2008 - Live on £4000 for a full year.

Frugaldom

Catshark, you rant away to your heart's content. We all know that it's impossible to keep others happy all of the time and men are notorious for being ruled by their bellies! Some have the attitude, whether aware of it or not, that after a hard day at work they should come home and be pandered to with a 'real' meal which, in my opinion, means - meat and two veg, same as their mothers used to make them! Cor, when I think of the rows over summer salads with cold meat for dinner that would be refused point blank as it wasn't classed as a 'real' dinner for a 'man' after a day's 'real' work. Yet it was ok to drink a gallon of lager and then eat a kebab for supper. Yep! Feel free to vent about others in the household who refuse to even try something you have made - I know the feeling well. :beer:

PS: Just had a thought - in case any of the members of my household are members of MSE and haven't told me, the lager swilling, kebab munching part is not about you.

mama67

Newbie here going to join in this challenge. Will start from 1 Feb with a figure of £3665 which is for 11 months.

We did a remortgage last year and cleared all our debts,got a newer but still secondhand car; obviously mortgage payment went higher, but not as much as monthly debts were supposed to be.
We weren't paying some of them.

Do not have any credit cards so can't use those.

Have been trying to work things out and think I've got it sussed.

We pretty well will only have the 4k to live on after the essential payments, but not including child benefit but does include tax credit (2 adults & 2 kids).

Will have to see how things pan out.
If DH gets any overtime then that will go straight into the holiday fund, as it is extra money and will be the only way we can get a holiday.

hopeless_spendthrift

LOL Nyk :rotfl: and a very good morning one and all!

Catshark, I bet your soup was yummy. Others don't always make it easy for us do they? lol! But we know what we are aiming for and there may be a great amount of effort involved in reaching that goal. Hang on in there girl! I think you are doing great! :A And I'm sure DH knows too. Reckon he was just having an off day.

Frugalmum - thank u so much for telling us how to make a soap solution outta soapnuts. I have finished with my sample batch and plan to buy some more when I have used up all my washing powder!

the_cat - Fantastic idea to use a slow cooker for making soups :T

I set about making chickpea and potato curry yesterday and it wasn't until it came to adding the potatoes that I realised I didn't have any! :rotfl: And only 1 tin of chickpeas in the cupboard - how organised I am! :cool:
Substituted the potatoes with a sweet potato and some carrots and added a tin of cannelini beans and it tasted ok Made a plain boiled basmati rice (cook with salt and a cinnamon stick) mixed with boiled green lentils (cooked seperately until soft in a pan of salted water). Toss the cooked rice and lentils together in a pan of butter - yum! I could eat this on it's own, I find it sooo delishious!

Also made some shortbread yesterday not exactly very MSE (although only cost about £1.50 for lots :j ), but DD2 requested some as it was on the menu at school, with strawberry ice-cream, but she didn't get any as it was all gone when it came to her turn to be served. It was sooo easy to make and tasted really yummy.

Almost had a NSD yesterday, but ended up spending 49p on a birthday card for my mum's OH from the kids, only to discover on peeling the price sticker off that it says Happy Birthday Grandson, instead of Grandad!!! :doh: :rotfl: DD1 bought it on the way home from school - it has pictures of warplanes on the front and a message inside that says something about raising your birthday to new heights! So plz pm me anyone who would like a Birthday card for their warplane-loving grandson (!?) as I don't know when, or if, I shall ever need it lol.

Placed an order with Mr. A yesterday for delivery today - just over £50 :eek: Didn't actually really, really need that much stuff, but DS has been off school all week not feeling well so I can't get out atm, and I begrudge spending money on delivery charges now, so had to spend at least £50 in order to qualify for free delivery Although this shop has taken me over my budget for the month, the provisions should last me well into February. And, in my defence, being new to this budgeting lark, I hadn't realised when setting my grocery target that there were 5 weeks in this month; set a target of £160 bc I wanted to aim for £40 per week, so haven't really gone over yet as i should have budgeted for £200 this month if that makes sense!

Enough waffling from me! Wishing you all a happy and penny-pinching day! :happyhear :hello:

Frugaldom

Hi Mama67, pleased to see we still have newbies interested! I'll give you a challenger number, which I think should be 123, and add in your 11 months participation. Glad to have you on board and hope that you'll have fun being a frugalite. Quite a few of us are also taking part in the grocery challenges, as they fit in nicely with this and makes doubly sure that we make twice the effort to out-frugal even ourselves! Playing 'catch-up' is an added optional extra if keeping to the 4k budget means doing without too much - you need to earn it extra to spend it, in otherwords, and then there's no adverse effect on your frugality where debt payments, mortgage over paymens or savings are concerned.

