cost of OS. Not always worth it. Maths only here

mummysaver

thriftlady wrote: »

Amazingly they are cheaper at Waitrose 98p for 500g and that's for organic ones;)

Waitrose is cheaper on pulses generally I think, red lentils were about 20p less than Mr T's last week, and couscous was in lots of different sections and packs at diff prices, but eventually found their basic kilo pack and was quite a bit cheaper than elsewhere!

This thread has reminded me about some packs of mixed beans I bought reduced a while ago, currently soaking and will be cooked tomorrow morning and half will be bagged and frozen, other half will be turned into refriend beans and then portioned and frozen (need to freeze quick else dd1 and oh eat them all!)

I think it is generally cheaper to cook dried beans, depends on your source though and how many you use and whether you want to really though! If you use hardly any beans and only save a couple of pennies then it probably isn't worth the effort, your time might be better spent on mysupermarket.com looking for the best value canned ones!

valk_scot

geordie_joe wrote: »

NO!!!! You are using free time, not time when you would have been paid if you weren't on the allotment. Your time and labour is free. You might think it is worth £5 an hour but you didn't pay yourself £5 for every hour you spent on the allotment. So why include it in allotment costs.

Even if you did you would have to put it down as income AND expenditure so it would cancel it's self out.

By your thinking you could say sleeping every night costs you £5 per hour because that is what your time is worth.

But the simple fact is, your time is only worth £5 an hour, and will only earn you £5 per hour, when someone else is paying you.

My time is worth £25+ per hour when I'm tutoring, but unfortunately I don't do that many hours of it!

My time is worth !!!!!! all when I'm sitting on my !!!! staring into space.

Anything else, it depends.....:D

The £5 is a nominal figure used during a hypothetical discussion, that's all. I can't say my entire veg crop only costs £128 per year, though it's true that's all I write the cheques for. It also takes me around 400-500 hours per year to produce them. That's a substantial amount of time and it's got to be factored in somehow and using a monetary value is as convenient as anything and at least you can relate it to earning power. Time is not "free"...it always has to come from somewhere.

And I'll tell you...anyone that thinks that running an allotment is a 100% enjoyable hobby should come and join me on a freezing November day to spread manure, or do four hours of vital weeding on a Saturday afternoon while your friends go for lunch and the cinema, or can help me lift three barrow loads of tatties on a blowy and damp morning in September. Yes some of it is fun. Most of it is hard graft. A lot of it is cold and wet and backbreaking and tasks have to be done at the time that's right for the plants, not when it suits you. It is work....

Oh, and I'm growing borlotti beans this year if anyone is interested....

geordie_joe

valk_scot wrote: »

My time is worth !!!!!! all when I'm sitting on my !!!! staring into space.

And that's all it is worth when you are in your allotment because nobody is willing to pay you for that time.

valk_scot wrote: »

Anything else, it depends.....:D

Your time is only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it.

valk_scot wrote: »

The £5 is a nominal figure used during a hypothetical discussion, that's all.

No, I'm talking about people adding an hourly rate for the labour involved in growing veg then comparing that cost with what they would have paid if they'd bought the veg in a shop.

valk_scot wrote: »

Time is not "free"...it always has to come from somewhere.

No, time is given to you free, you get 24 hours every day just like anyone else. Completely free of charge with no strings attached. You can sell your time, and if someone pays for it then YOUR time used by THEM is not free to THEM. But your own time is free to you.

geordie_joe

ALIBOBSY wrote: »

My new oven has a fast heat setting and heats up in about 5 mins or less,bargain!

ali x

Only a bargain in time, it's actually using a lot more electricity to heat up faster.

Zazen999

cheerfulness4 wrote: »

Crumbs - and I was sniggering when I saw our local garden centre selling 6 radish 'plug plants' complete with little woody radish in each cell for £2.99.

Was interested in the pinto beans. Are these given a different name when you sow from seed packets or do you just sow from the packets in the supermarket?

I know about saving my borlotti beans for winter dishes but which others do you save too?
Can see an opportunity for a real bargain here.

Pinto: last year I chucked a load in soil and they germinated, so I chucked a load more in and got plenty of beans for winter use. i saved some and of those I saved, a couple were speckled slightly differently, so have produced jet black pintos, plus dark speckled pintos. YAY!!! I have 3 different types now! Once I grow them next year, I can name them!!!

I save ALL my french beans as shelly beans rather than green beans. I also grow green beans during the winter in the greenhouse; some are germinating and starting to grow now....and I'll sow regularly once a month until next spring's proper sowing.

