Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Lol, CCL, that's good to know then! I thought it might be fierce stuff the way it was fetching gunk of that floor! Just got to work my way around another ton of tiles at some point. Will need a seriously good audio book on the go while I tackle that.
Mind you, Mr F came home & I showed him my 'before & after' sections of tiles & how much better they looked, & he said 'It looks like cement'. I said 'Yes, because THAT'S WHAT IT IS!'. We can have dark dirty cement or bright clean cement, but no amount of any product is going to turn our kitchen floor tiles into something different!!
He did concede that the bit I'd tested looked a lot cleaner & made me a cup of tea.
Shan't feel like floor up-doing this coming week if I can get out in the garden though. I'd much rather be out there playing with my tomatoes & squash plants & refereeing woodpigeon fights.
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

I've finished reading your diary today Foxgloves and it's been a good read . I chuckled many times over your debtisodes :rotfl: which reminded me of many foolish spendy episodes of my own . I hope there are more installments of the debtisodes to come? :rotfl:

I'm glad you bought the cycling helmet as I've heard from a doctor that the skull is surpisingly thin and it doesn't take that hard a knock to crack it open and give youself brain damage :eek:.

I'm in awe of your gardening and cooking efforts and wish I had your green fingers and culinary skills. I'm also envious of your long garden, but I do try to make the most of our tiny courtyard garden by growing flowering bushes, climbers and bedding plants in pots. My only food growing is represented by a blueberry bush, which hasn't fruited yet but I have hopes it will one day.

I'm also in awe of your amazing budgeting skills and your new (or not so new) found frugaility .

foxgloves

Lol, HHofD, I'm in awe of anyone who can grow blueberries!! I might have green fingers, but they don't extend to those! I used to have 3 blueberry bushes, I grew tham in ericaceous compost & followed all the instructions, but they utterly failed to thrive & after years of about 3 berries per bush, I chopped them up for the compost bins!
Glad you were entertained by my Debtisodes. Oh dear, we can all recognise our past spend traits in others, can't we? As I've said in my diary, I was in debt from the age of 19 & didn't pay off the last chunk until I was 46. It's outrageous, really, the sheer amount of money I wasted, but it wasn't spent on big expensive designer brands/items or foreign holidays, it was pretty much frittered on lots & lots of smaller things & just general profligacy. Like you, Mr F & I have come to our financial senses quite late in life, but we both talk about this sometimes & are very much agreed that we are much happier living within our means.
As for Debtisodes. yes, I will continue to include them. I've been meaning to post another one, but haven't got round to it yet.
F x

foxgloves

Fab sunny day today which has inspired me to get cracking & achieve loads.
One of my favourite seasonal 'Shopping from Home' activities began today. I have a modest herb bed & love to cut, tie & bring bunches indoors to hang from the kitchen beam for drying. I cut my first proper bunch of the year - oregano - & it's hanging up, to be joined by others before too long. The winter savoury will soon need a haircut & I think the best thing is not to aim to do it all in one fell swoop, but just to cut a bunch whenever something that would be useful in the kitchen cupboard, looks lush & ready. I've made a note to sow more coriander. The current tub is looking at its prime, & it's a variety which you can cut & come again, but I like to have another pot sown ready for when the first one is over. No excuses for buying supermarket coriander plants when I have a greenhouse & time to grow stuff.
Am getting some serious stink-eye from our cat, who wants it known that it is an entire EIGHT MINUTES past his dinner time & that he can under no circumstances be expected to wait any longer.
Cheers all,
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

Your kitchen must smell and look lovely with the dried herbs hanging up.

That's cruelty to cat making him wait 8 minutes for his dinner .

foxgloves

It does HHoD, but the best for herby kitchen aromas is when I cut the basil & bring it in for pesto-making. It's just sooooo green & smells gorgeous. A long way off yet though, I've raised a lot of basil plants this Spring, but they are still only knee-high to a guinea-pig atm!

foxgloves

Greetings Frugalistas,
What a lovely day its been! Blue skies, sunshine, didn't think about Brexit all day.......
Also, Mr F was owed a day off work, so we've been out to a NT place further north in the County. Thoroughly enjoyed it, & what a frugal day it was. My halo didn't wobble even once.
No parking charge & our annual membership covered our admission.
Took a picnic, snacks & a flask of coffee, so we didn't venture into the very nice, but cash-sapping cafe at all.
Did not cross the threshold of the gift shop, as really, REALLY don't need anything (..... well, except black treacle & some spread, neither of which are likely to be lurking among expensive candles, throws, bags & fudge, etc) so no cash leakages there.
Perused plant sale area but my purse remained zipped in my bag. I have raised sufficient free plants this Spring to plant my garden twice over. I don't need to be spending money on more.
And last but not least, free fitness, as we walked over 10000 steps while we were there. Really enjoyed seeing all the baby goslings, acrobatic squirrels & just watching the water shimmering in the sunlight.
Of course, back in the Spendy Years, I'd have considered this a pretty poor trip without a new plant, some or other gew-gaw from the gift shop plus coffee & cake, & probably lunch too, in the cafe. Then we'd have called in at Wait*ose on the way home to 'round off' a nice day with further treats. Today, we just drove straight home & fired up our own coffee machine. None of these 'old' spends would have been enormous, but the sheer number of times that purse used to come out in the course of a day meant frittering through some serious cash.
Days like today just confirm that a perfectly lovely time can be had a whole lot more frugally, don't they?
Oh, & back in the day, we'd often have talked ourselves into a takeaway too. What a pair of idiots!
F x