Won't waffle on any longer as I STILL haven't been to the shop this morning and now it's almost afternoon! Oops, again! :rotfl:

Laurabelle

andromache wrote: »

Laurabelle, you bought a Valentine's card?? Handmaking is cheaper I'm sure it'll be appreciated though. :A

I dont have the materials to make one and I had a quick scout around and it was cheaper to buy the ready made card from a cheap card shop!
Plus im not exactly Van Gogh!

Can I also be added to the list so i can have a number?

whitewing

Hopeless,

Get on your PC and print out 'Grandad' and somehow stick it over what's there.

I do that with cards, especially if there's a nice Grandma/Nana one that's perfect but says Grandma (as ours are known as Granny and Nan). If you put a little effort in, it actually looks better than the original most of the time.

Burlesque_Babe

£20.03 in petrol. Knew I wouldn't get to the end of the month on £15.00.

Need to go back a few pages and read up on the potato 'thing'. Not sure I've got a container the right shape but I'm definitely interested. The only thing I've ever grown was a couple of tomato plants in a grow bag 3 years ago. Got a handful of tomatoes, but generally i'm really rubbish with growing stuff.

The car is making a funny noise which has made me feel really down. It did it one day a few weeks ago but then stopped as soon as it started. I know nothing about cars, but I wonder if its a bearing in the front wheel, a kind of metalllic sound which gets louder as I accelerate

bails

Hi all

Have to be honest, I'm feeling quite down about the move (or rather lack of one) and just feel like comfort eating and therefore spending!:eek: I do need to get a few things later so I may just add in a cheap loaf and some real butter for some hot buttered toast...
Sorry, not up to posting much (will go and give myself a stiff talking to) but Andromache, you should definitely go to the ball, play catch up to get there; I love the potatoes idea :T; sorry to hear about your car Keren, wish I knew something about them to help you; welcome to the newbies, lovely to have more peeps on board; catshark, sorry about your OH, all your effort is worth it and we're here for you to vent at whenever you need to. Sorry if I missed anything out; I'm off for a bloody good cry to get it out of my system and then it's back to it.
Whoever has the frugalist day can earn today's 'Stingy One' title...:D

Frugaldom

Hi Keren, hope the car noise gets resolved soon and doesn't turn out to be anything nasty! On the potato front, I've read a few of the threads and you can actually grow them in strong carrier bags or bin bags - start with them rolled down to shallow bags, keep well drained but well watered and gradually top up the soil/compost as the shoots grow upwards, unrolling the bag as you go. Haven't tried it but did order a 25kg of local farm grown Maris Pipers today and hope to seed some of them for growing. I think letting them go to seed is the same as 'chitting' - when all the little sprouts start coming out of them?
Today is going OK for me so far, spent £3.30 on groceries, got in a free sample of Olay, my second pink 'Curly' pig from Pigsback, a free £5 voucher for a place called Outback Steakhouse and my £10 deals from Tesco towards booking my Stena Line ferry ticket. Checked bank and there's a strange £37 payment gone in from I haven't go a clue where, so I transfer £35 of it plus £5 saved from ciggie quit money into my house account. (I needed a nice round number to help alleviate my financial OCD. ) Washing is hanging outside, as it is lovely here today, and the soap nuts appear to be working fine. I'm using a few drops of lemon essential oil (got several in a Christmas gift) but might try lavender next time.

Off to put my reduced price braising steak into the slow cooker now, should be nice with the Maris Pipers, steamed carrots and the yorkie pudding with gravy. Gosh! Don't I sound domesticated! :eek: That's one word that I never associated with until I read the OS threads on MSE and got the hump! I didn't realise that living like this was classed as 'old style' - what a cheek! :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: Now I know what people mean when they've used the term 'down to earth' about me - I think!! Others just say I have my head in the clouds!

wornoutmumoftwo

Went to see the debt advisor today, and because I was so organised (detailed SOA/full expenditure of 2008 etc etc) there wasn't actually lot she could do but I got advice on the couple of debts that have been worrying me.

Just need to write a couple of letters and then I should have my debts managable, tried to get British Gas to reduce my weekly debt due to the fact I'm on benefits and they were no help at all, refused point blank until another 400 has been paid off my debt (about a years time).

Got my phone cut off today because the person at virgin put down I would be paying last months bill yesterday instead of today, bit that has now been sorted out and back on the phone.

I keep running up a phone bill ringing all those 0870 etc numbers bu today I used saynoto0870 website and found landline numbers that are covered by my talk unlimited package (I hope). so next months bill shouldn't be too bad.

Tight budget again this week (about £40 for food/essentials), so need to be very careful this week.

And that's it, budget for week 3 was on target (by a few pence), hopefully this will be a very succesful week.

Now I just need to catch up on pages of posts, the potato in a bin sounds great!:T