Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

savingmore - I like pickled foods too. When our pear tree crops well (not this year), I often make pickled pears. Somebody I worked with many years ago once gave me a jar, as she made them each year & I thought they were so lovely to add to salads, etc, & also liked them with ham & various cheese & meats, so as soon as we moved somewhere with a pear tree, I started making my own. I have made a few jars of courgette pickles recently as we are overwhelmed with courgettes atm & we like these on burgers, BBQ'd meats, etc. 
Weeding is very therapeutic. I used to go at it hammer & tongs and get very frustrated with myself when I couldn't clear a whole garden in a couple of days. Now I take a much more zen approach. I choose which area is to be weeded next, then concentrate on doing it really well.  These small areas are not always situated next to one another so strangely, the effect can be that it actually appears as though I've weeded more of the garden than I actually have!
F 

Toni'sfriend

I've never had pickled pears. They sound lovely. I once had pickled walnuts with goats cheese and honey for a dessert. It sounded odd but it was truly amazing. I found a cheese shop in the Lake District that sold them and I have two jars. You've just reminded me about them. Must take them out and start adding them to salads.

foxgloves

Oh my days, today seems to have just totally disappeared up its own what-not!! Where HAS the day gone? Well, I haven't spent any money, so that's one thing, I suppose. What have I done? I've done 2 loads of laundry & pegged them out in the sunshine for free drying, I've baked a batch of wholemeal bread rolls, I've done 'rubber pork duties' (not anywhere near as kinky as it sounds, sadly!) & sliced up sufficient leftover meat for hot pork & apple sauce rolls tonight, I've blanched & frozen some more french beans & I've continued with tidying things away to reduce chaos levels as much as poss once the builders get cracking. I've put a colour on my ucky roots too, as was feeling distinctly faded....not that I am going out anywhere now that they have been tarted up, lol!
I've also read the energy meters, uploaded them & already received our August statement. That bit of debt on our energy account had become a credit balance by June's statement & is now sitting at + £142. I'm pleased with that, as we are unlikely to go too mad with expensive things like heating for a few weeks yet & that should mean another £40 or so added onto this credit balance ready for the winter bills. I've checked online banking for a transaction which went awol yesterday due to some or other tech problem.....it's still a bit too soon for it to show up, so will look again tomorrow. I am pretty sure that the transaction didn't complete, but I am not going to mess things up by assuming so & making a duplicate payment. Things can be a little slow to appear around the weekend. I've also caught up with some surveys, taken part in a couple of exercises for a customer banking forum I've been recruited onto & done a little general admin.
Next task is making some coleslaw.....we've been buying it recently, but Mr F has decided he prefers my chunky home made version. When he gets in later, we plan to remove everything from our rear lobby as the builders will require access from Wednesday. It's getting tricky to find places to store everything, as they will need access to every room except the conservatory at some point & I don't want to fill that too full of bulky items because it is likely to be the room I use the most while the work is ongoing. It's funny, but when I was thinking of everything I need to do before the work starts, I heard my Mum's voice in my head saying 'Make sure you remember to fill the kettle & a couple of clean buckets with water'. She did this when they were having any work done which might have resulted in the mains water being turned off for a while, as having buckets on standby meant they could still flush the loo & they didn't have to go without a cup of tea! Needless to say, I now have 2 large hob kettles & two buckets at the ready! There is some gas work to be done too, but in any emergency which meant the gas (oven & hob) & electricity (coffee machine & slow cooker) had to be switched off simultaneously, we still have the back-up of our little camping stove & gas cylinders. You know how we run on coffee in this house.......all bases need to be covered, lol!
Well, I must go & fetch the laundry in. Tomorrow is our final day before disruption, but it will be so worth it to get these improvement jobs/upgrades done & once they are, we can move onto the next stage which will be plastering, decorating, carpets........& oh, it almost brings tears to my eyes to say it.......cat adoption. We still miss our old fur friend terribly, but we know that the Rescues are full of cats just like him who have had a rotten start in life & we look forward to welcoming somebody else to a new life with us. It probably won't all be finished until January/February, but with all the work on the house (& probably front drive) finally out of the way, adopting a new whiskered individual will be the cherry on the icing.
Anyway, must go....hope you've all had a decent start to the week.
F x

foxgloves

Toni'sFriend - I love pickled walnuts! In our family, they were always on the table for Boxing Day lunch, to have with cold turkey & ham, etc. They were quite divisive, with half of us loving them & half not even being able to cope with the concept of them! I've always loved them, they are so unusual, I think because of them being traditionally pickled in their shells, which go soft in the vinegar. I still always track down a jar every Christmas. It wouldn't be the same somehow without them. Mr F would rather eat his own feet than even try one, the big chicken!
F x

carrielovesfanta

Very excited for your works starting Foxgloves!

