2008 - Live on £4000 for a full year.

Janey51

Have registered for online billing with BT to save a little. Latest telephone bill is for £469 but this includes £269 for the callout to re-locate our phone line following a house fire. We also made a lot of extra calls following this disaster and the call bill is for £58 (usually about £20ish) as most of the Insurance numbers we had to call were 0870 and we were also using mobiles before the line was fixed which we never do as no reception. This bill also includes Broadband.
This bill means our DD has increased from £41 to £108 per month :eek:

Until the insurance claim is settled I have decided to pay this as it is an interest free loan. Trying to get BT to give a breakdown of the bill for the insurance company is a nightmare :mad:

Marru

Janey51 wrote: »

We also made a lot of extra calls following this disaster and the call bill is for £58 (usually about £20ish) as most of the Insurance numbers we had to call were 0870

Check out this website: http://www.saynoto0870.com/

It is featured in Martin's article:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/0870-say-no#step1

I confess, I haven't used it but will do from now on. Especially as O2 stopped giving these numbers as part of the calling plan :mad: .

Marru

bails

Oh Georgiasmum, good luck with Ofsted, hope it all goes okay x

Off to work now, see you all later.

dfw844

Janey51 wrote: »

Have registered for online billing with BT to save a little. Latest telephone bill is for £469 but this includes £269 for the callout to re-locate our phone line following a house fire.

Hi Janey, I'm sure you've mentioned it before but it's the first I've read of your fire, it sounds terrible so I hope you're getting everything sorted now. I too have just organised online billing - they didn't mention the discount when I signed up with BT or I would have jumped at it. As far as I'm concerned it's one less bill which floats around the kitchen table until I finally file it away! This is a really easy way to cut the phone bill though, hope everyone else has done it.

I've not been about for a few days as I had an awful sore throat. However, spending a couple of days in bed has done wonders for my budget! It looks like I should be on target, believe it or not. I can't fathom how I have (hopefully) done it two months in a row! I really didn't think it was possible but it looks like you lot were right all along.

Anyway, can't wait until the end of the month so I can tot up all the figures and work out how much I have paid off! Also doing quite well on ebay since I finally got motivated to have another go. I've been selling my old stuff since Dec '06, but there are a few bits and pieces which have been hanging around waiting to be listed for far too long. As I love my spreadsheets I've got one with all the ebay stuff on. I just added up the total column (less all fees) and couldn't believe I have made £486 since I started! So then I read down the list of items and thought 'do I miss any of these' and the answer, sadly, was 'not one'. So that's spurred me on to list again (though it's sooo boring). No bids yet, but a few watchers, so we'll see how it goes.

Good luck to everyone for these last few days of the month, we can do it if we put our minds to it!

Jacks_xxx

Hi Frugalites, :wave:

I'm just posting to let you all know that I'm ducking out of this challenge.

I hate to sound defeatist, but it's just not an achievable target for me and my family and to be honest, it gets me down to hear the rest of you doing so well. (Sorry, I know that sounds churlish and not very MSE.)

I could have 25 NSD's a month - every month - but our Direct Debits plus food would still come to more than £4000 a year and that's not including the dentist, prescriptions, gifts, clothes, pocket money for the kids, pet costs, insurances, travel or home maintenance. (or the things not counted such as mortgage, council tax, water rates & car costs etc.)

Being set for failure every month no matter how hard we try just demoralises me, so I'm going to bow out.

Good luck to everybody,

Love Jacks xxx

elantan

jacks i feel the same to be honest but am gonna keep going the £4,000 isnt going to be possible for me but i want to know that by the end of the year i have done the best that i can and this thread is helping me stay on track ...would it maybe help you if you upped your total? or even if you left your total blank and just did the best you can and used this wonderful supportive thread to spur you on? i hope you decide to stay i really do i enjoy reading your posts

Frugaldom

ticklepenny wrote: »

can I join in?

