Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

whitewing

Brassic wrote: »

Love the spending diary site. I've signed up to the grocery challenge. The kids will moan but I'll try and cut down on food even more, and will put a figure together in the morning when my eyes are able to stay open on their own

Thank everyone.

Brassic

I think I misread this to start with. You do mean cut down on spending on food? It's not about starving them, lol! If you're doing it successfully then they should all feel better and full up and you should be saving money.

Our supermarket shop has gone down from about £400 a month min to about £150-£175 a month. And MIL started living with us in Feb and we don't actually spend any extra now; she just got incorporated (we weren't at a point where we had fully refined it anyway).

Welcome aboard!

(Marru - what are you doing up so late? Get some rest, girl)

Brassic

Our supermarket shop has gone down from about £400 a month min to about £150-£175 a month.

Howwwwwwwwwwwwwww?!

Frugaldom

Still no rain here, but [STRIKE]it's a bit cloudy at the moment, so we could get a shower later[/STRIKE] the sun is shining, sky is blue. Still very warm, so I'm assuming the long hot spell will break with an almighty storm sooner or later.

DD has just left and we've been discussing the frugal party. :j :beer: :T After pricing around for caterers etc, I am pleased to say that she's accepted my offer to do the catering by way of a gift to her and my soon-to-be SIL. (Scary, or what?! :eek: ). I have mum coming to stay that weekend so she can help me. The wedding is planned for August 2009, so I have a full year to budget for that and all I can say is THANK GOODNESS I have lived by this challenge for the past couple of years and have savings pots for everything. I now need a new one for DD's wedding fund. :rolleyes: It's DGD's birthday in August but those of you who have been here since the start will know that I already have her pressie, the Disney doll's pram, bought in the January sales and already included in my gifts total. I even have her Christmas pressies bought!

Whitewing, you are my lead in the engagement party/wedding stakes and I'm already quite excited. I promise not to take over her plans and am learning when to hold my tongue based on your reactions to your dad and my own reactions to my own wedding plans back in 1985. :rotfl:

When I got married, we had just bought our first house and wanted to just take a witness into the registry office, get married and then home, no fuss, no photographers, no expense. But, parents want to celebrate such occasions, so it ended up a great deal more than that. Howevere, my DD's planning a big church wedding followed by the reception, so I need to be careful not to force underspend.:rotfl: Fortunately, she has picked up quite a few frugal tips since living with us for those few months last year. Oh, and they have already found a nice newly refurbished flat with a large garden, so they will be moving in together in August. I'm sure we'll manage to furnish it frugally;) Things are all so topsyturvy these days, but I guess it's all the same in the long run. (Edited in: The divorce in 2003 cost more than the wedding!)

Now - I need a few quick pounds for party grub and oooooooooooooooooooooooh!!! I forgot free bingo Mondays!!!!! :eek:

Back again - managed to snaffle some free tickets and fingers crossed, hoping like mad, as there's £500 up for grabs today for us !!!!!!!!!!

Edited in again - still no Bails update on the Wales trip!

bails

Hiya everyone! I feel like I've missed out on a few things, despite thinking I'd caught up on all the posts never mind!
Janey, hope OH's operation went well and that he feels less tired soon. Great tip about the HM coconut milk, presumably a lot less fat too!
Good luck with the home brews, look forward to hearing about the results.
Hm, what else can I remember? Great win Marru! The stats for long-term ISA savings were interesting, the pension stuff scary!
Hope you're having a great time with your mum Mumzy, why on earth did she bring you fags for if you're trying to give up though?
The stockpiling sounds good to go, I wanted to have a go at this but life is a complete muddle at mo so will need to sort everything out first and then see where I am. I've at least sorted out the spends for Holland (expensive but truly, truly awesome!! ), still need to get May squared away. OH has been a bit overwhelmed with starting work so I think I may have to write off May - not that we spent loads just the breakdown of where it went - and keep a proper track againthis month. Annoying but we'll still have a very good idea of our spends by the end of the year.
Lovely day here, lots to do in the garden this week but can't go out to get the bits I need for it as am waiting for Cat Woman to ring :rolleyes: Think I may just have to give up, she was meant to ring and come round this morning with paperwork so i could take the kittens to the vet this afternoon. At least I've cleaned the kitchen and the lounge and put the first of many washes on.
Oh, as for the surprise.....sorry to disappoint you all terribly, but OH had no intention whatsoever of proposing :rotfl:In fact, he thinks you're all quite mad for suggesting it! It was horseriding as I'd hoped, but sadly I've been really poorly since Thursday so couldn't go :rolleyes: My whole family were going to go with me, which I thought was lovely as they really aren't keen on horses! So it'll have to wait for another time...along with the proposal :rotfl:
Have a fab day everyone!
ps I love cold baked beans too - reminds me of whole weekends spent at the stables as a child.

