Thursday 9th July - What small DFW things will you do today?

twiggy86

Morning all!

Enjoyyourshoes - good luck with your 2nd interview!

Mine went pretty terribly due to the interviewers asking the wrong questions!!! They were interviewing 6 people for 2 positions but I'm not holding my breathe! But never mind, all good practice!

I have a question for my frugal friends - I spent last night peeling and part boiling potatoes as I didn't realise how many were lurking in the cupboard! I've now frozen them but my question is would you defreeze before cooking? I just did some new potatoes (i.e. skins on) some chips and mash (which I will defrost).

Today I have/will:-
* Check banks
* Take lunch to work
* Update expenses as had to do some bits on way to work
* Check FPL - located the fifth way to win which I never knew was there! So thanks to whoever posted that (sorry can't remember - how rude of me!)
* Read Martin's email
* Go for a walk at lunch
* Sort out washing which I managed to wash on 30 degree quick wash and dry on line yesterday
* Go to circuits (already paid for)
* Dinner from stores
* Wash hair and let dry naturally

Think that's everything for now. Hope you all have a good day.

1HANNAH

Morning all,

I don't feel that I've been very productive this week, energy levels low and feeling generally bleughh

The boys have 6 days left at school before the summer holidays so I need to have a really good deep clean everywhere before then as during the holidays I just want to be doing the basics so that we have a lovely break.

Todays list
* Free breakfast at school for boys done
* Fill water bottle at gym done
* Pt session at gym trainer didn't turn up I just did 15mins on treadmill
* Wash a load at 30 degrees
* Washing on the line
* Ironing (turn off before then end)
* Tidy fridge done
* Tidy freezer done
* Clean kitchen using stardrops
* Hoover upstairs done
* Check bank/update spreadsheets done
* All meals from stores (well after Mr T delivery!)
* Add something to cs bag

Thats enough to start with,

Have a good day all.

foxgloves

Morning Campers........wish I WAS camping! That would mean re-winding back past the flu & take us back to our lovely few days in the tent, watching owls hunting over the marshes & soaking up all that lovely fresh sea air. Never mind.....onward.......if not very speedy tpday. The flu has hammered me hard & I can keep going for only so long before I need a sit-down......not like me at all!!
Today's bits of money-saving:
*Jumped into mr f's hot bath water as soon as he jumped out - why pay to heat it twice? Am trying to build up a nice little surplus on our energy account to see us through the winter.
*Handwashed 2 shirts which are now drip-drying on the line. No point wasting electricity running even a small load just for 2 shirts.
*Watered the veggies.
*Divided up a pack of mince & made 2 nice quarter-pounders for tonight's dinner - the rest will be turned into one of mr f's awesome chillies tomorrow night. Just got to encourage him to make it do 4 portion now, as he has a colossal appetite.
*Refused to feed cat any breakfast until significant inroads had been made into last night's spurned food. He cracked first & ate it, so was rewarded with new stinky food,,,,,,which he also wolfed.
*Listen out for shopping to be delivered. Did a quick meal plan & list last night & banged an order into Sainsbury's. Can't fit in an actual shop at the weekend, so made sense to make use of a 'green' delivery slot....i.e the van is already in the area, so it's just £1. Stuck to budget.
*Made dough for bread rolls - just proving now.
*Did a very few surveys as am up to date with them. Only cashed in my Toluna points yesterday & already have over 4,000 points towards the next voucher. Very boring, but those points do add up, especially if you do the daily quick clicks.....15 points a time, but you can rattle through them very quickly as it's just one tick in a box each time.
*CD arrived for the present box - purchased using an Amazon voucher earned from a survey.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch.
*Did a little filing of financial admin. Keeping things very organised always saves me money.
*Try to progress my current big knitting project. I'd like to have it ready to wear this autumn. Also, I seriously need to start my Christmas knitting so as to get projects finished & into the present box in good time.
*Listen to some free podcasts.
OK, that will do me for today as I'm not firing on all cylinders yet.....though I do look slightly more human today. I was thinking this morning how good my skin looks for a woman of a dodgy age who has just been flattened by flu, then I realised it's probably because of all the water I've been drinking while I've been ill. I was very hot & fevered, so I was drinking pints of iced water to keep hydrated, & I think it's given my system a bit of a internal karcher-pressure wash! Skin looking v clear as a result. Hmmmm. Need all the help I can get these days, so think I will defo keep up with drinking all the extra water.
Love to all,
f x

