Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

broke_mum_of_three

Just had my darling mother down today. She comes with food parcels galore. She has done all my ironing and my house is looking lovely. I had a no spend today as she brought so much with her!
Hooray for kind mothers, welcome back Keren!

mumzyof2

Ok im very ashamed to say my total for March is £701.21 :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

Im going to try really hard next month - and hey im away for 2 weeks so i should do good!!

I have a DD coming out tomorrow of £35.16 for the Tv licence,, shall i include it or not????

Im away on Friday night as i will have no food left in freezer/fridge to feed us on..so im off to my aunties/gran's for the night, and also in that time my fridge/freezer will defrost. She can feed me, and then me and my auntie coming back saturday night to mine. After TEA LOL. Buy a little milk carton for my 5am brew for sunday morning..and leave it in outhouse over night as i will have no fridge (leaving it unplugged till i come back off hols).. Go bed early..get up at 5am..leave in taxi at 7am!! Get to airport about 7.45am ish.. OMG iam sooooo excited!! Oh and rain is due on sunday in Cyprus LOL. I got all the last of my holiday things today and everything is all packed

Im soooooooooooooooooooooo excited, im just worried about 4 and half hrs on a plane with 2 children :eek: I have sweeets, lollys, magazines, crayons, coloring books... does anyone else know what to take for the kids aged 3 and 2??? Im also taking there fav blankets for the airoplane...it gets pretty chilly when im up in the air :rotfl: OH i do hate flying... i hate all the bleeping noises lol hahaha

Erm ive gone on sorryyyy

Frugaldom

Hello everyone! I just popped back online to check on progress and found the original thread locked already! That's fast service from MSE, most impressive.

Hello to Keren, hope you are enjoying your new job and welcome to part 2 of the challenge

Good luck Marru - studenthood could be fun!

The mere fact that we have entered the second quarter makes me think of springtime. I need to go and investigate why the bells were tolled here earlier today as they normally do this to signify the return of migratory birds - I have a feeling that it may well be the arrival of the first Osprey!

I'm starting the second quarter the way I mean to go on - my first big expense of this quarter will be the £500+ winter electricity bill, so I'm turning off the storage heaters from tonight so I get Q2 and Q3 under control. The power useage chart has been kept updated daily since the start of this challenge and should make interesting reading. Sad, or what!

Now that all my receipts have been fed into my accounts programme I am beginning to really see the difference this challenge makes, nearing in mind that I'm on year 2. I haven't greatly increased my income on last year's figures but I have succeeded in keeping to most of my set budgets. (I failed dismally on last year's attempt to quit smoking so I'm nearly £500 short of my saving expectations because I let it go up in smoke. :rolleyes: ) This year, I am saving every penny not smoked into a separate account. Since the budget put another 11p per pack onto the price, it means my previous brand would have gone up to exactly £5 per pack. I have increased my savings amount accordingly and will now save £10 per week rather than £1.28 per day. It's known as "Cahoots for my charoots" :rotfl: and the savings are earmarked for future garden and livestock related purchases

Next up is the ISA scenario... I am sorely tempted to try to 'beat the ISA' by way of another mini-challenge. From 6th April we can pay £3600 into selected accounts and receive tax free interest. Current top rate is about 6.5%, or £234 over a full year assuming you have the lump sum at the start. I'm wondering if I could earn more than that off £300 per month ... how easy would it be to turn £300 into £330 each month and set aside 20% of the £30 profit for the taxman? That would beat the ISA rate by quite a bit. Hmm.... how big a gamble would I be willing to take, that's the question!

PS: Mumzy - you missed out the number :rotfl:

mumzyof2

nykmedia wrote: »

Hello everyone! I just popped back online to check on progress and found the original thread locked already! That's fast service from MSE, most impressive.

Hello to Keren, hope you are enjoying your new job and welcome to part 2 of the challenge

Good luck Marru - studenthood could be fun!

The mere fact that we have entered the second quarter makes me think of springtime. I need to go and investigate why the bells were tolled here earlier today as they normally do this to signify the return of migratory birds - I have a feeling that it may well be the arrival of the first Osprey!

I'm starting the second quarter the way I mean to go on - my first big expense of this quarter will be the £500+ winter electricity bill, so I'm turning off the storage heaters from tonight so I get Q2 and Q3 under control. The power useage chart has been kept updated daily since the start of this challenge and should make interesting reading. Sad, or what!

Now that all my receipts have been fed into my accounts programme I am beginning to really see the difference this challenge makes, nearing in mind that I'm on year 2. I haven't greatly increased my income on last year's figures but I have succeeded in keeping to most of my set budgets. (I failed dismally on last year's attempt to quit smoking so I'm nearly £500 short of my saving expectations because I let it go up in smoke. :rolleyes: ) This year, I am saving every penny not smoked into a separate account. Since the budget put another 11p per pack onto the price, it means my previous brand would have gone up to exactly £5 per pack. I have increased my savings amount accordingly and will now save £10 per week rather than £1.28 per day. It's known as "Cahoots for my charoots" :rotfl: and the savings are earmarked for future garden and livestock related purchases

Next up is the ISA scenario... I am sorely tempted to try to 'beat the ISA' by way of another mini-challenge. From 6th April we can pay £3600 into selected accounts and receive tax free interest. Current top rate is about 6.5%, or £234 over a full year assuming you have the lump sum at the start. I'm wondering if I could earn more than that off £300 per month ... how easy would it be to turn £300 into £330 each month and set aside 20% of the £30 profit for the taxman? That would beat the ISA rate by quite a bit. Hmm.... how big a gamble would I be willing to take, that's the question!

