Monthly Archives: June 2010

Monthly budget

Debt reduction

It’s that time of the month again, when we sit down, work out everything coming in and everything we have to pay and wonder what we are going to do with the tuppence ha’penny we have left!

This month I cleared the last £1.76 off my Halifax, so the balance is ZERO! My other card is now receiving the snowballed payment of the full £500 per month, which means my Santander balance will be down to £1300 (after receiving my tutoring fees in July’s wages - that will be zero too) We have transferred one of DB’s 21% cards over to Barclays on 0% and that will be paid off in ten monthly payments of £210. I have transferred his other card to Virgin, again on 0% and that will also be paid off in ten monthly payments of £500 (I’ll make the first payment when I’ve cleared my Santander card, in July I will have to make the minimum payment.) We are left this month with £315 to live on, to buy all food, clothing and anything else we need, which is fortunate that we don’t need anything!

I don’t count the lodger’s £30 a week, and usually buy the groceries when we get paid and then use what ever we have left in the ‘pot’ at the end of the month to put towards a debt. With our projections we will have paid off another £11,294 in ten months…………..I know what you’re thinking, if we were not in debt, then we would have masses of savings! We will get there!
This is the time of year when I work the hardest and try to make as much money as I can! I get all the money I’m owed with my July wages, then I’ll wipe out £2300 in one go. I’m also going to be far more proactive about lodgers in the future and aim to rent my room out all week, to make some more tax free money.
I’m looking forward to spending my summer holiday, in a deck chair in my garden, or doing craft of walking on the moors with the dogs………..roll on the holidays!

Bring on the subs!

frugal food, Frugal weight loss

For lunch today we had tex-mex fajitas with a cheesy sauce! My lunch was 6 points and DB’s was 11. I dry fried the onions and peppers and used the one cal spray oil. It was expensive to buy but it seems to go a very long way. I then added some quorn meatballs that I’d cut in half. Again, another spray of oil.
Whilst they were cooking, I warmed the tortilla wraps in the mini-oven. I love the simple food labelling, and it’s easy to work out the points. The wraps were 79p from Lidl so approx 10p each. The meat balls were £1 - Morrisons on offer. DB can have a third more than me at every meal as he can have 30 points a day and I can have 20.
To make up the points for DB he could have 40g of grated low fat cheddar…….I couldn’t. Instead, I had no points Caesar salad sauce with mine, which gave it a lovely cheesy taste. So we substituted the chicken for lower fat quorn, we didn’t use oil and DB had 40g only of cheese, which went a very long way. I added a heaped teaspoon of the Asda Tex-Mex spice mix and that doesn’t have any points either. I’m amazed to think that I lost three stone once and then put it all back on again. You all know my determination and I am going to lose the weight, so is DB and I’ll make sure it isn’t expensive and that it is tasty.
I had to include a photo of Scruffy, he takes relaxing to the next level!

Locked away from the world

Earning extra money

I’ll be back soon…………school work and planning has shut me away for a while. I’m surviving on toast, Marmite, low fat spread, strong coffee and gritted teeth. It’s going to be a long weekend and I may have nothing to show for it at the end; but a teacher’s job is never done. Normal service will resume shortly; plus Dearly Beloved is very ill so I’m attending to him.

What’s the alternative?

frugal food, Frugal weight loss

We are picking strawberries almost daily, we eat them with breakfact cereal, snacks and with our meals. In WW terms, they are low in points and we ate them with fat free yoghurt (bogof at Pesky Tesky as Ilona calls it).

It’s the alternative of strawberries and ice cream. We had another alternative too. We had grilled chicken, baked sweet potato and half a tin of beans each. Ever so cheap, lower in calories and low in points. My weight this week 13 stone 6 pounds, so in my first week, I have lost six pounds. I know it will slow down. Still just under £1 each.

Counting every one of them.

Frugal weight loss




It’s all in the points you know. It’s all about weighing everything and it’s all about having mountains of food with no points. The pointless food is great because, in the main, it’s cheap and very healthy. tonight I had a pork steak, DB had two and I had 120g of dry roasted sweet potato DB had twice that amount, we had a mountain of broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. I can barely move for all the food, which is good as I won’t pick later. If you wonder where the piccies are, it’s because I can’t find my camera! It’ll turn up, it’s usually in a jacket pocket as I take it everywhere. This is not a picture of my cat! My cat is a skinny fast chap! But if I’m not careful, I’ll end up like this fella! So, I’m counting all the points and making sure I don’t over eat!

Foraging for free food

free food

We walked the dogs this morning and there is an abundance of wild strawberries. They grow on the Cornish stone hedges that everyone has at the bottom of their garden. They grow in the crackS and ripen really quickly. They are tiny, like little sweets. We kept stopping, picking and eating them! No good for the diet, but wonderful for our vitamin C intake! I would like to ask the homeowners if they want them, as technically they are on the other side of their boundary and not in their garden but the moral side of me feels as if I am scrumping!

Summer season for car boot sales!

