Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Blackcats - You're right about energy billing. I decided to submit new readings as they stated (wrongly) that they hadn't received any from our household for ages. But did this clarify anything? No.... because today I received another bill..... the third one this week & the deficit on our account had increased again. I've come to the conclusion that this new company (a merger of 3 smaller ones) has set up its systems so that whenever a customer submits a set of meter readings, this automatically generates a statement for the account. This could be useful in terms of keeping tabs on things, so I'm going to keep a close eye on it for now. I did strongly suspect our DD had been cut too low last January. I would prefer it to increase than for our account to run up a black hole.
But yes, bah to energy companies anyway.
F x

foxgloves

And Wednesday night greetings to everyone else......
It's been a day of two halves today. Quite a leisurely morning pottering around gathering up clean laundry (not wanting to pay for a minute more heated airer time than necessary), tidying, making progress with my current research project, liaising about a family get-together at Easter.......then this afternoon, everything suddenly sped up with some of the planned work on our house. I rang a local firm I've used in the past to see if they would be interested in giving us a quote. Their boss was in the area & called round to peruse our list of jobs, said they can do all of them, measured up & discussed options, disappeared for half an hour for number crunching & came back with the quote. It was a fair price, less than we expected so I said we'd go ahead, & the work is being done next week! I was amazed but apparently December & January are a good time to book because most people don't think about exterior home improvements until at least Spring.
So it'll be a bit hectic next week, but how nice to be able to crack on so quickly. And I'm pleased to be using a genuinely local business & not, as I've mentioned before, one of these big national chains which advertise as though they are local, when they really are not.
A busy day of domestic stuff planned for tomorrow, including my mid-month budget check-in, pantry & freezer forensics & hopefully some batch-cooking.
Hope I shall have both a money saving & productive day to report.
F x

wishingthemortgaheaway

January is also a good time to get work done as people are too busy in the run up to Christmas to organise anything and too poor in January to get work done

We had a quote for our dining room floor to be done just before Christmas, emailed Monday to accept (after working away last week) they started yesterday and finished today.

Can't imagine the rest will be that quick, but you never know

foxgloves

Wish - Yes, I think you're right about January, but it's played right into our hands. Our thinking was that if we got the smaller jobs out of the way & paid for, we'd know how much money is available for the more complicated renovations indoors. I'm trying to think positive, but guess I could have my head in my hands when we start getting quotes for that part of the work!
Oh well, we can but see how it goes.
F x

PurpleFairy26

Excellent work on arranging the work and it being done so quickly. Hope the indoor stuff happens as smoothly - can the same company do the indoor stuff or are they specialists?

Enjoy mid month check in - one of my more enjoyable days of the month :rotfl:

foxgloves

Purps - No, they can't do the indoor stuff, unfortunately. They do pretty much all the exterior types of rennovations you can think of, but not the sort of projects we badly need tackling indoors.
Re mid-month budget check-in.... Yes, it is well worth doing as if things are not on track, there are still two weeks left to pull the budget back into shape, or at least not let it slip any further. I can't think there are any nasty surprises waiting to be uncovered. My main thing at the moment is double-accounting to ensure that the funds ring-fence for home improvements remain separately budgeted. If there is a waiting list for a builder for the next stage, I will move this to savings as we may as well earn a tad of interest on it.
Anyway m'duck from dahn t'road, have finished a big mug of coffee. I think I'll just get tonight's planned meal out of the freezer, then go & clear the ironing pile as the rest of today's money saving jobs are very much kitchen-based.
F x

