Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

Marru

Hi,

I have been walking dogs (and that monkey that I call DD) and then we went to see rats, gerbils, mice... Bails the rescue had two mummy mice and two baby mice and the two baby mice climbed into my sleeve and they were lovely!!! Do you want a phone number?

And Bails to your question about piggies teeth and claws: Teeth should be ok but if you want you can give them apple tree branches (if you can get hold of them) to eat. If the claws grow long enought to curl then they need cutting. I haven't tried this yet but there are piggy nail cutters in the market but probably ordinary human nail cutters will do the job. Good luck!

Still not done my totals as DD is downstairs harrasing the dogs. I shall go and rescue them now and put DD for her nap. I must be ill as I had some chocolate left in my secret stash that I had forgotten. Me forgotten that I had chocolate !!!!

Have a great summer/winter day everyone (I can't figure out which one it is so you have to take your pick).

Marru

PS CA - WOW you have been very busy and I don't really know what to day except way you go!!

taka

Time for a bit of an update from me...

Bills £52.62
Birthday £39.74
Food £16.44
Spends £4.15

Total £112.95 :eek: and its only day 6 of my challenge Oh god......:rotfl:

In my defence this also includes £4.62 into my various savings pots :rolleyes: Am I convincing anyone?

I'm still stuck on the interest beater challenge too...help... lol

BlueFleur

My brother is bad with money, so I figure that it could be a good part of a gift. I've been looking at the hamper thread, and I'm quite taken with the idea. I struggle to think of Christmas presents, so it could be quite useful for me. And a way to limit my spending I like the idea of decorating it, so I might steal that

Still trying to work on my budget. It is surprising how much I must have spent every week to get me into this level of debt. Now I'm trying to cut back as much as I can, but I'm annoyed at my [STRIKE]evil[/STRIKE] money spending former self, that got myself into this position in the first place.

Jay1_2

Hi folks

Well done on all your GN profits. I agree with what Frankie said ages ago but wish I didn't now!

Your secret car made me laugh CA, or maybe it really is very small.

Now I have a question:
Does paypal charge the same amount every time or do they change a percentage? Should I transfer money from it asap so I get interest on it or leave it till I've got a decent amount so I am only paying once?:rolleyes:

Frugaldom

Wow! What a busy lot you have been and can you REALLY use the prepaid envelopes from junk mail? I am VERY interested in finding out more about that and will try sending one to myself to find out if it gets her :rotfl: We save all the stamps that come through on letters for charity, not sure how they make money out of them but the school collects them.

Charlies Angel - YOU BOUGHT A CAR??? :eek:

Marru - I'm still thinking about what we could call the other thread?

Banks for pressies - (Love the Noah's Ark, Bails) I have 'Phil the Pig' this year and use him in Mumzy's Sealed Pot challenge. I save my small change then it gets given to someone as a present at Christmas; they get the entire thing wrapped up and I try to be as inventive as possible when choosing the 'bank'. It's been everything from tablet tubs, smarties tubes, toffee tins, food tins and, this year, recycled newspaper around a 'Children in Need' charity balloon made into a pig. I also made a cash cow, which has already gone as a present. The DGD got a penny piggy and then came penny penguin. Loads of us made them and here's the proof:

All the details are in this thread - papier mache and free hobbies

The weather here has been great! It's also been
quite an eventful day. Potatos have been planted, I have repotted the tomato seedlings and now have 16 small plants on the windowsill alongside a tray of onion seeds. I have repotted the chives, coriander and mint, I have severely pruned back the lavender and saved enough to bottle with some bubblebath. I just use the cheapest bubblebath I can find and leave it sealed with the herbs for several months then decant into small, fancy (recycled) bottles to make up gifts.

Amidst all of the above, I heard a yell and was signaled back outside to the garden to discover a pony had escaped from nearby and was running around the lane and into next door's yard. Daft animal had knocked the garden gate three doors down clean off its hinges to escape. That's when I spotted the 2 little lambs! They must be motherless and being bottle-reared, so now I need to go chat with neighbour so I can see them. On return to our garden, I was admiring the lovely neat rows of newly planted spuds and suddenly there was an almighty hissing, spitting, screaming noise and next door's cat came FLYING over the fence and made a failed attempt at running up the cherry tree i it crashed into the potato patch, narrowly missed by a growling black dog, all hackles and yelps, which had crashed straight through the fence after the cat! Our lovely tattie patch! The cat managed to escape onto the shed roof but it took me ages to tempt the stupid dog out the gate. I certainly wasn't going to try laying a hand on it as it looked like a maned wolf with its hackles up from neck to tail! But can you credit it? The ONE day that we decide to dig, hoe, rake, plant, make neat ridges etc, etc, etc... and the cat & dog fight erupts right in the middle of it! :mad: Except I had to laugh! It was quite funny seeing the cat & dog spinning like a furry cyclone in the middle of the potatoes.

That's been my day, so far, and it's not even 5pm I wonder what's going to be next? I'm off to have some soup and then I think I'll drag out the BBQ and clean it up for spring. Frugal cooking is just around the corner. Mmmm... has anyone else tried BBQ kebabs made up with chicken, onion, peppers & mushroom with peanut butter? :T

Jay - go to the fees section on PayPal as it depends on what account you have. Mine's a business account and it costs various percentages, depending on the overall total. I withdraw as soon as I have enough to skip the withdrawal fee but still end up paying a 'pay-in' fee when it arrives in the bank.

MarkyMarkD

bails wrote: »

Sorry to hear about your guinea pig, I had to do a similar thing with one of my Russian hamsters, v upsetting. Talking of guinea pigs, does anyone know how often their teeth and nails need clipping? And why is it necessary ie it's not like there are guinea pig dentists in their natural habitat? Thanks.

We never had our GPs' teeth done. You are supposed to only need to do that if you don't feed them sensible food and/or don't give them anything to gnaw on. Ours used to gnaw their hutch to death and that seems to have been sufficient for them. You would know if they had a problem because it would make them unhappy and probably stop them eating too so they'd lose weight.

I used to clip their nails myself with a human toe nail clipper and it was fine. A bit of a s*d of a job, though, especially when you have 4 to do - it's a lot of nails!

Janey51

:eek: A huge triumph in the home of a frugalist and a none frugalist today:j

Asked DH to count al teh money I have saved from the housekeeping in the first 3 months of our challenge and it's £179.80 :j
With my Grand National winnings that will take it up to over £200 so I am going to buy a couple of National Savings Bonds to tie up in savings for 5 years

DH then said, "I've bought a piggy bank" :eek: :eek:
Well, blow me down with a feather:beer:

DH then announced that he has spare cash in his wallet and is going to buy a Premium Bond :T

I think Frugalism is overcoming DH's immune system and he is showing a fairly advanced form of Creeping Insidious Frugalitis :rotfl:

Janey51

Mark when I saw the start of your post "We never had our GP's teeth done" I thought.....what the :eek:

Then I realised it meant Guinea Pig:rotfl: :rotfl:

Janey51

Nyk your post about the dog and cat is priceless.
If your LL is going to sell up...what about your potatoes?

Marru

redglass wrote: »

Marru, and anyone else who wants to make money from writing: there's a site called duotrope.com which will send you a regular email listing all the English-language magazines, websites etc wanting short pieces, what they want, whether they are in the UK or the USA, whether they pay or not, etc. It's a brilliant resource. There's nothing to pay as the site supports itself from voluntary donations (I am ashamed to say I haven't donated yet - must get round to it soon)

Thank you so much for the link. It looks great! :j

Marru