Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

You won't be able to run a great deal in the house, on one car battery.

Also, if it's not on a vehicle, it needs to be put on a trickle charge regularly.

It's easy to start out with good intentions, but very easy to lose interest, and there's nothing more certain to wreck a car battery, than letting it sit around flat.

A battery is worse than useless if, when it's needed, it's flat.

Also, a car battery isn't designed to run things, long term.

For that, you really need a deep cycle leisure battery.

[Deleted User]

Well, no sign of snow, or indeed an other form of precipitation, but the sky is clear as a bell, and the cars are icing up good style.

The thermometer, on my outside wall, is already reading -4 C.

Softstuff

Karmacat, I can understand why meal planning is cheaper for some people - if they're making a variety of recipes, find they have a lot of leftover stuff and food goes to waste, then I get it. The thing is, we very very seldom have anything go to waste here (it tends to only be if a salad item or bread goes funny long before it should!).

As for how it works Randomer - if I buy some mince cheap for example, I don't need to know what it's going to become in advance. Given what I generally have in the house, it could be meatballs, chilli, bolognese, lahmacun, curry, burgers, teriyaki with noodles.... you get the idea. It's important to me to know what I can safely freeze, since that's generally where a lot of my reduced goods go initially. I don't generally know when I get up what I fancy for breakfast, how the heck would I plan next fridays dinner!

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

However, with this large fixed fee cost of staying where you are that you, presumably, have no control whatsoever over then it would be as well to put yourself in a position where other people cant "spend your money for you" iyswim.

That's the crux of the matter really, other people simply aren't that careful with money. I recall one particular example where the management company hired someone to paint something that would take an hour and $50 of paint, it cost nearly $600. The shocking part was, the rest of the residents were ok with that :eek: I said the next time I'd do it and even provide the brush, but no go. I tried changing the system from the inside, but couldn't get anywhere, people just don't seem to want to save money if there's even the tiniest effort involved.

Apparently tea makes a lovely looking hedge too Smileyt, it's on my list of things to grow eventually.

dND

smileyt wrote: »

Just popping in to say - I got a pressure cooker, brussel sprout and kale seeds and tea seeds for Christmas, yaaay! I am starting my own Manchester tea estate...

But seriously - any tips on using the pressure cooker? I'm vegan so won't be cooking meaty stuff.

I basically use my pressure cooker to quickly pre-cook beans and pulses and would add these two other things to what people have already said. Firstly, don't add salt until any beans or lentils are cooked as it really seems to make the tough and secondly don't add too much water so that the froth boils up and blocks the steam vent.

DawnW

Karmacat wrote: »

GreyQueen, Softstuff, I'm very pleased to find that the two of you don't meal plan either. I never have, and I'm not going to start. I keep loads of the basics in, obviously,and for me its just a question of ringing the changes on each ingredient.

I sometimes meal plan, and sometimes don't. I should do it more often - I really only do it when I need to empty the freezer, or to ensure that things I have in don't get wasted. Despite having a number of supermarkets in our small town, we don't often get real YS bargains here - reductions are small, for example just a couple of pounds off a really expensive item, or pence off more standard things, so not often really worth bothering about. The special offers at the butcher's are much better tbh, though nothing like the YS reductions that some lucky people mention

I tend to plan around what I have in, or what the butcher has on offer. These are usually bulk deals (so freezer space is a must), such as 3lbs of quality lean mince for £5, or a mixed meat pack for £30 (you get a lot of different bits - the last one contained 4 large chicken breasts, a whole fresh chicken, several pounds of the butcher's own prize winning sausages, a large pack of bacon, stewing beef, pork chops and mince etc, enough for loads of meals, and all good quality meat, much of it local). And this is fresh, not on its sell by date. The supermarkets here can't beat that. He was selling whole local gammons for £25 before Christmas, where Sainsburys were charging nearer £40 (I bought one for a large family gathering on Boxing Day, and we are now looking at planning for the leftovers. I will need to freeze some.

We also have quite a lot of HG veg and fruit from our little garden, and some game, as OH helps on a shoot, and fishes for trout in season. So, I need to do a certain amount of planning to account for this.

jk0

Softstuff wrote: »

Karmacat, I can understand why meal planning is cheaper for some people - if they're making a variety of recipes, find they have a lot of leftover stuff and food goes to waste, then I get it. The thing is, we very very seldom have anything go to waste here (it tends to only be if a salad item or bread goes funny long before it should!).

As for how it works Randomer - if I buy some mince cheap for example, I don't need to know what it's going to become in advance. Given what I generally have in the house, it could be meatballs, chilli, bolognese, lahmacun, curry, burgers, teriyaki with noodles.... you get the idea. It's important to me to know what I can safely freeze, since that's generally where a lot of my reduced goods go initially. I don't generally know when I get up what I fancy for breakfast, how the heck would I plan next fridays dinner!


