Live on £4,000 for a year - 2009, Part 3

bails · 1 July 2009 at 9:58AM

Morning everyone and thanks for the new thread Nyk! Lovely to see the heartfelt posts at the end of the last thread - this community is very special indeed.

Thanks for the HMV heads up Nyk, we've just ordered Series 5 of The Wire via Quidc0 :T We've just finished Series 4 (the first box set we've ever bought) and are going to sell it on

Good luck to everyone at the start of Part 3 :j
My aim for today is to make a menu plan to use up as much of the food we have as possible before we go (we have lots

).

Fingers crossed for you Whitewing.

cha97michelle · 1 July 2009 at 9:59AM

Hi everyone

I am still not up to date with my figures for June. I really lost it there for a while, but i am back with it now and aiming to live as cheaply as possible to see if it really is an option for me to not work for a while and still be able to pay off the mortgage earlier at the same time and have a nice time with the kids.

My big aims this quarter are:

sort the garden - make sure we learn from this years mistakes and are prepared best we can for next year - use as much grey water as we can for watering now the water butts are empty as costs would soon build up on the water meter.
try to make every penny we do have work as hard as possible for us
read the tightwad gazette to see what else i can try
get fitter not fatter otherwise i will need to buy more clothes, and i might not find the heat so unbearbable (about a stone and a half would be fab)
get back into meal planning better - a few things have been chucked out in the last few weeks and it really irks me to do it. sloppy buying and sloppy planning.

whitewing i am keeping my fingers crossed for you. It might be worth buying some cheap pregnancy tests from e.bay. They sell just the sticks you wee on, and they are about £3 for 5 or probably cheaper if you look around. Provide your own pot and it makes it cheaper. That would be fab news to start the quarter with.

sf hope that hand is healing nicely.

Mollymop5 · 1 July 2009 at 10:23AM

Morning everyone.I'm still about though don't get to post very often.I read everyday though and love hearing about how yous are getting on.Good luck whitewing.fingers crossed

HH62 · 1 July 2009 at 10:38AM

First off thanks to everyone who's involved in this challenge Nykmedia and everyone else for all your hard work over the last 6 months helping everyone to stay on track!

I'm in again (keep saying this on the first of the month but this second half of 2009 I really must pull the reins in).
Yesterday and today are very expensive days for me - car tax, car insurance both due, and car had its first MOT and a service on Monday. My total spend since Monday has been £914. I've considered getting rid of my car but it's not feasible - I live in a village and there's no reliable taxi service. We do have a rail station but it's a very limited service. I can't manage without my car. So the car stays, despite the expense this week it's cheap to run and I would just lose too much independence if I didn't have it.

Today, 1st of the month, a lot of my DD's go out.
I'm still trying to get some sort of spreadsheet together (I don't know how to do it) and in the meantime will use Spending Diary.
Monthly budget to cover everything (not mortgage/rent) is £600. :eek: Living in a one person household.

On a positive note, I know where I spend too much - food, gas in the winter (I hate being cold), chocolates, sweets, cakes (I don't count those as food), and random/impulse spending on things like make up and I'm obssessed with buying brand new pads and pens (dont ask!!) I'm just not very good at cutting back, especially on my food.

My challenge till the end of the year

1) Stay within £600 monthly budget.

2) Drastically cut back on consumption of sweets/chocolate/biscuits etc. I need to lose weight so this will help finances and figure!

3) Really look at food spending and find ways to cut back, and do a lot more cooking myself.

Good luck to everyone for this next half of 2009.

cw18 · 1 July 2009 at 11:13AM

nykmedia wrote: »

CW18 - I got my DS his driving lessons for his 17th and I was able to get a decent discount via B$M, plus they accept Te$co Deal$ as payment - worth thinking about if you save them.

I don't save my Deal$ for swapping - only time I've not used them directly against a grocery shop was a couple of weeks ago when I exchanged £10 worth so I could spend £20 in the clothes dept (which included £7 of school tights for GDs, which I've had back from DD). I have the sum total of £4.50 worth in my purse :rolleyes2

Wouldn't touch B$M with a barge-pole either. They were the bunch my Dad paid for DDs lessons, and the instructors she had were useless (and local to us). I took her out a couple of times in my car (when I had a diesel estate) and she said she felt she learned more with me than them - purely 'cos I only snapped instructions at her if she was doing something wrong, while they were still talking her through every move after 12 months of lessons :mad: She gave up shortly after, and I don't have the patience to teach her properly - nor the money for the extra on the car insurance.......

