Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

Janey51

shaz you saved this evenings dinner when you posted the recipe for Corned Beef Hash as I had put the last few potatoes onto boil in preparation for making some and I forgot about them :eek: Seeing your post made me leap out of the chair screaming "potatoes" and leg it to the kitchen watched by one confused husband and 3 wide eyed cats.

Hello keren and taka :wave:

Sorry mumzy and others are feeling a bit waffy. Have a:grouphug: but keep your germs to yourselves.

Have got some of my interest amounts back totalling £420 :j :T

DH and me decided to save half of the interest we get and split the remainder so we can choose what to do with it. I have put mine in my own personal savings account and DH has put his in his wallet :rolleyes: He will probably spend it on me anyway which is lovely of him but makes me feel guilty

I am going to have to backtrack through the posts and get this new challenge set by our great and glorious leader into my head. Figures are not my forte really :rotfl:

I decided to count the money I put away in the various savings boxes I have on the go to collect the change from shopping and extra income (like when DH gives me some of his tips from when I help him at work) and it came to ta-ra ta-ra

:j £137-70:j

And, looking at my remaining budget in my sig. If I hadn't saved this money, I would have been almost bang on target for my £4000 for the year. That's quite amazing.

Frugaldom

Good evening all, and welcome (officially) Taka. I've updated post 1 and allocated you number 144 - good luck and have fun!

Lollopy, I love spreadsheets but for this challenge, I am using www.spendingdiary.com because it is so, so simple to use - I love it!

Sophiesmum - Don't forget that if you decide to go for the 'earn £10 a day' challenge that you'll probably need to declare your earnings to Mr Tax Man. The extra cash may not be taxable, but it's always safest to declare if it's more than just tax free gambling proceeds.

Jay - Nice to see you again, hope you managed to catch up with everyone. You'll have spotted that the numbers are still growing and we're all still spending. I think our combined annual cost of living is somewhere in the region of £5,760,000 for 144 households plus pets, ponies and poultry - mFrugalsville is a really up and coming place! :rotfl:

Janey - Hope the tatties were saved! I did same with the uber-chicken tonight! Well done with the savings! I'm in Mumzy's sealed pot challenge, so I'm not allowed to open 'Phil the Pig' until December. As you'll see by my signature, I cheat a bit and weigh him! :rotfl:

Marru

LollopyBear wrote: »

There's my geekiness, so confess to how you keep track of yours! Any tables I'm missing and could include?

I have added a column that shows my cumulative bank balance after all these incomings and outgoings and then I can reconcile it with my statement daily (also of course column for cash) and I have budgeted my future dd's and other spendings to the future like a forecast cashflow as to see am I likely to go over budget or not. My hardest quarter will be the last one as then my car needs service, MOT, tax and my recovery cover needs to be renewed so I better get my spending well under budget before that.

Bails - there is no cupon, just sign up and you get the BB's. But don't play now as everybody and their grannies are playing and the winning gets so much harder. Wait till after 2 am (yawn...) or if you can do it in the morning or early afternoon. I haven't seen it advertised in any cash back sites but always worth checking before signing up.

Tonight supper was surprisingly delicious. After loosing my potatoes and broccoli yesterday I wanted something quick and filling tonight and didn't fancy starting to cook more potatoes or trying to salvage my parsnips so I cooked some noodles, mixed cooked noodles with ready pasta sauce (bogof) and threw the left over from the left over fish in and it was yammy and there was enough for me to have it tomorrow evening as well. DD eats at the nursery so she only has a snack when she comes home. It is now safely in the fridge out of harms way.

I shall head to bed early as have some catching up to do.

TC

Marru

BlueFleur

LollopyBear wrote: »

There's my geekiness, so confess to how you keep track of yours! Any tables I'm missing and could include?

I'm in the geeky camp as well. I have a spreadsheet which keeps track of all my 'extras' like money from cashback sites. I then offset that with any related expenses. I'm going to have to brave the taxman at some point in the not too distant future, so I want to be as organised as I can.

I've also created a table with all my mobile phone bills in- unfortunately I'm unable to change tariffs or providers until January. So I have this table (and a pretty graph next to it ) to compare what I spend month-on-month. I can then try to reduce this over time. Now that I have got into the swing of things with this challenge, I'm going to try and copy this format in other areas. I think it'll help me cut down on spending on petrol especially.

I'm trying to get the hang of snowballing, as I have to decide whether it is best to clear all of one card, or part of both, when my sl comes through. I've tried the calculator that a lot of people on this site recommend, but the answer was quite surprising. I think more maths is needed to help me make up my mind If I play around with Experian too much (the free section), will it impact my credit score? I've read that repeated searches do some damage...

I did manage a NSD today, but the chocolate cravings have hit! At least being in the middle of the countryside makes it more difficult to pop to the shops

sophiesmum_2

nykmedia wrote: »

Sophiesmum - Don't forget that if you decide to go for the 'earn £10 a day' challenge that you'll probably need to declare your earnings to Mr Tax Man. The extra cash may not be taxable, but it's always safest to declare if it's more than just tax free gambling proceeds.

Thanks Nyk but will do the easy stuff, probably a bit of matched betting,piggy points , selling few of my books on amazon, etc -, I don't do the mystery shops, surveys, and stuff haven't time.

Frugaldom

I'm watching TV to see how to become super-rich, back later :rotfl:

OK, still watching telly and am going to point out a few mistakes that I am making:

1) When I quit smoking, I began saving into my garden fund; apparently that was too greedy saving for the whole garden and I should just have set up a hedge fund!

2) When thinking all I had to spend was buttons, I should have been thinking levers! It's all about leverage, apparently.

3) The super rich spend money on some really strange things in a bid to keep up with the Jones. In fact, they don't want to simply keep up, they want to beat, outshine, show up the other super rich - I need something unique (priceless?) to sell them, like a customised fighter jet or stealth bomber.

4) Run up enormous debts, as much as is humanly possibly, then take as big a risk as you can with other people's money in the hope the gamble pays off. If it all goes wrong, don't worry; the Government will bail you out... Then you can start all over again, clearing your debts and living on 4k a year

Editing them in as I spot them! What a doughball I must be! I should have learned all this years ago

The above is NOT my personal belief nor does it represent any sort of financial advice or recommendation. It is a personal interpretation of a recent television programme. :rotfl:

CharliesAngel

Bugatti Veyron for me please...... lol

Frugaldom

News is on now; 8 million for a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe???????????? :eek:

BlueFleur

nykmedia wrote: »

News is on now; 8 million for a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe???????????? :eek:

£4000 is aprox 240,422,816.11 Zimbabwe dollars.... But that would only allow them to buy 30 loaves of bread a year...

mini_huny_money

gnite everyone.....am off to bed and this is quite late even for me.....was reading a thread on DT and it was quite a nasty one ( dont often go in there really ) and just wanted to come back on here for a wee minute and wrap myself in .........niceness....(thats not really the word I want,)

.....support and friendly people, each of us with a common goal, thats how I feel about us 3,4,5 and whatever k our challenge is

Gnite and I feel better now :A :A