Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Blackcats

Wow - you are a busy lady!  

Going back to the posts a few days ago, I'm another one who thought it's good money management to buy more to get free postage.  Just a couple of weeks ago I had an email from m and s offering me the chance to get a beauty bag apparently worth £115 For £15 (can't remember exactly) if I just spent £25.  I wanted that beauty bag because it was such a bargain 🤔 even though I didn't even know what some of the items in it were!!! Of course it didn't mean just spending £15 because I needed another £25 to even qualify for the bargain beauty bag.  Nearly fell for the marketing, very nearly .... 😱

foxgloves

Blackcats - I had an email about that offer too. I almost looked at it, then decided not to open it. I know that an apparent £115 worth of beauty gubbins for £15 is a deal which sounds incredibly good, but as you quite rightly say, it was a £25 spend plus £15, so £40 in total. If I have £40 to spend on beauty products, it is more valuable to me to buy a couple of full size products I use regularly, such as favourite moisturisers or something lovely to go in the bath. I'm sure the box would have been very nice to unpack & explore, but I'm not all that bothered about lots of mini-sizes & having one-off things which I probably wouldn't buy again, not to mention make-up colours that might not be my choice. I'd get more out of spending the same money on stuff I love or have been wanting to try for a long time. Back in the day, of course, that box would already have arrived at my door - another addition to the permanent overdraft of The Spendy Years! 
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sweet Peas,
I have just sat down with a coffee after quite a productive day on the domestic front. It's all been very 'old-style' here this morning. I've baked bread & cooked the beetroots our friends brought from their allotment when they came over for a BBQ at the weekend. They also brought a cabbage (now shredded, blanched & frozen ready for a roast dinner) & raspberries which with a dollop of Skyr provided a nice summery dessert on Sunday. Our own veggie plot is progressing well. Today I've picked lettuce, the last of the rocket, courgettes, 1 kg rhubarb, spring onions & basil. I've made the rhubarb into compote which did lunch & three containers for the freezer. I've done three loads of laundry, all blowing dry for free on the whirlygig & I've cut up an old worn bath towel into cleaning cloths, as I find these more effective than plenty of purpose-made bought ones, with towelling fabric being scrubby enough to remove dirt & absorb spills, but not abrasive. I can't think that I'd ever spend out money on cleaning cloths now, unless I genuinely had nothing suitable to recycle. 
I've updated the grocery budget & paid off a 'just for points' credit card in full. It suddenly dawned on me when I saw the calendar today that tomorrow is my mid-month budget check-in morning, so I wanted to get everything straight for that. I updated my column on the 'Personal Spends' section of the spreadsheet too, so hopefully tomorrow's budget check-in will be trouble-free (famous last words!) I finished listening to the last bit of my audiobook while I was messing around with rhubarb & cabbage and then finished reading my library book while I was eating my lunch, so I started a bag of returns now that libraries are open again.
My next task this afternoon is to get my seed box out & do new sowings of lettuce, spring onions & radishes. Then I shall fetch the secateurs & have a pootle (that is one of OBL's words, usually applied to her chickens!) around the garden with a trug, deadheading & cutting a few perennials down to encourage more flowers next month. I also need to make a pasta bake for tonight's meal. I have some leftover bacon rashers from the freezer, red onions, our home grown garlic, basil & courgettes as well as the surplus peppers I chopped & froze last week, so it will hopefully be a nice tasty one for very little effort or expenditure. I would like to finish knitting my 2nd mitten tonight & to chose some colours from my yarn stash for the next pair. 
OK, time to collect the shed key & get on with that seed sowing.
Cheers all......is anyone else feeling like they could do with a really good productive week? That's what I am aiming for, anyway. And if I could find an hour to sort out a colour on my yukky roots, I'm sure that would lift my mood to a quite ridiculous degree!
F x

