2008 - Live on £4000 for a full year.

Frugaldom

keren29 wrote: »

£5.00 for me today. Registered and deposited the minimum with Foxy bingo. It means though I get 2000 piggy points with Pgisback which means I can get £20 of Boots vouchers to spend on a few presents throughout the year.

Thanks for that Keren, I'd never have thought of registering for anything like that but I will now! I joined Pigsback a couple of weeks ago when I read about it on MSE. (My first purchase is the little pink piggy so I can take photos and try to win more piggy points - waiting for him to arrive soon :rotfl: ) I also use Greasypalm, Freefivers, iPoints, mutual and save the Euroffice points. Just before Christmas I had £20 in total of Argos Vouchers that got used for pressies.

Mini, I hope you enjoyed the birthday! Thanks for the update :T

This morning, I have read Martin's email newsletter and have already taken advantage of the offer for his new book, >>> The £3.49 launch deal: I wanted to keep the price down and agreed £4.99 with the publisher; yet for launch it's available at £3.49 from both Play* and Amazon*. Delivery's free at Play (or at Amazon if you spend a total of £15). <<<

Umm... sorry Martin, but I kind of cheated on this by going through my Geasypalm account to Play.com, taking advantage of the free delivery, I'll also get 1% back and I paid it on my Tesco Clubcard CC so I'll also get a point somewhere along the line :rotfl: When it arrives, I'll read it very carefully then keep it for a pressie for one of the younger members of the family :cool: I pay my CC accounts in full every month, so this spend will not show up until next month. I'm deducting it from my gifts allowance of £500, so I now have £496.51 left of that allowance.

I'm going to break down my budget and list it on here and will try to add the figures into my signature so you can see how I juggle the figures.

NYK WACKY HINTS & TIPS: If you see a bargain that looks too good to be true, look harder, it could be too good to be true or you might just find an even better deal by 'mixing and matching' your frugal options :cool:

Ellidee

Nykmedia have you heard of Bookfinder.com ? You type in author and title and it searches for the cheapest retailer. Probably not applicable for Martin's book but usually helpful.

whitewing

Yes, I'm ordering Martin's new book for a pressie too.

Having a declutter day today.

Found out that I am on a single rate for gas/elec which is very useful as I work from home so can put the washing in at any time. So just doing meter readings once a day.

Frugaldom

Ellidee wrote: »

Nykmedia have you heard of Bookfinder.com ? You type in author and title and it searches for the cheapest retailer. Probably not applicable for Martin's book but usually helpful.

Yes, I have heard of that one, thanks. I think it's the one you can put on your own site, if I'm not mistaken. I use all sorts of searches for stuff and guaranteed, I always check elsewhere before venturing somewhere like eBay. P&P costs wreck a lot of otherwise great bargains.

I REALLY need to ge get some work done, I can't get out these forums!! :rotfl: 2008 is going to be a no spend year (other than online) at this rate

liuhut

Just popped down to the shops to buy a few bits as I wont do my main shopping until next week. Spent £7 so not too bad.
Still having problems with OH !! Really think that I will excluse him from this and then he can do extra overtime to pay for his spending!!!

LoadedIWish

Have spent today £1.71 on eBay fees, £4.98 on mobile phone battery cover (lost mine), £17.99 towards my DH's birthday present and £1 on chocolate and crisps.

Least I had a packed lunch today, apart from chocolate and crisps.

Doing this challenge is definately helping me, I want Guitar Hero for the PS3, normally I would have just bought it without a second thought.

princess_leia_3

Just had to pay £120 off catalogue but I did manage to pay off £50 with cashback so I just had to fork out the other £70 :j

Lexxi

I've still not spent anything! I was going to go out for breakfast this morning but figured I'd then amble round the shops and fritter (my new fave word) my money away. I'm going to get my video calling taken off my phone, costs me £3 pm for 30 minutes and I've only used 10 mins in 4 months. Then going to look at mobile insurance as I'm currently paying £6 pm which seems too much to me. Done my budget too, wasn't too far off saying 50 pw. Yearly my bills are £1651.32 (live with my parents) so I get around £45 a week for me, more once I finally get through to 3 and cancel my video calling.

Bread and butter pud (which I had for breakfast rather than going out)

Cut 225g of brioch into 3 slices lightly butter one side then layer butter side down in oven proof dish along with 50g dark choc chips.
Continue layering finish with layer of bread on top
Whisk together 1 egg and 2 egg yolks with 50g caster sugar.
Heat 410g can of evaporated milk in a small saucepan until just simmering. Gradually whisk into egg mixture.
pour custard over pudding then press the brioche down into milk.
Place dish in a roasting tin and fill roasting tin half way up with boiling water.
Bake in preheated oven for 30 mins or til custard is set at 180 degress/350 f or gas 4.

I added 1tbsp of cocoa powder to milk to make it extra chocolatey!

I got the recipe from a book called What's cooking chocolate, has some fabulous recipes in it, not all requiring obscure expensive items!

Also, asda has a 200g bar of dark chocolate at 52p so you could chop your own choc chips cheaply! it's also got the same cocoa percentage content as one of the big name dark chocolates! Make sure you chill the choc if you're chopping it up otherwise you have to spend ages licking chocolate from your hands!

Wish me look tonight, I have a date and we're going to the hilton tower, which I know isn't very cheap, wouldn't be very ladylike to drink pints in somewhere like that to keep cost down, would it? :rotfl:

liuhut

Lexxi, Where's the Hilton Tower?? I'm guessing London? Why not down pints!!! I'd start as I mean to go on! Have a fabolous time oh and good luck!

whitewing

Coupons. Just had my freebie Danish blue cheese calendar turn up. This has £2.40 worth of coupons in it. Which got me thinking. I'm alright at ripping the occasional 50p off coupon out of a sunday paper. But I usually store them in my purse until they fall apart. And I can never be bothered printing off the computer (because I have a laptop and it's not connected up). But I am sponsoring DS Hawkrider's reading challenge, which I didn't budget for in this challenge (as I hadn't thought of it then). So a mini-challenge to me will be to match my spend on his reading challenge with using up coupons.

Anyone got any coupon ideas, then please let us know. I know there have been threads about what Tesco will accept. Does anyone know what Lidl's policy is?