Put away your purse & become debt-averse

joedenise

Brilliant to come in under budget! What sort of meals are you planning? Could do with a few new ones myself.

I already meal plan using as much food from the freezer & cupboards as possible but shopping is still coming to about £40 a week for 2 of us which is a bit high I think, although we can afford it so it's a case of wanting to reduce it rather than being a necessity.

Denise

foxgloves

Hi Denise,
Roast chicken on Sun, then in the week: cold chicken with jacket potatoes & salad, home made Mexican style pizza using more leftover chicken, smoked haddock chowder & home baked bread, one of Madhur Jaffrey's curries for leftover meat served with home made garlic flatbreads, chermoula tuna steak with new potatoes, sweetcorn & salad, veggie fajhitas using batch-cooked refried beans from the freezer.
I'm going to make & freeze a batch of the garlic flatbreads as they're really useful. As I'll have spare yoghurt leftover from those, I'm intending to use it up in a batch of spicy chickpea burgers (Delia Smith recipe) & freeze those too, as we have everything else to make those already.
There are 2 of us too. I budget £50 a week for groceries & that includes cat food, cleaning stuff & a few basic toiletries. I'm happy with £50, though food prices have defo been rising over the last year or so.
F

joedenise

Thanks for that. Maybe £40 isn't too bad then as we don't have pets. My total includes cleaning stuff, loo rolls, toiletries. Food prices are definitely on the rise!

D

foxgloves

I reckon £40 a week is really good, JoeDenise, I wouldn't worry about that being too high. We sometimes spend over the £50 target & sometimes under....the key thing is that we try not to go over the monthly amount, as that will be the thing that impacts elsewhere in the budget.

Well, I got off to a great start with my job list this morning.but I've had to wait in for a parcel delivery, & gradually, all the jobs left on my list were things which I couldn't do, as wouldn't be able to hear a knock at the door. So couldn't go & do greenhouse jobs or vacuum or have a bath & hair wash or walk to the post office, etc. Can't bear sitting around waiting, so decided to set about survey sites with a vengeance. Pretty much all the money from doing those goes in the Loan Pay Down Fund or towards mr f's big birthday present later in the year, so at least I'm being useful. Did 2 Ipsos, 1 Prolific, 2 Onepoll & so many Toluna that I eventually got the message saying that was my quota for today. Still stayed on the site & added another 2000 points to my total by doing the Quick Click votes. Parcel has arrived now, so I can carry on where I left off. I have delayed potting up my baby aubergines & pepper plants for quite a while as it is sooooo cold at the moment, but with better weather promised next week, I'm going to risk it, I cloche everything with cut down plastic bottles anyway, & can bubble wrap them at night until we see this mythical sunshine. All our home grown veg helps a lot with the budget once it gets to harvesting time & I love doing it, so that's it......my boots are going on & I'm going to leave you & squidge down to the greenhouse. Cheers for now,
F x

foxgloves

It's NOT RAINING!! And my motivation has just gone up by 100%. Heading out to the greenhouse to see what my seeds (nearly all free ones) are doing.
Sold another ebay item overnight & mr f informed me that he even did a survey in the bath this morning (?!), so we have really renewed our focus on exploiting all these little sources of additional cash to chuck at our last bit of loan.
Must get a shift on. Have a good day all,
F x

PurpleFairy26

Eaten any frogs today ? :rotfl:

I ate mine, took me 55 seconds ok, I'll need to go back for round 2 as the person didn't answer but I did leave a message. Go me :rotfl:

foxgloves

Ha! 3 frogs on the menu this morning.
1st was eaten.
2nd was then eaten buy needs re-tackling as no bloody response. Grrrrrr.
3rd & biggest frog .......um.....well I'm afraid it's still sitting on the plate looking particularly large, green & amphibious.
F x

PurpleFairy26

foxgloves wrote: »

Ha! 3 frogs on the menu this morning.
1st was eaten.
2nd was then eaten buy needs re-tackling as no bloody response. Grrrrrr.
3rd & biggest frog .......um.....well I'm afraid it's still sitting on the plate looking particularly large, green & amphibious.
F x

Less frogs than this morning is a success me things, although boo to none responders!

foxgloves

Really pleased with the grocery budget this month. So far, 3 out of 4 shops have come in under budget. Saturday's online shop, despite being at a more expensive supermarket than our usual one, still came in under target. Three underspends in a row mean that we either have an extra £19 to spend on our final shop of the month, or we can via it to a different budget or save it. I've already identified 3 or 4 meals in the freezer which will do for next week, so another good meal plan will be the key.

A bit chilly now the sun has gone down, but I refuse to light the fire! April to September is a time for using as little gas & electricity as possible & building a surplus for winter......& maybe even a cheeky little refund.
Best Wishes to all,
F x

foxgloves

PurpleFairy - Yes......in the words of Meatloaf "two out of three ain't bad"....though he wasn't talking about frogs. I MUST swallow the big massive frog this week. It's a legal thing we need to do. I've done all the prep & procured all the relevant docs (thought it would be cheaper to do that myself) but I don't know why I'm prevaricating so much on the rest of it as not doing this job is more stressful than actually doing it! Honestly, what are we like?!