Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Wow! Crackers are nice! And made primarily from the portion of sourdough culture which gets chucked down the sink each week. I put thyme in these ones. Think will pick some rosemary for drying & aim to make a future batch using that & a little garlic powder. Anyway, good to have shut off one of the last sources of food waste......we barely throw out any food these days except the occasional lemon that's grown blue fur overnight, & even that would go in the garden compost.
Knitting time now. 36 more little squares to do before crocheting them together for a nice new free sofa throw.
F x

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

Onebrokelady - Yes, us too! Made it back from a 75 mile journey just in time on Sat, as it snowed all evening & all night & we had a good 6cms by Sunday morning. It's melted now. We grow quite a lot of food & I really need some drier, less freezy weather to progress the veggie garden.

Ours is all gone now too,you wouldn’t think it had ever snowed

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

Morning readers,
Well yesterday felt like a day of two halves on the money front. On the plus side, there was lots of frugal kitchen activity. I froze some little scones I baked on Sun, shredded blanched & froze 100g chunk of leftover savoy cabbage as I can use that with l/o bacon in the minestrone soup I'm making tomorrow. I also had a look at what fruit is left in the freezer, as I didn't buy much fresh fruit this week. Found a bag of blackberries, which I stewed for using in our Easter trifle, & a big bag of wombled cherry plums. I cooked those up & froze in individual portions. They will do for desserts or in yoghurt or on top of porridge. Also baked quick sponge for Easter trifle. We have custard powder, so will only need to buy cream now.
Last night was 'Freezer dive night' on my meal plans, so I did a pan of rice & we ate that with Hairy Biker channa masala & some dal I batch-cooked a while ago.
I also carried on knitting my current project - a real thrift project this, as am knitting tiny mitred squares from all my odds & ends of leftover sock yarn to make a throw for the back of the sofa.
NOT so good things:
I spent about 40 mins at my desk updating budgets & straightening out those where we'd swapped funds. We often use CCs to buy planned purchases, then pay the money across asap, as we like to maximise loyalty points for vouchers. So I carefully went through everything & made an action list of everything I needed to do to keep different budget pots correct.
Then the phone rang & it was the fresh fish supplier we use, to say they're coming on Mon. I wasn't expecting them till April but I guess Easter hols have altered their scedules, so had not budgeted for our fish order. So that meant going back to my desk & re-doing figures, as I don't like letting our small emergency 'cushion' in current account get too low. So more coffee & calculator, & it still looked as though I'd be able to put a little extra into our Loan Pay Down Fund next week.
Then mr f came home from work & announced that Amazon Prime have taken payment for a further year. I deal with all the bills except Virgin Media & Prime. He apparently thought Prime payment was next month so hadn't flagged it up. So I hadn't allowed for it in March's budget. Bah to continuing payment authority payments which husbands don't tell me about!! Next week's payment to Loan Pay Down Fund probably won't happen now. Grrrrrrr.
Oh well, must see what Cat is up to.....can hear an ominous rug-destroying noise. Have a good day, all x

I contacted Amazon about my prime and said I hadn’t wanted it in the first place and they refunded my payment

foxgloves

Good idea - though we do want it. We did take out the original subscription last year, but thought it was next month. Never mind......it won't be sneaking past us next year, as it's going on my outgoings spreadsheet regardless of which of us deals with it.
We do watch a fair bit of stuff on there.....more than we used to watch when we last had a paid-for TV package (a long time ago, as we switched to Freeview).
Glad you got a refund though!

foxgloves

Hello diary readers,
Well, I've been thinking a bit about how I first 'chose' the path to debt. It isn't a choice for everyone, but it was for me, as I liked buying things & running out of my own money didn't stop me.
I grew up in a debt-free household. Apart from the mortgage & the very occasional car loan, my parents didn't borrow. Mum always referred to credit as the 'never never', as the item had invariably worn out before the long time it took to pay for it. They were fairly comfortably off but not lavish spenders. We didn't have foreign holidays or a lot of tech. I got a part time job at age 15. I worked a couple of hours a week after school, Saturday mornings & extra hours in school holidays. I was pretty sensible with my wages. I spent some & I saved some & by the time I left home to go & study for my 1st degree, I had around £1200 saved. That was quite a lot for an 18 year-old back in the 1980s! I had been intending to buy a motorbike but decided to wait & buy one when I'd moved north to uni.
I was fortunate to study when students received a government grant. These were means tested on parents' earnings & parents were expected to make up the difference. This was before the system changed to student loans.
So off I went to live in a big city for the first time ever. And by the age of 19, just 2 terms later, I was well into overdraft, having spent all my student money for those 2 terms plus ALL my savings!!
What did I spend it on? I wish I could say 'books' but my Dad used to insist on buying every title on my book list at the start of each academic year. No, my money went on going out, discovering how expensive 'buying a round' was, takeaways, clothes, shoes & boots, more shoes & boots and especially on 'stuff to make my room look cool'.
When the bank refused to extend my overdraft (back then, you had to go in & beg), my parents would bail me out.in chunks of around £400 or £500. I was really grateful at the time but I think that if they had not done this, I probably would have had to learn a hard much needed lesson as students couldn't get credit cards back then..But no, I continued to fritter money away & this set a pattern of behaviour which lasted for the next two & a half decades.
Along the way I met & married the lovely mr f.......who had exactly the same toxic attitude to money as me & more debt too! We enabled each other's bad behaviour for a few years before I finally had a PROPER LBM & since then, I haven't looked back.
But you know what? I do sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I'd bought that motorbike instead of squandering all that money on tat. (I do have a leather jacket & some biker-ish boots but that's as far as it goes!)
Might share another episode (debtisode?) of this tomorrow x

