Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Redrose

I am loving the frog eating thread..... ( yes I found it ) and totally agree with it...... I am still waiting for me to eat/swallow my first frog, but I know it will come ...... I love it .. what a great way to deal with tasks that we all put off.


I am just loving reading our diary Foxgloves, you are giving me so much determination to sort my life out - Thank you

foxgloves

Can you believe I had to eat that same bloody frog again this morning due to a change in mr f's work schedule meaning we could no longer make the appointment date I arranged?!! Got it sorted first thing while it was kind of just still a tadpole.

foxgloves

Evening debt-busters,
Was pleased to find that mr f's Ugov cash-out money was in our account this morning, so I was able to pay that £50 straight across to our Loan Pay Down Fund.
I also did a meal plan for next week & shopping list, as we've placed an.online order this evening. I've already mentioned that I've subbed an extra £19 to this month's grocery budget to deal with an overspend, so I was determined that we would be within our £50 target this week. This called for an extra cafetiere & some serious 'shopping from home'. Maximised stuff from freezer for meals & built in a meal where I can scale it up easily & freeze a spare. Checked everything before I wrote it on the shopping list. Chose a cake recipe to bake for Mum when we visit at the weekend & made sure it was one where I have plenty of the ingredients in stock & only two needed buying....both mainstream sensible things which will be used in future bakes, as opposed to the more 'maca-powder coated organic baby goji-berry flakes' end of the market!
Our online order did indeed come in on budget, so much so in fact, that we were able to include a bottle of wine, a couple of beers & a spare 500g pack of mince for the freezer which I'm already mentally converting into meals.
Going back to the 'Shop from.home first' mantra, in my head we needed loo rolls, loo cleaner, washing up liquid, tinned tomatoes & cheese. I would normally have added these to the list. Worth checking, as we didn't actually need any of them & they'd have added a fair few quid to the bill.
Well, that's today's thoughts.
Next payment into Loan Pay Down Fund will be from bottoming out our Paypal account, so roll on that day!
Hope everyone's managed a decent day,
F x

foxgloves

Hi Debtbusters,
Had intended to do a bit more out in the veggie garden than I actually achieved, but was pleased to see the first sweetcorn seedlings just poking through. Such a lovely crop to grow & cook fresh from the plant.
I got side-tracked in the kitchen this afternoon, but all good stuff. I doubled up on the pasta bake for tonight & made an extra one for the freezer. Based them on a chunk of leftover chorizo & a couple of unused peppers I sliced & froze a couple of weeks ago. We've always got onions, garlic, herbs, celery, frozen peas, cheese, tinned tomatoes, etc, so it's an economical use-it-up meal.
Well, I went a bit all smug Mrs Money Saver then & decided to tackle the extra pack of mince I bought yesterday when I saw it was only £1.79 for 500g. Froze half of it to make a chilli & turned the other half into two big juicy quarter-pounders. I didn't do anything lah-di-dah fancypants with them, just a bit of finely chopped red onion, some dried winter savoury, which I grow in my herb bed, a dash of soy & worcester sauce & a bit of seasoning. Also frozen, so that's two days of useful meals in there for future meal plans.
Halo still glimmering so filled up all our tiny plastic snack boxes with dried fruit ready for packed lunches. So much quicker just to grab one out of the cupboard & much cheaper to buy the reusable boxes once (pound shop) & fill with value dried fruit than the little already-filled branded boxes from the supermarket.
Final job was mixing up a sourdough loaf which I'll bake tomorrow first thing, then a quick move around in the freezer to check what needs using up.
Eeeeeuuww.....cat is licking my leg. Time to go!
Hope everyone's had a good day.
F x

foxgloves

So today, I had two meetings which I was expecting to be very difficult. They weren't as bad as anticipated & I enjoyed walking around town looking in the shops while waiting for mr f to finish work for a lift home. Since the LBM, I rarely go shopping without a mission. I paid some cash into the bank & bought a couple of well-priced birthday cards from a little indie shop. I also bought a new snappy collar for our cat, as his current one is quite stiff & is rubbing his skin. Apart from that, I just enjoyed looking round......but honestly, the stuff I thought about buying......
* a bra (why? Only recently had 2 nice new ones)
* a nice A4 notebook.(have a lovely unused one from Christmas).
*a set of 30 different coloured reels of sewing thread (I've only actually run out of black & white!)
*Bubble bath (we have half a bottle on the go & a full unopened one in my toiletries stash).
*a packet of sparkly pipecleaners (what was that all about?)
*a cauliflower (having already a. Done the meal plans b.Already done grocery shopping & c. Definitely no cauliflowers required!)
So I'm grateful to be several years past the LBM, otherwise I might be sitting here now in a new bra sewing glittery pipecleaners to a large brassica! So funny wandering around asking myself why I was even semi-contemplating any of this daft miscellany of stuff. I guess it's that whole thing of not having a defined purpose, so the act of 'shopping' became an activity in its own right.
But I honestly did return home only with 2 birthday cards, cat collar & a paying-in receipt from the bank!
Anyone else find that wandering around town without a mission results in some odd temptations?
F x

