Friday 14 May 2010

time to save

Now i am not a person to go and spend willy nilly well ok maybe a little nilly on the fabric front :)
I have decided i need to cut back on all that crap i buy !
I waste too much stuff mainly food which does bug me a lot ...
i do also buy junk food usually when i shop when i am hungry !
This has got to stop i tell ya .

So for the nxt 4 weeks i am going to feed the family ... that's 6 of us on £10.00 a day
thats school lunches and evening meals ....
yikes can it be done i hear you cry ?
Well i shall be blogging each day with what we eat and if i actually manage it !

It should mean i can save about £40-50 a week just on food !

I am also going to sort out my clothes and ebay / boot sale the unwanted / unworn items !

Another sin of mine is magazines and books ,
now this will probably put WhSmiths and Amazon
out of business but i am limiting myself to one magazine
a week and no books at all unless they are secondhand ...
arghhhhh this challenge is not sounding much fun at all !

now for the most painful bit NO FABRIC unless needed for an order .
Time to be creative and use up what i have and i have A LOT

So this is all going to start on Monday ... so i shall be of on a splurge tomorrow
no only joking ;)

Feel free to join me in this challenge if you like x x


11 comments:

about paperkatie said...

I find when I set my mind to living on a budget, I can! In a weird way, it becomes a sort of game.

For instance, when I shop for groceries, I make a list, and decide what I expect everything to cost. Then, as I go through the shop, I put the actual cost on the list, and keep a running total of what I've spent (and the difference between what I expected to spend and the actual amount). Sometimes, I have to do without something on the list, but more often I end up with an extra £2 or £3 that I can then spend on something else. Sounds dull when I type it out like this but when you are doing it, it's like a personal challenge!

Good luck with it - it can be done and you'll get a great feeling of personal pride for having committed to it!

All the best,

Kate

Beki said...

Joining you in the challenge hunni, read my blog post.
Have a great weekend

Beki xxx

mother of purl said...

Good luck with budgeting, I'm sure you will find it easier than you expect. We were forced into suddenly having to live on a shoestring after my husband's shop got into trouble last year. It was very tough at first but I now find I get much more pleasure from the very simplest of things than I ever did from shopping! Food was a biggy for us too, but with a bit of menu-planning and focusing on things that are in season, we now feed ourselves on a quater of our previous food budget! xx

cottonreel said...

Bring on the menu,s--cottonreel

Jen Walshaw said...

Hello, I found you through Beki's blog and thought i would join in, although I do manage to feed us on about £40 a week (family of 4). I really need to make some extra money, so will be busy decluttering and listing on ebay and plan to car boot the rest on 20 June. I look forward to getting to know you better

Anonymous said...

Yep it can be done with a bit of prep, we spend around £250 a month on food which includes pack lunches and there are 5 of us. I do get a lot of basics in bulk and make HUGE pots of things like chilli, bolognaise, curries etc that can be frozen for use when time is scarce. I try and freeze veg to stop it going to waste and stock/gravy too(I have 2 small freezers for this!)I know what you mean about getting junk when you shop on a hungry tummy it is lethal.
I think that the fabric part of your challenge is going to be a toughy. I say every day that I need no more yarn and yet there I am being drawn into each yarn store I see...just to look you understand ;)
I wish you well on your challenge and maybe soon I will give myself a challenge to stop spending!

Unknown said...

OOOO I did this after christmas and it works.. My shopping bill has dwindled from around £100 to around £70.. I am working on getting it down more but I am a total BOGF freak lol!! Plus I am a Cleaning product freak which bumps my bill up over £10++++++ some weeks. Shameful I know!! Also I have subscribed to my fave mags, I stopped buying the weekly ones as they all were the same stories week in week out and I was totally bored with them..

I have had you on RSS forever so I will be following your sucessess..

GOOD LUCK and have FUN!! :o)

Floss said...

I came to see you from Beki's blog, as she's joining your challenge. I'm half way through the Challenge of the Utmost Kind, so the second hand stuff is working well, and I've bought one magazine this YEAR (withdrawal symptoms at an airport recently...)

But your general spending challenge is one I could really do with! Best of luck and I'll be following you for some inspiration for my own challenges.

GiddyStuff said...

Being thrifty is great, I love the challenge, Sunday's leftover gravy is added to the stock for Monday's casserole, fab!
Don't think I could slim down the magazines though, my WHSmiths bill was £31 yesterday!!!!

Muddy Puddle Crafts said...

Well done you, a few thoughts that may help...for the food you should try Aldi, its amazing value and the food is surprisingly good quality, every week my trolley is over flowing for about half the cost of a full trolley in Tesco. A magazine a week? I wont ask how many you used to get, I do 1 a month, maybe you should arrange a mag swap and we could all pass them round ? and finally I think if you achieve your budget you deserve a little treat so why not add a bit on as contingency for this. Good luck :)

Rebecca said...

Good luck, it can be done! My husband and I are saving up for a deposit for our first home and it amazing how much you can cut back and save whilst still living a normal life!