to pay as you go £10
• overtime overtime overtime
• blog blog blog

FunBrum, your energy bill is amazing! I was inspired to switch my boiler to timer with heating mainly on in the evening and night :cool:

Hope that February goes well for all of us, I have a good feeling about this month

FunBrum

I've been out all day, walking, mending for my niece and sister. I also have had lunch at my sister's...yummy cheese sardine!

I'm going home in a little while so I thought I'd post whilst I have internet access.:D

HM soup for tea and then I have a hat my brother-in-law wants me to trim, so will do that and if I have time, I'm going to be candle making. :A

It's lovely that the evenings are getting lighter. I love it when I can potter about the garden later.

bmma

NSD today = 2
hair cut today-seperate budget x

Buffythedebtslayer

I am having a nightmare!

I haven't gone over the budget tho I had to buy car insurance so that took what I laughingly called an emergency fund. And I have used every last penny of my money and only saved 200 pounds.

I am also de-cluttering so whilst on the one hand I have stuff to sell (and a currently a boot load for charity) I am also trying to reorganise what I have left and have had to buy storage which is annoying.

Plus I have a dreadful Amazon habit. click click click click.

So am calling January a draw!

jess444_2

Sorry you are having a 'nightmare' Buffy ...we would all be so better off without cars, but I can't imagine being without one.
Well done on having 'the talk' Evuka, hopefully it will give her pause for thought!!
Another week within budget, in fact under budget as I am trying to put aside money for the car insurance excess. Managed to get some YS veg from Asda, so that has helped with lunches (soups and salads. Also been using heating a lot less - two hours in the morning and an hour at teatime. All in all beginning to feel positive that we might just be able to manage when I retire in September.
Have also started listing a few bits on EBay to try to boost the emergency fund.
Need to get a haircut next week so need to budget that in.

[Deleted User]

Hi All. I have lost it budget wise this month. There is a definite correlation between me losing focus and not coming on here regularly so I need to make sure I come onto the forum for inspiration daily.

Finally had a look at how things are this afternoon and I have planned some corrective measures.

Frugal plans for the next few days are:
Make potato soup with bits I already have in the kitchen.
Make HM cookies
Need to finish off some Ironing including bedding and put another wash on over the weekend which will be hung on the pulley in the kitchen - I no longer have a tumble dryer.
Finally get round to tiding out the kitchen cupboard.
Minimal spending on food - max £5 until I run out of stuff from freezer/pantry.
And of course - come onto the forum daily to keep me focussed.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Morning all,

Took some of our wraners to market yesterday, and brought them back, prices were awful.. With loads selling for £1. Or not even getting bids, we put a low reserve if £20 in them, and they struggled to get to £10-15 .. After the auctions loads of people approached us, saying what nice weaners they were, and wanted to but then for silky low money!!!

The problem is Russia has put a ban on importing pork from Europe, so the big pork producing countries like Denmark, Holland etc are now dumping their cheap low welfare pork here.. Not only hitting the large pig breeders, but the little hobby breeders like ourselves..

Going to try a diff auction next month, but if its the same there.. I will have to save a large amount of my ney to get them processed, and buy/ get some more chest freezers!!!! We have 9 all together.. And we still have half a freezer full left from the last 2 that went..

Its piddling it down here, so going to spend some time today batch cooking, and picking up my eBay order that I had delivered to Argos, 4 diff size stainless steel stockpots for only just over £20!!! I know I don't need 4 lol, so will see if my mother wants one,

sheba

Morning fellow Frugal Ears :rotfl:

Following on from my previous post, it seems I may have indeed been over excited and put money in the wrong place as since then, we HAVE had to pay hubsters business advertising (£252- yowee!) , also hubster has changed mobile contract (sim only) from 10.20 a month to 9.80 a month but the mid month change has meant his last bill is 2.42 more than expected (tiny grrr as it upsets my numbers briefly) and bigger GRRR as my cats' insurance renewal has come in and it's gone up by 3.32 a month to a whopping 25.09 a month!!! That's annoyed me as I feel they have me over a barrel now as cat is 15 so I can't move insurance. But I do know that although I've never claimed anything for him, the 4K I've likely paid out thus far could be offset by any claim I might have to make in the future-vet fees are redonculous aren't they? So as it stands, I spend 54.18 monthly on pet insurance for 1x 15 yr old pusky cat and 1x 8 yr old pooch and 0 a month on life insurance for me- maybe need to remedy!

So to achieve my monthly aims I will have to pull my belt in an extra (3) notch(es) and hope for no more off plan spending. Fingers crossed.

Have a fab weekend all, and hope your weather is better than it is here at mo (-very yucky, but good excuse to stop in and watch the rugby- gotta love those silver linings)

Talk later