bails

Brassic, sorry I forgot to welcome you!
As has been said, focus this year on working out how much you do spend on things and then you have a target to reduce from next year. As for Whitewing's success with the GC, I know it seems impossible when you first start but believe me, it is possible to cut down your grocery spends massively without compromising on health (in fact, eating better in my opinion). Get stuck into the GC and you'll soon reap the benefits! Hope to see you more on here and we can share what we know about living frugally, and happily

whitewing

I just can't bring myself to buy blackberries. I love them but we always picked them for free in my Dad's fields so even now most of the bramble bushes are gone, I still go without rather than part money.

We used to go to a big supermarket weekly. This made us very susceptible for impulse buys eg posh trifle, and microwaveable posh brand sugarsnap peas with baby carrots etc. If you added up our treats that probably came to a quarter of the bill!

Now we do a monthly shop in a basic supermarket (eg lidl or aldi) for approx £90 and spend another £25 on fruit/salad at main supermarket. We top up on bread/milk/maybe fruit/veg thro the month. Basic supermarket costs about twothirds of what we used to spend. Partly because we buy more basic stuff and make our own stuff from scratch. We rarely buy icecream or treats, but we enjoy them so much more when we do have them as they are a proper treat rather than just 'it's Friday night'.

We buy more tinned stuff too. We use frozen fruit/veg too, which makes the fresh stuff we get monthly more of a treat.

Our non-recylable rubbish is much less than it used to be. We have a small bag lurking in the bottom of our wheely bin and I don't think we've ever filled the bin up.

We still enjoy what we eat. Leftovers are a semi-planned part of next day's food, whereas before OH used to be the human dustbin although he can get away with it as he's skinny.

The one thing I can't get over is that the cupboards look bare halfway through the month but we always seem to make it last until payday. Literally if a particular item is already used, we go without it until the next main shop. We eat a bigger variety of things.

The other thing it does is focus your mind. Because I spend £80-90 a month at Lidls I seem to somehow measure things against that. Eating out for the family is a huge chunk in comparison so we are less likely to eat out. But when we do, we really enjoy it.

I had got stuck into a bit of a rut last year, and felt a bit powerless to control things. It's been a learning experience that has freaked me out at times (coupled with an obssessive need to set unrealistic goals), but overall we are doing better than we ever have. But the absolute crucial, crucial thing is that we don't feel that we are missing out.

Frugaldom

Oh Bails! I am so sorry that you weren't well enough to go horserinding! How gut-wrenching that must have been I hope you are feeling a little better and not too deflated after making the trip. Sending you big hugs and my very best wishes. and now you face the prospect of free bingo! Maybe you'll win the £500 to make you feel better.

I'm searching for frugal party supplies - I am loath to spend a fortune on disposable paper plates and bowls! There must be cheap washable, reuseable ones somewhere, surely? I already bought plastic cutlery but may have been cheaper buying real stuff! However, I'm sure there will be health and safety issues concerning a stand up buffet, metal cutlery, alcohol and children in attendance, so settled for plastic! At least I'll can wash and reuse whatever doesn't get broken. :rolleyes: Must search for serving plates and bowls, as we are catering for over 100 now! :eek: Gone to count up spends so far and wishing, wishing, wishing for a financial windfall of some description.

DdraigGoch

I'll have a look around, Nyk. Any preferences for colour, shape etc? Not that I'll necessarily be any good at finding it, of course, but many hands make light work etc....

bails

Thanks Nyk, actually I was fine about it really - without wishing to sound like a sob story in any way shape or form, there's been a lot of learning to cope with disappointment and developing a hideous amount of patience so I was well prepared And I'd had such a fantastic time before that it was more than worth missing the riding...so you can imagine how amazing Holland must've been
Whitewing, thanks for sharing that. I have found it to be so 'empowering' (dislike this word but you know what I mean) to rejig it all and find new ways of eating lovely food AND saving lots of money.
Nyk, what about collecting lots of crockery from Freecycle and then Freecycling it again afterwards - or does it need to be matching?

sophiesmum_2

Costco do all the catering stuff very reasonably Nyk but don't know if you are able to access one
Also last week asda had plastic reusable picnic plates, bowls, and little tumblers at 20p each. They were the sort you would use in garden not disposable stuff, I think they had them in lilac or aqua colours.