Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Thanks all! I was pleased to find that budget leakage too. It has honestly felt as though I've 'lost' around £30 every month by the time I do my check-in on the 14th or so. Of course I haven't actually lost anything, as that money was paying bills anyway, but it was doing my head in that the sums went %***£$%**% every time & I couldn't find the error in my calculations. Of course I couldn't, it was elsewhere, built into the Foxgloves system. Never mind, all sorted now.

Yes, @Hazelnutty - There is defo a strange twilight zone between pay-day (27th) & the start of the new calendar month. It is like a Bermuda Triangle for unwary £££s. When my accounts have a little bit of a la-la I can often trace it back to something from those 3 or 4 days. Also, our bank often orders transactions in a not quite strictly chronological way. I queried this once, ages ago when the order in which they displayed the transactions on our online statement made it look as though we had dipped into our overdraft. We absolutely hadn't, because I had previously transferred quite a big sum of money in from elsewhere. So was sufficiently annoyed to crank up Livechat for a bit of a moan. The chap I spoke to said that they have a specific ordering they use for different types of transactions. My view was that if they don't display them in the order that the customer makes them, then it is confusing & could lead to occasions like this, where we look to have dipped into overdraft when I had in fact, transferred that money IN before I'd paid something much smaller out. He said it's just how they order them & it wouldn't count as being overdrawn. So, I wonder if the occasional little Twilight Zone confusion could even happen because of a variation of this slight bank statement anomale, I don't know. My budget skills are around several billion times better than they were back in the Spendy Era (i.e non-existent) so I am grateful for having finally seen the light before I progressed too far into my 40s. It could have been a lot worse by now, had we not decided it was time for a big change.....& we are happier for it.
F

foxgloves

Hello Saturday Savers, 
Well, not particularly a money saving day - we had an order to pick up in town. As part of the ongoing house refurb, we decided to chose one of Mr F's lovely flower portrait photos & to get it blown up onto a canvas for the chimney breast in our newly decorated bedroom. So we had that to pay for. I'm sure it was cheaper than buying in somebody else's art though. Only steak & peaches to buy from the remaining grocery budget (July's budget starts on Monday) so we have come in at £24 under budget for groceries for June. I'm quite pleased with that. Mr F suggested we buy a couple of bottles of wine with it, but we are not drinking much atm with the dieting, & we do have some in the pantry, so I might recycle it into one of our savings pots, probably the Presents Pot as I am going to concentrate on building that up now ready for all the winter family birthdays & Christmas. 
I'm popping down the garden in a minute to cut a bowl of rocket & pull a few spring onions. I'll check if anything needs watering, as we do like to maximise our food crops this time of year. There are some big chillies coming on my 'Fuego' plants (the Jalapenos are a little behind) & I may cut a few of them at the green stage for the freezer as I like to have as many recipe ingredients in as possible. Still haven't lifted the garlic. Maybe a little job for tomorrow.
Right m'dears, off to fetch the colander. My step count will be rubbish today. I think I might march up & down the garden a few times. It's 200 steps (well it is with my little legs......) from the back door to the shed & back, so I only need 5 of those to put 1000 steps onto my daily count. Might see if I feel like doing 10 or 15. Comes in useful having a long garden.
Enjoy your weekends, all.
F x

foxgloves

Afternoon Frugalistas,
Not an overly finance orientated day but have kept the faith thus:
*Did not go for coffee while we were out at the craft market this morning. We are in town mid-week & decided that as coffee shop purchases come out of our Personal Spends, we didn't want to pay twice.
*The underspend on June's grocery budget which I had identified as a Present Pot addition was indeed used for that. Saw a couple of good presents at the craft market. Bought them with the underspend & have put away for Christmas.
*Veggie garden - Picked another cucumber plus a colander of lettuce for tonight's salad. Sowed more parsley, spinach & spring onions ('Lilia' - a nice red variety). Potted up 30 more lettuce seedlings into modules.
*Checked weather forecast to see if tomorrow is set to be a good laundry-drying day. Nope. Will wait till Tues. I'm not paying to dry laundry at this time of year.
Mr F has just brought me a cup of coffee, so I'm going to finish reading my book now.
Take care m'dears,
F x

QueenJess

I am still only partway through your diary for my overnight reading, but I did find your recipe for garlic flatbreads. It so happened I had some out of date yogurt today (but tasted fine) and so made them. DH loved them and is asking me when we can eat the rest. He said he would be happy if he was served that in a restaurant.