foxgloves

1LL - Yes, it's funny how so many unplanned spends contribute to busting both the budget & the calorie allowance!
I'm ok with 'just looking' on a shopping trip if it is still a 'mission'. i.e I could set out to look for, try on & price up a new top or a coat without being tempted to spend off list, even if I had no intention of actually buying the item that day. I think it's the pootling around the shops with no mission at all which is where silly stuff starts to look tempting. Absolutely LOADS of my pre-LBM spending was racked up in this way. Shops, garden centres, craft markets, antique & vintage fairs......oh dear, the shabby chic vintage syuff could really be a 'debtisode' for another day......

foxgloves

Redrose - I'm glad you are feeling inspired. If anyone had told me 10 or 20 years ago that I would turn into a sensible budgeting person, I'd have laughed all the way to the cashpoint! Hope you are progressing your money saving plans/budget. Best time to get a real grip is pay-day so you can see exactly what your true position is & can work out the new month's budget based on what you have. Of course it can take more than a month to get out of overdraft if you have one of those, but it's still possible to put a plan in place to reduce it each month. Finally getting rid of my overdraft (which I'd had since I was 19) was such a key marking point because from then on, ALL my salary was available each month, instead of a big chunk of it disappearing straight into a black hole.
Good luck with it, anyway. It truly is possible to change.

Hopeless_Case

foxgloves wrote: »

Afternoon Debtbusters,
Well, it took a couple of days longer than I expected, but that Paypal payment finally rocked up in our account today & I transferred all £84 of it to the Loan Pay-Down Fund, which is now up to over £600.....or ten times more than it was in December. This £84 is a definite reminder that every little helps, as it's made up from all sorts of little bits & bobs - the biggest amount was £40 from Prolific Academic surveys, but the rest was made up from a couple of ebay sales, selling one of my little hand-crafted items & selling a few old books & CDs to Ziffit. I've dropped another box of Ziffit sales off for Collect+ today......only around £9's worth, but all these bits & pieces do add up. They certainly added up back during the Spendy Decades when my money was busy flowing out in the wrong direction, so it's got to be true the other way round too.
Oh, I've remembered I said I'd share a few more stories of when, back in the day, the 'light bulb' flickered for a moment before being extinguished in a haze of shopping. I've kept a journal for a lot of my adult life, so flicking through those, it's so easy to see that there were times I was worried about lack of money, but not enough to sustain an LBM longer than a couple of days. Oh well, that can be a 'debtisode' for another day, as I need to get this sourdough bashed up & put to prove, & to get on with a few kitchen jobs.
Hope everyone is having a productive week. If not, try not to worry too much, there's another week coming, & you can start again on Monday.
F x

Loving the diary

I had a really big sort out last year and made about £200 by selling old books and DVDs to Ziffit, Zapper and Momox - I found that if you tried the bar code in each one, prices varied wildly, eg 10p on one, another not interested and £4 on another. I got rid of all the books I did't want, some from right back to the 80s, some of which got a surprising amount. Our kids had all left home fairly recently and left books and DVDs they didn't want, so I sold boxes full. It was a bit law of diminishing returns though, by the end I was left with books I was being offered pennies for and couldn't make the minimum amount without way crashing the maximum weight, but it was fun for a while and all went off a credit card

Redrose

I can not wait for Payday, not that I am that skint, but I want to get a real good start on my new adventure, Friday I found a 2018 diary at work, that had not been used, ask the boss, if I could have it - so I have a new budget busting book ( at no cost to me ) normally I would buy a lovely fancy book, but a book is a book after all, - going to use it to write down all my out goings DD etc. incomes, also going to use it to write down my social dates so it will make it easier to budget for nights out,


Already set my food budget at £50.00 for 2 me and dh, and 3 fur babies (50.00 cash in a separate purse), going to set my spends at £100.00, but will reduce this at a latter date.....


I actually went into town centre yesterday need to buy a birthday card, went into shop brought card and came home, normally would have been into clothes shops looking for new outfit for party. Sorted out my wardrobe and hey ho found a lovely summers dress and once rocked up with a few bangles and necklace, dh said I looked stunning.......


I need now to sort out of dvds, and cd, to see how much I can make from them........


Have a great day everyone, the sun is shining and life is beginning to look very rosy ......


one more thing before I go hubby, decided to tackle our rotten window, cost to replace £500.00 - old house old sash windows........ as done a pretty good job, at a total cost of just under £100.00, I am well and truly happy...... now for the next 5 windows xxxxx

*vamps

Hello. Very long time lurker here. Ive read your thread all the way through and really admire your money saving lifestyle. Had to poke my head out in to the sunshine to ask.. please how do you pickle courgettes and what's your recipe for garlic flat breads please.