I have loads of different types, and and am depodding them when crispy and drying them out, then they will go into jars and look pretty as well as being used all winter for lovely soups, stews, curries, and chilies.

If you buy dried beans, each type you buy - put a handful aside and sow next April/May. Leave the plants until the pods dry out then shell them.

[Deleted User]

I got both prices for the haricots from the tesco website

It`s all relative these days and when our children were small and the mortgage high, then believe me I saved every 32p I could. Here, there and everywhere and that sort of thrift got us through a very nasty recession. I grew nearly all our veg and batch baked everything and it was jolly hard work.

I suppose that the end result is now for us ie the children have flown, the mortgage paid off and we both have retired, although we do live on my pension and savings for a few more years yet. We couldn`t be doing that if I hadn`t been watching every 32p

Some things os I will never compromise on ie baking my own sourdough bread and my own hm ice cream and my jam but beans??? well that is a different story. Home processed haricots are just no different to those tinned in water so that is one os thing that I am abandoning

The maths in making your own clothes might turn out interesting too ie how many of us have made our own clothes, jumpers etc to find out that mmm they don`t fit or look that good. Better imo to go and try something on before laying out good cash. It was very different in the os days when our children wore and loved everything I made, no more though and not even for grandchildren when `george` is around the corner

GrillMonkey

Time is not "free"...it always has to come from somewhere.

It is when it's free time... clue's in the name

I take the view of many other people here that if you're doing somthing you enjoy in your sparetime then you can't really put a price on it.

Thinking about it in a more possitive light. You're spending 500 hours a year doing something active, therefore you're saving on possible gym fees maybe £500 a year (roughly £40 a month).

voiceofreason

Zazen999 wrote: »

I take your £1.99 plus £2.14 postage for haricot beans and double it: they were selling 6 onion 'plants' on ebay the other day, for £2.99 and £2.99 postage; that's one english pound per plant - and one plant might grow one onions - a pound per onion :eek:

Now that's some ambitious pricing!!!!

Well done - fair play to them, if they can get away with it :T :T :T

rhiwfield

I think its horses for courses.

Not everything OS will be cheaper than buying ready made, a knitted jumper for example, but where is the love in a machine knitted top, especially for a newborn?

Fresh fruit and veg, if you GYO, are far cheaper and much fresher than shop bought, and you can choose your variety. You can also make sure that its grown organically with no artificial preservatives. I remember once buying Asda carrots and throwing the meal away as they tasted tainted. Even DS2 now prefers GYO veg to the supermarket alternative.

Mass produced supermarket bread is vile, whereas OH makes a fresh loaf every other day using the breadmaker AND saves money AND it tastes better.

Generally I find the OS approach gives you a more satisfying result, although we have no intention of going back to handwashing clothes and using a mangle! But family mealtimes cooked from basic ingredients, the smell of baking bread or chicken stock simmering on the hob using herbs from the garden, these are part of the magic of home that heating up a shop bought ready meal cant begin to match (not that the OP did that ).

As for pricing my time, I'm reminded of the saying about knowing the price of everything, and the value of nothing

sunflower76

I've had my allotment for over ten years now (I'm only 28) and although it's hard work I enjoy every minute of it. I know it's sometimes back breaking and that sometimes the slugs eat something or the squirrels fetch an entire crop of strawberries but I can honestly say that I don't hate any part of it. If I did then I wouldn't do it! MrS, on the other hand, HATES the allotment and detests putting so much as a foot on it. You couldn't pay him £50 an hour to be up there working but his values are different to mine and I accept that. I am the shopper and prefer to buy organic, local produce. He isn't too bothered and would happily buy beans from Kenya

My allotment rent doubled this year and I was determined to prove that I got my worth from it, so I built a spreadsheet detailing costs and expenditures. I purposely omitted the time I spent there because I don't feel that I can justifiably charge myself out for something that I love doing. I keep a log of everything that I spend on the plot and then record everything that I get back from it at pick your own or supermarket basics prices. I should really record everything at organic prices as my products are but I don't think I would really go out and buy 10kg of organic plums etc. It took two months for me to achieve an on-paper profit and everything else is a bonus now.

So, I'm in profit, I'm eating a healthy diet of fresh, local, organic produce and I'm getting exercise. If I add my time at the rate my employer pays me my crops are ridiculously expensive but to me it's still worth it.

So the point of my post? Worth is what YOU believe it to be.