Earning extra money, Recycle eco

There are two very good car boot sales in the Liskeard area in the summer months. Both a run by the local Lions clubs. The Liskeard car boot sale is held from 4 - 7 pm on Friday, at the Cricket Club and we arrived at 4 and it was in full swing. There were all sorts of useful things for sale, from furniture to clothes but I was most impressed at the amount of children’s clothes, toys and equipment for sale.
There were a lot of mums there buying useful things for their children and lots of useful things for their homes. We found a stall where some one had lots of bedding. I bought a double blanket for a pound and it’s in perfect condition. We put them under the sheets on the beds as it keeps us warmer. This, although it smells freshly laundered, will go in with my next wash ready for us to put on one of our beds. The other carboot sale is held every Saturday at Westwayland Farm, on the way to Looe and Polperro. We’ve never been to that one as I cleaned caravans every Saturday last year. I hope to get to one or two of them this year. We just had fun ambling around and having a good look. I can certainly recommend the Liskeard car boot sale and if you have anything to sell and live locally then it’s buzzing with customers looking for bargains.

Difficulties of frugal weight loss

Frugal weight loss


We are not even one week into our weight loss programme and already I’m concerned about the cost. Once upon a time, when salad was seasonal, it was cheap at this time of year. Well, it isn’t anymore. After reading Hardup Hester’s blog I went to Tesco and bought three packs of meat for £10, which I divided up into: three portions of pork steak, two portions of chicken and three portions of mince. We are used to filling up on things like homemade quiche, or homemade cake that I make for pennies. Until we get used to less calories, we stave off hunger with masses of fruit and veg and they are not cheap. If only Tesco would sell a ‘fruit and veg’ bundle for £10, like they do the meat.

We did OK with last night’s dinner and ate: roasted veggies/butternut squash/roasted carrots, roasted parsnip and roasted new potato (only one small one each) and roasted beetroot - we’ve bought some spray on oil, which seems to stop them from drying out and not burning. We had one chicken breast each and then a pile of steamed frozen green beans (which were really OK) Although we’re not spending money on Weight Watchers, I have all of their literature and advice and we’re following their points plan. I did this previously and lost three stone; kept the weight off for two years and then put it all back on again. I’m still managing to keep our food budget at under £2 a person a day. DB is missing sweet things and he loves the occasional biscuit or piece of cake so we mooched around Morrisons for something low fat yet nice. We came away with WW chocolate biscuits and some low fat yogurts. What concerns me is the list of chemical inside them. Heck knows what those will do to us.

Weigh day is Tuesday……….just picture this! DB wandering down the corridor in his pants!!! ready to be weighed! I’m his weight loss advisor and he is mine! Our target is to lose 10% of our body weight initially and then keep it off!

Beans in a bucket - 1, Beans in a bag - 0

home grown

My homemade upside down tomato planters are faring well and the plants are covered in flowers and I hope for some toms in the near future. The rest of the garden is a bit hit and miss. My Bramley apple and Victoria plum trees have doubled their yield since last year and there are two fruits on both of them!!! However, the strawberries in the hanging basket are thriving and I keep picking strawberries; it’s lovely to leave them there until they are completely ripe and eat them straight off the plant!
I am growing climbing French beans in: a donated large pot, an old Habitat bag and an Aldi bag. The beans are thriving in a pot but the beans in bags seem to have been eaten by insects and their leaves look like lace. I have searched the plants and the bags and I can’t find any flies or insects so I can only assume the beasties fly in, eat it and fly off.
My buckets full of courgettes and butternut squash are doing well too. I have to keep watering everything as it’s so dry and I must find somewhere to plant my broccoli so I have plenty for the winter. I’m going to try growing it in the potato sacks after we’ve eaten the potatoes, which I think will be ready in two to three weeks.

The onions are just about OK, they are growing in flower pots. We had an amazing time tonight as one of my potato plants was looking a bit dead. I emptied out the growing bag and it was totally filled with little potatoes. I found out how dry the compost was and have increased the amount of water to my potatoes. It’s hit and miss and I’m not sure how growing things in buckets and pots will work in the end, but I’m having so much fun doing this.

Frugal Weight watchers

Frugal weight loss




I like the picture of me on my bike. I’m on holiday a few years ago and I had lost three stone. I wore a bikini on holiday and sun bathed by the pool and felt like a princess! I still am a princess but I look like Shrek’s missus! So! I’m going to climb up and get back on the wagon that I’ve fallen off for the last two and a half years! I’m going to be realistic and know it’s going to be harder than last time as I can’t afford the nicest and healthiest foods and will have to make do with what I can get.

I have joined a very exclusive slimming club as Dearly Beloved has decided to lose weight with me. I’ve been totally inspired by a blog I follow by “Bitchcakes“ a lovely lady from Brooklyn who has lost weight by hitting the streets of New York on her Hello Kitty pink bike, and cycles in high heels, a basque and lots of lippy!!! Dearly Beloved reminded me about our bikes, bike rack and how we’ve paid for them (still paying for them!) and we need to get over to the Camel Trail at the weekends to get some exercise and other than paying to park the car, a couple of quid for diesel, it’s reasonably cheap! It can get very busy! So, get there early and pack a few drinks in your panniers as it’s a hot and muggy ride through the camel valley.

So here is my starting weight - 13 stone and 12 pounds - BMI = 27 - I hope to lose a pound a week, and maybe, like Bitchcakes, you’ll get the weight loss photographs! Weigh day will be Tuesday!