That's the crux of the matter really, other people simply aren't that careful with money. I recall one particular example where the management company hired someone to paint something that would take an hour and $50 of paint, it cost nearly $600. The shocking part was, the rest of the residents were ok with that :eek: I said the next time I'd do it and even provide the brush, but no go. I tried changing the system from the inside, but couldn't get anywhere, people just don't seem to want to save money if there's even the tiniest effort involved.

Apparently tea makes a lovely looking hedge too Smileyt, it's on my list of things to grow eventually.

We have a tribunal for such things here in the UK called the FTT. Don't you have any regulator for such things in Aus?

elona

I don't meal plan but I do buy "stuff that makes stuff".

I sometimes get a family pack from local butcher- mince, chicken, sausages, pork steak and and stewing steak.

Sausages can be skinned and added to stuffing mix and onions and rolled in pastry to make a "Wellington" - or as a mixed grlil or with mash or toad in the hole or with eggs and beans etc.

Stewing steak can be a stew or a curry or a pie or pasties.

Pork steak can be grilled with potatoes and veg or sliced as a stir fry with veg or noodles or rice.

Mince can be shepherds pie, spag bol or lasagne or burgers or meatballs.

Chicken can be roasted whole then the carcass used for soup and pieces of meat used in pancakes, tortillas, quiches etc.

Leftover mashed potato can be added to chopped onion and veg to make veggie cakes or used to make potato scones.

I try to use up what is in the fridge or veg on their last legs to make soup etc and get a real buzz when DDs say there is nothing to eat in the fridge - and then 30 minutes later I produce an omelette. a frittata or pancake or stir fry from the "nothing"" .;)

Softstuff

jk0 wrote: »

We have a tribunal for such things here in the UK called the FTT. Don't you have any regulator for such things in Aus?
[/LEFT]

I presume you mean for the expenditure? Over here when you have multiple properties on a single lot (like flats), a "body corporate" is formed. That means that a set of rules is made, generally a management company is hired and each owner of the individual property is entitled firstly to stand for a committee formed of owners and secondly to vote on various matters.

In our "body corporate" there are 104 owners. Of those 104 owners, I know of about 3 that are frugal.... the rest outvote us by far. I've even stood as accountant on the committee, but couldn't change anything. Nothing has been done that contravenes the body corporate act, it's simply that when 104 people vote on a budget or a level of expenditure, the frugal folks are outvoted.

It's not just a matter of people being spendthrifts though, some simply don't see common sense or efficiency. Another example would be the time the pest control came out to spray the buildings perimeter, then window washers were hired in, followed by people pressure washing the building (washing off the pest control spray and leaving water marks on the window), followed by the gutter cleaners (covering both the windows and the building in filthy leaf matter). There's nothing that contravenes the act and when raised at a body corp meeting, it didn't seem to bother anyone other than the other 3 frugal sensible folks!

moneyistooshorttomention

Softstuff wrote: »

That's the crux of the matter really, other people simply aren't that careful with money. I recall one particular example where the management company hired someone to paint something that would take an hour and $50 of paint, it cost nearly $600. The shocking part was, the rest of the residents were ok with that :eek: I said the next time I'd do it and even provide the brush, but no go. I tried changing the system from the inside, but couldn't get anywhere, people just don't seem to want to save money if there's even the tiniest effort involved.

.

I would have expected the bill for that to come in for no more than $100 from what you say there and have strongly objected to paying 5-6 times the proper rate for it. I've been in exactly the same position as you and also tried to "change the system from the inside" and got nowhere. In my case, I think it boiled down to "internal politics" and a huge hourly rate was being paid for something because there was a lot of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" going on. When I realised what was happening and wondered at what point "my back would be scratched" to compensate me for paying over the odds I soon found out the answer was the others hadn't factored in me getting any compensation of any description (financial or otherwise) for this and it would have just worked out as "take/take/take" on their part and "give/give/give" on mine. As you can imagine, my decision was to opt out of that arrangement as soon as it became clear what the set-up was.

Hence why I used the phrase "spending your money for you", as there is often a "back scratcher" arranging things like that, rather than a fair-minded/efficient sort of person. I wouldn't have objected if a fair person was in charge and was even prepared to be that "fair person" myself, but that apparently was unacceptable to them, so I opted out.

I'd hazard a guess that you may find some backscratching (rather than inefficiency and laziness) is at the root of that high charge.

EDIT; Even if no-one is "on the make" for some money for themselves in your set-up and it is just down to a couple of Mr or Mrs Inefficient having "loud voices", I don't rate the chances of silencing the "loud voices" of Mr/Mrs Inefficient, as they've probably been running things since the Year Dot and are getting their friends to vote to keep them in position as Major Influencer, because their ego demands they are seen to be "somebody important". You don't know just how much "tittuping around the place" any Major Influencer might be getting up to (with a little whisper here and unofficial favours there) to get people to vote the way they personally want.

[Deleted User]

No snow overnight, but the cars are well frozen up this morning.