foxgloves

Ally - It can't hurt for you just to have another look at the Married Couples tax allowance. I think our situation was very straightforward in that one of us works full time & the other doesn't work at all, so that meant I could transfer the full amount allowable of my tax-free allowance to mr f because I am not using any of it.
If your partner is not working, then it is she who will need to apply to see if she can make over any of her allowance to you. I'm afraid that apart from knowing the 'earner' needs to be bringing in less than £42k, I don't know all the other criteria. It's not a huge amount of money. If I was elligible for the maximum amount, & it only works out between £17 & £18 a month, then I guess some couples' pay-outs will be lower, but it was kind of the principle of the thing. At the risk of sounding like my Nan, I thought how much I could get for £17 at the local butchers, or that it would cover cheap Tuesdays at the cinema for both of us with change leftover for coffees & treats & the car park. Your employment situation may mean you are not elligible, but you will lose nothing by just making sure.....maybe by emailing an advisor at HMRC with your circumstances to see what they think?
f

foxgloves

Maria - Sorry to hear that there seems to have been bad political news on the farming front affecting you in Wales. When I was growing up in the 70s in rural Cambridgeshire, the farmers were the ones charities approached, because they always seemed to have oodles of money, really wealthy old famillies. This was broadly my understanding of farmers.....until a few years ago, I read a book by Joanna Blythmann called 'Shopped - the shocking power of supermarkets'. I could not put that book down. Joanna went under cover & also spoke to loads of people & really exposed how UK famers are being uttlerly ripped off by the supermarket system. Some of the stories such as a farmer who was asked by a major chain to change all his production solely to a certain type of lettuce have stayed with me. When it was time to harvest all his lovely lettuces, the supermarket said 'Oh, we don't want them any more' & he was left with a crop they'd promised to buy & no money. I'm afraid the consumer is to blame for some of it. If we are paying £1 for 4 pts of milk, & some of that is going to the supermarket, some to the bottlers, how much is actually going to the farmer who puts in all the work? We are just shutting our ears to the well known fact that farmers are paid less for their milk than it costs them to produce and this is wrong. It traces back to war time when maximum food was expected for minimum money. We now expect it. I also wonder about pork farmers. When I'm picking up a lovely big piece of pork shoulder from the supermarket for around £7, I can't help but wonder if the farmer has made anything on this. My belief is that farmers are absolutely robbed blind by supermarkets. It's very short-sighted of us as a country because with growing world populations & more of the world wanting to eat a western-style diet, we need to maintain capacity to produce as much food as possible on our home soil. This is not going to happen if farmers are going bankrupt & selling up because we expect them to farm for nothing. Why should they? Would I go out to work for no wages? I would not! Our food production has got very messed up in this country & it will come back one day to bite us on the bum. I recommend Joanna's book - she's not writing about chains in other countries which we've never heard of, these are supermarkets we all use, & some of their practices are unbelievably stinky.
So Maria, I don't have your inside knowledge & experience, but am just wanting to show a bit of solidarity because I do believe our farmers are becoming a rare & oppressed breed.
f x

allydowd

foxgloves wrote: »

Ally - It can't hurt for you just to have another look at the Married Couples tax allowance....

Thanks Foxgloves.

allydowd

:grinheart Got some free exercise this morning in the front garden: tamed the hedge, OH edged the lawn, then I tidied up the wind-battered roses and we re-arranged the pots so that the best ones are nearest the path and the poorer ones are a wee bit less prominent. The foxgloves and lobelia were from seed and we inherited the roses. OH also blagged six windows from a neighbour who was having them replaced for the sum of £5. There are talks of constructing a cold frame with them. The pots were given to us by a neighbour who also said we could have some rhubarb if we tidied up her lavender bush.

:grinheart Also ordered a boxed set of DVDs for 50p cheaper than the cheapest retailer I could find through Flubit.com.

:grinheart Got the washing on the line while the weather was fine.

:grinheart Did some i-Say surveys.

maria3104

foxgloves wrote: »

Maria - Sorry to hear that there seems to have been bad political news on the farming front affecting you in Wales. When I was growing up in the 70s in rural Cambridgeshire, the farmers were the ones charities approached, because they always seemed to have oodles of money, really wealthy old famillies. This was broadly my understanding of farmers.....until a few years ago, I read a book by Joanna Blythmann called 'Shopped - the shocking power of supermarkets'. I could not put that book down. Joanna went under cover & also spoke to loads of people & really exposed how UK famers are being uttlerly ripped off by the supermarket system. Some of the stories such as a farmer who was asked by a major chain to change all his production solely to a certain type of lettuce have stayed with me. When it was time to harvest all his lovely lettuces, the supermarket said 'Oh, we don't want them any more' & he was left with a crop they'd promised to buy & no money. I'm afraid the consumer is to blame for some of it. If we are paying £1 for 4 pts of milk, & some of that is going to the supermarket, some to the bottlers, how much is actually going to the farmer who puts in all the work? We are just shutting our ears to the well known fact that farmers are paid less for their milk than it costs them to produce and this is wrong. It traces back to war time when maximum food was expected for minimum money. We now expect it. I also wonder about pork farmers. When I'm picking up a lovely big piece of pork shoulder from the supermarket for around £7, I can't help but wonder if the farmer has made anything on this. My belief is that farmers are absolutely robbed blind by supermarkets. It's very short-sighted of us as a country because with growing world populations & more of the world wanting to eat a western-style diet, we need to maintain capacity to produce as much food as possible on our home soil. This is not going to happen if farmers are going bankrupt & selling up because we expect them to farm for nothing. Why should they? Would I go out to work for no wages? I would not! Our food production has got very messed up in this country & it will come back one day to bite us on the bum. I recommend Joanna's book - she's not writing about chains in other countries which we've never heard of, these are supermarkets we all use, & some of their practices are unbelievably stinky.
So Maria, I don't have your inside knowledge & experience, but am just wanting to show a bit of solidarity because I do believe our farmers are becoming a rare & oppressed breed.
f x

