Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

Mollymop5

Oh my goodness where is everyone???? down the bingo halls maybe

I have my advance tickets booked for this evenings games.hope I have better luck than last week.No wins at all

sophiesmum_2

Good evening frugal friends:D
Very quiet in here this evening you must all be at the bingo place:rolleyes:
i haven't got the patience for it today:o so will resign myself to remaining "winless". Good luck to everyone.

OH has now completely repaired my greenhouse:j so will be able to move all my tomato plants and other seedlings to their new home over the weekend. Made a discovery in garden today - found a crop of parsley growing in garden and realised it was area where i emptied some compost from herb pots last year,must have been some dormant seeds still in the compost:D , have now colonised it in a pot:D free parsley.

Went to costco today buying for oldies and the food increases are even starting to hit there. Several items have increased since last week, uht milk, cooked chickens, sugar, meat,and also some of the cheaper bakery lines have been removed and replaced with more expensive extra special ranges:rolleyes:
Making me even more determined to do my bulk buy/grow own challenge from June onwards.

Have almost got my first batch of soft cheese (quark) finished from my kefir, will separate it from the whey later and have some for breakfast on toast with some of last season's blackberry and apple jam.:D

Enjoy the rest of the evening everyone:D

PS bails - the chicken breasts with pepper and feta pesto were scrummy:j

Janey51

Morning frugalists.

I am amazed at how empty the Challenge has been lately and Bingo is obviously the new place to be :rolleyes:
Following my mega Bingo win after my drunken night, I have not been back because I am not a gambler unless I have consumed (unexpected) alcohol

Yesterday afternoon...in between showers...potted up loads of bedding plants and will now be spending hours watering them and rotating the trays on my kitchen windowsills. Luckily for me, my bad cats seem to be ignoring them. Bad Cat No 1 has a habit of hooking things out of pots to get a closer look.

DH decided to confess that he spent "about" £20 on the food he bought in the market while I wasn't watching which means it was probably double that so I will deduct £30 from the housekeeping. It really grieves me but I have managed to save a lot of the leftover party food and he understands his diet will be a little boring and repetitive for the next couple of weeks :rotfl: My monetary update at the end of the month could be a little scary. Not helped by the fact that diesel is now 122.9p/litre in this little corner of Scotland.

DH's car insurance is due next week and his quote was £220. Managed to get it for £166.80 + £50 cashback from the Post Office + £23.70 from Quidco. The Quidco transaction has tracked so thats means we are saving £126.90 on the original quote :j

I am going to spend the £5 Mars voucher I got ages ago for complaining about some Maltesers. I feel the need of chocolate today even though its only breakfast time. And with the price of food going up so quickly, you can't be too careful. I will try and get something to put away for Christmas as well if the expiry dates stretch that far. Of course, I could always buy biscuits, take them out of the tins, wrap them in cellophane and who will know if they've expired
Or is that a bit too devious :rotfl:

I got another Christmas present yesterday. Its a money box. I am going to give most people money boxes this year as there are so many lovely ones about. It was only £4.99 and is a bright pink pig with springy legs and a necktie on. If DH can start saving in his pig, there is hope for everyone

sophiesmum_2

Morning janey and everyone else to come later:D

Janey - great result with the insurance:j :j :j Hope the cats leave your plants alone. We used to have a german shepherd who loved to wait until you planted stuff in the garden then promptly dig it up and bring it into the house and present it to you as a gift:o We ended up with nothing but lawns while we had him.

Sun is just breaking through here today so hopefully will be a bright day later.
Cooking for my oldies at teatime so free tea tonight:D

have a good day everyone, almost the weekend.:j

bails

Morning Janey, SophiesMum and everyone else!

Bingo was indeed as boring as you might expect yesterday and you did well to stay away, as I for one didn't win anything (still hoping one of the others may have won overnight). The only highlight was that our conversation deteriorated over the many, many hours of our lives we [strike]lost[/strike] happily enjoyed bingo into hysterical ramblings - I haven't laughed so much in ages

Inbetween the tedium of the big G, I managed to do some more sorting in the garden, with the help of my amazing parents. It's almost all been deweeded, a masive concrete coal bunker's been demolished, loads of rubble removed, several tip runs, an area prepared for a second veg patch, fruit trees moved to a better spot,an area cleared for a sun trap in the evenings and seedlings repotted :T Still lots to do but it's really starting to take shape, v exciting.

