Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Oh what a day of every kind of weather imaginable - that's what we've had here today. Our village is back on flood alert, as is Mr F's work, although at the moment, the grey overhung sky has broken into blue & the sun is actually trying to wiggle a couple of rays out. It has chucked it down all night & this morning I found that we'd had a bit of water ingress above the landing window frame. It's never happened before, so I expect there has been some horizontal rain pounding it overnight. Mr F reckons he can sort it by waving some sealant about, so that will hopefully be easy enough. He had to work today, which didn't really matter as the event we were planning to go to today was cancelled due to flooding, so I've been upstairs in my cosy little HQ room (it even says 'HQ' on the door) progressing a big project & have done very little on the job front. I've got a granary loaf just proving before it goes in the oven & I've put some steak & kidney in the slow cooker - well, the smell of that is doing our cat's head in! He is walking up & down sniffing the air, looking at me expectantly - I'm sure he thinks I'm doing him a special dinner, instead of his usual pouch of stinky commercial meat bits!
I do intend to put the washer on timer to take advantage of the Economy 7 tariff overnight, but as I've already nobbled Mr F to make parsnip mash to go with the steak & kidney, I shall enjoy an evening with my magazine, book & maybe knitting. 
Oh, & something which fair excited me first thing.......I peeped in my little electric propagator & discovered that there are FIVE tiny chilli seedlings up - the lemon ones, so a big 'yay' to that! Must get a few more seeds sown over the coming week.
Stay cosy,
F x

Honeysucklelou2

I love that moment every year, when the first seeds germinate. I have some sweet peas that have germinated and am always glad when I see them! Happy sowing!

foxgloves

It's the simplest of things, Honeysucklelou, just nature doing its job, but so cheery. I love seed sowing - so much promise in every tiny blob.
F x

Kantankrus_Mare

A big thank you to you all for your kind words. Its not until something like this happens that you realise what people go through. You really must have had a tough few years Foxgloves and not helped by living at a distance. Its going to be after the funeral that my Dad is really going to feel it. 
Thanks again all of of you....I know we dont actually "know" each other but I find this thread one of the most supportive on MSE and just a very nice place to come to. Xx

Onebrokelady

Kantankrus_Mare said:

A big thank you to you all for your kind words. Its not until something like this happens that you realise what people go through. You really must have had a tough few years Foxgloves and not helped by living at a distance. Its going to be after the funeral that my Dad is really going to feel it. 
Thanks again all of of you....I know we dont actually "know" each other but I find this thread one of the most supportive on MSE and just a very nice place to come to. Xx

Just wanted to say I'm sorry to hear about your mum 😟 take care xx

foxgloves

Yes, Kantankrus, after somebody close dies, it is one big whirlwind of getting all the necessary admin & funeral planning tasks done, then once that's out of the way, you sort of realise that it is only the big task list that has gone, you have still got all the feelings to deal with from actually losing the family member & helping the people left behind. If your Dad lives locally, it will be easier from a practical point of view. We managed all the travelling. 150-mile round trip doesn't sound too bad, but it was having to do it so regularly & worrying about not being able to get there promptly in any emergency or if the situation worsened. You are right, it was a very difficult two years, & I did find good support from people in real life & my virtual friends on here. Sometimes the anonymity on here is nice......it is with the debt-busting as well. My friends & family know I've been a spender, but I certainly haven't shared with them all the stories of me at my worst, like I have on here with my 'Debtisodes'.
It is genuinely nice to hear that my diary is a nice place to visit. That being said, I'd better get today's post on.
I'll just be a minute.....
F x

