Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Oooh, Pixiehouse, won't it be lovely to get that card paid off? Not long now by the sounds of things! 
Woodpigeons can be a bit of a pain, can't they? We always seem to have a couple of nests these days & they can eat for Britain! I'm glad they can't perch on the bird feeders or they'd hoover everything in sight. 
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

kayannie said:

HairyHandofDartmoor said:

You're sounding very organised for Christmas 🎄 and I think the sweets in a pint glass idea is a good one. I love tulips so I must try and get hold of some bulbs 🌷. Is it too late to plant daffodil bulbs do you think? Our hungry slug multitudes ate all our colourful primroses last summer 😡 so I've given up buying them, which is a shame as I do like them.

I worked in a garden centre before I retired - any daffodil bulbs that didn't sell were planted out in the gardens surrounding the centre. I remember some being planted out in a patch of grass in January about 30 years ago, and they are still there flowering and looking beautiful every year. If planted late, they will probably flower later than usual for the first year.
KA

foxgloves said:

HHoD - Yes, Kayannie is right - Daffodil & narcissi bulbs are usually planted earlier, but they will still be ok if you plant them now. They will just flower a bit later. My old Nana used to love a bargain, so she used to look for reduced bags of daffs in December. They still flowered.
Re the sweets - I once won a nice selection of sweets on a charity stall raffle. They were in one of those plastic pint glasses you get at festivals & the whole thing had been wrapped in clear cellophane, gathered at the top & tied with ribbon. It looked really pretty, so I am going to do a couple of those.
I am being organised because I shall have to post so much this year. 
F x

Ooh thanks both of you, I'll see if I can get hold of some daffodil bulbs to plant then as they are my favourite flower .

foxgloves

Hello Pumpkins,
A pleasant day today. A bit of a blip first thing when the electricity tripped & I had to halt the ironing (oh big massive boo-hoo!) I thought it was a power cut at first, then discovered that all the upstairs lights were working but none of the sockets. So it was just a trip out, probably caised by the iron, so I sorted that out, & did carry on with getting the wretched task finished. Rewarded myself with coffee & banana (in absence of biscuits) then yakked to my sis on skype, then to my best friend on the phone. This afternoon, I've really made headway with present wrapping & without sounding like Mrs Tightwad of Scroogeshire, I've used up all sorts of little pretty oddments of saved wrapping paper from last year. I'll carry on with wrapping tomorrow & think about when to start writing Christmas cards. 
While I was chatting to my sister, she told me about a conversation she remembered having with me about budgeting right back in the 1990s when I was Very Spendy Indeed. It was depressingly illuminating! Shall tell you about that tomorrow. 
F x

Baileys_Babe

Looking forward to tomorrow's tale.

Onebrokelady

Can't wait for tomorrow's instalment 😊

Blackcats

Me too!  I'm anticipating being amazed at how much of me I recognise 😊

foxgloves

Hello Diary readers,
Useful day today - cleaned whole house, did a few surveys, knitted more of birthday gift socks & finished wrapping everything which needs conveying to another household for Christmas (except a very few items which haven't yet arrived or I need to buy tomorrow). Also boxed some of it up ready to post to my sister's household & she's doing the same as we reckon it'll be a bunfight come December. Anyway, you don't want to know about any of this old stuff, do you - you want to hear about this conversation I had yesterday with my sister, which I felt really crystallised my old attitude to money. 
So, this subject came up quite naturally when we were talking about the benefits of joint v individual bank accounts & I mentioned having two that kind of run together, but one is Savings Pots accounts & I made some quip along the lines of coming to budgeting rather late but now being a well & truly born again budgeter. I said that back in the day, I'd have regarded budgeting as very much a negative thing, something that would curtail me, stop me doing what I wanted, take away my freedom to buy what I wanted, etc, but the truth has been quite different - my budget actually facilitates me doing & having things. Well, the halo was having a little glimmer there for a minute, then my sister said she could remember having a conversation with me about budgeting years ago. She could remember exactly where she was living at the time (dodgy house share in London) which pin-pointed the year exactly - 1994 - I was 30 & had just bought my first house. Anyway, she said we were chatting on the phone & I was moaning that I was broke & never seemed to have any money because it always seemed to get spent, etc, etc. Now, I was earning a professional salary at the time, admittedly not huge & I was single, so no shared household expenses, but this was right bang in the Spendy Years & I used to fritter money right, left & centre. My sister on the other hand was in stop-gap employment, not a great wage. She said her reply to me when I started moaning about my everlasting lack of funds was "Well, what I do when I get paid, is deduct everything I need for my rent, bills & food, then everything left is mine to spend". And apparently, my answer to this was "Oh, that's a really good idea, I think I might try that". Yes, "OH, THAT'S A REALLY GOOD IDEA!!" .......as though not actually frittering away my mortgage money, food & petrol money & money for bills on fol-di-rols for my house, eating out, takeaways, expensive skincare, clothes I often didn't even much like (remember the triffid top, anyone?) was some kind of rocket science-level revelation!! We had a bit of a laugh over this, but I did think about it afterwards. Her advice was SO basic....to put aside everything needed for essential living expenses, then the rest is the amount available to spend. Clearly my response was akin to hearing incredible wisdom from the Wookey-Hole witch, instead of something which I as a Masters graduate & someone who very successfully managed budgets at work, could have worked out for herself!!! But I didn't or wouldn't. We let in the dawning light when we are ready, don't we, & I still had over a decade to go before the LBM well & truly pinged on.
I thought sharing this story would make you smile. 
I'm going to toast my toes by the fire now & read latest book from my library stash. 
Be cosy,
F x

Blackcats

That was a funny recollection.  I remember (and it was probably in about 1994 too) being scathing about a friend who had saved up for a new car!!! Yes indeed SAVED UP!  Well of course I wouldn't have been able to do that because I had no money left to save but it really didn't register for me that if I didn't spend all my money on "stuff" then I would have had money to save.  I actually thought my friend was a bit weird and that saving money was a very odd thing to do 🤨

Onebrokelady

My mantra was always " I don't have money to save I can barely pay my bills ) why .....because I frittered money away like a mad woman, now I'm like a saving ninja and there wont be any frittering going on ever again 
Like you say Foxgloves it really is that simple, budget budget budget. I am currently seeing my DD1 making all the same mistakes I did when I was her age, she never has any money but is always buying stuff 🙁

HairyHandofDartmoor

Onebrokelady said:

My mantra was always " I don't have money to save I can barely pay my bills ) why .....because I frittered money away like a mad woman, now I'm like a saving ninja and there wont be any frittering going on ever again 
Like you say Foxgloves it really is that simple, budget budget budg et. I am currently seeing my DD1 making all the same mistakes I did when I was her age, she never has any money but is always buying stuff 🙁

That was exactly my mantra back in the day OBL 🙄. The truth is that there were things I could have done to save more money and spend less money, despite being on a low income. Of course once debt gets you by the scruff of the neck it's probably true that you don't have any money left 😥. 

Your amazement at this perfectly sensible idea is funny Foxgloves 😂, oh to put the clock back twenty years, but you can only start from where you are and keep moving forwards.