2018 Frugal Living Challenge

foggy_froggy

Aargh only half way through my first month and the budget is blown, purse staying firmly shut for the rest of the month. So annoyed with myself loads in but some nights too lazy so grab something quick from shop on way home from work. Not anymore, meals for rest of the month planned and slow cooker dusted off. I will be debt free by the end of the year.

lynnejk

Pipsmum wrote: »

...........
I do have one question that is probably very silly, but I know you will have some great ideas. I have been inspired by Frugaldoms £1 a day for all meals, and think it would help me reduce my overall spend if I knew how much each meal was costing. But today my food shopping just gets put away, and I have no idea how much individual portions of things costs. I was thinking of working out the cost of say one ounce of flour/tablespoon of sugar/one stock cube etc, and writing this on the packet - but is there a better way?.....

I'm not sure. I think I've been living on a budget for soo long and just buy things I know will fill up the month for the monies we have. I do make a lot of soups, nearly always batch cook and freeze and generally buy f & v in season.

We are not lucky enough to have a garden/allotment so have to rely on the shops, and I usually try to buy when things are on offer and stock up. We do however, buy fresh meat from the butcher as I'm happier with that rather than the sms.

You might like to look at this site however, as it seems to show you about portion pricing

https://www.budgetbytes.com/2013/07/how-to-calculate-recipe-costs/
HTH
Lx

spudsmum

Finally home!

It took us longer to get from the airport to the carpark (about a mile) than it took to fly from portugal to manchester due to roadworks. How crazy is that?! we landed at 2pm and got home at 8 so we might have had a sneeky takeaway due to pure exhaustion.

Ordered an online shop to be delivered ready for us coming home - prices have obviously dropped a little as it came in £12 under budget (which was roughly what we spent on the takeaway - but hey ho )

Final tally of the holiday spends and I have spent 309.33 euro for the week. Not too bad - so I have 190.67 euro left over to go towards the next one. Also had £75.43 in English money too so I'll be paying at least £30 of that towards debts together with whatever other bits and bobs of money i can scrape together this week

DH also got paid more than expected this week - he had 4 hours off so should have been about £40 down at least but he was only £3 down. Need to check that as theyve made mistakes in the past but hopefully will mean i have a full weeks budget instead of being short this week. (DH's wages cover all the day to day expenses as he gets paid weekly - I allocate £200 from his wage to my budget every week but if his wages are short or he's sick or takes time off then I have to take the hit and make allowances for that in my budget )

Not much else to report - have a rare day of peace tomorrow so going to sit and rework my budgets to see where I am and what needs tweaking, Feels strange to say I am oddly excited by that.

Frugaldom

Buffythedebtslayer wrote: »

... I have my plan to buy a house up north. for about 35,000 - 40,000. I can do that with a large bank loan I think but need to get more research.

You're moving to Scotland? :j:rotfl::beer: Yes, I reckon you can buy a cheap house on a large bank loan - I've read of people buying on cash advances from credit cards in the past! :eek: I've also heard of people usng car loans to buy property. Speaking from personal experience, my houses have cost less than some of the cars friends and colleagues are driving. :rotfl:

PS: MSE forums have been bouncing about here, too... halfway through typing and the whole page jumped to twice the width of the screen.

Pipsmum

Thank you Lynnejk, that is a great help. As that article says, it is probably only something I will do a couple of times with various recipes, as I think it will help me learn how to tweak recipes to make them more filling for less money, but making sure I get the maximum flavour.

Frugaldom

Don't forget to exchange your paper £5 and £10 notes for new ones or else pay them into the bank. Deadline is 1st March for spending them.

Has anyone noticed any of the cheap fruit trees in the supermarkets yet? Keep waiting for Ald! to get them in but still no word of them.

Thanks for that handy link, Lynnejk - I'd add it to the list but can't find the list

Glad you enjoyed your holiday, spudsmum, and better still that you came in under budget. Will you pay he underspend towards debts? Only reason I ask is that my round number OCD keeps seeing your £20,864 and wishing it could be rounded down to the next 50 or 00 :rotfl:

spudsmum

Frugaldom wrote: »

Has anyone noticed any of the cheap fruit trees in the supermarkets yet? Keep waiting for Ald! to get them in but still no word of them.

Glad you enjoyed your holiday, spudsmum, and better still that you came in under budget. Will you pay he underspend towards debts? Only reason I ask is that my round number OCD keeps seeing your £20,864 and wishing it could be rounded down to the next 50 or 00 :rotfl:

Haha Frugaldom

The euros I'll be saving towards the next trip at Easter - normally I would have thought I needed the money so would have changed them back to pounds and then being scraping around for holiday money before going away again but that would mean losing on the exchange rate both times AND new superbudgetting me knows I can afford to live without that money - yay!

The pounds will probably go towards the debt along with my survey money that came in last week - i like round numbers too!

I've not seen the fruit trees yet - I'm looking out for them myself - i revamped our garden last year as it was all concrete and added lots of growing space as i was hoping to get into growing my own stuff - never happened as life got in the way but I'm going to seriously try it this year. My mum is a keen grower and has a couple of the Supermarket fruit trees in pots and theyve been fab so hoping to get a couple myself.

indigowarrior

Buffy,
I am like you. I want to buy a very cheap house. Which is why I plan to move to the area I want to buy from in the next few months. I am following Frugaldoms steps in that I dont want a mortgage.

indigowarrior

Does anyone struggle to get the consistancy of porridge right? I bought a large bag of smart price porridge (75p) and twice in row I have struggled to eat it.

spudsmum

Buffysounds like a great idea and one of the reasons I love being in the North - you get so much more for your money property wise.

I agree the lure of being mortgage free is very strong - Its currently possibly within my grasp but requires some hard work and a bit of luck on my part to bring it off.

Not much going on here for me today - been invited to in laws for tea tonight so one less meal for me to provide this week :j I also feel the need to do something productive today so this afternoon I'm going to have another clear out to identify a few things to sell and maybe do some surveys if time permits.

Also going to use my fancy new notebook too to crunch some numbers and see what I can send to my debts this week.

I just realised its only 8 days until my payday too and looking forward to it - not for the money but because everything resets financially and I will be able to see the exact amounts of our overdrafts so i can calculate exactly how much my debt has come down and maybe change my DFD - that will give me enormous satisfaction :j