Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

System

ps boo hiss to mean ex's!

Marru

Jumble-Bee wrote: »

ps boo hiss to mean ex's!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Frugaldom

shaz_mum_of__2 wrote: »

Nyk

try your local LIDL for seeds ours selling them 29p a packet or why not join a seedswapping group i have a web address for a UK based one can i post the link here ?? or we could start one on here?

Shaz

Hi Shaz, thanks for that

Unfortunately, you guessed! We haven't got a Lidl anywhere near us. I think the nearest is about 80 mile round trip and I can't wait until they finish building the one in next town.

To be honest, if seeds etc are as cheap as that, I think I'll need to save for a house with several acres of land, never mind a garden big enough for a veggie plot! :eek: I'm now thinking longterm - if seeds last long enough, I should be buying them this year for next year and booking a short break holidays to somewhere that has huge supermarkets and discount stores. Perhaps another trip to parents' house is needed sooner than I thought. :rotfl:

Frugaldom

Well, I have been and added a new thread to the 'Up Your Income' forum for all of you interested in doing the mini-challenge of earning an extra few pounds to beat the interest on savings equivalents. I have posted it HERE and hope that it was OK to do so. I guess we'll soon find out

General discussion about cost of living and anything concerned with this challenge will always remain here. The new thread is just for discussing progress on the how/why/when of extra earnings and will save this thread from clogging up with calculations etc that aren't relevant to cost of living.

Back on the garden front, mum has promised me a good sized root of rhubarb when she's thinning hers out, so that's my fruit section starting to fill up now too, if you are counting tomatoes in with it. Just need free strawberries now.

looby-loo_2

Hi everyone, Great to see everyone talking about seeds and growing their own veg. I've done that as long as I can remember and at last I'm 'fashionable':D

I've had an 'eat from the freezer' week to make space for the icecream maker tub which has to be frozen for 24 hours. Then I did some number crunching and I'm horrified to find that I spent more on guinea pig, rabbit and cat food than I did to feed two adults and two teens:eek: That is one weeks food for them - not buying in bulk! (I do have a lot of cats just now)

On the bright side I bought cream to make the icecream but I bought far too much so I made butter with the 1/3 pint I had over as it was 'turning'. It was so easy and tastes yummy. No more throwing away the odd half tub of cream from now on.(and the cats loved the whey)

bails

Ooh Looby, can you tell us how you made the butter please?

Not up to posting peeps, feeling all fluey - well, it is the Easter hols! :rolleyes: Off to sort myself out and will be reporting back for frugal duty asap.
BTW, have you seen Weezl's £40 a month GC budget - I wish I could get ours that low!!

Frugaldom

Bails, hope you are feeling better soon. Any time I made butter with the extra cream that was all there was to the recipe. Tip it into a jam-jar or similar container with a sealable lid and start turning/rolling the jar continuously until the cream separates into the butter and whey. My mum used to make curds & whey but I cannot, for the life of me, remember what it tasted like. We'd use the top off the milk to make butter but that's near impossible now because of the homogenization process used on most milk these days!

I'm not recommending the above method for buttermaking as it has been some years since I attended Brownies & Guides, where I first learned to make butter. :rotfl: I think we even salted it! :eek:

System

right, i think iv cracked it....

i got the start date for my course today, turns out it is right at the end of the month (i had been budgeting for the middle) so that gives me a wee bit more income. Plus I will only aim for the first £155 of travel costs (i think i might get free money to cover the rest? will check this out...)

i have decided that i would be much happier with a monthly target of £135 (1620 for the year) - for the 1st quarter, if i had been aiming for £135 i would only have been £9.72 over....i am going to nick £9.72 from my UC fund so that i can start the £135 target without playing catch up. {EDIT - changed my mind - i will leave it in and hope to come under at some point}

SO all in all this means the UC target is now £440.03

NYK, can i join the interest beater thread for my UC? it sort of is an interest beater challenge, but linked to student loan interest rather than ISA interest - the aim is to keep every penny of the loan and stick it in an accout which earns a higher rate of interest than the loan costs, and make a wee profit from it. This also gives me a cash lump sum to knock off my mortgage as soon as altering my mortgage becomes viable, so that i 'replace' the high interest of a mortgage with the lower interest of a student loan.

I managed to do this with my undergraduate loan, and it makes me feel like this :dance:

ps i am sooooooooooooooooo impressed at the butter making!

looby-loo_2

bails wrote: »

Ooh Looby, can you tell us how you made the butter please?

Not up to posting peeps, feeling all fluey - well, it is the Easter hols! :rolleyes: Off to sort myself out and will be reporting back for frugal duty asap.
BTW, have you seen Weezl's £40 a month GC budget - I wish I could get ours that low!!

This is where I found the butter recipe - very sensible and easy instructions.
It's a great site too!

http://www.allotment.org.uk/allotment_foods/Making_Butter_at_Home.php

Marru

Bails,

Hope you get well soon

Marru