2008 - Live on £4000 for a full year.

whitewing

Hi All,

Feeling better now that a cheque for £800 from the Inland Rev has turned up!!!! I thought it would take months. (Once upon a not-so-long ago I would have spent it straight away. Now I will be ultra-frugal with it. Not even a bottle of wine to celebrate. We now put apple juice and sparkling water in wine glasses so that we have a Friday night 'experience'. How very sad am I?).

You have made me laugh with your posts when I came back. Althou I don't think I'll ever be so frugal that the budget stops scaring me....

hopeless_spendthrift

whitewing wrote: »

... Not even a bottle of wine to celebrate. We now put apple juice and sparkling water in wine glasses so that we have a Friday night 'experience'. How very sad am I?).

Not at all Whitewing - Apple juice and 7up is my favourite tipple!

funkyfunkymonkey

missyg wrote: »

Hi guys, I haven't signed up because I know I can't live on £4k a year, but I am really serious about cracking down on my expenditure.

I have spent £554.30 this month and I'm not expecting to spend any more. £334.08 of this was my household bills. The rest is food (£96.07 for two), a few small personal items, and a channel crossing for my summer holiday.

I haven't bought petrol, eaten out, or had any evenings out. I think if I had really cut it to the bone I could have spent £50 less this month but that still works out nowhere near as low as £4k a year... you guys have my respect - good luck to all of you

Hi missyg, nice to see you here

As nykmedia says, the challenge is to become more aware of our spending and reduce 'wastage'. I cannot hope to live on £4k, but I have saved so much money so far by not spending on things that I would otherwise have bought.

My biggest offence was the grocery spend, but as I was losing weight I felt that at least my reduced rations were going to taste extra nice - it worked and I kept to the diet and (as you know) I am now 'maintaining'.

My grocery bills were in the region of £500 - £700 per month , and I have really been able to hit that and it won't be too much over the £250 that I set at the begining of January.

FFM

funkyfunkymonkey

hopeless_spendthrift wrote: »

Ah-ha! Do not fear my fantastic fellow frugalactically infested foragers, on closer inspection of my cheque book I find that the said cheque was sent to a company called DAXON, who dropped me a catalogue through the post ( probably as a result of the frantic clicking that's been going down here! ), with a £3 voucher, promising me a FREE COAT :shocked: if I placed an order over £10!!! I did so - bought a couple of tops, but if the coat comes with I shall be over the moon! :j It is a three-quarter length style, beige in colour with a fur-lined hood. Looks very warm and stylish in the picture and I really do need a coat

I had one of these sent to me a couple of years ago, I hope things have improved but the one I got was awful - I used it to make a rabbit costume for DD for school :rotfl:

Hope yours is much much nicer.

FFM

Frugaldom

(Not so) hopeless - there's loads of stuff about stoozing on this thread. I didn't know it was called stoozing until I came to MSE, but it seems they borrowed the name from one of my old haunts (Don't want to show my age, but if I say I began as a frugalling fool amonst a motley money crew then it should give you a clue! :eek: ). I'm not very well up on how they stooze here, although I am trying to get to grips with it. I used to just look at the 0% CC as your ticket to a free (or very low interest rate) loan. I like my Egg card because it offers the interest free balance transfer every year and only costs me 2.5%. New cardholders, however, appear to get 15 months with a fee of about 3%. This is still pretty good, if you consider that for every £30 fee you are paying (£1000 'borrowed'), you could be earning £60 over a year. Perhaps that doesn't sound much but imagine if it was £20,000! That could be an extra £50 per month FREE :cool: Or, a REALLY cheap loan if you just need to get something in a hurry that you haven't quite saved for in time.

I am NOT recommending trying any of the above, I'm just trying to explain how I see this card shuffling game that's been around for years and years. Get it wrong and it's a very, VERY costly error to make.

Final roundup of today - a NSD! :j :j :j Have a great weekend!

Don't forget to check that your signatures are within the new guidelines by 1st February - 4 lines max, 300 characters max and no links without express permission of MSE.

Penny2myName

I thought it was 5 lines, best try deducting some more from mine

LollopyBear

Just got back from the meal. It was gorgeous food, all homemade and very filling, plus wine for £10. Well worth it I think and only once per year. I also had to run out earlier because I was out of shampoo. I normally have to have a particular brand - not designer, but fairly pricey in comparison to others as my hair is waist-length and needs lots of TLC. This time I went for a shampoo that was a brand down and was on offer! This never happens! It's another side effect of Frugalitis - breaking habits of a lifetime. I thought I'd give it a go of going down a shampoo brand but still having my normal conditioner. I can notice a bit of a difference, my hair isn't quite as soft as normal, but it's not horrendous. I think I'm going to stick with this new shampoo and only get my normal one when it is on offer!

So, a total of £10.96 for me today.

broke_mum_of_three

hopeless_spendthrift wrote: »

:mad: :hello:! This Frugalizing is a full-time job!

I agree with you, I feel I cant switch off from it at all! You defo have to keep on top of it, even a day's lapse in concentration could be disasterous to your budget:eek:
Should be a good day today, taking my DS2 to a BB competition (bless him he's only 7) so that will keep me away from any retail establishment for today:T Does anyone know if I can join the grocery challenge for February?

whitewing

A very good morning to you all. Off to take DS to his swimming lesson and then to work until 8pm so I won't be spending much today.

Got to go and make my packed lunch..will have to magic it up out of thin air as we haven't got much in the house at the mo!

princess_leia_3

Morning whitewing and bmo3 and whoever else is around, I am trying for a nsd today, I have arranged a curry tonight tonight so dh does not try and order in a takeaway!!

Saying that I do need some eggs so I may well have to spend a few quid