Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

mah_jong

Food and grocery spend for the week was 19.22.

I spent a lot on cheese!:D Trying to think what I spent all that on!

Oh I forgot the chicken ..... had guests so roasted a chicken, had some curried once they left, have frozen 3 more portions worth. Of course I made stock for soup. I froze that as I was too busy to make the soup.

The skies are clearing here ....I may get out into the garden yet!

Mollymop5

I've been trying to get may breadmaker to work but not having any luck.If anyone can help please do.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=882823

thanks

Frugaldom

Good afternoon everybody
As usual, I'm being lazy and haven't done a thing that I had intended doing, not even planted the seeds yet! I was contemplating a trip to the local market but after the lashing rain this morning, there are no market traders to be seen anywhere. The place is empty! Oh well, saved spending anything.

eBid auctions - use free listings, I list mine to end within 3, 5 or 7 days of first bid, that way they can stay there for free until someone happens to find them and makes a bid. Or if you list to start immediately, run them for at least a week and then automatically relist if unsold, as it's free to relist as well. However, I do have the buy it now option and have found that most do! The few buyers who venture into my listings seem to have an urgency about them and just want to get the items, pay and go. I'm dumbfounded by the whole concept, as I have seen me listing something at 99p start and no reserve with buy it now for £5 and they still BIN for whatever reason - weird! I have never seen a ferocious bidding war on there and have 'won' loads of stuff at ridiculous prices because nobody bid against me. :rolleyes: But I'm addicted to the site and class it as part of my daily working life because I do, strange as it may seem, get enough sales to make up my extra £1000 per year for another challenge.

Free bingo - anyone who decides to try out the Gala one, I only signed up originally to get the cashback as it amounted to more than the initial deposit. I had never played bingo before (still never seen the inside of a bingo hall) and don't know where I was when I won 2 full house games for the £60 and £70 a couple of weeks ago. I was probably in the Stables at the country club as that's where I park my username whilst the games play in the background on here. As for preferred beverage, all I had was coffee. At most, there could have been a free sample strawberry Ty-phoo tea. :rotfl: Seriously, I can talk that amount of nonsense and get the giggles without touching alcohol!

Stockpiling - I am going to stockpile the basics but haven't the space (or the security of knowing I won't need to move house) to store or grow enough to last. Which brings me to asking a more serious question:
Janey - why do you say you'll never own a house?
I panic constantly at the potential for becoming homeless at the drop of a hat purely because I rent privately. I cannot begin to imagine affording private rent when I am past earning a living, or in the event of not being able to earn a living for any health reasons - I know a basic state pension wouldn't cover it, that's for sure, and that's about all I'll have. It is my biggest worry and my biggest regret that I didn't have the financial ability to fight for the right to keep the house during the divorce, especially as EX was remarried and living elsewhere by the time it sold. I do know there are social security benefits available but very few landlords will rent to anyone on benefits. I think it's a disgrace that they are even allowed to advertise stating, "No children, no smokers, no pets, no DSS". We were given 2 months notice on our last house as soon as my DD and DGD came to stay because landlord disallowed anyone under the age of 30 in his house!! :mad:

bails

Oh Nyk, I can totally, totally relate to what you're saying about renting! I had a nightmare trying to rent anywhere - it would all go well and people would be lovely until I had to say I was on benefits then bang, complete shutdown or downright rudeness! I found going from being seen as a 'repsectable member of the community' to being treated as a second class citizen particularly difficult and made me very angry, which of course just made me more ill :mad: I understand that landlords can have problems with non-paying tenants (you just have to ask my dad!) but they can be anyone, not just people on benefits :mad: Ooh, can of worms most definitely opened...:rotfl:I am so incredibly lucky that my parents decided to buy this house (ie take out a mortgage) for me to live in and erase that stress, and I do wake up grateful (and guilty) for that every day. One day in the not too distant future I hope I can get a mrtgage of my own and free their savings up so they can enjoy them to the max.

The Cat Man was waiting on my doorstop when I got back from the market, apparently he left messages last night, oops. We've tried baiting the traps and catching some of them but no joy yet, so they're obviously fnding food elsewhere too as I didn't feed them last night. I think the thrashing around will be quite distressing when we do catch them but will be better for them in the end. He's hopeful that most of them will be rehomed (as in with families and not on farms) so that's great. Marru, want one? Or I could do you a free kitten in a couple of months (still no sign of them yet). Spent the time waiting with Cat Man talking about how he got into it - he's a volunteer and does it every weekend outside of his full-time job as one of his cats was mauled to death by a dog :eek: - and dreaming about the animal rescue smallholding :rotfl:

Sorry MollyMop, can't help you with the BM, hopefully someone can though and I'll ask my OH in case he has any bright ideas when he gets back tonight.

