Mon 3rd Aug - What small DFW-style things will you be doing today?

twiggy86

I've just realised that all this talk of veggies and I have a pear tree in the garden! No idea when pears are ready to be picked so must look into that and then come up with some pear recipes!

foxgloves

Morning Campers,
Warm, sunny breezy day here today. Have rushed through my jobs so that I can sit in the garden after lunch & finish my knitting.
Today's small money-saving efforts:
*Did laundry overnight on cheap tariff. All blowing dry on line for free. About to peg out another half-load to make the most of it as I think the rest of the week may be wetter.
*Cooked the 1kg rhubarb picked yesterday & will divvy it up into 6 calorie-counted portions to make this week's fruit basket last longer.
*Hard-boiled eggs ready for tomorrow's meal when I'm cooking Madhur Jaffrey's egg masala. (Very economical recipe - shared it a while back).
*Ebay admin/wrapping, which has taken a fair bit of time. All parcels now wrapped & ready to post tomorrow which is my Car Day. Messaged 3 people to remind them to pay me if they want their package to be posted within my stated timescale. Used all recycled wrappings from my stash - only ever buy sellotape & brown parcel tape for parcels.
*Cut out several Co-op vouchers for extra dividend points which we will be able to use.
*Entered competition.
*Studied mr f's letter received today from HMRC about Married Couple's Tax Allowance. it all seems to have gone through correctly. We've received the arrears & he has a new tax-code, so should in future receive the extra £17 or so in his monthly salary.
*Watered veggies. It's mostly just maintenance now I've got the late sowings of salads, beans & baby turnips in. I like to keep up to date with this though, as I don't want crops to 'go over' & waste potential food.
*Picked veggies for tonight's meal - will be using our home-grown aubergines, red onions, garlic, basil & salad, so not much cost there.
*Did a 50p Ugov survey - takes ages to reach their £50 cash-in, as don't seem to receive many surveys, but I'm at £29.00 so it would be silly to give up & the £50 will be good for the car fund when it does finally appear.
*Make tomorrow's packed lunch & work snacks - I think I've posted this before, but years ago, before the LBM, mr f & I worked out that we spent around £2000 a year on buying lunches. Unbelievable! Think what we could have done with that (like using it to pay off some of the significant amounts of debt we had at the time!!)
OK, that's me. Am going to have a really early lunch, then I can get into the garden with my knitting & try to finish re-knitting the piece I frogged the other day. Christmas present knitting has to start soon.....there, I've mentioned the C-Word, but am a great believer in spreading the cost by planning & making lots of gifts, & some things, such as damson gin, blackberry vodka, etc, need to be started off before too long.
New week, new start, let's keep our hands on our pence.
Cheers,
f x

foxgloves

Twiggy - We have a pear tree too. Our pears are still small & not ready for picking yet. They are usually ready in September, but may be earlier or a bit later depending on whereabouts in the country you are. It looks like we won't have such a big crop this year. Some years, we have so many pears, I pack them into 7lb batches into carrier bags & everyone who visits us has to take a bag (or I tell them they're not allowed to visit!) You can do all sorts with pears (ours are the 'Conference' variety). Some of the stuff I do with them: Pear & blackberry crumble, pear & blackberry jam, pear chutney, pickled pears, sliced pears poached in sugar syrup & frozen, pears in salads with cheese, pear & ginger muffins, pear & cinnamon loaf cake........they are really versatile. But when they're ripe, they're ripe, so don't miss them!
f x

twiggy86

Thanks foxgloves! Ours are conference too and I live in Dorset if that makes any difference! Those ideas sound lovely so I really must "harvest" (is that the correct term?!) them this year as last year they just dropped off and neighbour used some for cider I think! Oh pear cider!

greensalad

SMGee wrote: »

Thanks Dawn!

I use Money Dashboard which probably has similar elements. I quite like it now, but when I was always in the minus figures I didn't enjoy it so much

It's a program for budgeting. Not really much like Money Dashboard as it's more about planning whereas I find MD to be more about seeing how your money is spent after you've spent it.

You have accounts set up on YNAB, and you put in the balance you have today. You then budget every £ of your available funds to different categories (which you can create). So ever £ has a 'job' to do.

When you buy something, you add the transaction, amount and what budget category it came to through YNAB. It will show you how much of your budget you have spent, so for example if you have a 'coffee shop' category you can see you have £3 left in your coffee budget so you can have a coffee. The whole thing syncs on all computers and on your phone. The phone view is much more designed for checking your budget (how much is left to spend) and the computer interface is more for categorising your spends.

It's really great. For example, I have set up 6 accounts on YNAB and input their balances. These are my savings accounts which have always been real, physical Barclays accounts. When I got paid, I immediately assigned £xx in YNAB from my available funds to one of the savings accounts. I then transferred it over on Barclays online.

Now I've decided I'd be better off putting all my savings in my decent-rate ISA, all lumped together. But how do I know that £300 is for the car, and £100 is for Christmas, and how do I keep track of when I've spent it if it's all in the same pot? I'm using YNAB to keep track of virtual accounts like 'car' and 'holiday' and 'christmas' but in truth they're all sat in the same account.

I'm also really enjoying it just for keeping me budgeting on track. I can see on YNAB I have £190 in my current account so I know how much I can spend.

1HANNAH

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I've just done it

floella80

Afternoon everyone!

Another busy day for myself but I hope your day is a little more relaxing than mine!

List for today:
* [STRIKE]Partner send off for provisional license [/STRIKE]
* [STRIKE]Go the library to print off something from email [/STRIKE]
* [STRIKE]Book appointment to get joint bank account [/STRIKE]
* [STRIKE]Put load of washing in then hang out to dry [/STRIKE]
* Still need to sort out my maternity bag!
* Clean and sort out bathroom
* Clean microwave
* [STRIKE]Check sb and gh [/STRIKE]
* [STRIKE]Check postcode lottery [/STRIKE]
* [STRIKE]Check lucky phone [/STRIKE]
* Ring bank for new keycard. My toddler was playing with it and now I can find it!
* Complete any surveys on various sites
* Turn off all switches, nothing left on later
* Sort out clothes for selling/recycling
* Sell DVDs - sort them out
* Sell two pairs of shoes. Maybe one on fleabay, one on local fb group

I think that's about it. My list will probably move over tomorrow and the next few days, but if I don't write them down then I tend to forget!

Have a great day, everybody!

Digging_2

greensalad wrote: »

Now I've decided I'd be better off putting all my savings in my decent-rate ISA, all lumped together. But how do I know that £300 is for the car, and £100 is for Christmas, and how do I keep track of when I've spent it if it's all in the same pot? I'm using YNAB to keep track of virtual accounts like 'car' and 'holiday' and 'christmas' but in truth they're all sat in the same account.

Great idea! I have too many different 'real' accounts for different savings but the interest rates aren't that great on a few of them. I use my own spread sheet instead of YNAB but I'm going to use this idea. Keep them separate on my spread sheet but put all into one savings account with the best rate. Thanks greensalad :j. It's amazing to think it's such a simple solution but I just didn't think of it! :rotfl:

twiggy86

I do this - all "pots" in one but I just have a spreadsheet which sets out what belongs in each pot rather than YNAB

floella80

Does YNAB have an app I could use as my laptop doesn't connect to the internet anymore.