So thanks for the recipe. DS loved it too, so looks like a new staple for us 😊

foxgloves

Glad you enjoyed them @QueenJess. They are a staple in our house too. They freeze well & are inexpensive to make. I've even used a couple as quick emergency pizza bases in the past & they are useful if we are running low on bread. 
F

marionmgcars

Went to a car boot sale today and picked up an egg coddler for £1.00 - delighted as have been searching charity shops for over a year.  

MissRikkiC

Thanks for the heads up @QueenJess - Off to search for @foxgloves Garlic Flatbread recipe now :P

foxgloves

I love a good 2nd-hand bargain find @marionmgcars, esp like your egg thingy when it's something I've been actively looking for. Haven't been to a car boot for years, but there is a new one trying to get established here on Sundays, so might pop by once it is properly up & running. We gave up selling at them years ago, too annoying pricing things really low but fair, then people coming along with ridiculous offers. I remember telling one chap who made an insulting offer for something that if we wanted to give away our stuff for free, we could just go & stand on a street corner & hand it out! Have missed treasure hunting in charity shops over the past year & a half. Must get back to that for sure.
F x

foxgloves

Morning Monday Frugalistas,
Am confined to barracks this morning as I was waiting in for a parcel (now delivered) & need to be in this afternoon to take delivery of our Grimsby fish box & divvy it up for freezing. Have made myself useful though. Got a batch of bread dough on the go for a loaf, made tomorrow's packed lunch & updated budgets following the weekend. Mostly this consisted of moving funds around so as to ensure payments are charged to the correct Savings Pot. This having been done, I was able to pay various purchases (mostly presents) off our 'Just for Points' credit cards. Also updated the Home Improvements Budget. While I always aim to do post-weekend budget updates on Monday mornings, I don't always manage it, for various reasons. Despite having a well-established household budgeting system, leaving myself plenty of post-it notes when needed & annotating receipts, it always surprises me how much I have already forgotten & have to dredge back out of the little grey cells if I leave this task even just to Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday! This morning, everything's been fresh in my mind, so I just lined everything up & worked through it until all our budget & various pots were straight again. As I'm going into town on Wednesday, I also got that £200 ISA payment ready to go to the building society, just so I can't have any second thoughts starting to percolate about other things I could maybe use it for. 
I'm done now for admin.....have written a nice card to my elderly distant relative who is in a care home, cleared out heaps of old emails, done a bit of filing & 3 surveys. I have PA open on a separate tab so I can see new ones coming in & it's definitely helping my earnings total inch upwards. Still aiming for £100 cash-out in December, probably to add to my Personal Spends in case I see anything fab in the January sales. However, as I have been very honest in my Diary about how the old spendy me had serious form when buying sale rail clothes.......so many poor decisions - the sparkly Triffid top, that bloody dress I kept chopping bits off to try to make it look better on, etc, etc, so I shall say right here & now (before I have even finished earning that sum of money) that if I don't see something in the sale that I like enough to have bought it at full price, I won't buying it!
Wishing everyone a good productive start to the new week.
F x 

Hazelnutty

QueenJess said:

I am still only partway through your diary for my overnight reading, but I did find your recipe for garlic flatbreads. It so happened I had some out of date yogurt today (but tasted fine) and so made them. DH loved them and is asking me when we can eat the rest. He said he would be happy if he was served that in a restaurant.

So thanks for the recipe. DS loved it too, so looks like a new staple for us 😊

ooh could you repost @f@foxgloves ? That sounds A-MAZ-ING!