Marru

bails wrote: »

people would be lovely until I had to say I was on benefits then bang, complete shutdown or downright rudeness! I found going from being seen as a 'repsectable member of the community' to being treated as a second class citizen particularly difficult and made me very angry, which of course just made me more ill :mad:

Marru, want one? Or I could do you a free kitten in a couple of months (still no sign of them yet).

Or when you say that you have a dog. Now after all these additions I better stay put as I am completely out of the rental market with my zoo and housing benefit.

I would love one but The Dog wouldn't let me. This is too small house for adding a cat into a mix of guinea pigs, rats and a dog that doesn't like cats. When I have that animal sanctuary small holding.....

I am trying desperately to download a logo to my brand new ebid shop :mad: so I'll be here for awhile.

Marru

mama67

bails wrote: »

Impressed that your teenager makes banana cake Mama67, must be your good influence! :T Good to see people are still about even if no time to post.

second that Mama67! If you learn the skills when you're young there's no stopping you in the real world. And we all know cooking from scratch is the key to frugal living (and staying healthy).

Thanks, he is not too bad at cooking things if he likes to eat them, has made spag bol for tea for us all before now as well.

I have got an excercise book form wilkos and am writing basic recipes into that for him as he likes the recipe in front of him to read and only ask me for help if hes not sure. Told him now though he is on banana cake duty.

DS2 made choc kripsie cakes at school yesterday so he is now on that duty.

Just need to get them both to learn toload the dishwasher as they seem to not be able to do this.LOL!!

System

guess what i finally found today at the jumbles?

a breadmaker! I have been waiting for one to turn up for ages now. It is a brand new never-been opened kenwood rapid bake and i haggled it down to £8

:happyhear

sophiesmum_2

Bargain buy jumble - bee:T :T :T

today I have been offered several trays of lettuce seedlings for free:D one of oldies relatives came to see me as she had gone a little overboard when she sowed her lettuce seeds and now has several hundred little gems and all due to be ready to eat at the same time:eek: so I will be getting lots of free lettuce seedlings tomorrow:D .
Have you noticed that there are a lot more people starting to grow their own veggies this year?? Not sure whether it is because of the food price increases or the urge to grow organic food but more and more people seem to be taking up veggie growing.

Off to a party later so will be having buffet food for tea and no cooking;) then tomorrow I am doing a roast dinner for the oldies so this weekend has been very frugal foodwise, especially with DD away too:dance: (if you are reading this soph I love you really!!!)

Frugaldom

Well done on the BM Jumble-Bee!! Bargainhunter extraordinaire! Bet you're jumping for joy now. :j

Re the housing thing - I don't claim housing benefit etc but being self-employed is every bit as bad because everyone wants employer references! :mad: Other things I learned from experience are that divorcees can be ranked lower than single women as far as general credit ratings go, and it's almost impossible to get credit unless you have had the same address for 3 continuous years. The latter is almost impossible when living in rented accommodation on 6 month leases. I gave up trying to get a mobile phone contract and as for a self-employed, no-permanent-address divorcee ever getting a mortgage, well... that is an absolute joke! I would LOVE to come into BIG money and then refuse to invest anywhere that had an anti-divorcee policy! :cool: I do have one other option - raise 40% or a mortgage and buy commercial premises. Yeah, right! 40% of HOW MUCH?! :rotfl:

Marru - Congratulations on the eBid store, you need to join us in the eBid challenge thread now I had a problem with my banner at first too, so make sure it's the correct file size and then don't forget to force your browser to refresh so you can see the new banner. Everyone could see mine except me! I've just spent the afternoon listing for the charity auctions to see if I can get any closer to my target.

Had a quick look at some more of the free bets and free bingo offers and reckon that there could be about £100 to be made just from sign-ups via cashback sites. I've 'invested' £10 in one offering £30 cashback, so will let you know when it tracks and how long it takes to pay into my account. And I did remember to use a debit card, so no cash advance fees lumped onto any credit cards.

Sophiesmum - veggie growing has always been popular, but I think it's the fact that more people are talking about it openly in forums and the media. Years ago, I don't remember it getting talked about, nor do I remember it being particularly unusual to keep a few chickens. Contrary to it being anything new, I think it's just more people returning to traditional housekeeping methods - veggie plots, herb gardens, kitchen gardens, orchards & fruit bushes, a few chickens etc. Food prices rise, we can't afford to own our own homes outright, we can't afford to own our own land, so we rent and find ourselves like modern-day serfs - slaves to the system. It's shocking, really! Frugalism isn't that far from Feudalism, when you look at it that way. :eek: :rotfl:

Prudent

Jumble bee - well done on the breadmaker. I have one and just love it. I find the bread stays fresher much longer, so there is less waste.

I am just back from Aldi/ Asda - just finding that food is going up so much. I am trying to grow more things to eat this year, although am restricted by a very small garden. Just reading these threads though has made me very grateful that I do have a house. Big hugs to those going through rental hassles. NYK - did you find somewhere else to live?