Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Thanks - interesting about the plans from various vets. We've never had them for our previous cats, but always take them in for their boosters so they receive a check-up then. We've always administered flea/worming treatments ourselves & I think we'll continue to do that. It's a good time to get pet insurance sorted out though while they've just been given a clean bill of health & confirmation of ages (as far as possible with Ash, who was a stray - Soot was relinquished by his former owner so we did have a definite age for him).
Town first though so must make a list & stick to it. Think will wait till we get home for coffee & save £5.60. Promised ourselves a breakfast at local farm shop tomorrow so will save our money for that. Determined to have a careful year. No idea what our monthly outgoings will be until the new annual bill amounts start arriving.
F x

peb

I would suggest having a look on the pets board, lots of advice there  not only on the best payers out but which wins increase dramatically and also on insuring ongoing conditions etc.

DawnW

I administer the flea and worming treatment myself Foxgloves, just pick up the treatments at no extra cost from the vet's, though I am sure they would administer it foc too if I had problems. He will eat anything with a little bit of cheese wrapped round it

foxgloves

Thanks @peb & @DawnW, I will get some cover sorted this weekend. We do have a Meow Fund as well, which operates as one of our savings pots, it's just that I like to plan for adversity these days!
F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary readers, 
Useful morning in town & stuck to list like glue, apart from a 99p novel in the charity bookshop which was from my Personal Spends anyway.
I am definitely moving into 'Dodgy Economic Times Ahead' mode as the following small savings were made:
*£5.70 saved by not visiting coffee shop for cappuccinos. Had cafetiere at home instead.
*£2.70 saved by using free supermarket car park instead of the slightly more central multi-story.
*20p saved by nipping in supermarket for a free wee, lol, rather than town centre facilities ☺
*£2.50 saved by going to a different shop for cat meat
*Approx £4.50 saved by making a joint decision not to buy Valentines cards this year. We have always bought them in the past, but instead, we bought a beautiful big heart-shaped cookie to share & decided that could be our 'cards'.
So those choices added up to over £15 saved with virtually no effort.
Just a thing re the cat meat. We went to the aforementioned shop to buy a box of 40 pouches of our usual brand. Usually the best price around locally. Well not at the moment! Was shocked to discover that the price had increased by £2.50 (a rise of 19.23%) since we bought this product just one week ago. Inflation I believe is running at about 6%, so a rise of over19% is outrageous. We stood there speculating whether this might be kind of a Brexitty induced rise, & an elderly, very well spoken man joined in, said he didn't know what was happening with the state of the UK & that in his opinion, Johnson is an "utter !!!!!!"...... so we've had a bit of politics in the cat food aisle this morning. Anyway, we popped into M*rriss*n's as we were in their carpark anyway & discovered the same boxes of 40 pouches for £13. As we need 4 boxes a week for the fur friends, this price represents a £10 per month saving.
I suppose this is a long way of saying that the overall 6% UK inflation rate is the general figure because prices of some products are rising at a much faster rate. I'm pleased that Jack Monroe is calling attention on this regarding much larger than inflation rises on basic foodstuffs.
On a cheerier note, I've just sorted all this year's seeds into envelopes labelled with their sowing month. If it wasn't raining & getting very gusty, I'd be out there sowing a few packs. Never mind. Plenty of time for seeds. Going to read my book instead with a hot water bottle tucked up behind my back.
Stay cosy, 
F xx

Sun_Addict

 🤣🤣🤣🤣 to the free wee, every little helps 😆 Great swap of a nice biscuit instead of Valentines cards. Mr SA always insists on buying me a card although I’ve finally managed to steer him away from large expensive ones, this has been a work in progress for many many years. A work colleague gets her hubby a couple of bottles of his favourite beer and he gets her a bottle of wine instead of cards, far more practical and enjoyable. 

foxgloves

We do like exchanging Valentine's cards, @Sun_Addict - I often pin nice cards up on the kitchen pinboard, have them on my desk or use them as bookmarks - but today, neither of us had got round to buying cards, so the heart biscuit idea seemed a go-er.
The wine/beer idea you mentioned is good too. 
F