foxgloves

OK, back again. Hello readers & can I just begin by saying I do hope none of you have been flooded over the weekend. I woke up today to the news that our village AND town are now on flood alert. It's the level of alert which means it is expected imminently rather than it 'could theoretically' flood & no sooner had I read this latest update than I heard that one of the arterial routes in & out of our town had been shut because of the depth of the water. Mr F texted me when he got to work to say that all the fields are underwater again - those poor farmers - the fields around here hadn't really properly dried out from the last big floods in the Autumn. In our village, the warning is for two streets right next to the river which always get it, but also for 'the area around ******** Lane'. That always sounds worrying because our road leads onto that lane, but thankfully the flood water hasn't got further than the far end of some of their back gardens in all the time we've lived here. I'm sure it will eventually reach our road at some point over the next decade though, with the climate emergency being well & truly underway.
And now back to money saving. Every Monday morning, I do a quick Budget update up at my desk. I update my grocery budget tracker with the weekend's food shopping & do any transfers from Savings Pots for other categories of spend which may be necessary to keep everything straight. I also did my mid-month Budget Check-in at the same time to make sure everything is going ok & that there aren't any nasty surprises. Well, I was getting on with that, stopped for a coffee (we run on caffiene in our house) & it struck me that I had transferred £224 out of two Savings Pots to our current account (House & Garden Pot & Car Maintenance Pot) to pay for two new tyres & a bulb for some or other bit of lighting gizmo on the car and the new bedside lights & spare bulbs from the Swedish Emporium. No problems. Both Savings Pots had sufficient funds for these purchases & all went smoothly with the transfer & updating of my Savings Pots spreadsheet. But it got me thinking how Savings Pots, while they sound almost scarily sensible, actually FACILITATE being able to buy things & especially to replace stuff we need from our own funds. You see, that £224 hasn't put any kind of dent in my budget because the relevant pots covered it. Now, the old me wouldn't have had any Emergency Fund, let alone anything put by for essential car maintenance like tyres so they'd have gone 'Boom' straight onto my everlasting overdraft or a card. Ditto the lights......& back in the Spendy Years, there is NO WAY I'd have paid a visit to the Swedish Emporium & only come out with a couple of bedside lights & a few bulbs. I wouldn't have deemed that level of purchase worthy even of the petrol money to get there! But just looking at the spending we did do - £224, including the new tyres - yes, that would have gone on credit, then another 3 similar amounts (& we all know how very easy it is to do) unbudgeted for over the month & that would have been close on £1k added to the dastardly debt total. You know, I occasionally look at people's SOAs & there are often expensive holidays, eye-wateringly expensive weddings & all sorts of things I would never have actually spent my money on, but I still had decades of debt, just from frittering on stuff I took a fancy to, twinned with never ever budgeting. That m'dears, as we all know, some of us to our cost, is often all it takes. I chose to overspend my income every month without fail. If anyone had suggested savings pots or an emergency fund, I'd have said I didn't earn enough. What a load of rubbish. Savings Pots rock & now that I've discovered them, I'm not giving them up in a hurry!
Well, it sounds like the wind is getting up again, so I must pop down to empty the compost bucket before it gets too wild out there.
Stay warm all,
F x

Blackcats

Kantankerous - my sympathies - it's a very sad and difficult time.  This is indeed a very nice thread.
i hope the flood waters recede around foxgloves' town and that the impact is minimal for those affected.  

Foxgloves, it was so easy to spend money on credit cards and into the huge overdraft.  A bit here, a bit more there and a small fortune had been spent.  At one stage, my overdraft limit was £1500 and most of it was used most of the time.  I'm sure I had somehow managed to disconnect from the reality of spending money that wasn't even mine.  I rarely went to the Swedish shop but if I had I can guarantee I would have filled my trolley with lots and lots of essential "bargains" 🤔

foxgloves

Yes, I think it was simply so easy to access loans, cards & overdrafts, Blackcats, that they were regarded as part of our income. Mr F used to be a classic example. I think I've mentioned before that he'd say we could afford some or other big purchase because he'd "got £2000'......but it hadn't. He wasn't lying to me, he meant he'd got £2k of credit 'spare' on one of his cards. He genuinely saw that as available funds, which is just how the card providers like it, I imagine.
I had a an awful revolving loan from my bank back in the day, called a 'Flexiloan'. Did you have one of those? With hindsight, I suspect they were designed with the financially incontinent in mind!
If my bank had suddenly recalled my overdraft, like they do nowadays, I'd have been right in the doo-doo.
F x

PurpleFairy26

Oh yes I remember flexiloans. I had one of those and also a cheque book that meant I could write cheques where the balance would go to a CC balance rather than out of my account 😲☹️ Not good, I’m glad there has been a restriction on these things as although no one was forcing me to use them, it was very normalised back then. 

Hope flood waters are staying away @foxgloves