Monthly Archives: April 2010

The day before payday!

Saving money

We all know how this feels. The lodger’s money went in. I bought car and house insurance and the lodger’s money went out. Balance? £10.11! However I have saved myself £443.48 simply by judiciously checking every price comparison website. We’ve shopped around in the past but never as ruthlessly as I have this time. The renewal quote on the home insurance was £410.33 and the cover I bought, giving me exactly the same cover as I previously received was £143.85. My car insurance renewal quote was £344.64 and again the cover I bought, giving me exactly the same level of protection is £167. I have bought both policies through my Quidco account and have earned a further £78 in cash back. So in fact my total saving is £521.48. I might only have a tenner left to my name at the end of the month but I am feeling flush with my money saving abilities!

I also came home to the evening sun illuminating the beech tree at the end of my garden, which in turn made me feel positively loaded. The rain has made everything look emerald and luscious .

Everything has burst into life; especially the potatoes. They are incredibly easy to grow. All in all, even though I have £10.11 left to my name until I get paid; I actually feel extremely rich. I am always well stocked and there’s plenty of food in the freezer and the cupboards. I’ve been careful with money by finding good insurance deals, I’ve been careful all month so we’re not short of anything and my garden and my surroundings make me feel so lucky to be here.

In one hand and out the other!

Saving money

Off to the bank tomorrow; the rent has been paid! Whenever I hear someone say ‘money’s not important’; I usually remind them that it’s pretty difficult without it. I need to bank this pronto as I have a mass of bills to pay, the car insurance and the home insurance! Oh and another bogglin’ thing…………the upstairs loo broke today and it’s been running water all day! So back to the DIY store for a new flush device! Thank the Lord for Dearly Beloved as I certainly can’t afford a plumber! I’m now off to search QUIDCO to get the best deals with the best cash back!

The sum of all our days!

Saving money



I hope to live until I am 90 and if I do I will have lived for 32,850 days! I have been alive for approximately 16, 180 days and I have 245 days until I will have lived half my life. After that; I will have less time left than I’ve already had. I have looked back over my blog and taken a look at the sum of my days. I have catalogued almost every day this year and strangely enough, even though I have set myself rigorous guidelines to live by; it has been the best year of my life.

Throughout my school holiday last year; I cleaned holiday caravans and people left soap, shower gel, unopened toothpaste and cleaning products and I recently finished the last of the shower gel. At the end of the summer, I took the money I had made and bought myself some new work clothes and they were the last new clothes I bought. At Christmas we made the bold decision to only buy presents for our own kids and mothers; no one minded. Throughout the Autumn term I started extra tutoring and was paid at the end of March and paid off half of one credit card balance. In the Easter holiday, we made some money from ebay and bought bits and pieces for our garden (including a water butt) and I have a patio full of sprouting and emerging veggies.

As I look back over my blog; I can’t notice anything I went without and when I count up the sum of my days I can look truly positively at the days I’ve had, which in turn gives incredible optimism for the days ahead. It can be claustrophobic but it has also given me time to think, reflect, read, just sit, drink coffee on my garden step and have a sleep in my sun warmed shed on a cold spring afternoon. It’s a long journey and I have to have days like this when I sit and reflect on how far I’ve come and just look at the view and enjoy that mountain moment when I can see the ‘promised land’.

To pee or not to pee?

Eco issues, Saving money




I hate South West Water! There…I’ve go that off my chest. I have no option but to buy water off them and they force the price up by us having to pay for the crud of tourists, (no offence to anyone who holidays in the South West but we pay for you to have clean beaches) so big businesses make money and the tourists cost the ordinary folk!!! (I think they should bag it and take it home with them!!!!)

I can do what I can to save money but there is nothing I can do to save water. I think I’ll get Dearly Beloved to rig up some Heath Robinson type affair to collect water as we’re using too much. We had our water meter fitted on the 17/02/2010 and had the meter read on the 19/04/2010 and have used 27 cubic metres of water! At £1.69 per cubic metre to buy it and £2.76 per cubic meter to dispose of it! So my bill for two months is £126.96!!!! It comes to something when you have to cut back washing to save money! I am though saving money as my bill for un-metered water was £1224.13 last year! and a direct debit of £122.40 for ten months of payments!

Well that’s it then! I’ll be nipping into the sports centre for a two or three showers a week, piddling in my compost heap and ‘airing’ clothes instead of always washing them! It comes to something when an ordinary person has to cut back on groceries and lighting to pay to have a poo! GGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! It’s time to get a few of these and save my own rain water!

Non paying lodger is about as good as no lodger at all!

Earning extra money

I’ve just signed up with a couple of rent a room websites. There are people looking for somewhere short term to rent in my area and I may get some one who wants my spare room. I discovered the tax loophole, which allows the income from renting a room to be untaxed!!

I’ve got a lodger at the moment but his rent has built up and I’ve not been paid. I’ve been direct….texted, emailed and asked and I know he’s short of money but aren’t we all? So if he doesn’t pay me this pay day then I’m going to ask him to leave as I’m sure I can rent the room out. He is the ideal lodger as he complains when the heating is ON! and all he wants from us is the wireless broadband! So in many ways he’s perfect and he’ll let the dogs out but he’s no use if he doesn’t pay his rent. (He only stays for 3 nights in the week and pays - or doesn’t! £10 a night and now owes £300!) Bless him, he even had the nerve to go on holiday in the school break when he owed me money! Anyway, I’m either going to be better off or better educated by pay day!!! In future, I want the rent in advance!!!

