Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

OBL &  Baliley'sBabe, Yes, I think that Lockdown makes days feel as though they are merging into one & this is then compounded when we do things on different days to normal. I've just come upstairs thinking what a shame it is that I've spent so much of the weekend at my desk budgeting & doing admin.......before remembering it's actually Friday. Honestly, I think we're all apt to lose the plot at the moment!
F 

foxgloves

Hello Daffodils,
A pleasant little trip into town first thing - Mr F managed to take his day off so we went in together. We decided to park near the castle & walk in to save paying car park charges, but mainly for some fresh air & a few extra steps. Well, we couldn't get up to much in the shopping department, with most shops still being closed, but we bought our fresh veg on the market & some more bird seed, plus a few toiletry items I needed, a couple of cards & a magazine - having a monthly Personal Spends Budget really concentrates my mind on which magazine to buy. I chose a gardening one this time. Back in the day, I had a terrible magazine habit - all big glossy monthly ones - I simply seemed unable to buy them as single items, always 3s or 4s, & multiple times a month too. Anyway, I shall enjoy reading it this weekend, especially as we are planning to make some progress out in the garden tomorrow, as the weather is so nice at the moment.
Rest of today = Big Budget Day duties. It's all gone fine, no nasty surprises. It took me a little longer than I hoped, as there were quite a lot of things from February's budget to reconcile plus it is that time of year when bills start arriving with new monthly payment amounts, so I had a number of those to input into my spreadsheet to facilitate actually starting with an accurate figure. I was very surprised to see that our annual water bill (unmetered) has decreased - ok, only by the tidsiest amount (£7.50) but how unusual for a water bill to decrease. I think it has reliably climbed higher & higher ever since we moved in. I wonder if there has been some kind of industry watchdog missive saying that bill increases need to be capped......I don't know, probably not, it just does seem very unusual & I had to look at the figure twice as assumed I'd misread it, such are my suspicions about the greed of the big utility providers.
Well, nothing exciting to report.....I moved some funds around, paid 'just for points' credit cards (proof that this is worthwhile arrived this morning with £15 vouchers in the post, which will come in useful) & assessed the current state of our 10 Savings Pots. They are all pretty healthy & either at their capped maximum amount or close to it, so this time I have only paid into the Car Maintenance Pot & the Presents Pot. I worked out from Christmas (we have several winter birthdays) that we ideally need £1500 in this pot by the end of October to ensure that expenditure on cards, presents, postage, birthdays & various festive bits & pieces are bought from this pot of saved money & not sneaked into other budgets or onto credit cards. Am already up to over £500 in this pot, so feel pretty confident that the funds will be in place. Last year there was some left over, & I'm hoping that there will be again. Finally, I double-checked all my calculations & worked out that I am able to do a March 'account sweep' of £400 into general savings. I know that interest rates are low everywhere, but honestly, having any savings is still quite a new feeling for us, so even if it is only earning a tiny bit, it is saved, it is tucked away, & we are therefore much less likely to spend it. Psychologically, I now get as much as a buzz from saving as I did debt-busting. As you know, prior to that, all my money buzzes came from spending. Yeah, I was a bad'un, but I'm Ms Halo of Goody-Twoshoes-Land these days.
Well m'dears, it is defo time to stop looking at screens, so I am going to finish reading my book, then do my piano practice.
So looking forward to our gardening day tomorrow.
Love F x

Pixiehouse55

Hi Foxgloves and Gang. 
Just popped on to haveca catch up on what you are up too.  Ive been busy setting up my page on Facebook to sale all of our craft stash that we won't have room for our narrowboat. We have so much stuff to sale. Shows how bad I used to be as I found stamps, stencils ink pads etc not even opened. I think it will be Ebay to try and sale some craft books. I think I listed a out 80!!
Hubby is selling a lot of his as well.  Then its his carpentry tools.... never ending.. our lady goes back to her day centre on March 8th for 2 days. More time to get things done then. Ive listed everything in our main chest freezer and freezer indoors. Enough meals for at least a month.  Off to read for a bit. Take care and keep safe everyone  X 

foxgloves

Hi Pixiehouse, You have been busy again. Hope you get some good ebay sales on your craft stuff. I have a big box of jewellery making gear up in the loft. I should probably sort it out & see what is usable/saleable, but it's out of sight, out of mind..... it hasn't bewn touched since 2002. It must be so exciting making your narrowboat plans.
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

Four_Seasons said:

I did the same as OBL but in my wisdom I plunged my hand into the water to retrieve the lock and came up with a drowned baby rat!! x

That made me laugh so much 😱🤢😂🤣

HairyHandofDartmoor

Your shed padlock rage made me laugh too Foxgloves 😂. Thanks for that because we all need a good laugh at the moment. I don't lock our shed because I can never get it open again, so we really need to buy a new padlock! There isn't much in there of value but still 🤔.

I'm glad Mr F's tests brought good results. I completely understand about health worries when you get to a certain age. I was convinced DH's bursitis and arthritis was bone cancer until he got his x-ray results ☺.

It's great news that you can get out into the garden again and enthrall us with your horticultural exploits 🌱🌿🌺🌻🌳. Anything to do with plants, animals or nature is very soothing to me, compared to all the stress inducing virus related news.

foxgloves

Me too, HHoD. With the stress of the pandemic itself plus my abundant anger & despair at how the Government has dealt with it..... well, it's not a good mix. I do find gardening, outdoors, green surroundings, wildlife watching etc, all do my head a whole lot of good.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Nearly Spring Savers,
This morning has brought me joy. Despite icy cars & a frosty white lawn first thing, the sun arrived, brought blue skies & we managed to have our planned garden session. Mr F concentrated on 2 or 3 hours of serious ivy control & moved the bird feeder pole to a different area. I did a mixture of jobs: Swept the courtyard, moved the bay tree, cornus 'Midwinter fire' & 2 potted Christmas trees to their Spring/Summer position, composted dead pansies, forked over & weeded my winter/early Spring bed near our coffee bench & planted out the two new primulas & cowslip which have added a cheery pop of colour. Also potted up 18 perpetual spinach plants (sown last Autumn) into modules prior to them going into a bed next month, distributed old growbag compost to a couple of borders & litter picked. It is surprising how much crud can be picked up from a garden after winter storms, etc. I soon had a bucketful of bits of broken pot & brick, old clumps of somebody's insulation material, scraps of plastic, a piece of firework, two polythene bags, as well as the endless pieces of broken glass which keep working their way to the surface doubtless as a knock-on effect of Mr Numpty's greenhouse-burying antics. I also moved everything off our courtyard which doesn't belong there. We so enjoyed sitting out there for our coffee today. Such a simple pleasure.
Oh.... & the scales were kind today. Another 0.8kg of flab off.... that is a total of 3.3kg now. I think that probably means I can have a couple of glasses of wine tonight..... just for those helpful anti-oxidants, of course! 
Peace, 
F xx

Sun_Addict

Well done on the weight loss. Hope you’re enjoying a vino with your feet up. I’m in quite a few holiday FB groups with folks from other nations and there are far far worse handlings of the virus situation than our government that’s for sure. Compared to them we have done extremely well. Some of them even want to borrow Boris 🤣

foxgloves

I shall have to disagree with you on that one then, Sun_Addict, because I think he has been pretty abysmal.
Yes, the vino went down rather well, thanks. I think I enjoyed it more because I'd put in all that physcal effort in the garden earlier. Hope the weather will allow lots more gardening sessions next week, as it's good exercise, also good for mental health & communing with nature.
F x