Put away your purse & become debt-averse

HairyHandofDartmoor

I've heard that the Oxford jab can give you more side effects than the Pfizer jab, but it varies so much from person to person.

Narola1976

I had the Astra vaccine and developed a lump in my arm which was red and hot, nearly 2 weeks after my jab. The Dr put me on antibiotics which I am still on. The lump is getting smaller but still there, been on antibiotics 4 days. I hope it goes soon as it was quite worrying

foxgloves

Thanks all of you for sharing your vaccine experiences & tips. If I didn't have workmen here the next day, it wouldn't even occur to me to worry......I'd just lie on the sofa or spend the day lolling around, but I will be a little limited for horizontal resting opportunites, so I think I will have some paracetamol at the ready & just see how I get on. Hopefully I will fall more into the sore arm category then feeling totally rubbish. I definitely don't intend lugging firewood around, @DawnW, so that should be a help!
F x

foxgloves

Hello Favourite Saturday Savers,
Another useful day. I haven't been out & I haven't spent any money. I have spent most of the day decluttering both my laptop (have cleared all sorts of files, emails, stuff I'd been meaning to send to people for ages, etc) & my desk. It now has just my laptop on it, my pencil pot & a pile of annotated receipts & post-its ready for Monday morning's budget updating session. I have dealt with lots of annoying jobs that were lurking in my HQ.....the kind of jobs that can actually take as little as 5 or 10 mins to deal with, but are still ignored. I also changed the bed linen & tidied the bedroom, as far as that is possible with it being full of Man Cave items.
What else? I drew out a knitting chart for one of my blanket squares. This is a pink square with moss stitch borders (which they all have) & a textured heart in the centre. So far, I have only knitted 2 of this design & I need a total of 14. I have been avoiding choosing to cast it on because I need to adapt the pattern & it is quite fiddly to do in my head, so I have drawn a chart, coloured the squares (colouring pencils, yay!!) & shall be casting on with renewed vigour tonight. 
I've entered a competition (I think there is a general sort of cosmic rule that any entry from me is removed & fed to aardvarks prior to judging day) & done a sweep of the fridge for use-it-up opportunities.......meaning that lunch included leftover tuna, leftover skyr & leftover blueberries (but not all together!) 
Mr F's clearance of the Man Cave seems to have morphed into quite a significant declutter if the 2 bulging rubbish & recycling bags by the back door are anything to go by, so a big 'Yay' to that! He is also cooking tonight, so I will shortly be finishing all my little jobs & sitting by the stove with my book. 
Hoping to watch 'Bloodlands' tonight. Meant to watch it last night but was so sleepy, frankly I doubt I'd have made it through a whole episode of 'The Magic Roundabout'. 
Peace,
F x

Sun_Addict

I have no luck whatsoever with competitions or the lottery but my name is often drawn entirely at random at work to perform various tasks 🤷‍♀️

savingmore

thought today I might be free of vaccine ailments.  felt better on waking, arm still sore, but after walking into town to do shop, i started feeling nauseous again, and had to rest for rest of day.  Lady holly, yes I used to take paracetamol before vaccinations to, but was reading an article that changed my mind.  what we are wanting from these vaccines is for our body to have a response to the vaccine to build new tcells and antibodies.  if we take paracetamol and ibropofen, this tells the body to reduce fever and cuts inflammatory response, which is actually what we want, so can reduce the effectiveness of vaccine.  that makes sense to me, so didn’t take them with this vaccine.   it’s a bother but better than getting covid, so I am still counting my blessings.

£14 on food shop.  i a man really spending less with careful meal plans now.  am doing a monthly shop first week of month in mr. al*i for supplies etc then weekly top up of milk, fruit and veg locally.   going for £150 this month for two of us.  spent £90 so far....so think I have it cracked.  usually i allow £250, so it’s a big difference.  been doing this since start of year.   going to treat myself tomorrow and make a queen of puddings.   haven’t had one for years.  it’s my mother’s day treat to myself for losing 7kgs since start of lockdown last year and am at goal weight.   

foxgloves

@Sun_Addict  - I used to win one competition a year.... quite small things, but welcome....but regardless of how many I entered, it would never, ever be more than that single prize. Now it is no wins. Admittedly, I don't do as many comps as I used to, but never having even a tiny sniff of a win does tend to put one off spending the time on them. It made me smile that you do, however, win 'Who can we palm this task off onto?' draws at work. Typical, isn't it?!