Honeybug

Please do, I am really enjoying each 'debtisode' :rotfl:

foxgloves

Awww, thanks Honeybug - I think I'm finding it vaguely cathartic - I think more than anything, I want to show that it really is possible to have a major change of attitude & to address poor money habits, even for people who have been spendy narnas for a long time x

foxgloves

Hi Friday readers,
Well, a city centre trip today. I'm going to tell you how it went from a money point of view, then share with you how such a trip WOULD have gone back in the Spendy Decades:
OK, so we parked on the cheapest car park & made sure we were there before 9 a.m, which puts a price cap on the parking fee, even if we'd stayed all day. We treated ourselves to a coffee & toasted hot cross bun each, but paid using our March personal spends, so zero impact on the budget. We had a look in 'Cex' - mr f is a big film buff & always has a list of dvd/blu-rays he'd like, & it's surprising how many he finds in there 2nd hand at very low prices - about a third of their films today were priced at 50p - he didn't find any on his list, but no worries, if he had, he'd have purchased them using his personal spends cash, & as he didn't, he's still got his money. We went to Thornton's next - I freely admit I'm a girl who likes a chocolate treat or three - but how lucky were we today? Our phone contracts are with O2 so we have the O2 Priorities app & used it to get the current Thornton's egg offer - 2 full size pretty chocolate eggs for free! That's us sorted for Easter - & you know they're made of cocoa beans? Beans, right? Practically one of your 5-a-day. I'm getting side-tracked. A nice bit of browsing in clothes shop but bought nothing, because although there were a few things I SORT of liked, there was nothing I liked enough to buy. Found a book I wanted, but it was £8.99 for a paperback, not unusual, I know, but I didn't buy it & then found it elsewhere for £3-99.
Today is also grocery shopping day - the 4th & final grocery shop of March's budget. Despite it taking longer, we still shopped around by going to Wilko's for stuff we know is cheaper there.......cat's favourite cat food always seems to be £3.25 per box instead of the RRP of £4.85. Picked up some generic own brand painkillers too while there.......they are just pence compared with the big brands. Then off to do our 'big weekly shop' - despite using a more expensive supermarket today, we came in just £1.13 above target & that included a huge joint of pork from which I will get a lot of meals. As is usual for us now, we had meal planned thoroughly, checked our own stores & we shopped tightly to our list. I walked right through the magazine department (to get to the loos!) without buying a single one. It is new budget next week & I still have £17 of my personal spends money left. Oh, & I should add that we had breakfast before we left & as we knew we'd be in the supermarket around lunchtime, we took a couple of filled cobs & crisps to avoid that tempting little combo of panini & chips.
This all sounds reasonably angelic, doesn't it?
Well, I can assure you that the Old Me would have:
*Parked in the most convenient car park regardless of cost.
*Had breakfast out.
*Bought at least 2 items of clothing DESPITE nothing being quite right.
*Bought several other smaller things - toiletries, make-up (I was a big fan of a certain cosmetic counter...think the one which does 'Bonus Time'.....(nothing's a bonus if you couldn't afford to buy the qualifying products in the first place), nice stationary, a book, often a couple of CDs, a few bits & pieces for the house, you know the kind of thing.
*Visited the cashpoint at least once to withdraw at least £50 'extra money' as I always liked to have cash in my purse. No tallying up of what I was spending at any point, as would use a mixture of cards & cash.
*Lots of foodie treats would have been bought in Thornton's & M&S food hall for the weekend.
*Would have had lunch out.
*No shopping around for best price. See it, wannit, buy it.
*Wouldn't have considered 2nd hand DVDs - was a sucker for those 5 for £30 type deals where you always seem to end up paying £30 for 1 that you actually wanted & 4 that you weren't all that fussed about.
*Grocery shopping - wouldn't have meal planned, wouldn't have had a list, would have gone with impulse buys, necessitating that evil thing 'the top-up shop' 3 days later.
*Would never have got through the magazine aisle without buying around 3 titles at a time (all glossy monthly ones)
And then.......a nice busy day so why not round it off with a take-away?!
I sometimes feel like that was a different person, but it wasn't! It was a time (a long time!) when my impulsive irresponsible side was clearly Queen of the Money, instead of now when I really do relish the security of knowing exactly where we are each month with the budget.
Thankfully my worst years were before recent times when people seemed to be able to get hold of multiple credit cards - I think I might have got in a worse situation if I'd been one of them - I had one credit card, my debit card, an authorised overdraft, an unauthorised overdraft & a particularly tricksy loan arrangement.
But I have my halo shining now. It is so possible to change if you want it enough. There is simply no bag of cra*p I could come home with now that would make me feel as happy as being in control of my money.
And that is today's 'Debtisode',
F x

wishingthemortgaheaway

Love it. Please keep the debtisodes coming.

foxgloves

Lol - wishingthemortgageaway......I'm not proud of how I used to behave with money, but I am pleased with the way I run the household & all associated budgets now.
One of the big realisations (in fact I had this as my mse signature for a while) was that our household income is our money. There isn't any more. So if we are putting whatever it is on a credit card or a loan, or going into overdraft to buy it, that's somebody else's money so we obviously can't afford it. Not rocket science, is it? But nevertheless it hit me like a revelation & helped me understand the nature of 'payback time' which follows all borrowing as certainly as night follows day. Every time I see a notice or shop banner proclaiming '0% credit available', I mentally translate that as '0% debt'. We are very debt-averse now.