Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Thanks, HHoD. I will.....especially as it's Mr F's cooking night. He's busy constructing one of his epic cauliflower cheeses. He's using up some smoked cheddar which didn't even get opened at Christmas, so it should be an extra tasty one.
Yes, our lounge is very peaceful. It is only small, but sometimes that can make a room feel cosier, can't it? I'd like a woodburning stove in there, but now that I am sensible with money, I just can't commit to one until I know we will have the funds to pay for it after all the essential house improvement work is done. I am well aware that the old me would have whacked it straight on a credit card, but that is absolutely not going to happen these days!
F x

PurpleFairy26

Wood burner paid in full sounds lovely foxgloves glad you managed to get a leap start on the glasses fund. We too have lots of pots, I like juggling each month to see who gets what or where might need a little more. It really does work and I’m now up to about 10 from 1 in the first place. Enjoy your evening and hope the rest of your week is productive and frugal.

foxgloves

I have 10 as well, Purps. Mine are Car maintenance, House & garden, Clothes, Holidays, Leisure/entertainment, Meow fund, Presents, Household appliance replacement, Optician/dentist and Tech replacement.
I run a separate Emergency Fund as one of the key drivers behind these pots is that we don't end up using our EF for non-emergencies. My feeling is that lots of things - for example a new fridge to replace an old non-functioning one - is important & essential, but not really an emergency as such. I'm really trying to ring-fence our EF for those big emergencies where we'd struggle..... things like loss of income, serious storm damage to roof, that sort of stuff.
Yes, I agree the pots do seem to work well, so I'm going to continue running this system.
F x

cbsexec

I agree with you on food waste but how to educate our children not to recoil in horror if you offer them milk or yoghurt with a day to go on the date is a mamouth task!! But it goes out of date tommorrow is their cry - what do they think happens to it. Maybe it self destructs.


I love reading your diary - thank you for cheering me up so often.

foxgloves

cbsexec - Nice to hear that someone as opinionated as I am occasionally cheers someone up!
Agree with you re the dates on food. How daft is it that you can eat a yoghurt or an apple at 11.59 pm on the stated day, but not at 12.01!I mean, what is going to happen in that 2 mins? It's hardly going to morph from perfectly fine to eat into a seething mass of food poisoning organisms, is it? There are some foods I'd be very cautious about eating past their 'Use by' date, but really, these 'best befores' have turned us into a population unable to apply the most basic common sense food spoilage tests - appearance & smell. Added to that the fact that many folk seem to have no idea of how to turn leftovers into filling, tasty meals....... the money wasted on food being chucked out is unbelievable.
When your kids are responsible for their own food budgets in years to come, yoghurt on their last day might not be such a sad yukky prospect!
F x

stitching_witch

foxgloves wrote: »

Nice to hear that someone as opinionated as I am occasionally cheers someone up!

Haha Foxgloves, you always cheer me up!

foxgloves

Hi Stitchy,
I do? I didn't even know you read my diary! Ah well, no secrets......my Spendy Decades are completely out in the open on here. I'm a reformed character these days for sure!
F x

foxgloves

What a chill wind blowing around the corners of the house this evening. Cat has just gone out through his flap for the speediest ablutions imaginable & is back on his furry rug looking accusingly at me. What a tightwad Meowmy I am still not to have lit the fire yet!
Oh....manners.......I haven't even said 'Hello'......
Hi Everyone,
I honestly do not know where today has gone. It seems to have disappeared up its own wotnot in a puff of smoke! I didn't lie around in bed this morning - I never do - & got off to a good start, but the day feels as though it's nearly over & there's so much more I thought I'd do today.
Never mind, I haven't been idle. I've hung all the overnight laundry on the heated airer, Made marmalade with the oranges I prepared yesterday & prepped the rest of them for the final batch of marmalade I intend to jam tomorrow. I've baked bread & dinner is done because I just stuck everything in the slow cooker for chicken jalfrezi. I've sorted out car insurance renewal & tested our new printer which was pretending we had no wi-fi yesterday, which was a blatant lie. I've also been down to the bottom of the garden with a bucket of scraps for the compost bins. And this might sound 'proper tragic' but this was the nicest part of my day! OK, not the actual act of taking the lid off the bin & hurling the eclectic assortment of peelings & gunk within, but the meander down there. Our robin was darting about in the raised beds & one of the blackbirds was singing its socks off. And nature is working its magic in the garden.........our autumn sown garlic is coming up & the rhubarb has poked through a little more since last time I looked. There are several snowdrops out, an early narcissus, my Mum's lovely winter iris & the first clump of mini iris - variety 'Katherine Hodgkin' - one of my favourites because of its pretty markings. The winter jasmine is still covered in cheery bright yellow flowers & I managed to salvage my first purple primula from naughty beaks this afternoon too, as I looked up & there was a circle of about 7 little sparrows all sitting around the edge of my big terracotta witch hazel pot just starting a group peck-in. The autumn sown sweet peas in the greenhouse seem to be doing ok & we must really make inroads into eating the winter salads in there over the next 2 - 4 weeks (I may experiment with transplanting a few into an outdoor bed) as i shall soon need the space for all my seed trays.
So a little walk to the bottom of the garden & back just made my green fingers twitch to get started. Well, I think I shall just trot around the house & close all the curtains, light the fire (cat will be packing his spotted red hanky on a stick & leaving home if this doesn't happen very soon!) & decide what to do with my leisure time tonight. I had planned to knit some more of my gansey but I'm also reading a really good book, so it will be a toss-up between the two.
Keep warm!
F x

Blackcats

Always such a lovely description of your day. Cats are soooo superior aren't they. Mine circle like sharks from 5.30 onwards ready for their dinner at 6. It is not possible for them to get much closer to the radiator right now after a busy day of sleeping.

foxgloves

Oh they are, Blackcats. Loved the description of your felines 'circling like sharks'. Ours doesn't so much circle as adopt a kind of netball tactic. Now, we are of a very similar vintage & so I'm sure you'll recall a few fairly dire netball lessons with a sergeant major PE teacher yelling at you to 'mark the person you are supposed to be marking'. I never really saw a lot of point in it to be honest, but I do remember that it involved making a general nuisance of yourself in front of someone who was better at netball than you (in my case that was anyone as I regarded it as a monumental waste of my time & would rather 'forget my kit' & pick litter) to prevent them getting near a goal post or a useful person. Well, that is EXACTLY what our cat does! Once he's within a couple of hours of his dinner time (yes, he starts early), he is two steps ahead of you wherever you go. If you step to the right, so does he, if you move to the left, he's there. His whole method is that you simply can't go anywhere without seeing him smack in front of you. Eating his is no.1 top activity followed closely by snoozing.
F x