Time to mend and make do, beg, borrow and barter.

rtandon27

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

...Thank you I've been doing a budget most of the day inbetween snacking from the cheese drawer...

Me too! - some cheese deals were to be had last week, so the cheese drawer is full as are our bellies - re-purposing our budget categories has netted an extra 2 month contribution to the savings pot - hoping to repeat it again this month (we'll need to continue eating from the stores though so a meal plan is needed) - now off to find somewhere to keep the savings pot that will pay out some decent interest!

Pippilongstocking

Arg lost the money update.

Pesky laptop. So you'll get the headline version

Budgets now updated. Main headline acts

Petrol up to £300/month
Food/Household/Pets etc £300/month (includes cleaner/occasional dug walker) £20 spent today
Oil £85/month (3 years figures now gives me a clear idea)
Uni girl £50/month
Holiday pay back £100/month

Newbies to the stage
Pocket money £50 - help with hosp mags etc and my charity shop addiction
Gas/Wood £50 - didn't have 2 of those appliances last year they should help reduce oil/elec spends
Vet £100/month maintenance meds {pesky mutt, love him to bits, scoundrel}
+updated petrol spends for galavanting with mother.

Updated budget suggests £307 spare for debt payments so I've paid £300 over to the credit card and its now under £2k {£1725.27} woop :money: and I've given myself a contingency of £7 you know just in case.:rotfl:


Any non spent vet money/food/petrol can go to the pesky card.


Banked £1000 from my kind brother to one overdraft, its not debt clearing, its helpful reallocation of funds :money:. Whilst its not gone as its 'parked' money, its saving £20/month on interest and fee (Thank you for the suggestion of focussing on that)

:eek: Paid back the non-bonus and made an email appointment to see the finance lady at work and **discuss** what hoops I have to hulahoop through to GET that bonus back.

:money::jDEBT NOW £3725.27:j:money:

Thanks for helping me focus guys.

Pippilongstocking

Non-Money Activity today
The borrowing was sour milk from MIL which she'll likely get back as scones

Lent 3 Brene Brown books to SIL

Bartered some gardening at theirs soon for some malt whisky (BIL works for large distilling group and I think they get given a fairly large allowance to sample ) I can swap malt at later date for something amazing I'm sure.

Swapped tatties for parsnips

And now I'm off to mend my poor old sallies, as I appear to expanded a tad over the holidays.

Slight food profit to sort out later including sausages, bacon and cream cakes.

Pippilongstocking

rtandon27 wrote: »

Me too! - some cheese deals were to be had last week, so the cheese drawer is full as are our bellies - re-purposing our budget categories has netted an extra 2 month contribution to the savings pot - hoping to repeat it again this month (we'll need to continue eating from the stores though so a meal plan is needed) - now off to find somewhere to keep the savings pot that will pay out some decent interest!

:T:money::T:money::T

On all counts!

Pippilongstocking

Evening yup me again - I'm dans le chez-longue and reading up on uber frugal month. Interesting links and thanks to GREYING for sharing.

Have had a nice day reading bits - love the style of the ladies writing and a few posts have got my eye.

Why we don't meal plan

We eat out of the cupboards alot and I know I need to be a bit more organised while out and about. But, I do struggle with meal planning. I'm a fickle creature, I've never got on with it - although I have vague ideas in my head I'm a food butterfly.

We do eat a lot of leftovers and making food from scratch from end date/near end date grub is a bit unpredictable, so often the meal plan goes a bit awry. Then I get stressed and then I don't do it.

So - this month - no meal plan. Just a pledge to eat up what we've got, really use up the stores and try to grocery only essentials like milk and any mega bargains tasty stuff.

Feels a bit like a relief TBH.

£20 food budget spent on drugs from the shops for the diseased one. Not really *food* but my £300 budget is for everything consumable in the household.

Back for a mooch in frugalwoods........very interesting thanks GP!

Toni'sfriend

My mother used to make pancakes (Scottish ones) with sour milk. Oh the joy of eating them hot from the pan spread with my Granny's home made jam.

