Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Yes, he is, @Sun_Addict. I think it will be very slow progress because he is so freaked out by everything, but there really are signs that he is starting to get a little bit braver.
I did manage to get next week's meal plans done too today, wrote the grocery shopping list & bookmarked the recipes selected. I feel I've cleared lots of indoor jobs to free myself up for a good gardening session tomorrow morning. 
F x

Alchemilla

It's so lovely to hear about the moggies finding their feet. 

foxgloves

Hello Frugalistas,
Well, the best thing I was 'given' today was......an extra day! I know this sounds ridiculous, but I'd had half a night of deep sleep followed by the other half where I was in & out of sleep & you know how this can cause quite a discombobulated feeling? I lay there planning my Big Budget Day & a few other admin-type jobs, then over breakfast when I mentioned I'd be cracking on with February's budget, Mr F said "Oh, you're doing it a day early, it's not pay-day till tomorrow". "Eh?", I said, "surely it's today. It's in my diary, to do it on Thursday"..............which is when he pointed out that today's only Wednesday!! What a narna! However, a day gained! Celebrated by putting a colour on my yukky roots before heading down the garden.
I am quite achey in my muscles, as I always am when I get back to garden clearing after a break, so I decided to be a woman with a plan. I set a timer for an hour, which I spent solidly cutting back, weeding & clearing the big bed I started the other day. When the pinger sounded, I tidied tools away & did small 'quick win' jobs. One of these was an attempt to get some free plants. I noticed that winter hasn't been cold enough to kill off my verbena bonariensis plants, but they are way too lanky to leave as they are. I cut them back & spotted quite a lot of healthy 'cuttings' type material on the stems. I've taken a dozen cuttings, covered them with a plastic recycled food tray lid & put them in the greenhouse to see if any of them root. The seeds are pretty easy but these will be ready to plant out much earlier if they 'take'. I hope they do.
So that was only 1.5 hours of gardening, but at the end of it, I could see the difference & it was good to get a bit of stretching & movement in as well.
Dug out a trench under the privet for litter tray emptying/burial. Had the trays looking absolutely pristine.......of course you can guess what appeared in one of them barely ten minutes later, agghhh!
Have spent the rest of the day floating around putting annoying stuff away. Managed to fit all 3 batches of marmalade into the pantry......it fits ok until Mr F decides he's back to buying beer. Also tackled the mending pile, which has been annoying me for a while, but is another one of those tasks where less than an hour with a needle, a coffee & a bit of TV gets shot of it. Why do I consistently put the same jobs off? I have got tidy-itis at the moment. I used to be quite untidy in my teens & 20s, but I have low tolerance of it now, as having stuff everywhere invariably wastes time further down the line when a needed item can't be found, or a pile of gubbins slides gracefully down into one's coffee.
So, despite my nocturnal plans, today was only Wednesday, which means that tomorrow definitely IS my Big Budget Day. I shall aim to get a good early start, as in addition to reconciling January's budget & setting February's, I also want to make a list of everything for discussion in our forthcoming New Year money summit. We are a bit later doing it this year because of the delayed car purchase, but it will take place next week over coffee at the dining table where it always does & we will look at priorities - also potential pinch-points for the year ahead.
Time to go & ferret around for some decent jacket potatoes now,
Be cosy - @Onebrokelady, this will hopefully very soon also include you!
F x

foxgloves

Hello m'dears,
Pleased to say that my Big Budget Day went well today. It did take me a long time to reconcile everything & check our finances were all looking in order following paying for the car last week. I didn't find any glaring errors in any of the figures, so if I've made any mistakes, they are yet to come to light. I've set February's budget - our cycle runs from 27th - 26th of the month. It's that time of year, between now & April, when bills start to go up, so I am making sure I keep Spreadsheet 1 (Household bills) bang up to date. A couple of small increases to input today, but amazingly, 2 bills have gone down! Our car insurance, despite being a new, more complicated model (hybrid) has dropped a little, ok, only about £9 a year, but I'm used to having to haggle insurance down at pretty much every renewal time. Then I phoned our breakdown cover provider (the one with the flag of verdant hue) to inform them of change of vehicle & was told 'Oh that's a newer car, you'll be getting a refund'......not the most life-changing sum in the world at £11.50, but I was astounded to be getting anything at all. Should also be getting a month's road tax refunded - as we often say on these boards, the little things do add up, although no amount of them is going to offset the coming energy bill rises once that bloody cap is lifted again in April. 
I deliberately haven't paid our savings pots this month, which I'd normally do on budget day. This is because I have a workman to pay for tree/garden work next week, plus birthday money to arrange for 2 nephews' birthdays, so I will see what is available for the pots once those costs have been paid out. I couldn't see the point in transferring those sums to the relevant pots then having to hoik them straight out again.
Mr F had a loan (an internal one only, as I truly hope our days of consumer credit are over) from our Tech replacement savings pot to buy a camera lens. This is working well, as he tells me each month when I set the budget how much of his Personal Spends allowance is to be paid back into the pot. It's nice to be able to borrow from ourselves. Back in the day, of course, he'd have had that lens - & probably not just one - in an instant, straight onto a credit card. He was quite proud of the fact that he put in lots of research to find exactly what he wanted at the best price. 
Ash is becoming a little braver every day. He came to see me in the kitchen at lunchtime to ask if he could perhaps have a little taste of my tuna. They've been chasing around all morning. For all the money spent on cat toys (tbf, we've only bought one, & that was a scratcher toy to try & preserve our new carpets from claws), the most fun Soot has had today has been charging at an opened up cardboard box, pouncing on it & sliding the length of the hall tiles. He had so many goes at that, he needed a lie down afterwards!
Right, must go & do a bit of a veg round-up to see what's going in my Chinese-style beef stir-fry tonight. Am also closing curtains to keep the heat in.
Cheers all,
F x