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

Evening
I'm in a similar mindset to you foxgloves - i wanted to buy a book in a CS but decided i'd rather keep hold of the £1.50. I have so many books and have sorted out a pile to try to sell or if not give to the CS, the book i resisted would've been added to that pile once i'd read it!  I also want to start going back to the library.  
My cats like certain cat food - named after a queen, but i haven't been able to buy the big boxes for ages; the small 12 packs are now £4.30 whereas they used to be £3.99.  My fave bread is now £1.90 - in Dec it was £1.65, i know this as i didn't buy any for a month as I was doing veganuary! 
I feel like i'm watching every penny.... 
love Deni x  

foxgloves

Yes, I feel the same @Deni_debt-free_dreamer. I am definitely going to kick my efforts up a gear. I went in 2 shops for some new foundation today. The bargainaceous toiletries chain had it in stock but it was exactly the same price as in B**ts, so I went there instead so I'd at least get some loyalty points. I didn't even ask myself if heading off elsewhere was worth it, because I know that building my loyalty points up a bit means that I can have some 'free' toiletries, say a hair colour, moisturiser or shampoo when I need them. I can feel myself changing from an 'it's only a pound' mode to 'I'm not paying X when I can get it for a quid cheaper just down the road' mindset. We know everything is going up - energy bills will be particularly horrendous - so we can help mitigate this a little by striving to get best value on everything else. It's all we can really do.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers,
Finally we sat down for our annual Money Summit. It has taken us a few hours, but as we both said, it is just once a year & allows us to set up the various budgetary plans which facilitate some of the stuff we want to do, as well as being able to pay our way on all the essentials. It's been a really useful session with lots of discussion, & even though there are still rather a lot of 'unknowns' re bill increases, we have worked on as up-to-date info as we can today & I will make sure I input the new figures onto our household bills spreadsheet as soon as I receive them. I actually almost lost this spreadsheet because Soot stood on my laptop & a troubling blank screen appeared. Thankfully it was recoverable! It was attention-seeking on his part because cat tummy time kicks in at 4pm. 
We have assessed the state of our savings, agreed on a plan to rebuild what we have recently spent on changing our car & went through our 10 savings pots one by one to look at what expenditure we would expect for each one. Having done this, we put a cap on how much we realistically need to have in them this year. I found this the most useful part of the afternoon tbh, as we found that we no longer require much at all to finish off our house refurb (apart from paying the builders for the last of the external work this year, but that money is in a separate pot), so we decided to via half of the money in there to a pot which is in greater need. It's also been useful to look at the costs of things on the horizon - for example the balance on our holiday up north plus cattery boarding fees - & work out how much needs to be saved into the Holiday Pot to allow that to happen. We lifted our usual cap on the Optician/dentist fund, as I am going to need (booo) some restorative dentistry in the not too distant future, we assessed whether we are likely to need any new white goods or appliances this year (no, except for a replacement coffee machine, the cost of which I can mostly cover from a refund on the old defective one plus my voucher stash) & how much money would be realistic to put into the Leisure/Entertainment Pot, given that we need to be careful because of cost of living increases. We have two concerts already paid for & that left just one opera that Mr F dearly wanted to see, so as we already had sufficient funds in that pot to cover it & he was happy to go in a cheap row, I told him to go ahead & book it. He was so happy to be going that he volunteered to sort out the cat insurance policy AND research new mobile phone deals. I did have to get a bit assertive about available funds for the latter (he is way more bothered about tech than me) but he has seen a deal he'd be more than happy with, which for both of us comes in at just £1 extra a month, so I've told him he can go ahead & sort that. Re cat insurance, we did go with the policy I'd researched - we will get £35 of nectar points for taking out the policy plus double nectar on all purchases including fuel. We went for the mid-level one, as neither of us believe in medical intervention to keep an animal alive if it is kinder to end suffering. We had this decision with our dear old fur friend. The vet said that radiotherapy & chemo were possible but when we said that he was very poorly & we didn't want to put him through that stressful treatment for what would only have been a short extension of life, the vet said '"If he was my cat, that's exactly the decision I'd have made too", but as I've owned a very snuggly charming cat in the past, who was also an absolute prize fighter, I know the importance of insurance for those regular sort of vet trips! I have lowered the Presents Pot cap by £200 as we did not spend all of the money saved for Christmas & a year's worth of birthdays. I like that Savings Pots are flexible, During Lockdown, we hardly put anything into our Leisure Pot as we weren't able to go anywhere! We will keep the cap on the Clothes Pot the same - no need to increase it as neither of require anything much in that line & I do feel that each Pot has been forensically investigated ready for the year ahead.
We also talked a lot about the effects of the cost of living crisis & came to the conclusion that most of the key ways to keep costs lower still come down to effective household management, particularly grocery shopping, batch cooking & curtailing energy wastage. I would, of course, add shopping from home to this, as this concept does make me stop & think whether I do need to spend the money at all - often I do, but definitely not always, as I regularly find I already have something at home which will do the job just as well. I've made a list of follow-up tasks for actioning - Mr F has already done one of his - & I will do those tomorrow morning when I tackle my regular Monday morning budget updates. Mid-month budget update is also due, so by the end of all that, I will hopefully be feeling really organised with financial stuff & much more focused as we head further in 2022.
Stereo meowing now underway in the kitchen.......they are apparently having cod & tuna!
Hope you've all had a decent weekend,
Take care now,
Love F x