Today will need to be a quiet one as yesterday is taking its toll (not sure if it was the gardening or the bingo :rolleyes:) so just teaching one lesson and then chilling out as going out for dinner tonight with the rest of my illness group (thankfully not one of those that moan endlessly about how awful life is ).

Hope everyone has a lovely Friday and just remember, there's another whole 6 days of freedom til Bingo Bedlam :rotfl:

ps glad you enjoyed the feta pesto chicken SophiesMum :j

shaz_mum_of__2

Hiya all

I think i pretty much got free tickets for every game 8am to 8pm yesterday(off sick)

Not a sausage


Shaz

Marru

HI all,

Just a quick one. I did win £70 in bingo yesterday and while I wasn't even looking! I second Bails - the chat was hilarious. There were times I couldn't type as I was laughing so much. I was afraid DD might wake up. So this means that I don't have to bring cost of my animals to this challenge as this bingo win will keep them fed for awhile.

Need to go to DMP thread now and get some things sorted. Back another time so have everybody a great day!

Marru

bails

Lol Shaz, can relate to that - I was on from 8.30am til midnight and still no joy! Next week is our week You hear that Gala? - either you make me a winner or the kittens get it :rotfl:

bails

Hi again everyone - where is everyone? Just realised I haven't really updated recently so just thought I'd do a little ramble...;)

We're about to complete the GC in budget for the 2nd month in a row I think *touch wood* and we've reduced it by £25/mth since Jan despite feeding 2 more cats of our own (and about 8 strays ). My current hero is Weezl (those of you who are on the GC will know what I'm talking about) and although we'll never get that low, I would like to decrease it quite a bit further yet. If you're interested in how she does it, she's got a thread here ; she's very keen to make sure their diet is still nutritionally balanced.
We've also paid off our CT for the year :T Of course we get some help with this due to my circumstances but it was still a big chunk of money to have lying around, which never happened before :j I know ideally we could have invested it for the year and then paid but TBH I worry that OH will find another way to spend it so better that payment cleared. We can still put our CT money to one side each month and save that up for next year.

I've also just 'stolen' £100 from our joint account and put into our PMS Fund, which leaves us with about £25 til the end of the month. It will hopefully be doable (although the car leaks fuel it uses it so fast) and if so, that'll be another £100 towards our savings :j:j It's a psychological thing, if it's not there (OH in particular) will be quite happy not to spend on anything til next month. Yes, I'm a devious wench (well, not that devious as I always tell him what I'm doing) but it works!

I've been thinking about the idea of saving up the 4K ready for next year - I'm not sure it'll happen as I would like to do some improvements on the house etc but it's definitely an idea to play with. As you know, we're not actually living on 4K this year for everything but I'm going to have a good look at exactly what I do spend this year and perhaps see if it's possible to get closer to it next year. Thinking about it now I can immediately see 3 big problems - meds, cars, travelling! Not to mention the rising cost of everything - do you think it'll stay at 4k next year Nyk? Why is it 4K actually? (should probably know that, blank moment ). I get quite excited thinking about how we can reduce it further though, and make our money work as hard as possible for us (cos we aint ever gonna be rich! Oh, except OH is going to become a world-famous sculptor of course )

But enough wittering! Off to crunch numbers Nyk-styley :rotfl:

dfw844

Hi everyone,

It does seem a bit quiet round here, doesn't it? Afraid I haven't been about much myself recently as I have been having a really busy couple of weeks.

Luckily though, I haven't lost control of the groceries budget (always my downfall). And even this morning, when I couldn't have my usual breakfast cereal (only because I couldn't find a clean bowl!!) I dug a free bagel voucher out of my purse and had that instead. I've been polishing my DFW halo all day because I resisted the temptation to buy a coffee with it!

Looking forward to the end of the month to update all my totals. Think I have overspent for the second month running though. I thought I had been so careful. Oh well, plenty of time to make it all up yet. I'll have to have a good look at the spending diary at the end of the month.
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