Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Greetings Frugalistas,
Rain all day here so far but the garden is loving it, so I'm not complaining.
A few small frugal wins today, all of them deeply unexciting, but we all know, a win's a win when sticking to budgets, saving, etc. We have come in under budget with our grocery spend this week, despite buying everything except fresh fruit & veg at the most expensive of our 'supermarkets of choice'. The parcel I needed to post today cost less than I thought it would, & we also bought a truly enormous loofah!
OK, that last purchase might need a bit of explanation - I have mentioned before that we are gradually identifying plastics that we can replace with something more sustainable. We've already swapped pump handwash for bars of soap, plastic toothbrushes for bamboo, only buy laundry powder in cardboard boxes, etc, those kind of easy swaps. We also decided to stop buying sponge scourers for washing-up as they are plastic, so a while back, I ordered a pack of two loofah slices to try. I was surprised that they have both lasted a lot longer than the sponge scourer jobbers so I'm not sure I can really work out how they compare in money terms & also delivery cost to factor in. So today, we passed a local bath & beauty-type indie shop which had a colossal loofah in the window & I decided if we bought that, we could slice it up ourselves to make a cheaper supply of these natural scourers. Mr F has declared this to be a task particularly suited to his impressive physical strength (this is because the woman in the shop mentioned that they are very tough to cut up!) Talking of Mr F, he has also had a look at the defunct vacuum. Remember I thought the motor had blown the other day? Well it hadn't. The terrible noise it was making was due to a total blockage & the slow whine into general kaput-ness was caused by a power cut. He showed me a huge clump of blockage which he described as mostly my hair!! I felt forced to point out that my hair is fair & not made from grey fluffy nylon & cocktail sticks (the former was obviously fluff from our new carpets, no clue about what the latter were doing up there, as didn't even know we had any!) The upshot of this tedious tale is I no longer need to shop Mum's old Dys*n from it's home in the loft, as it looks like our old warhorse has lived to fight a few more floors.
Two more surveys done. Am up to over £70 now on PA, so am thinking my target of £100 by Christmas might be achievable. And that was the end of today's money saving.
F x

teapot2

I use a lump of loofah as a pan scrubber too so no plastic and they can go in the compost bin as well.  I've quite fancied trying to grow them but never got round to it

foxgloves

@teapot2 - My friend is growing them this year on her allotment. I've never tried them myself, so will be interested to see how she gets on. I like the packs of rectangular jute pan scourers too, especially that they, like the loofah slices bio-degrade in our compost bins.
F

foxgloves

Finally braved a city centre night out yesterday. We had a lovely time, but I almost neeeded a cardiac massage this morning when I woke up & remembered we'd paid £19 for car parking!!
F 

Baileys_Babe

Ouch to the parking costs

foxgloves

@Baileys_Babe - I know, it was indeed an 'ouch'! But I sucked it up on the grounds that we have paid so little parking, either city centre or otherwise for well over a year with all the lockdowns, postponed holiday, etc. It genuinely was nice to go out & I shall take the cost from our Leisure/Entertainment Pot, so it won't actually hit me in the budget.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Only the most humdrum of money saving activity today, but everything adds up. I saw this hugely back when we were debt-busting & can now see this same 'small regular habits' approach helping us to build up our savings.
Checked over the veggie garden to see how food production is doing. Picked first cucumber of the year & tied in tomato plants again. Mr F has weeded the chard bed, which has saved me a Monday job. Made tomorrow's packed lunch - I sometimes think back to when we were both working full time, still in the Spendy Era & we worked out that making a packed lunch every day would save us around £2000 a year! If I remember rightly, we were on the M1 at the time & it was such a shock, we talked about it for most of the way home! Have checked weather forecast to see whether tomorrow is a good day to get laundry dry for free outside. It isn't, so have postponed to Tuesday. It really is a waste paying for drying at this time of year. All leisure activities today have been free, including a walk around the village to try & get my step count up from 'truly pathetic' to 'vaguely reasonable'. Looked out a selection of suitable recycled jars from my jam jar stash ready for making a batch of chilli jam tomorrow. Asked my sister for her birthday wishlist - I like to chose nice things for gifts & hate that feeling of leaving things too late which can so often result in spending a lot more but on stuff that isn't actually as suitable as if I'd put the effort in earlier. She's really into sewing atm & has sent me some ideas, which is really helpful.
Oh & it was Weigh-Day yesterday - another 1.2kg off. That's 7.2 kg off since the end of January, which I am reasonably happy with, considering I went seriously off-piste between Easter until a week after my birthday. I like the 'Traffic Light Diet' (Judith Wills) because it is just normal food - no expensive extras to buy, endless calorie maths (I only have to count up to 6 & can manage that, lol), exclusion of entire food groups or pretending that la-di-dah fancypants greenery & seed slime blitzed up into pondy-looking drinks will magic off the flab. Bought a 2nd-hand copy of the book & seem to be getting on well with it. Have set a target of another 1.5kg off by next weigh-day. Harder to shift the weight for us old crocks, so am keeping it realistic.
Everything for Monday morning budget updating waiting on my desk,
F x

Sun_Addict

7.2kg since January off is brilliant better than losing it in a couple of weeks and putting it back on again. Slow and steady wins the race. Don’t get me on the juicing/smoothie/shake path, what a load of rubbish that is and people believe it, that’s what’s scary 😟 

MissRikkiC

Excellent to lose weight steadily Mrs F, I’m a nutrition coach on the side and never advocate anything that you can’t sustain starting with water intake and steps being a healthy number. If people can’t build those 2 things into their life, I struggle to work with them as I don’t believe in anything other than long term habits for the future 

foxgloves

Thanks @Sun_Addict & @MissRikkiC - Yes, I am happy with getting this weight back off slowly & steadily. I know how to do it as I lost a lot of weight some years ago. I didn't 'finish the job' however & have spent the last 7 years cycling the same couple of stones back on & off.......only with lockdown, I gained an extra one this past year. My target for next Weight-Day is another 1.5kg off but as long as I remain on a downwards trajectory, I shall be satisfied. It's going well so far.
F