Here’s the quote from the HM website! so it’s official! “Under the Government’s Rent a Room scheme, you can rent out one or several rooms in your home, to one or more tenants. The rooms must be furnished, but you cannot modify your home to make the rented area self-contained with its own front door.

Rent a Room allows you to receive up to £4,250 a year tax-free. If you get more than that, you must nominate to pay tax on either the overall profit after utility bills and wearand-tear costs are taken into account, or on the rental income above £4,250.”

hard cheese

Debt reduction, Saving money, Shopping

I’m going to need to steel my resolve, to find my Blitz spirit and polish up my cliches to get through this month. It’s truly wonderful that Dearly Beloved is 100% eye candy as he’s going to be all I’ll see this coming month! I have had to work out a very tough budget for May and we will have to grit our teeth to get through it!

Every month we sit down (well, we do now that we’ve come to our senses……….if only we’de done this yaars ago!) and write out our budget for the month. We leave nothing to chance and make sure we’re putting money aside for car tax, water rates (now that we’re metered), clothes, birthdays and Christmas, car tyres, and eventualities. We then know what we have to spend on food. This month we have a big food budget of £64.82; we don’t need that much and will be able to direct more money towards debt payments. It’s going to be a very very tough month though as we have to renew the house/contents insurance and the car insurance. We hoped we would have a few days camping in August, but it is not looking likely. We should see a reduction in our utilities now that we have cheaper tariffs and we’re being very stingy with gas and electricity.
Here on my spreadsheet I can see every penny coming in and out, what we have to put by for bills we don’t pay monthly and what we have left to go shopping with. There is nothing for going out and there are two bank holiday weekend, so I hope the weather will be kind to us and allow us time on the moors with a picnic.

Watch the pennies….

Saving money



……..and the pounds will watch themselves. I was just thinking of Ilona’s blog and how the little things add up to costs and you have to watch every penny. I even take food out of the freezer in the morning to save the cost of the microwave.

I’m getting tired of faggots, but I’m soldiering on as I have a freezer full, but tonight I choppped up the meat in its gravy and topped it with some mashed potato (also from a tub out of the freezer, when I cooked extra in the past). I never use my full sized oven unless I am batch cooking and I can fill it up. I often look up the cost of running an appliance and check how much it’s costing me. It can take one unit of electricity to cook your dinner and it will cost you considerably less to run one of these.

I also looked at the remnants of March’s salary and have just under £150 to last the month, so I’ve paid some extra off my credit cards £27.32 to Santander and £35.48 to Halifax. I got the PAD idea from “One life, three kids and counting” who has a fantastic blog, keeping on top of the bills and making sure she clears her debts, by taking any extra money she earns or makes and pays a debt. So today was a PAD day for me!

It’s been another long and tiring day with extra private tuition at the end of the day earning me some more money and helping another student get his grades. A good day in all.

Pure joy!

home grown

I’ve truly found paradise. I opened my back door and there it was. I came home this evening to waggy tails and a garden full of evening sunshine. The fruit bushes are getting bushier. The courgettes and butternut squash have shown signs of life. The window sills are ranged with tomato seedlings looking lively and healthy.
The pot of herbs is beautifully green and capable of being cut and used whenever we want. I’ll make stuffing at some time with fresh sage and onions from my garden. I loved just sitting on the patio steps with a mug of tea and a dog at either side and surveying all I could see and thinking, I planted that, I grew that and I felt so amazingly peaceful, even after a busy day at work.
Best of all are the £1 Poundland windmills that wizz in the spring breeze and glint in the last of the evening sunshine. They make me smile and feel true pure joy at such a silly sight!

Washing clothes by hand.

Eco issues, Saving money

For years on end we went on camping holidays in Carnac in Southern Brittany, where washing clothes by hand is still popular. How do I know this? Because every supermarket has plenty of soap for handwashing clothes, usually beautifully scented and in every variety. There really is no need to use a washing machine for all of your laundry and delicate underwear always needs to be hand washed. I use very little laundry soap or water when I hand wash and after I have rinsed them I just use my washing machine to spin them. Take a look at your own washing machine….I’m sure it will have a spin cycle. There is always a percentage of my washing that is hand washed, saving me lots of money and giving my arms a good work out!


My washing is always hung outside as I have no dryer and they come indoors onto a ‘clothes horse’ if I have days of rain and really need clean clothes.
But I do have the most incredible ironing machine! He’s called Dearly Beloved who loves to do nothing more than watch the Grand Prix or a film and iron; he always puts the clothes away too!

Keeping up appearances?

Debt reduction, Frugal fashion



Today was the day to shed the winter layers and actually put a frock on! I went to Plymouth again today to see my daughter, to catch up for a chat and a cuppa and it was, as ever, a delight to see her.

Dearly beloved and I had paid for the car park ticket so we took the opportunity to browse around the shops as I needed some lighter clothes for work. I can get away with a reasonably smart dress on a average day when I don’t meet any parents as our classroom have huge southfacing windows and even with the blinds closed; can be incredibly hot and will often be in the mid thirties as the days get even warmer.

I perused the shops and looked at the monochrome prints that are dressed up with vivid greens and pinks and looked at how I could do that on my budget. The dress above is from Monsoon and £45, which is way out of my league but I like the style and looked for something in that shape. I found a couple of high waisted dresses in the hospice shop and I have some chunky pink and some chunky green necklaces, I also have dark dress shoes and tights to wear with them if it’s cooler…………..oh and the price £2.99 each! So there’s the summer work wardrobe all sorted! I also remembered to get the bean poles in so they will have something to climb!
Oh………..I think it’s important to keep up appearances! Who knows what the beans might think of me if I wore any old dress!