foxgloves

Hello m'dears,
I feel ridiculously exhausted tonight - I'm ready for bed, the make-up is off & the night cream is on & hopefully doing its stuff! You see, I had a sensibly productive morning (skyped my sis, put a colour on my yukky roots, did my mid-month budget check-in & vacuumed downstairs), but after lunch I went crackers! I fetched a trug & my secateurs ready for my planned afternoon of picking a bit of veg, deadheading & tidying. I did pick a pattypan squash, a few courgettes, spring onions, coriander, beans & a cuke, but then I was done with being Mrs Sensible. There is a terribly overgrown area where we had a diseased tree removed earlier this year. The tree stump has put out heaps of suckers which were up to my waist. It is in the centre of an old circular bed edged with half-sunk fancypants beer bottles which had become overgrown with a thatch of the most annoyingly spready weeds. Well, this area has been annoying me for ages, so I fetched another 3 trugs & dived in. Managed to wrestle out all the beer bottles & chop down the mini-forest of suckers. All the too-ing & fro-ing to the garden waste wheelie ensured I achieved my daily step target. There are still heaps of weeds to remove but I just about wore myself out! Found enough energy to cook up prawn skewers & veggie couscous and to chuck a packed lunch together but that's me done! My backside is now welded to the sofa until further notice.
Hope everyone is ok. Any thoughts, dear readers, about compulsory masks in shops? I think I will feel safer going out & about if people are wearing them & wish there had been a damn sight less dithering about implementing this ruling, which could have been in place much earlier. Am.interested to hear orher people's views. 
F x

Kantankrus_Mare

Sounds like you've had a busy constructive day Foxgloves!!
Face coverings being compulsory........hmmm.  Bit late in my opinion. They should have done this as soon as we went into lockdown. Of course....I will wear one when doing the weekly shop but its not going to encourage me to go to other shops. The cynic in me thinks that the government may be thinking it will also put people off non essential shopping and thats why they have given a week on Friday as the day to bring this in. Would make anyone that wants to visit a non essential shop without wearing a face covering, go within the next 10 days which would give a boost to the economy. I may be way off the mark but thats the cynic in me. 

HairyHandofDartmoor

I agree with you that I'll feel a lot safer in shops if I'm not the only person wearing one, so I'm pleased with the mask ruling. 

Blackcats

I will comply with the requirement to wear a mask like I've tried to comply with what's been asked of me during the pandemic and I think many of us stick to the rules even if we question some of the rationale.  someone in front of me in the checkout queue today was ranting and saying he wouldn't wear one and no-one could make him.  Good job he didn't need to wear full PPE for 12 hour shifts for the last 3 months is all I can say.  I find it strange that we have so much notice of a rule change, surely if masks are needed in shops next week then they must be needed in shops this week? 🤔

PurpleFairy26

I’m happy the rule has been bought in. Obviously you’ll always get people who won’t comply but the more that do the safer it’ll be when I return to shops. They say the delay in date is so people can get organised but if they’d announced it during lockdown for when shops opened that would have been sufficient notice, surely 🤷🏻‍♀️

Toni'sfriend

It's been in place here in Scotland since last week and I think generally most people are complying at least in the bigger shops (as far as I'm aware but I'm avoiding  anywhere that isn't strictly necessary) but I've been told in two smaller shops that it's ok for me not to wear it. One as they are only letting two people in at a time (not sure that's a good reason or correct) and one who didn't give a reason why it was ok (won't be going in there again). I think I might be exempt from wearing one because I have asthma but I'll continue to do so. The only thing is my glasses steam up and I can't see. I'm thinking I might try a buff/tube type thing instead of a mask. It's a bit uncomfortable to wear but if medical advice that it's necessary what's a bit of discomfort?

I agree that this should have been brought in much sooner and I don't really understand the "need to get organised" thing.You don't need to buy a mask or even make one yourself. Something like a scarf covering nose and mouth is apparently adequate. I think the cynic in me probably agrees with you,  Kantankrus_Mare.

Baileys_Babe

I am pleased that we are now being instructed to wear face coverings. IMO it should have been since the beginning of lockdown.
I will feel safer when most people are complying, I have been surprised at how few people have been wearing face covering for the last few weeks.