PS: Mumzy - you missed out the number :rotfl:

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: I had to post it and then fill in my total from my sig LOLOLOL and got carried away!!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

CharliesAngel

just a quick question considering all this frugal activity... how the hell has my debt risen?!! i'm paying more than minimums... i can't work it out. But i was never good at maths... lol

anyone know any good recipes for eggs?! lol i'm getting so many off my sis that omelette is getting boring... mayonnaise? is that worth making?! erm.. i'd love to be bothered to make pavlova... Mmmmm raspberry.....

tempted to start selling them on the 'black' market lol.. i.e without my sis finding out... :rotfl:

had pizza at my sis's house yesterday and could only eat half of the half... so brought the rest back lol and it's in the fridge for tomorrow's tea with chips out the freezer.. she thinks i'm sad but i'm proud lol

nothing much else to report.....

CAx

lyndasharp

CharliesAngel wrote: »

anyone know any good recipes for eggs?! lol i'm getting so many off my sis that omelette is getting boring... mayonnaise? is that worth making?! erm.. i'd love to be bothered to make pavlova... Mmmmm raspberry.....

CAx

I made a quiche at the weekend, enough for 4 days food (with a salad on the side), just needed cheese, onion, 2 eggs, pastry, tomatoes and olives, plus a bit of cream and milk. Very cheap and very very tasty - plus you can freeze some portions for another day. Meringue is a good use of eggs too:D

I'm having a happy day, got my first ever pay for over £1000, and I've come in £40 under budget for March despite having to renew my passport! Flights to Inverness to pay for next month, that'll be tight from my budget... lots more quiche making I think! Still, a proper money saving holiday... staying with a friend's parents in the Scottish Highlands, lots of walking, they'll provide food and lodgings, all we have to do is get flights there and a small contribution to their costs!

Aril

Hello fellow frugalites:D
Your no 1 by proxy supporter here signing up for the second quarter and reporting for duty:D
Huge congrats to all of you who have made it through to here...where has the 3 months gone Crikey I just wonder how much you lot have save to date if it was all tallied up...I suspect it would run into the the thousands already.
Gnat bottom stakes will continue as before. Sent OH off for the weekend to earn some dosh which bless him he did....we're one of those affected by the loss of the 10% tax bracket so need to up the income to counter it. Cheeky beggar still left me with instructions to change the BT package to one which gives us free evening/weekend calls in his absence. Have been a good frugalite and carried out his instructions to the letter so there should be a saving there. I meanwhile have inherited a load of summer skirts from my sister which should rejig the wardrobe at no extra cost and am now the proud owner of a hanging basket from freecycle which is destined to have strawberry plants in it later in the season [couldn't possibly be a tip I nicked off the part 1 of this very same thread could it now:rotfl::rotfl:] My frugal tip would be to think very carefully before turning down something that somebody offers you. It may not be what you want on this occasion but if you refuse next time they have something you want they may think to themselves that you won't want it and offer it to someone else;)
Aril

bails

Phew, I've finally caught up with our spends! :T Sadly, the Spend Days challenge wasn't so successful as OH seemed to buy the odd thing on random days :rolleyes: so overall we had 11 SDs. I'm going to try and improve on that this month, will let you know my aim once I've [strike]throttled[/strike] clarified things with OH
Right, so for our first quarter we've spent £920.31 so £79.69 under! :j:j In March we spent £146.30 - £25.09 in first 2 days then £38.86, £66.35, £12.76 and £3.24 in subsequent weeks.
I'd like to put the £79.69 somewhere and then draw on it if we need it, but we don't actually have the money in the bank account! What about if I take it out of my savings (metaphorically speaking of course) and then pay it back to myself over time - does that make any sense to anyone? :rotfl:We've also saved £1544.16 so far this year! Woo hoo!

Marru, that's great news about going back to study, I hope you get accepted. You're right, this challenge is making such a difference to our lives too :T I've got something to show you all that I'm (far too) excited about but I need to take a photo of it first...
What about a mini challenge to celebrate the new thread/next quarter - anyone got any suggestions?

mumzyof2

Yeh lets have a mini challenge!!!!! pretty please!!

grandma247

MUMSY flying may not be such a problem if it is all new to your kids. If they like you to read stories just take their favorites. The little one will probably go to sleep anyway because of the white (monotonous noise). We did a 28 hour flight with a three year old. The main prob with him was he kept pressing the call button when we were asleep and getting soft drinks for himself.