foxgloves

Hello Frugalistas,
Very definitely NOT a no-spend day today. However, we did stick to the shopping list except for buying two very large cat litter trays, which we felt might be better suited to adult cats. They will feel like Olympic size swimming pools compared to the previous ones, which I will re-purpose as greenhouse shuttle trays for young plants. As we'd already done the routine grocery shopping, it was nice to have a bit of a meander around town looking for bargains. I needed 3 birthday cards & found a nice range in a charity bookshop for 99p each, which I thought was a good price for decent cards. We did visit our favourite coffee shop, but we had a free coffee to claim, so the only hit to our Personal Spends is half the price of a skinny cappucino each - I think we can cope with that! Called at the village garden centre on our way home with my vegetable seed list & managed to pick up most of what I need, as well as a bag of seed compost to get the very earliest stuff sown next week - it's still way too early to sow most stuff.
Bargain of the day was a Mr F find  - we called at the local market butcher for bacon & he was selling 3 x lb packs of pork mince for £5. We've popped those in the freezer, as they will make a lot of meals over the next few weeks. Mr F likes to make a Cajun pork thing & I will definitely make pork & apple burgers or a bacon-wrapped meatloaf with some of it. Mr F was quite keen to buy a branded boot liner for the new motor. I suggested looking at generic ones first, as branded car stuff always costs more & he rather unenthusiastically agreed to do so, but then (in an inexpensive store) found exactly what he was looking for - two things actually - the quality looks fine & I bet what we paid for both together is still a fraction of what he'd have paid for one branded accessory from the car dealership. 
Spent the afternoon cleaning the house - we hadn't vacuumed since the cats arrived, as we felt it would be too scary for them, especially for Ash, but today, I reached the point where the state of the carpets was way scarier, so I took the upstairs, Mr F the downstairs & we have vacuumed everywhere to within an inch of its life. Ash was ok. He went & sat in the conservatory & was very wary, but not as panicky or as freaked out as I thought he would be.
The only annoying thing today is that my dodgy tooth is sore again, after several pain-free days. I am hoping it settles again, as we did make a plan for its future (involving pliers!) last time I was at the dentist, & he was fine for me to monitor it to see how it goes. Ah well, plenty of painkillers - stocked up on generic cheapos of those in town today too.
Time to read my library book & toast my toes now, as it's Mr F's cooking night. I'm reading 'A Famished heart' by Nicola White, a new author to me. It sounds like a trashy romance, doesn't it, but it's actually a crime mystery set in Dublin & I am certainly sufficiently intrigued by the first few chapters to want to find out what happened to the two women at the heart of the case. Love starting a new novel - all that promise.
Enjoy your evenings, all.
F x

Sun_Addict

My new kitten is the only pet I’ve owned who isn’t frightened of the vacuum cleaner. She isn’t phased by it in the least. Feet up with a new book while someone else cooks is my idea of heaven. It must be so nice. Never happened to me unfortunately. Boo to the dodgy tooth flaring up 👎

Blackcats

Sounds like the cats are doing really well.  I keep mt cat's treats in a plastic tub which is good to rattle at the door when trying to get cats indoors (when yours are ready to go out).  Trouble is any tub opening is viewed as treat time by mine.  Their treat tub has some desperate teeth indentations in the lid 😾
In a rare act of frugal living mine have downshifted to lid lees own brand treats which are about half the price of the dreeemies.

Sun_Addict

My cats both prefer the stick treats and are more than happy with the Lidl ones. 

foxgloves

Thanks for the treats recommendations, @Blackcats & @Sun_Addict. Soot doesn't actually seem too bothered about the branded crunchy drug for cats, but Ash loves them. I rarely go to L*dl as it's on the edge of town which can back up a bit with traffic for the A1, but next time I do visit, I'll buy some for them to try.
Just fortifying myself with extra coffee, then doing the Big Garden Birdcount before getting out into the garden for a few active jobs. 
F

Baileys_Babe

We are planning to do the Big Garden Birdwatch tomorrow when the wind is predicted to be about 25 mph slower, I doubt we would see any birds if we did it today.