Put away your purse & become debt-averse

PurpleFairy26

Glad you were able to help your relative even from a distance. I’m sure she would thoroughly enjoy receiving and reading your card too. I don’t use the post too much but I’m with you, I will still use it when I need too unless I’m told not to. I posted a letter to an aunt recently as she can’t talk over the phone much these days and I knew she would enjoy it. Like you, I’ll write another in a couple of weeks. 

Your garden sounds lovely, I need some more colour in ours so that’s the plan over the course of this year. 

foxgloves

Well, we are limited in what we can do from a distance, Purps, but it was better than nothing. An additional problem is that this elderly lady has been relying on somebody on her street to do her shopping while her other support has all stopped due to Covid19. He is only prepared to go as far as a small corner shop, so she can't get all the things she needs & he hasn't been to see her for quite a few days so he may be self-isolating. But my sis & I feel there could be some low-level rip-off going on there, as he has apparently twice also asked for money......as in not for the shopping, but for himself & a relative. Not a lot of money at all, but it is still outside what I'd expect of a neighbour doing an old lady a favour. I wouldn't describe this relative as naive exactly, but it wouldn't be the first time she's been pressurised into handing over money. All we can do is warn her again, but if it falls on deaf ears, there isn't anything more we can do.
F 

foxgloves

Morning Daffodils,
Such a bank of dark grey cloud over us first thing that I wished I hadn't put an overnight load of laundry on, but it brightened up quickly & although there's a chilly wind, it isn't at all a bad day weather-wise. I've been quite productive so far. Mr F has had to go into work to enact his weekly emergency measures, but I am always up early anyway. Staying in bed tends to give me a headache, so I'd prefer to get up & at it.
Two loads of laundry pegged out to dry on the whirlygig for free. Greenhouse seedlings & the planty babies I potted up yesterday all watered. Bread dough proving - home made pizza tonight & I will use the remaining dough to make rolls & cross them off the shopping list for next time, as I can freeze the spare ones. Pause to crank up the coffee machine, then up to my desk to sort out my Monday morning financial updates & banking. No nasty surprises, but I'm going to need to keep tighter control on the grocery budget as the month develops. I did allow a bit more for groceries this month to allow a few treats for Easter but that isn't really the issue. I think the supermarket shortages have led to more erratic buying on our part. I expect there are others feeling the same? It isn't that we have been overspending on panic buying, not at all. It is more a case of seeing 2 or 3 items which we would normally buy but have been unable to get for a while, so we'd buy 2 or 3 rather than just one, in case supplies remain low. For a while, we felt that a more expensive supermarket in our town had implemented by far the best social distancing/Covid precautionary measures, so we elected to go there, rather than our more usual one. Pleased to say that similar measures are now in place across all of them, as far as Mr F could tell when he did our grocery shopping at the end of last week. I've also noticed how much of our remaining grocery budget is still in cash. I always make sure a proportion of it is in our petty cash purse for paying at local market stalls, but we didn't visit the market this week, & supermarkets are quite rightly preferring payment by card & contactless where possible atm. This won't be a problem, as I can recycle the petty cash into next month's 'Personal Spends' on my next Big Budget Day, if necessary. I've updated my grocery budget tracker sheet & divided by the remaining number of weekly grocery shopping visits (3) & we will be perfectly fine, but I intend to flag up with Mr F, who has taken on the role of 'Hunter' during these strange times, that we need to have a couple of weeks of nifty meal planning. My ideal would be to plan for a little grocery money left in the budget in case we see any flour. We would normally buy 2 bread flours & 1 plain flour per week, so our supplies are slowly dwindling. 
OK, time to stop for lunch......apart from topping my pizza & shaping the bread rolls, I have pretty much done all my chores for today, so I think I will dig out my box of Easter decorations, take the secateurs & go & find a suitably twiggy branch of something for making my Easter tree. It always goes in our front window, so it will be something nice & seasonal for people to spot when they are out on their one daily walk.
Take care all of you,
F x

DawnW

Definitely more erratic shopping here Foxgloves. No markets unfortunately, and relying more on the milkman who delivers some other things as well, and the corner shop in order to avoid the supermarkets as much as possible. Still, I did have a delivery from Asda last night, which I managed to secure about 3 weeks ago, and was able to add to it more recently. So no more shopping needed for a while. I shan't book another delivery (even if that were an option at the moment) as I feel that I would rather slots went to more vulnerable people. Flour is still hard to come by - I understand from an article I saw elsewhere that it is the packaging / packing lines for the 1.5 kg bags which are the issue rather than a shortage of actual flour. Pity the supermarkets don't use their common sense and stock some larger bags (no shortage of those apparently) which would at least help the regular bakers anomgst us - though I suppose some people would buy them, not use them and then throw them out, leading to more waste  

foxgloves

I saw that article too, Dawn. As a home bread baker, I'd happily buy a sack of flour. It sounds as though milling companies aren't able to sell as much to their usual corporate clients due to so many shutdowns. But here are heaps of home bakers who can't get flour for love nor money! If they could just somehow forge an emergency partnership with a supermarket chain on a click & collect basis, it would be mutually beneficial.
We do have good general food stores at home atm, but of course we haven't touched our emergency supplies. We are keeping those intact in case we go down with Covid & find ourselves unable to go out at all. We've a leg of lamb in the freezer for Easter so my intention is to stretch that to several meals, then add a couple of batch cooked things from the freezer plus a jacket potato night, & that will be next week's meal plan sorted. So next shopping trip should be mostly just fresh stuff.
Glad it's not just me finding grocery budgeting has gone a bit erratic!
F x

Tescodealqueen

You are right i have moved bits of money from several other pots to groceries this month as it does seem a bit hit and miss and we won't be meeting friends or celebrating Mr TDQs 70th birthday in any big way that we can see at the moment . We can't find flour at any of the shops we frequent.

PurpleFairy26

I can't find bread flour, but have managed to get plain - even got some delivered today on an online shop so now I'm very lucky. I bought some extra baking powder early on so I didn't have to worry about both SR and plain. Agree it's frustrating about the lack of bread flour in smaller bags. I don't see why it needs to be so difficult to get to the end users as there doesn't even seem to be the normal supply in the shops at the moment 🙁

PurpleFairy26

Oh and my grocery budget is higher than normal. Definitely noticing not using l1dl and shopping from multiple places and just having 1 delivery. But that said, I'm grateful for a) being able to afford this, I know many are not in that position and b) getting deliveries as I mustn't go to the supermarket 

HairyHandofDartmoor

I'm spending a lot more on food than usual too Foxgloves. This is for the same reasons as you; in case we become ill and can't go out and in case we can't get hold of something when we need it. I eat oats, berries, eggs, bread and milk every day and would feel lost without them, so need reliable stock of these items and don't want to miss a chance to buy them if I see them at the moment. Although the supermarket I went to today did seem to have plenty of everything.

NorthernSoulSouthernLife

Just popping in to  wish everyone well & hope you’re all keeping safe. 

I haven’t been around for a few days, struggling with grief & increasing anxiety.
anyhow I have a lot of catching up to do, hoping to be around a little more over the coming days .
NS x