2008 - Live on £4000 for a full year.

Riq

Hell no, I pay £1,000 per year. I don't have a Ferrari (yet anyway )

It WOULD be insane for me to pay that!!

affordmylife

Well £1,000 per year isnt too bad is it then.

Tho you could take that out of the equation as a necessary spend like travel to work expenses couldnt you? Or am i getting it all wrong?

Is it quite an individual sort of thing.

Like for me personally i dont have to pay much out of my money but cutting down from about £12,000 spend per year to £5,000 per year will be massive for me. A lot of my personal budget will be on food, clothes and entertainment for the children. I only have to budget about £150. per month on bills and £100 of this is savings - more or less.

So for me it is to stop the frivolous and unnecessary spending in order to either overpay a chunk of the mortgage or take the family to Florida in 2009.

I think we are all trying to achieve different things and have different things to pay out of our chosen budget.

Che75

Ooh. I want to sign up to a couple of challenges for 2008 to start me off on the right track. I actually think I can manage this one, and would like to sign up to £4000.

Frugaldom

Hi Che 75, welcome to our frugal challenge for 2008. Your name has now been added and we welcome you as number 45 on THE LIST :beer:

Congratulations on taking this financial plunge and good luck! We'll all look forward to your future input and be rooting for you every penny of the way :T

KiKi

Can I just ask - is the plan that we each, say, do a monthly status update of where we are with our budget?? Plus any other posts that will help / encourage others or ask for help!?

I managed to pick up some absolute BARGAINS in the Debenhams sale today - and have purchased most of my Christmas and birthday presents for next year already! Not intentionally, but just saw some great bargains!

Buffythedebtslayer

Christmas is over!! yippee!

ahem. sorry to sound like a party pooper. i have been really ill, flu like thing well I won't go in to details, but I ache everywhere.

One good thing about being ill, I didn't do any last minute shopping, and all presents were well recieved. so yay me!

so I have finished christmas and am still in the black. wow. I wonder what it will be like next year?

Kiki, I think I will either do weekly or monthly updates? and show a total of what I have left.

when I feel better I will be back with ideas etc. I wish I could get my Mum to do this. ho hum.

xxx

Frugaldom

Hope you feel well soon, Buffy! And well done to Kiki!

I'll be adding my updates here regularly and screaming out for ideas on where to get the best deals if an emergency crops up. I'm going to update my signature totals accordingly so it's easy to see what's left of the original £4000 of my budget and aim for as many NSD as possible. Really looking forward to sharing in this thread with everyone here, it's great fun already! Thank you all for joining in this crazy challenge

whitewing

Wahey! It's great to see some more people joining in. I keep forgetting that it's not 2008 yet!

Been out sales shopping today. Not fabulous reductions as i live near one of the retail outlet centres so it has reduced stuff anyway. But I managed to get some good stuff for aunty's 'blue basket' (I'm inspired by the Finished baskets thread).

We're apparently making a cash cow for DS's friend, but I'm a bit delayed on adding layers to the balloon at the mo. Still have a week to finish it.

Have a list of 'baskets' that I am making for the next year so am taking that for further sales shopping tomorrow. Using Xmas present money we were given for shopping at the mo. Am more careful with cash as I get excited about these things.

It's fun

Buffythedebtslayer

Baskets? what are these baskets of which you speak?

and how do you make a cash cow?

xxx

azjh77

Off to work today - I was going to have a quick look at the sales -only got a tenner anyway so won't be getting a lot. Just need Mum's b'day pressie and possibly some cheap wrapping paper to put back for next Christmas. I have recycled all the gift bags and took the labels off of them so I can reuse them next year too.

Got myself a nice hat box type thing for Christmas with domestic Goddess on it (yes we had a laugh about that!) to keep all my vouchers/coupons etc in. 'Borrowed' one of the girls note books to keep my spending diary in....2008 WILL be the year we save and sort ourselves out!!

Lots of people going to be getting home made stuff this year - free entertainment for the kids/money saving gifts for me to give!

Good luck all at resisting the pull of the sales..remember it's only the cr*p they couldn't sell in the summer !!