Hi Foxgloves,

Many thanks to you for this. It is very sad and a reflection on our politicians, who do have the power to control the supermarkets, but who also then chose to make decisions about who gets what cash and when and how much and in some cases their decisions leave us farmers stunned/perplexed/angry. I understand this one has been made as it is cheap to administer for them.

The general public support is much appreciated and we realise it is not the housewife who is buying below the cost of production who is at fault it is the sm who are loss leading the milk at the cost of the industry. Some research must show that the milk price is linked to footfall?

Many thanks and only thankful I am an old farmer and not one of the young ones.

greensalad

Just got paid for a small job. Put away money for buying a phone, put away my tax savings, moved money for work lunches onto my prepaid card, and put £42 towards my credit card bill. Good all round!

Hoping to be paid for another job on Monday and all of that will be going into paying off the overdraft (a no-interest debt but one I would like to clear for emotional reasons, as it's my current account, so it's hard to stay out of it). Want to get it closed for good soon!

Bobarella

maria3104 wrote: »

Hi All

Well, Wales Agri minister has managed to wreck the businesses of over 1000 welsh family farms. Cleverly announcing her decision night before budget day has distracted the reporters from any notice of the complex announcement.

I am watching this and wondering how many suicides will follow, how many "accidents" statistics will increase and I am totally overcome with sadness for the families affected. Terribly sad.

The farms on top of snowdon and visited by tourists have been protected and the grunt working farmers doing the invisible farming with sheds of cattle and poor returns on larger turnovers have been totally written off. Please note Wales is shut for beef and dairy farming in favour of smallholders and extensive hill farms.Time to consider other options, 70% of our EU support gone, milk price now half the cost of production. The sales of ride on mowers and garden tractors will soar and the sales of tractors will collapse as a result of this decision. Any police man thinking of retiring to a smallholding in Wales, do it now, the Welsh government is funding you.

Rant over.

Maria, this sounds terrible. I am going to look this up online & if there is any protest to sign I will gladly do so. Does this directly affect you? I really hope not.

enjoyyourshoes wrote: »

Bobarella
Hi I have 3 Halifax RS for kids at 6%
Considering the option of S&S (fidelity) ISA instead when these mature. Long term (10-15 years) strategy not 10-15 annual RS strategy.
Any suggestions welcome

I highly recommend taking a look at Baillie Gifford Scottish Mortgage investment kids products. The one we selected is an actively managed product, so there is a small management fee, but the ROI over 6 years has so far been very good. http://www.bailliegifford.com/individual-investor/featured-funds.aspx

JoJo - That is fantastic!

Kayannie - If it were me, I'd be tempted to use the £6 and shop at Mr T just the once. You can get a lot of essentials for £6. TBH on value products, I dont see that Mr A is that much cheaper, but obviously the lack of brands, super 6 etc is brilliant, but if you only shopped value products vs Mr A I'd be surprised if the cost per basket was that much different. £6 has got to represent a couple of days of shopping for you?

Twiggy - What do you mean they asked all the wrong questions? Also, I would guess no to needing to defrost the potatoes pre use, unless you plan to mash them or something like that. Chips are just frozen potatoes after all and they cook fine dont the

Hannah - Sorry you are not having a good week energy wise. Hope you pick up soon. Good luck getting ready for the end of term.

Foxgloves - You sound like you've done a tonne considering you've been so unwell. Please dont go too crazy. How has your garden fared whilst you've been out of the loop?

Ally - the gardening sounds good. Nice to be outdoors in this weather too.

GreenSalad - Good news there then!

For my own part, a massively busy day trade wise. At least double trade today if not more based on the number of awful low days we've had since reopening. So hip horray for that. Next week is the big one, rent, & overdue PAYE in the same week which comes to over £1,000 (ouch) so fingers crossed for 4 more good days between then and now.

Having a cheap & easy tea of cold sausages & salad tonight, am popped. Will pop off for a relax in the tub soon.

Where is Dawn today? And FVD has also been missed

Bob