2008 - Live on £4000 for a full year.

Jacks_xxx

:wave: I need to have a proper catch up with everybody later, but for now I'll just update and run.

Bought £49.09 worth of my staples.

PLUS

Replaced some Herbs, spices, worcester sauce, soya sauce and stock cubes etc to the tune of £7.21

Bought Braising Steak for the goulash I want to learn to cook this week £3.69 (Anybody got a favourite Goulash recipe they’d like to share?)

Bought what I hope is at least 6 months worth of shower gel for £9.92 (500ml Sanex on BOGOF at Tesco)

Bought 24 condoms cos they were BOGOF too! £7.98

Bought a new tap, £16.99 (now we have slightly odd taps but hey ho! The old tap is 50 years old and I don’t have the time or the money to trawl through reclamation yards to find its identical twin. )

Bought a new immersion heater £16.99

and a tool to fit it with £2.99

£114.96.

Not bad for Day Four!

£9885.14 left - 361 days to go!

Love Jacks xxx

princess_leia_3

:mad: Now I am going to re-name my challenge to see how quick I can spend £4k :mad:
Not off to a good start, found out we missed a few things off our shopping last week so had to spend another £6.69 today and STILL forgot to get toilet rolls this is hubbys fault as he insisted we had loads.......Mmmm I might just make him use newspaper for that little lie :mad:
Oh well, I will just have to write off this month as we also have our MOT at some point in the next few weeks too! :eek:
On the plus side I did send off my appication for maternity grant today so if that comes through I can spend that £500 on baby stuff so it doesn't come off our £4k :T

Hope everyone else is doing a bit better than me :rolleyes:

Burlesque_Babe

debrag wrote: »

If I'm only including needs I'd be on £1,200 a year (mum, travel, food). Social & other spending wouldn't be included.

Which of these are included:
rent
debt
mobile
travel
Littlewoods
web host
mum
Ice Skating
Roller skating
Food

can someone list needs & wants that are & aren't included.

I'm not including

Mortgage
Water
Council Tax

And that's it. Everything else comes out of my money. Anything I buy or if I go anywhere this year it will come out of my £3,800.

I'm going on holiday in March (already paid for). I won't be paying CT or water in Feb and March so the money for those payments over the 2 months (about £245), I'll use for my holiday spending money.

debrag

keren29 wrote: »

I'm not including

Mortgage
Water
Council Tax

And that's it. Everything else comes out of my money. I don't have any debt now but if I buy anything it will come out of my £3,800.

thanks I think I shall be including - payment to my mum, travel, social activities, web host, food so will still be fine for £3k

tryingtodobetter

I am not including:

Mortgage
Council Tax
Water Rates
Car Insurance

Everything else including car tax, petrol etc will come out of my £5000 budget (well that's the plan). I am going to update my sig every month on here but I am keeping a daily spending diary for myself. Its been going really well, have under spent on weeks grocery budget and I don't think i'll need anything else this week.:j

Penny2myName

I'm not including, rent, C.Tax, kids savings, holiday costs, debt payments and college expenses (including travel) as I have a grant to cover most of my college costs (including travel). EVERYTHING else is covered by the £4k

juliejay

Jacks, Try recipezaar for the goulash. There are millions of recipes there and its really good if you've only got a few bits. You can search for recipes with what you've got.

Lexxi

I've included bills for my mobile, furniture storage and insurance, although I guess the insurance is necessary. Worked out their costs for the year and took it off my £4000 total so I have an idea of what I've left to spend.
I spent £1.40 on my train fare last night and £3.14 in tesco due to being unefficient and forgetting to eat lunch!
Date was loadsa fun, I didn't get in till 4am!!!

I also remembered before that when I was living on my own I was bought a student cook book and told 'there's lots of easy recipes for you' (I can cook pretty well :mad: ) anyway the recipes are really cheap to make, stuff like cauliflower curry and an egg mayo recipe that stretches the egg mayo out so it lasts longer, I used to take it for my lunch, I didn't even like it v much so drank loads of water and was full all afternoon:rotfl:

Frugaldom

Hello all, hope there haven't been any catastrophes yet. I think I may be spending the weekend baking, as there's NO BREAD AGAIN! It is FREEZING here today, was up watching the snow storm in the early hours of this morning after the hailstones woke me! (I stuck a washing on whilst awake, as it was cheap rate.) I now have another 2 x £2 chickens from Somerfields but daughter said she'd to almost fight for the last ones on the shelf and it sounded like someone had declared war, the shelves were so empty! What is going on these days?
On a more positive note, it means there really is nothing to spend any money on when you live rural, except for online so long as it isn't grocery shopping because NOBODY DELIVERS IN THIS AREA!

Rant over, going to cook up some pasta and hope the cookers throws a little extra heat out.

OH! One more thing... I registered for online power bills with Scottish Power - it gets the unit rate down a little. Today I ran the meter readings through the site to see just how much the underestimation from October was going to cost me... £442! However, it now means I can sign online to Scottish Power and key in my meter readings anytime and make card payments without waiting for the bills. That has to be a good thing and it's a cheaper kw/h unit rate into the bargain

NYK WACKY HINTS & TIPS - Never accept estimated bills! Make them readjust them to reflect the true amounts.

LollopyBear

My DH pays Mortgage, gas (very minimal, about £4 per quarter), electricity, phone/broadband etc. and council tax from his account so I'm not counting any of that in my £4000 as I pay a lump sum per month to my DH. I'm counting everything else.

Today was a good day. I spent £5.59 on: enough cat food to last 2 weeks (half price on the nicest Whiskas pouches in Tescos - £2.09 each), a DvD that will be part of a friend's birthday present (£1) and a small can of Heinz beans (41p).

The best part of today was that I received a cheque for my tax refund of £1308.74! I was not expecting it to be that big!! This has taken a big pressure off because that will combine with my savings to get the electrics done in our house ASAP, providing DH finds an electrician, and have enough left over to get bits such as a shower.

I'm a happy bear today