Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

Marru

Oh WOW,

Luckily for me these boys came from very knowledgable (sp?) rescue and they are babies from mums that the rescue had earlier this year so I am confident that they have been separated before sexual maturity from their litter mates and that they are boys. I shall have rat party tonight in my little office playing bingo as I am going to let them out from their cage first time. Let's see if they can choose me any lucky tickets. Any funny messages from me this evening (i.e. tomorrow morning), that will be my excuse.

Marru

Frugaldom

Jumble_bee, I'm thinking your could probably make some sort of career out of your Jumble_Bee temping!

Sophiesmum, I would love to try the self-sufficiency thing for the summer but I feel it would be impossible, in light of the fact that I may not even be in the same house, so could lose out on any serious efforts at creating a food supply. Financial self-sufficiency is on my plans for my 2009 challenge, so I'm going to concentrate on reassessing my true costs of living this year, but do wish you luck. I'm not sure I fully understand the concept of what you mean, mind you, so please enlighten me further. I think I'm missing something somewhere - do you mean bulk buy enough food to last 6 months and see if you can live on that? My frugalitis is too far gone for that, I'd be terrified I'd miss a good bargain

Looby_Loo, My guess is that full moon madness must be about soon. I realised a long time ago that there's more than just a hint of truth about the lunar months and would truly consider living my year on a 13 month calender just to see if it made any difference. But I agree with Marru - men are safest with pocket money, as their brains don't seem to function in frugal mode. (Sorry Marky & MrDT, I'm sure there are exceptions to all 'rules' )

Hester, good to see you back and sorry there are still a few ceases needing ironed out of your lodger situation. I hope they use a dialling code to get cheap Caribbean calls!

JKS - Don't despair at any overspend, use this full year to assess your current spending habits and then you'll be able to analyse them for next year and set a realistic challenge budget for 2009. Think of it as a giant grocery challenge and instead of aiming for monthly grocery improvements, aim for annual overall improvements :cool:

Now on the subject of us bingo 'babes' who plan on scooping a few free pounds from Gala tomorrow, don't forget to claim your free tickets! It's also TV night here, when everything stops for Martin, the property programmes and Desperate Housewives. I bet 'Brie' could be one of us, she bakes and cooks all the time and never seems to spend a penny! :rotfl:

I need some milk, so might pop out to Co-op for 10 mins. Then again, I might ask someone else to go and give them only enough money to buy milk. That would be a far better idea!

PS: Hello to the rescued Mr Ratties

whitewing

Hello,

Been busy sorting out 'cultural differences' earlier this week (big misunderstanding at home - nightmare), and have read most posts but they haven't sunk in.

Anyway, good news to report: MIL has started her job yesterday and a hot meal at lunch time is provided. How about that for a frugal perk?

Also, heard today that OH has got his job and starts next week. Am very happy. (It's not rocket science or brilliantly paid but it does fit in well around our other business).

Things are slowly coming together. *Big sigh of relief*

MrDT

nykmedia wrote: »

I agree with Marru - men are safest with pocket money, as their brains don't seem to function in frugal mode. (Sorry Marky & MrDT, I'm sure there are exceptions to all 'rules' )

No need to apologise to me nyk, I'd agree we're best off with pocket money I have been operating a strict 'pocket money' policy for myself for the past year or so, every friday my 'spendey' money would transfer into my 'spending' account and I could spend it on whatever then without worrying about there being more month than wages

Changed this to a once a month transfer now to try (and fail) the grocery challenge. Kept the seperate accounts though, at least I can't spend the rent on an xbox or something this way :rotfl:

ps - since jumble_bee's thrown her hat in the ring, we now also have a MrDT available: needs internet connection, tv, a kennel (probably bigger than where I am now) and monthly pocket money... special skills, err, I'm learning to cook...? nah, that's not gonna cut it here now is it!


edit: sounds like things are one the up and up whitewing

System

i :heart2: free lunch too, whitewing! i got my first free lunch from my 12 week course today. Tommorrow i get breakfast AND lunch

i am in charge of buying all the food too - i spent less than half of the daily budget today, and still have nearly enough stuff left for tomorrow as well, i cant bring myself to be un-frugal :rotfl:shame i dont get to keep the change....

off to join gala bingo.....

sophiesmum_2

hi Nyk,
I aim to bulk buy enough food to last six months. Bulk buying will enable me to get better deals on the stuff that I buy, large sacks of flour. rice, etc. It will also help beat any price increases within the next six months, things are going up weekly at the moment.:mad: It will also keep me out of the shops and therefore out of the way of spending, and save on petrol costs too. It will also free up the time that would have been spent shopping.
I also want to supplement my food stores by making the most of home grown and foraged food, batch cooking, baking, preserving, drying,fermenting, and anything else I discover along the way.;) This will have the side effect of almost removing processed food from our diet too.
I have done a few calculations and reckon doing the above I could feed our family of 3 adults plus regular visiting adult son for £350- £400 for 6 months. I think that would be pretty good. It would definately be a reduction on what we spend usually.

The only stumbling block I can foresee is EGGS! I have no way of getting these free or storing them for 6 months so will have to work around that somehow

Frugaldom

Hi Sophiesmum, it would certainly be great to be able to budget £400 for 6 months of groceries but my household situation just doesn't allow for it because of the need for fresh milk, cheese, eggs and fruit. I need a bit more practice before attempting that. I'd also need a bigger freezer and the guarantee of no power cuts during summer storms I'll follow the progress and participate where possible as the homegrown produce, minimising the spending and cutting down on spend days all fits in with my challenge. Roll on getting my own place... I did learn how to milk goats and make cheese when I was in the Orkney Isles a few years ago, so I'd perhaps like a nanny goat as well as my chickens. Oh no..... something else to add to the list

I've been into Gala and secured myself 12 tickets for each of the 6 free games and have taken up residence in the country club. Now, I just need to sort out how to stay connected and tap the correct buttons once an hour for the next 24 hours and see if it really does work! :rotfl: I'm keeping count of how many games I manage to play this week, as it's my first full attempt at this. If anyone else can do the same, that would be great.

GOOD LUCK PEOPLE! WTG! WDW! And all that stuff that I haven't quite got the hang of just yet Needless to say, I have cleared the decks for tomorrow and ill make the post office run between 'hits' on the freebie tickets! Shout hello if you're passing the stables, I'll probably have fallen asleep in there!

whitewing

Morning All! Have a happy day today.

Just popped on to say to Sophiesmum that I was reading on other threads about little bugs crawling around flour, if you keep it too long. So need to be careful. Can't remember where I read it though but it was on this forum somewhere.

Frugaldom

whitewing wrote: »

Morning All! Have a happy day today.

Just popped on to say to Sophiesmum that I was reading on other threads about little bugs crawling around flour, if you keep it too long. So need to be careful. Can't remember where I read it though but it was on this forum somewhere.

Good morning Whitewing - Think you're talking about weevils. It's also in this thread, no panics

Morning all So much for a nightshift to win free bingo! :rotfl: When I woke up, my computer had logged out automatically, so I don't know how many games got played. Claimed a few tickets so far, not won a bean.
Good luck to anyone else who is trying this today.

The first of my new seeds are sprouting! Can't tell you which as I forgot to label the trays... oops!

whitewing

Thanks Nyk, should have known it would be here, I never go anywhere else!

*Ahem* I only need 8 more Thank Yous to go over the two thousand mark - SUBTLE HINT! (Don't know why I'm so sad; I can't even use my own thanks button! It doesn't work)