foxgloves

Oh well, what a dismally grey soggy day it has turned into here. I swear I spotted a tiny streak of blue sky first thing.....I think I must have been hallucinating! Never mind, I've spent my time doing a reasonably fair impression of a domestic goddess, albeit one that only managed moisturiser & mascara this morning, so is giving itself a bit of a shock every time it looks in the mirror, lol! Note to self - Be like Blackcats & make an effort to sparkle every day!
A thoroughly useful day, however. Had a scout around the kitchen to target use-it-ups - still hadn't got round to making the tuna & pea fishcakes because with plenty of leftovers making extra meals, they kept being pushed to the following week's meal plans. The spring onions bought for them were looking like they mightn't last much longer, so I made the fishcakes this morning & froze them. Two home grown squashes, chillies, ginger & the last of our green beans went with lentils, two lonely carrots & plenty of store cupboard ingredients to make a batch of Hairy Biker vegetable curry. While digging around in the bottom freezer drawer hoping to find green beans, I also found a 1lb bag of whole frozen tomatoes which I chucked in there while we had a bit of a glut over the summer. As we have plenty of milk & another 3 pints delivered tomorrow, I made a big pan of Cranks tomato soup. That just left my latest planned experiment with my sourdough starter. I'd already fed the jar, as have mixed the dough for a loaf to bake tomorrow, but if you make sourdough, you'll know that each time you go to feed the jar, you first pour off about half the existing starter. This generally goes down the sink, unless you have tightwad tendencies in which case you google around for things you can do with it! I've previously tried sourdough crackers......with various types of flavourings & sprinkles. They're fine, but fiddly & also have the habit of disappearing in a single evening, which won't help with my aim of being able to wear my denim tunic top again by Spring! I most often end up using a couple of big tablespoonfulls when making my ordinary yeasted wholemeal or granary rolls to give an extra flavour dimension, but a while back, I found a recipe online for using the throw-away sourdough starter portion to make pyclets. So I've tested that out today. Although it's mainly crumpets in the shops where we live, we border a county where pyclets seem to be the more local thing, so I have eaten them, know what they look/taste like, etc. The verdict? Well, they were extremely easy & must be one of the cheapest things I've ever made, but I couldn't describe the finished result as pyclets. I tried a warm non-toasted one straight off the griddle & a toasted one from under the grill, both with butter (in the interest of research, of course!) Yep, pleasant enough to eat, but I would describe them as more like blinis than pyclets. I can see a use for them, definitely. They would work as breakfast pancakes with fruit, honey & yoghurt or with savoury toppings for lunch. I'd also batch cook a whole load of them & use with nice fancypants little toppings on as part of a buffet, just as you would a blini. So very definitely not a pyclet in my opinion, but potentially a source of almost free blinis on a regular basis.
That was all much more fun that the mid-month budget check-in, which I've also done today. £65 out. Bah! And not in our favour. I did manage to account for £20 of it as our bank statement clearly shows that a direct debit has been taken twice. I got onto that straight away. Still £45 out, but you know, I'm not going to fret about it. January has been a funny old month for my accounting. There have been heaps of swaps between pots & other transfers, amounts paid off 'just for points' credits cards, etc, etc, & I think the most likely scenario is that I've paid something off or moved something as part of a complicated transfer & not accounted for what I've done in my Money Book. I think next month's budget should be less complicated, even though I am going to be double-accounting now that I have started paying for the programme of work we have planned on our house.
I think it's time to go & see what cat is doing. He woke up when he detected a whiff of tuna but zonked again once a flake had been proffered. It feels like time for the kettle to go on & for me to finish watching a TV programme.
Hope everyone's had a productive day - there's quite a wind getting up here too. I'm glad I don't need to go out tonight.
Cheers all,
F x

DawnW

It is horrible, cold and wet here today as well
Like the sound of tuna and pea fish cakes. Any chance of the recipe?

HairyHandofDartmoor

The weather has been AWFUL here too with torrential sideways rain :eek:. I got soaked just walking across the playground! It sounds like you got loads of really useful indoor jobs done .

PurpleFairy26

Top tip (unless you know this already...) if your budget is out by a number that is divisible exactly by 9 such as £45 there is a chance you have crossed a number over (can’t think of the fancy word for it) ie 23 but it should be 32... so possibly look out for that. I was an auditor in a former life and it’s amazing how many times that was the cause of someone else's adding up being out.