Just to say that I don't have anything useful to add re Kale. OH HATES it with a passion so I would probably find myself divorced if I tried to grow it!

foxgloves

Thanks, CLF. We are excited too x

foxgloves

Hello Diary Friends, 
Well, it was Day 1 of current building work today & it all seems to have gone smoothly. We have a smart new radiator in the lounge already & all sorts of shiny pipework going in. I had naively thought I'd decamp to the conservtory for the next couple of weeks, as it's the only room not having any work done, but I had overlooked the amount of kit we would need to store - not just all the radiators & pipework, wood, etc, but all the assorted gubbins & power tools required to tackle plaster boarding & plastering, floor tiling, external render removal, joinery, plumbing, etc, etc. So today I've mostly been in the garden. I actually feel completely exhausted, which is ridiculous as I haven't done much at all. I've picked 450g of beans & 600g courgettes, while Mr F rounded up another big basket of apples brought down by yesterday's gales. I prepped & froze the beans, then sat on our courtyard & wrote a long letter to an old friend. I had a little trot out to the postbox & started getting a box of stuff together to send to my sister (yay to a bit more decluttering!) Oh, & I nobbled Mr F about his life insirance policy, which is something we've meant to look at since we paid off our mortgage. We needed to weigh up whether it is worth continuing to pay for the policy or if it would be more valuable to us to add the money to savings. It seems that because we were unexpectedly able to pay off our mortgage 8 years early, the amount the policy will pay out over the next few years should something awful happen would be a lot more than we would accrue by saving the money instead. The contrary argument, of course, is that hopefully I won't need to claim on the policy, it ends in 2027, which would have been the end of our mortgage, so we will have paid in money each month between now & then which would be our money in a savings account if we didn't have the policy. I think none of us really like discussing the pros & cons of life assurance because it involves thinking about horrible things happening. At one point, Mr F said "Well what would you get, if say, I were to go under a bus next year?' I looked at the figures & said' £29,000, I think'. So he said, 'Well how would that help you, because that's what you need to think about" It really puts it in the cold light of day, doesn't it, put like that? I wouldn' t need the money for its intended purpose of paying off the mortgage, but it would help while I sorted myself out. We've decided to keep paying the policy but felt we did the right thing to review it.
Well, I fancy a tuna melt jacket potato tonight, so that is exactly what I'm going to have. Mr F is busy constructing an Epic Man Stew.
Love F x

Baileys_Babe

I agree it needed reviewing. I also think it is needed you are dependent on Mr F. income if he dies you will still need money to buy food, pay the bills etc. Does he have a death in service clause in his contract? I did in my last post. It would be worth checking if he does.
You could probably only live on £29k for a couple of years at most unless you were extremely frugal.
I hope you never have to claim on the policy but better to be safe.

foxgloves

Bailey'sBabe - Yes, it did need reviewing. He does have a 'death in service' clause in with his pension package at work & we feel it is generous enough for me to get back on my feet should the worst happen, along with the life policy. At least we have savings now, we're mortgage-free & I have a frozen pension pot I could techically access, although my intention is to leave that in place till retirement age. It is frozen, but it is still increasing a little each year.
We are definitely going to keep paying the life policy. As for frugal...... I know I can do that as I orchestrated our change in attitude & oversaw us paying off £35k of debt. I know I have those skills now.
And talking of which..... it's my Big Budget Day today. Am just waiting for the builder to arrive & then my trusty money book, spreadsheets & calculator will be coming out. 
F x

Baileys_Babe

That is good to hear that you have more provision than the life assurance policy.

Enjoy big budget day, will you be able to be in your HQ or will you be decamping elsewhere?