Hi Ticklepenny, welcome to the wacky world of frugal living. You are more than welcome to join us - just let us know what your budget is and I'll get you a challenger number. If you are going 'all in' for everything except rent/mortgage/water then the total amount from 1st March will be £3344 plus any child benefit if you have children. Work out your personal annual budget and see how it compares then get back with a figure and join the party. See you soon. :j

Bails - I failed the grocery challenge this month too, but I still came in under actual monthly budget, so I'm not unduly worried. My downfall is having to think too much about what others will or won't eat. :rolleyes:

Sophiesmum - glad you're getting the hang of it quickly! Hope you have fun for the remainder of the year and that it truly makes a difference to you. Well done. :T

Mini - loved your contribution this morning! I can certainly identify with the 'green cross code' message - brilliant analogy!:rotfl:

Nice to see you back, Prudent, and well done thus far! :beer:

Good luck to Georgiasmum!

:j Next lot of Tesco Deals tokens arrived this morning and I have found advance booking passenger return fares of only £21! I'm now thinking that we could just have a day trip to Belfast at a total cost of £52 (including booking fee) for 2.

Postie also delivered my proof copy of a book called 'My Epileptic Lurcher', so need to spend some time reading and try to get a review done soon. I'll bet it's sad - I'll be really upset if the dog dies at the end and the book makes me cry! Will be brave and make a start on it as soon as I get Duncan Bannatyne out the way! :rotfl:

whitewing

Jacks, I'm not doing well really. I could fiddle figures to not count stuff but I'm too lazy to do all the working out. So in my mind now my target is just to spend as little as I can in total over the year on anything.

This time last year, I didn't even have a clue what I was spending. Heck, I dodn't even know money I actually had, didn't know that I was eligible for tax credits; there was a whole heap of stuff I had not a clue about.

This year, family circumstances are continuing to move way too fast and all I can try to do is cut down, cut down, cut down. But it's still moving in the right direction, our priorities are more or less okay now, and in twenty years' time I may actually be in control, lol!

Don't give up. Just carry on monitoring your spending and as long as you are happy that it's not wasted money, then you are still meeting some of the aims of the challenge.

The more people who post and lurk, the more determined I am to do my best, even if my best isn't yet quite good enough. I'm a much more appreciative person in general and not quite such a harsh judge of others. Where else do you get a chance to read so much about the effects of money on some many different lifestyles and families? You're still a much-valued member of our team xxx

Frugaldom

Back again, just got the latest posts from Jacks and Elantan. If this budget isn't for you then please don't feel bad. Everyone here has different lifestyles, reasons for participating and objectives. Like elantan says, I can leave the totals blank and you don't need to take part, but you can still be part of our frugal-life family and share in your highs and lows throughout the year. The other thing is, it might just be the moon having its effects! (Lunar effects figure high on my list of what can disturb otherwise calm waters. Lunar = lunacy.) Only this morning, without a word of a lie, I came to this computer and sat down to type a post stating that I was calling a halt to my own participation because my family see it as insanity! But then I thought about it and, even if I never save enough to get out the rent trap, seeing everyone else's progress and knowing that the debt trap is receding made it seem worthwhile. Although, I must add, that I was so annoyed at the situation I did feel like withdrawing the kids' savings I've stowed away and chucking it at them!!! :mad: Oops, slight lapse again! :A And I shouldn't really call them kids in case they ever read this, especially when the youngest will be 19 in a few weeks and the eldest has been away from home for 4 years and has a 3 year old!

Janey51

Marru wrote: »

Check out this website: http://www.saynoto0870.com/

It is featured in Martin's article:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/0870-say-no#step1

I confess, I haven't used it but will do from now on. Especially as O2 stopped giving these numbers as part of the calling plan :mad: .

Marru

Thanks Marru. Unfortunately, at the time, the computer was kind of crisped as well so we would not have had internet access.