Any "embarrassing" money saving things you do?

NewShadow

Just checking - when you say 'elderly' fish, I assume you mean on rather than past Sell By/Best Before Date?

If so, it's really no different than a fish a day before it's SB or BB.

There's no real need to treat it with suspicion or 'thoroughly' cook it just because someone stuck a YS on it is there?

Pollycat

NewShadow wrote: »

Just checking - when you say 'elderly' fish, I assume you mean on rather than past Sell By/Best Before Date?

If so, it's really no different than a fish a day before it's SB or BB.

There's no real need to treat it with suspicion or 'thoroughly' cook it just because someone stuck a YS on it is there?

Personally, I'd only buy fish that is fresh - from the fishmonger so I could have a good look at it and smell it.
I've bought prepacked tuna steaks that are YS and when I unpacked them, they stank.
And went straight in the bin.

I'd buy meat YS on the Sell By/Best Before Date but not fish.

tenuissent

<< pass off the items onto someone else, a neighbour maybe? >>

Yes, I am lucky enough to know a wonderful woman and her daughter who help me clean my house for an hour every Wednesday (worth every penny! They galvanise me at the same time) and she happily accepts things I don't need - recently DIL gave me two big bags of kiwi fruit so I passed one on to her. Between Wednesdays, I think some things get too old to pass on.

I agree about buying the freshest fish possible. This fish is 3 days past its sell by date, and though I agree with post 162 that it is unlikely to do us any harm, it is one of the few things I would not myself choose to buy.

However, it is now cooked and flaked into a rather delicious sauce, ready to be heated up with a potato topping tonight, and looks and smells perfectly pleasant. DIL has brought me two large bags of sweetcorn kernels (not very sweet....) which I sprinkle into anything suitable, including this pie.

I always rinse slightly stale meat and fish in vinegar - gets rid of any smell from being packed in plastic too long.

I once bought fish from a van visiting from The North (Manchester?) which they promised was fresh - after they had gone I opened the package and it seemed to be soaked in some sort of horrible preservative that I simply could not stomach. Into the bin and never again. There is a fish shop in Hastings which always smells horrible in the same way - I don't know why people go in. There is no excuse for fish that is not spanking fresh in Hastings.

My neighbours on one side are uniquely unfitted to accept YS presents, being a Bakery, with their own problems of surplus cakes and biscuits and bread......I often benefit from their need to find a good home for things, including bags of slightly out of date bread flour, very useful.

happyinflorida

CathA wrote: »

When I get asked by my kids for a stamp, I give them the ones I've cut off of envelopes that haven't been franked. If you put them over a boiling kettle spout, you can get them off if you are careful, quick dab of glue, there you go! My kids hate doing it, think I'm tight and prefer to use a new one, so they usually go and buy one. Everyone's a winner!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - do not get your kids to do this as the person receiving this letter could be charged double or worse your kids could be prosecuted or you could be as the person responsible for making your kids do this!

When I was young I used to do this and told everyone I knew to do it, one of my penpals in Liverpool told me his dad had got really told off by his postman and been told to pay double the postage as a punishment, he was fuming with his son and beat him up for doing it!

So no, I would never recommend doing this as it is considered a fraudulent activity by the post office nowadays and you could end up down the nick!

happyinflorida

charlies-aunt wrote: »

I wonder if you could consider having a charity collection tin and asking them to put a small donation in lieu of paying for a stamp/frank?

What on earth for? Most charities in the UK pay their CEO's around £150K a year or more!! I stopped giving to all charities when I found that out.

I stopped giving to any charity like cancer research and british heart foundation etc when I found out they experimented on animals - no thank you, I don't want animals tortured to death with my money.

glider3560

happyinflorida wrote: »

I stopped giving to any charity like cancer research and british heart foundation etc when I found out they experimented on animals - no thank you, I don't want animals tortured to death with my money.

I take it you won't take any new medicines or treatments either, should you ever need these in the future?

moneyistooshorttomention

glider3560 wrote: »

I take it you won't take any new medicines or treatments either, should you ever need these in the future?

I believe this has been discussed before on the Boards.

From which - people are very unlikely to agree on this.

My own personal take is that I refuse to give money to any charity that "conducts research" on animals (yep..that does mean medical research ones of any description - so cancer and British Heart Foundation ones are out for a start-off). I know there is cancer in my own family. I know there are heart problems in my own family. I know that the most likely way I personally will "pop my clogs" come the time is down to heart problems.

So - there is personal involvement - but I still won't give to those charities. There's plenty of others around to take any spare money I ever have and, personally, I give to environmental charities.

The only way I see this is discussion as relevant to this particular thread is that it is either embarrassing (or worse) to be asked for money towards any charity I won't give to personally. No problems with saying "no" to them personally - but it does get awkward when a group I'm in is asked to contribute and then I get upset at the charity (or someone in the group that supports them personally) for asking a group (that, by definition, will have members with differing views in it ) and thus risking causing dissension in the group.

VfM4meplse

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

The only way I see this is discussion as relevant to this particular thread is that it is either embarrassing (or worse) to be asked for money towards any charity I won't give to personally. No problems with saying "no" to them personally - but it does get awkward when a group I'm in is asked to contribute and then I get upset at the charity (or someone in the group that supports them personally) for asking a group (that, by definition, will have members with differing views in it ) and thus risking causing dissension in the group.

I'm actually quite brutal about this. I hate being press-ganged into sponsoring people / events and say so, which upsets people but someone else's effort is no incentive to me, I'd rather they just donated from their own pockets than swim the Atlantic for 10p/nautical mile. I much prefer to select my charities without inducement, and CRUK, BHF and DUK are on that list, amongst others.

flubberyzing

I also avoid the sponsorship thing as much as possible. The only people I ever sponsor for anything are immediate relatives - and then only the ones I actually like.
Recently a cousin on my mothers side was asking around for sponsorship for some sport thing he was doing. Well, I've barely said 10 words to the man in 10 years, so that request was ignored.


I've also never sponsored anyone from work. I'm there to be paid for my work, not to give my money away to others. And 9 times out of 10 it's for something small like 'Race For Life', which is so over-done now.


I have the charities I support. There are 2 in particular that I have supported since I was a teenager.
Every year, at Christmas, I make a £100 donation to the charity of a cause that has touched me during the year. Last Christmas it was to a local charity that funds funerals for children, after 2 friends of mine tragically lost children and were helped by this charity.
The year before it was to the SMA Trust after a friend's daughter lost her life to the condition.
I've also been a regular blood donor since I was 17.


If people think I'm mean for not responding to most sponsorship requests, that's their issue, not mine.

mcculloch29

flubberyzing wrote: »

.
I've also been a regular blood donor since I was 17.

When I was out of work and doing voluntary work (which became a paid job) I made sure I donated blood. I can no longer do so as I am on strong painkillers, but when I didn't have much money for charity donations, I could do this for society, at least.
Being on the bed and equal with everyone else who was donating their pint made me feel better about my own situation. I did manage to get to my Bronze award before I had to stop.
I would have been well past Silver by now if I'd been able to carry on , c'est la vie.
I urge everybody who can do so to do this. I might add that I'm not too keen on needles, but I still made it.