@savingmore - It does sound as though you have been hit quite hard by vaccine side effects. Hope they are soon completely gone. That's a blimming good low spend for a food shop. When we were debt-busting, meal planning & a really targeted grocery shopping list were two of our most effective tools in the mission to stop frittering money all over the place. I like £250 a month for groceries too, but I have been budgeting more than this recently. I suppose because we now have no debt & no mortgage, spending more on food feels affordable. However, we have been chatting about this & of course it doesn't take a genius to work out that if we are not subbing more money into groceries than necessary, it will free up more money for savings when I do my monthly 'bank account sweep' on Budget Day. Neither of us can really believe we have savings, as although we have been reformed characters for a long time, we had debt for a much longer period, & we only got rid of the mortgage relatively recently. So we've had a bit of a word with ourselves about realistic grocery spending. We still meal plan religiously though & are big fans of cook once, eat twice. Mr F is going to make a big lasagne tonight....Quorn & all sorts of veg.......we will have it with maybe green beans tonight (still eating through last year's crop) & with salad tomorrow night. We also like 'Freezer dive' night, as it is so good for using up single portions of things on a jacket potato & feels like free food.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers,
I'm not going to moan about Lockdown ennui today. I'm going to tell you how things are progressing with the new growing season instead, particularly food crops, as this is always a very useful part of our food supplies (& therefore budget reduction when it comes to harvesting time).
So.....today I sowed cucumbers in yoghurt pots & popped them in my little heated propagator, along with the aubergines...3 seedlings, which is fine as I can't accommodate more than that & tomatoes...11 seedlings so far....I am hoping for at least one more, & peppers which are doing sweet b*gger all - old seed though, so no worries as have time to re-sow if necessary.
Also sowed basil in the greenhouse & radishes in a big trough in the veggie plot.
First lettuce sowing is just germinating - as soon as I'm potting them up into modules, I'll sow the next lot.
I noticed that the lid on my rhubarb forcing crock was hovering precariously & sure enough, the forced stems were ready. This is one of my favourite Spring jobs, to lift off the crock & the bright pink stems & acid lime green leaves are just a joy to see after the bare wet soil of Winter. I brought it indoors & cooked it in the oven, with just a tablespoon of water, one of orange juice, a little sprinkle of ginger & as little sugar as I could get away with. It was gorgeous for lunch with a dollop of Skyr, & there's enough for at least a couple more servings. The maincrop rhubarb is obviously slower without the shelter of a crock, but now seems to be coming through its pile of compost quite strongly.  Our autumn-sown garlic looks ok.....I think like me, it is getting heartily sick of all the endless rain, but it will pick up as soon as we have some decent sunshine....& the strawberry runners I transplanted last week seem to be bedding in.
Flower seeds are coming up in the greenhouse - all free seeds except for the Cerinthe, but I will be harvesting saved seeds from those this summer, so won't be buying next year. In addition to those, the calendula, rudbeckia, asters & cosmos are all happily sprouting.
My autumn-sown sweet-peas look sturdy - not as many as I'd have liked, but it was old seed. I shall start standing them outside on sunny days, as I usually plant them out in April, with a few recycled glass panels propped up against their wigwam if frost threatens. It does feel as though Springtide is starting to kick in now, although the wind today has been bitter. As usual, I somehow managed to combine wearing a short dress with gardening yet again.......Oh my days, I don't know what direction that wind was coming from, but I know exactly where it ended up! 
Well, I am wanting to crack on with another blanket square asap, but I think a nice hot bath & hair wash first. Decorator arriving early tomorrow morning - no time for lounging around on personal ablutions!
Take care now,
F xx

foxgloves

Hello Frugalista Friends,
Well, was jabbed last night.... the latest time slot of the evening & apart from feeling slightly more tired than I usually would after a good night's sleep & a sore arm (no worse so far than from flu jab), I haven't been struck by side effects (I had the AZ jab). Maybe they will kick in later, I will soon see. I texted Mr F to bring me some chocolate, in case they do!
Busy day answering decorator's queries about various aspects of the work, then piano tuner this afternoon. I hadn't planned to do any active jobs in case I was feeling rubbish, so have just done next week's meal plans, decided what to bake for Easter, knitted blanket squares (63 /144). I did sweep the floor rather than getting the heavy vacuum cleaner out as there was a trail of leaves & old bits of wallpaper wafting around the hall, but that is as active as it's going to get today - just some pasta to cook later & a quick salad to make.
Am really hoping Mr F will book his jab appointment when he gets home as the local hubs are now ahead of the nearest big NHS vaccination centres & are taking bookings from 50+s.
Well, had better see how the papering is going upstairs.
Love F x

foxgloves

Continued..... just to say that he did book it. Absolutely out of the blue, he received a text this afternoon from our Dr's surgery. It said, 'If you would like to have your jabs done at the surgery, just give us a ring & we can book you in for this Saturday'. How good is that? We will be in town anyway, so he jumped at the chance. 
F x