Our next-door neighbour is a self-employed instructor, and has promised us a 'neighbours discount'. DS isn't convinced about using someone who lives so close, but seems to me that it's ideal - if we get them kick-started soon, then if he gets a cancellation we're only round the corner for him to bump in an extra lesson for DS (or see if he can change DSs lesson from a different time to fill in the gap)

Unfortunately we don't have any private land around here to take him for a practise - would need insurance in place even to use the supermarket car parks after hours (used F0cus for DDs first try in my car with their permission, having proven to the manager she was on my insurance)

Whitewing - fingers crossed here

redglass_2 · 1 July 2009 at 11:13AM

Haven't been able to do more than the occasional lurk for ages now - just as well since I'm considerably over target (but still loads more frugal than I used to be). Hello to you all and (((hugs)))) and :T:T:T for all of you who need/deserve them!

I've just had to cancel a National Coaches return ticket that I bought as 'amendable'. I now discover that the cost of amending the journey, done in a few minutes by phone, would make it much more expensive than just throwing away the old ticket and buying a new one online, so in effect I can't amend it. :mad: I can't give it away, either: it's 'non-transferable' (why? It's a bus ticket, not a prescribed medicine). This is a shameless rip-off and I think Martin should have a campaign about it. Is there any way moneysavers can contact him directly and make suggestions about future campaigns?

slowlyfading · 1 July 2009 at 11:26AM

cha97michelle wrote: »

sf hope that hand is healing nicely.

Thanks, its slowly becoming less painful

hope you're okay xx

whitewing, hope the news is good

xx

Frugaldom · 1 July 2009 at 11:44AM

redglass wrote: »

Is there any way moneysavers can contact him directly and make suggestions about future campaigns?

Could you go onto one of his threads and then PM him or ask in the thread where best to post the question? It's ridiculous for something to be sold as capable of being amended but forget to add that it will cost extra and there's a non-transferrable clause. Are you sure it doesn't mean non-transferable to a different route rather than different person? I've never known any driver ask for ID.

Right now, it is RAINING here! :eek: It just started all of a sudden, no warning, no heavy clouds rolling in, nothing - just a shower of rain from nowhere to water the grass and gardens :T It isn't heavy enough to chase the poultry indoors but it's enough to give the veggies a drink

Ddraig says to say hello to you all, she's a bit snowed under with stuff at the moment and will pop in soon

HH, does your £600+ include all debt payments, bills and general cost of living or is that just the cost of living part? :eek: Are you part of the grocery challenge?

Hi Redglass :hello:

Just readjusting my totals after spending a ridiculous £2.99 this morning on a 12L plastic bucket for making the champagne. HS got it when doing the post office run, so that's more spending without even leaving the house. :rolleyes: Still, if I can make 10 litres of champagne for less that 50p per litre, then that suits me just fine. And I'll still have the bucket for reusing, so each subsequent batch becomes cheaper. :j Now I just need to get as many bottles gathered together as possible and make space in the garage for storing it all. :rotfl:

Skint_Lynne · 1 July 2009 at 11:51AM

Good morning all,

A new thread and onto the second half of the year.:eek: I have a new notebook at the ready, waiting to record my spends. The first frugal thing that I have done is have a look at my broken shower. It's one of these where you pull the cord, DH pulls the cord too readily and breaks it all the time. It was £60 the last time I had it fixed, so I have decided to try it myself.

I have unscrewed it and it looks as if it would be as easy as changing a plug. I'll go along to the DIY place and try and get another one. Will see how much it costs and if I succeed in repairing it myself.:D

DH promised to look at it, but as I have been waiting for 5 1/2 years for him to put up 2 curtain poles, I don't hold out much hope.:rolleyes:

I'm off to continue with my cleaning expedition, so will check in later. xx

bails · 1 July 2009 at 12:34PM

The frugal reins are in full force here too today

Just popped into the estate agents, they're keeping the price the same as it's a short term let and only a month to let it out, which is fair enough. They charge £100 +VAT for an inventory :eek: so of course I'm doing that myself. I also won't need to have Contents insurance so that's good. Total costs for their finder's fee plus all the necessary certificates shouldn't be more than one month's rent so barring anything going wrong with the house, my whole trip could be funded by the rent

I'll be monitoring our spends while we're out there, and plan to spend less while we're staying in Kathmandu (I hope) so there's more money for the months when we're travelling. We really need to start thinking about the route we can afford to do rather than the one we'd like to do though - OH has rather grand ideas backed by no budget at all :rotfl:

Hi Redglass, HH62 and Mollymop, nice to see you all x

Hmm, I'm thinking I really don't wander round the corridors of MSE enough, anyone got some great threads to recommend? Especially anything that's relevant to my situation at the moment?

Live on £4,000 for a year - 2009, Part 3

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