Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

I think buying gifts all year round when I see something suitable really helps with this, HHoD. Back in the Spendy Decades, I just used to go crazy with spending at Christmas, as already confessed in previous diary posts & those January....& even worse, February bank statements just used to be so depressing & appalling. Putting gifts away all year helps me spread the cost & also means I can buy a perfect little item when I see it, rather than try to remember it in December. I do still have a good few gifts to buy, but going through everything yesterday & making some notes & a list had helped me feel nicely in control x

foxgloves

Good Morning Campers,
I haven't made a job list this morning.....I'm finding so many tasks have been stymied by the weather recently. I've got the tedious stuff out of the way......i.e ironing (have I mentioned 150,053 times how much I heartily dislike ironing?), daily kitchen sort-out & I nobbled Mr F over breakfast to get next week's meal plans onto paper. He fancies making a chilli, which is good for me as it will easily stretch to two days & we already have mince in the freezer & peppers in the greenhouse. I've had my coffee break & while I was sitting drinking it at the kitchen worktop, the little garden birds seemed to be doing their best to entice me outside. Their bird food on two of our feeders has gone like porridge in all the recent rain & they have been looking meaningfully through the kitchen window to inform me that these sloppy catering arrangements won't do at all! There are lots of squabbles going on atm over the peanuts - the starlings are winning because they're the biggest of the birds which use the peanut feeders (unless our spotty woodpecker or naughty squirrel return), but there is also a great tit, two blue tits & a robin, two dunnocks & several sparrows out there grabbing all the bits of nut debris which is flinging off. We actively encourage wildlife in our garden, so it is lovely to see. Two wood pigeons have rocked up now. They are welcome, but I do feel from a money saving point of view, that they are the Dysons of the local bird population, hoovering up huge amounts of seed mix from the ground feeder, which I do like to keep, as blackbirds, dunnocks, robins & thrushes rely on it.
Anyway, enough of telling you about our birds - I need to get out there, get my gardening gloves on & progress my autumn border clearing. I got half of the herb bed done yesterday. Today I'd like to finish a big flower bed between the pear tree & the greenhouse. I could only get so far with it because I needed Mr F to remove some massive brambles which were taking over the hedge from the unoccupied house next door. My intention is to see how much I can do in an hour.
OK, the timer is on!
have a good day all,
F x

twiggy86

foxgloves wrote: »

as people don't usually go around flinging large quantities of potatoes out of cars, F x

I did actually once get hit by a potato that someone threw out of a car!!! :rotfl:

foxgloves

Gosh, Twiggy86 - Whatever triggered that, I wonder? Last thing one expects is a potato missile to come hurling out of a car!
F

foxgloves

'Ey up, Campers,
Very Useful Day today. Mr F off work so took the car over to the other side of the county for its service. No nasty surprises & cost fully covered by our service plan on this occasion. It was all finished so early, he said he'd do the grocery shopping on the way home, which came in on budget. Then a quick trip to town this afternoon for me to pick up a few items I needed. Managed to get everything on my list & we went home for coffee - go us!
I've also done a lot of annoying little jobs today. I find as I get older, I have increasingly low tolerance of stuff just sitting around doing nothing...... or rather, it sits around because I'M doing nothing with it. So today, I've tackled heaps of just such little irritating things - some of which have been nicely frugal such as using up the tiny last bit of a hand-gel so I could wash the bottle & add to my tub of cane toppers in the shed. I've also mended two items of clothing & a pillowcase which have been sitting hopefully by my sewing box for ages. And in some cases, it was just putting things away. You know I have my 30 second rule...... as in if a task is going to take 30 seconds or less, just do it, as it isn't worth adding it to a stack of tidying which I'll have to tackle later. Mr F however, doesn't have such a rule. He will put things down, then have a huge blitz & shift everything at once. This means there are often things sitting around annoyingly. It's surprising how much more space we seem to have after a damn good tidy up. I find it very mood boosting.
Hoping for a day out somewhere local-ish tomorrow, but have already agreed we'll take a picnic. I don't mind buying a coffee, but not lunch.
It's not my cooking night so I am going to try & best cat to the best end of the sofa - reading, knitting & 'GGBO extra slice' for me tonight....... AND there's chocolate in the house :-)
Love & Peace,
F x

smallchanges19

Hi Foxglove,

I just want to say thank you, your diary has been an inspiration to me since I stumbled across this forum in early 2019. I have been a persistent lurkker.

I have done quite a lot of 'shopping from home' this year, am trying to train my OH and DS to put things away the first time they hold them rather than just moving them somewhere else (this is definitely a work in progress :-) and have managed a fair amount of decluttering.

Your stories of the spendy days have made me laugh out loud and as a lady of a certain age (54) many of your refences to the past made me cringe and smile in equal measure.

I cleared my debt today but will still be lurking as I start to save to allow me to move on to the next, debt free, stage of my life.

foxgloves

Hi Smallchanges19, & welcome!
I'm glad you've found my diary inspiring. Great that you've paid off your debt today. I agree it's important to keep up the small positive money habits though - we all know how easy it is for things to start a bit of a slide.
I am a woman of a certain very similar age, which is probably why some of my spendy tales from the past resonated with you.
I will soon be in a position to pay off our mortgage & I wondered if I need to continue my dfw diary once I've got shot of all our debt, but we will still need to be careful. My lack of tolerance for over consumption & waste has become as important a part of our more frugal lifestyle as good money habits. The most important part of a greener, more sustainable lifestyle starts with what we don't buy, doesn't it? So I think I feel inclined to continue my diary posts for a while yet. We have a lot of work to plan on our house over the next year & that will most definitely require a budget & careful planning.
F

HairyHandofDartmoor

Please carry on with your diary Foxgloves, I want to keep reading your garden and baking escapades and I love your spendy cautionary tales. Also it will help to keep you focused on frugality and making the most of your extra money once you have no mortgage payments .

Blackcats

Crikey- I've been away for a few weeks and a mysterious potato saga has occurred. I cannot think of a single likely explanation. We need Morse or Frost to apply their honed detective skills to this one.

Your mention of earrings (pre-potatogate) made me laugh. I love earrings too. I was made to wait til my 15th birthday to have my ears pierced. My mum disapproved and so a wonderful elderly great aunty took me. We went to selfridges had lunch and the deed was done -it was such a lovely day. However, I cannot begin to imagine how much money I've spent in the last 40 years on earrings.

my flawed money management logic showed itself soon after my ears were pierced. I got a Saturday job in British home stores in the boring men's socks and pants department - to clarify it wasn't socks and pants for boring men - it was just a very boring department - it's all in the syntax isn't it.

My wages were £7.40 per day. We got paid at lunchtime and most of it was spent in the market on cheap clothes, in WH Smith's on records and in Salisbury's on earrings. Do you remember Salisbury's? It sold cheap jewellery, bags, suitcases etc. Anyway much to my delight a Saturday job was advertised in Salisbury's and I got the job!!! It was a pay cut, and my wages decreased to £7.00 per day. However, I was not worried by this - no siree, not at all. I knew with certainty that the savings I would make using my staff discount to buy earrings would save me far more than that lost wages money. The more earrings I bought the more money I saved! Sadly I expect all those earrings are still somewhere in landfill.

foxgloves

Well I shall need that, HHoD, as the money hasn't even arrived yet (bit of a saga) & I'm already feeling nervous about it.
F x