Pippilongstocking

Toni'sfriend wrote: »

My mother used to make pancakes (Scottish ones) with sour milk. Oh the joy of eating them hot from the pan spread with my Granny's home made jam.

I think perhaps we were separated at birth. We do grannies here - which is likely where your ma got them too?

Its the one thing my kids will insist are eaten milliseconds from the pan. In fact grannies pancakes featured on NYD in the alps in a certain chalet after DS had been OOT til the wee sma' hours. He had the mind to plan ahead and told folks they were secret family recipe. I'm sure all grannies would have giggled at his ahead meal planning which he's not got from me!

LOL.

I've never made them from sour milk, never thought of it. Thank you so much. Its now on my to do list.

:A

gien

Pippa, I’m really sorry to hear of poorly Mum and poorly dog and I hope everything goes as well as it possibly can with them.

I’ve subscribed to the thread and as I’ll be around on these boards a lot more this year I’ll keep up and steal some of your frugal ideas!

Pippilongstocking

Hey Gien you're very kind thank you and lovely to see you.

Heating is off, I've turned the timing off, we can do a cheeky boost when we need, but we've the wood stove on so one room is cosy, may put the kitchen fire on or just use the gas heater, although there is washing to dry. I need to go out and have a look at the boiler (outside) and see if there's an obvious leak. Tempted to just turn the tank off but I do like hot water. Must organise a heating engineer out. Bah. Ordered more oil via BJ and took the long delivery to save a bit, still £250 is a bit ouchy, and had to put £150 to the pot to get it paid as we only had £100 in the BJ account - once the bigger DD kicks in it will help stop those kind of unexpected spends.

Tea last night was relaxed due to my crazy idea to just go with the flow from the stores - ended up with a beautiful thai curry (Panang?) with leftover prawns and crunchy reduced sugar snap peas and some coconut powder there was a portion of frozen rice in the depths of the freezer so it was a quick make. And delish it was. Himself is still sick and in isolation at home - no food for him, poor fella. Will tempt him with some chicken noodle soup later as have some in the stores.

Dinner will depend on the patient I guess but from the stores.

Took a bit of time to go through the fridge and freeze a few bits from visitors being here - mainly meat.

Oven is on and theres a quarter of a giant pumpkin in there roasting away to be soup - did like the last batch, so might just do it the same Pumpkin, Chilli and Coconut soup. Although its vegan, so no butter, veg stock, etc and I use coconut powder - only need a couple tablespoons for it to make it super creamy.

Might take it to work again - nice first day back vibe. Need to sort out some lunches too.

Washing machine is on and the kitchen stove it turns out was smouldering away so its got more wood on it now. We've hardly any wood left in the bunkers but lots of free stuff to chop - so I might do some today. I'd rather use free wood than oil anyway.

Bit of sorting and organising to do today - but I'm not quite ready to go back to work just yet.

Best get a wriggle on.



PS how easy it is to spend £250 (oil) without even getting out of bed. Yikes.

Cheery_Daff

Yikes indeed :eek: But worth it to keep you toasty warm Hope you don't have a leak though, that would be most vexing. We're going onto an LPG tank when we move so I'll be waiting with interest/baited breath to see how much that is going to cost us :eek: Quite possibly less than here as the boiler is 20 years newer and far more efficient, and there's a THERMOSTAT which we are very excited about turning down :rotfl: Here we just have to switch the heating on, then wait til we get too hot and turn it back down again :rotfl:

Poor old RG. Hope he's feeling better soon and revives a little with chicken soup. Mind you, if he's not eating temporarily at least that's saving a bit on the food budget! :money:

I'm busy snaffling leftovers from last night's dinner party for my lunch :money: Most tasty - two types of curry, home made hummous and coleslaw and a bit of cheese that was crumbly cos it came out of the freezer (and before that came free from somewhere :money: ) Dinner last night was also a resounding success as it was largely compiled from leftovers from new years eve dinner

All gone now sadly :rotfl:

Keep thinking about you in relation to chickens One of the first jobs on my list when we move is to find a suitable space, build some kind of suitable house and get my name on the rescue list :j