Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Hello Tulips,
Productive day so far, but have now officially run out of steam. Decorator working hard upstairs, & I've cleared a bit of space for access tomorrow when we are having smart meters fitted.
Have planted out sweetpeas & tied them in & will just pop a cover round them tonight in case it is another cold one. Supposed to be a couple of degrees warmer here tonight, I think. Have sowed 4 different types of courgette & squash and potted up posh echinacea babies (free seed). Did a bit of weeding in herb bed & planted out this years parsley.
Also cut a bunch of sorrel, put it with some leftover bagged spinach which was lurking in fridge & made soup (I use the 'Cranks' watercress soup recipe for any leafy stuff. Baked a loaf & did a quick triage of vegetable baskets to see if anything needed rounding up to add to tonight's stir-fry.
I'm now going to see if I can recycle the big photo album I found in the loft by using sticky address labels. It seems a shame to throw it out & buy new when it is just the writing which needs re-doing. I think I can make a neat job of it. I have amassed the old pre-digital photos I want to keep to put in it.
Maybe another coffee & I shall crack on with that.
Take care, m'dears,
F x

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

Hi foxgloves and followers

Just popping on to second the recommendation for Snag tights; they are the best tights i've had! Loads of choice of colour, size, denier ...

I wish i had your green fingers!  i usually get lots of homegrown tomatoes courtesy of my neighbour who grows them in his greenhouse but i have to buy everything else.

i too love walnut whips but my fave chocolate is a Daim bar and it takes a supreme act of will to resist the mega packs at the Swedish emporium

love Deni

foxgloves

Hi Deni, I will defo order a pair of Snag tights to try. It won't be an issue once the weather gets warmer - although I do like footless tights with dresses & sandals - but I am defo not enduring another winter of these falling-down hosiery horrors!
F x

foxgloves

Hello diary readers, Bit of a fraught morning.... double workmen... but am on my own now & am de-stressing nicely.
I did manage to recycle that big photo album to accomodate a selection of the old photos I found in the loft, which meant I only needed to buy some sticky labels. Result!
A couple of photos were taken in my old house in the 1990s & it was really interesting examining my possessions. I'm pleased to say lots of stuff is still with me... either in use or sufficiently loved to be on display. There is however, a lot of  evidence of Spendy Bad Habits:
*Half-size witch's broom hanging on the wall (pointless purchase)
*Silver plated platter from bargain box at antique fair.... frankly there's probably about as much silver plating on my backside!! Gave to charity shop.
*Mediterranean fruit design platter. Went off it. Gave to charity shop.
*A weird metal item, can't even tell what it is... would have been a flea fair find.
*Two vintage apothecary jars.... bought from antique stall so I could go & talk to the scrummy stall holder who was wearing a piratical looking vintage uniform jacket & a velvet ribbon in his ponytail.... (sighs....) Gave to charity appeal.
*Heaps of CDs... only significant because of the fact that I'd only had a CD player for a couple of years so had clearly been making up for lost time!
*Large pile of glossy home/interiors type magazines - I counted 10, so that would have been a month's worth (I routinely bought up to 12 per month)
*Long length of crushed velvet. Not cheap, bought to make a top. Never made it. Used as a tablecloth (i. e wasted it) Cat is asleep on it in photo!
*History book from one of those postal book clubs.....where you get a great opening offer on condition you buy a minimum no of books a year. I bought some good ones... others have gone to Ziffit or Oxfam bookshop.
*Expensive soft toy cat. Impulse buy from expensive gift shop on Regent Street. Almost £30. I'm not even keen on soft toys. It got covered with candlewax. Went to charity shop.
*Suede cat ornament. £25 from craft fair. I could soooo not afford this at the time. I still have it. The eyes dropped off. I replaced them with little pearly buttons from my button jar.
*Expensive needlepoint kit. I bought quite a few of these at around £40 to £60 a throw.
None of these were hideously expensive. The problem was the sheer frequency of my various purchases & the fact that I was always in overdraft by mid-month with an evil flexiloan to enable frequent self-bailouts. I lived in constant fear of my debit card being refused & cashpoints flashing up 'Insufficient funds'. I looked at those photos a long while & kept spotting more & more silly decisions.
Ah well..... good job I did eventually grow wings & a shiny 😇!
F x

Onebrokelady

I can't even remember most of the stuff I wasted money on, some of it would be craft supplies that were used but I couldn't afford and the rest on useless fripperies that I no longer own as like you I became fed up with them and they were donated to the charity shops. My weakness was craft markets but I can safely go and not spend now. I am not buying craft supplies now unless it's to make something I can actually use because it just becomes more clutter, the money I'm not spending on craft things will get spent on riding though so it will still be spent 😀

foxgloves

I had a weakness for craft markets too, @Onebrokelady. When I was selling my hand made jewellery at them, I'd spend more money on other stalls than I made on my own & I really enjoyed the big marquee-type fairs too. I agree about the 'useful' thing. On the rare occasions I've been to a vintage/antique fair since my reformation, I have bought things I could use regularly - i. e a huge bowl for my preserving, pretty embroidered cotton bed linen, a wooden darning mushroom, etc.
I am genuinely happier to be buying less. I don't think that being super-frugal to finance your riding is a bad idea at all. You obviously get a lot more from that than you now would returning home from town with more bags of fripperies.
Clip-clop to happiness!
F x

savingmore

oh dear now i want a darning mushroom.   never had that thought before.....

foxgloves

Lol @savingmore
I am a sock knitter, so we both have lots of nice pairs of handknitted socks made from those funky self-patterning sock yarns. Having put the effort in, I always darn any holes until I am no longer able. I found the plastic darning mushrooms hopeless.... needle slides about all over the place, but the £1.50 I spent on a vintage wooden one was money well spent. It lives in a late 1920s glass biscuit barrel on my bookshelf with a pretty pincushion made by my Mum & a selection of yarn & threads..... no excude not to mend things with the kit sitting there right next to me.
F

Blackcats

Your purchases sound as eclectic as mine and the cumulative effect of the spending is easier to recognise with hindsight.  My house during that era was full of Knick knacks.  Pretty bowls from antique fairs full of pot pourri on every available surface, and those surfaces were covered in "vintage" lace and linen.  Baskets of dried flowers and a lot or ornamental pigs!  Lots of vases and a big stack of LPs which were then duplicated as CDs.  My pride and joy was my very frilly festoon blind - luckily my mum made this for me so not too much money spent on that.  

When I had my children I frequented antique fairs buying up Noddy books and whimsies (the little  china animals) even though we really, really had no spare money.  

foxgloves

Blackcats - I was just the same! It's as though we'd convinced ourselves that 'vintage' or 'second hand' meant 'free'!
No wonder I spent so very many years with debt, no emergency fund & a conviction that if only I earned more, I would be positively awash with funds! I don't have to tell you that things did not improve as I advanced up my professional payscale - my purchases simply expanded to hoover up any extra money. 
Lesson well & truly learned.
F x