Just saved £40 a month!

Think I pay about £40 a month with virgin broadband, but there is no telly out here. (Haven't got a telly anyway)

Tried lovefilm, but they had nothing I wanted to watch.

I watch movies on the BBC i player and the free ones on You Tube.

 

Sounds like you've saved some money there which is always good. I used to have lovefilm however I've gone on to Netflix now I find it better apart from you can't have rentals sent to your door. Just another opinion if you find you don't like Lovefilm

 

Well done to you!!! That is another £40 for your gardening budget
You were very wise to work out just what it is you really need and only pay for those aspects. Timely advise when so many are struggling with their budgets right now too.

 

Its funny (well not funny, but you know what I mean) how easily we can find ourselves hemorrhaging money.

I once had to stop and think, I'm on a decent wage, yet I'm the skintest person I know. So I sat down in front of this here computing machine and made a spreadsheet of all my income (easy, just my wages), my 'fixed' outgoings (stuff that can't change, like council tax, water, minimum mortgage payments etc, various standing orders and direct debits for various services like phones etc) and variable outgoings (shopping money, fuel for car etc).

To my horror (but not really surprise), most of my money was just going on random junk. Rubbish frozen food from the supermarkets, or treats from the local shops. Shortly behind that was contract payments for stuff I don't need or use.

So, first thing I did, I set a weekly shopping living budget. £100 between all three of us. That was to cover food and day to day costs, but not fuel for the car or gas/lec etc. I also set a target (but not limit) of £20 per week for gas and lec (we're on key meters which were here when we bought the place and we just haven't got round to having changed, so its easy to monitor our usage).

The next thing I did was to work out exactly what contracts I needed to keep or had to keep because I was still tied in. Anything that i didn't need or want, I got rid of as soon as I could.

Your saving of £40 per month might not sound that much as a percentage of your monthly income, but once you start dividing up your monthly income so you can see what it all goes on, that £40 per month becomes very significant. Its an extra day out for the family (cheap day out granted), a night out for you and the missus, a shopping spree at the local nursery, a barbecue party....

 

Just to add to the wisdom of clueless (is that an oxymoron? ) when you work out your budget, do remember that you have annual expenses which can bite you in the rump, even though they are "predictable" expenses. For example, birthdays, other celebrations, new car tyres/maintenance, annual MOT and road tax/insurance - all those kinds of expenses; add them up, divide by 12 and stash that amount away, as a direct debit, to a special account.

Also, I learned a long time ago that if I wanted any savings at all, it was no good deciding to "save" whatever is left over each month. Instead, I worked out how much we could afford to save each month and paid that out first. Once again, a direct debit into a savings account. Now it was deducted before anything else was budgeted for, it was more realistic to stick within a budget and yet still have a slowing increasing rainy day pot.

 

I have a spreadshhet as well with all my outgoings listed on it , standing orders , direct debits etc . It also flags up when insurance , cars or house is due , always get a new quote on the comparison sites. It does pay to change every year - no price for loyalty these days.
I'm with Virgin Brodaband , phone anytime , TV M+ at £43 per month plus my mobile at £8.50 a month 100min talk 300 texts, more then enough for me , and a new phone every 2 years.

 

It amuses me how they can get away with that. You are entitled to see your credit record any time you like, for a maximum admin fee of £2.

You don't spend £100 per week on normal shopping do you? We used to, until I set my budget. Now £100 per week covers all the shopping, a few tinnies for the wife and I for the weekend, and any sundries as we go along.

To achieve this, I binned off the supermarkets except for stuff that's hard to find or expensive elsewhere, like tea bags, dried stuff (rice, pasta etc), and tins. Our local butcher supplies all our meat. Yes the butcher's shop is more expensive than the supermarkets, but you go in, and come out with only what you wanted, and not a £50 worth of additional junk. We get most of our veg and eggs from a farm shop (an actual farm, not one of these new age trendy affairs). All this means that our main weekly shop comes to about £15 in all, and for we eat better for that than we did when we spent a fortune in the supermarkets. After that there's just sundry items to buy like bread and milk and bog roll, which the wife tends to buy as and when we need it from the local shops, and it all fits very well into our £100 per week, leaving plenty left over for our beer at the end of the week and a few other treats.

 

I'm aiming to cut down our meat expenditure by breeding my own rabbits and culling any male ducklings I hatch (can't do cockerels; too noisy, so hens are just for eggs, and broody hens are for hatching fertilised duck eggs ).

Just waiting to source a decent breeder for the rabbits we need. So much healthier than chicken, but just as versatile! And duck meat will be a richer treat, but equally tasty.

The way I look at it, rearing my own rabbits/ducks and having access to fresh chook eggs, technically, should provide all the protein our family *needs*.

The rabbits, ducks and chooks will eat all the vegetable matter that would either go in the bin (or compost) plus some weeds/slugs/snails from their free ranging, thus making feed for them minimal expenditure.

The one time it is very worthwhile buying supermarket meat, is pre and post 25 December. It's possible to find large pork/beef/gammon joints and whole turkey for silly prices. I tend to splash out at that point and fill my freezer. Turkeys can be slashed in price to the point where it is worth "jointing" them and freezing them. Many joints can be safely frozen for 9 months in their raw state.

Three months later (Easter time) similar bargains are up for grabs; with that same "9 month" freezer deadline. So, twice a year, (Dec + March/April) I buy up quantities of supermarket joints to put in the freezer which will last the whole 12 months (and beyond, because some of those joints can be used to make other dishes which can be cooked and frozen thus extending their "life" even further).

 

But in case Mr DEFRA is reading, I'm sure what you mean to say is that the chooks will get all the best bits of veg, like the delicious tough outer leaves, and the yummy stems with extra sweet greenfly poo on, while you make do with the left overs for yourself. The leftovers being all the 'good' bits that the chickens don't want.

You see, DEFRA has ruled that you can't give your chooks the leftovers. They just don't define 'leftovers'.

 

Thank you for reminding me; yes, that is precisely what I meant