foxgloves

Hmmmm. Friday. A bit of a routine sort of day, as it's when I do my big weekly clean, write the shopping list, etc, & generally clear the decks for the weekend. The grocery budget is more spent up than I would like at this stage in the month, & for no really good reason that I can think of. I think partly, it is simply that we haven't increased our target grocery spend for a few years, yet prices have been busy going up throughout the same period. There are all the big price jumps, such as butter, but I've been noticing 10p here, 20p there, on so many other things too, & despite reading that inflation is supposed to be levelling off, this doesn't seem to be reflected in grocery prices in the shops. Two of the supermarkets we use always used to have one brand of spread on offer at £1....now that offer is £1.10......I know, I know, lots of people would say 'Don't get out of your pram, it's only 10p', but as we all know, these little amounts do add up. We're shopping at our local Al*i this weekend & I've set about my shopping list like a good'un. Meal plans done....have prioritised what we already have in, & two of the meals I've chosen will make enough to freeze 2 portions for another week. Have gone through the fridge like a woman possessed........3 new potatoes, a little bit of hummous, a squishy tomato & a few other bits & pieces......they all went together to make me a lunch, thus saving me from opening what I intended to have, so that can now roll over into next week. Went straight to shopping list & crossed off a an item because of that saving. Some ancient yoghurt, the end of last week's milk, 2 elderly garlic cloves & half a lemon which was skulking about in the salad drawer were crying out to be turned into a batch of garlic flat breads, so I made those & they are now a useful food resource in the freezer- much more useful than a handful of tatty odds & sods in the fridge. Then had a good look in the pantry.....even fetched my step, as it's an old deep cupboard & I'm a bit of a short a*se........a new unopened jar of mayo......no need for more, so crossed it off the list, & another lunch item I chose last time which didn't get opened so there's another few pence saved. No cleaning materials needed as I'm slowly working my way through the stash I brought back when we cleared Mum's house & an extra bag of loo rolls in the downstairs loo I'd forgotten about. It's so worth checking & seeing if anything can be crossed off. I almost always find something I've already got in stock........just hope mr f doesn't spot the list & add half a dozen things when he gets home from work, but I don't think he will. I've told him that May's grocery budget is disappearing more quickly than I'd like, & he did say he was all for a careful shop tomorrow, so we'll see how we go.
OK, I've got a sourdough loaf in the oven, so must go & see how it's doing. The dough rose such a lot, that I stood the tin on a tray in case it was thinking of climbing out & sticking itself all over the oven. Am hoping its behaved itself! My sourdough jar must be very active at the moment.
Hope everyone is having a productive day with nothing too horribly stressful.
Love F x

Baileys_Babe

I like that we can make a slight tweak to our plans to use up the little bits and this can save us a meal.
We regularly plan no food on our meal plan, it's a great opportunity to use up all those little bits and bobs creatively, sometimes each person makes something different and other times a group of us fancy the same interesting combination.

This week we have put 10 single portions into the freezer. OH takes them to work, they're useful for dinner on the days we are very busy as well as if our planned dinner is something one person doesn't eat we are able to serve them something they will eat without much extra work for the cook.

foxgloves

Hi Baileysbabe, You are so right about the usefulness of single portions. Back in the day, I'd barely have bothered freezing them, thinking there are two of us, so one portion is neither here or there. I've really seen the error of this way of thinking since the debt busting. Single portions are great on cold or longer days when Mr F fancies a hot lunch for his pack-up, & he also has a monthly shift till 10.15pm, so a portable meal is ideal. Also, we've found that just popping 'Jacket potato night' or 'Something with home made jacket wedges' is a good way of eating frugally, while still having some flexibility if one of us really fancies a portion of chilli but the other one would rather have something lighter or meat-free. We've also found that a few single portions of frozen home made curries can be defrosted with a couple of garlic flat breads, then we just need to add a bit of rice & we feel we've got a Fake-away feast.
I don't think eating that extra food has done our waistlines or grocery budgets any good in the past. As we are doing calorie-counting atm, this also leads to serving up more sensible portion sizes so food goes further. Mr F is a big chap & has a colossal appetite, so he does sometimes ask me how many extra calories if he were to have a double portion, but when he hears how many that will be, he usually decides not to undo all his good work & 10k+ step count earlier in the day & the extra portion goes in the freezer for another day.
So I agree with you & it's a big yay to freezing single portions from me!
F x