Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Chrystal

What happened to the COFFEE walnut whips!! I've looked for them for ages and never seen any. HELP!

1LuckyLady

These little things certainly do help don't they Foxgloves, prompted by your post I've just looked back at my meter readings for Jan- Oct 2017 compared with the same period 2018 and mine have gone down a little. The kids do much better now with not leaving lights switched on and we switch ds2s alarm off at the wall every morning.
I also thought of you this morning when I pulled the car into the supermarket car park on the way back from the gym, I was going to pop in for something "treaty" to go into the kids lunch boxes, I remembered your post about shopping from home and I stayed in my car and drove to the exit. As I knew I had nuts, dried apricots, dried cranberries, oats, butter and golden syrup in the cupboard at home so I made up a quick batch of breakfast bars which we all love and kept my purse firmly closed

crazy_cat_lady

Apologies in advance if I sound patronising here, but just to let you know that any equipment that heats up uses way more energy than other stuff (so the washing machine heating, kettle, hairdryer etc). One of the things I try to teach my teenagers at school to make them a bit more aware of science in the real world

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

CCL - Yes, our shopping was the same - very little in it other than basics - we doubled up on coffee & cat meat because it was on offer, but there was no big joint of meat or box of washing powder or lots of frivolous extras. I think we will go back to shopping at A*ld next week. We do have a branch in town, but it is on the outskirts & so it involves moving the car to a different car park if we also need lots of stuff from the market or we have heavy charity shop bags to drop off, etc. 'Shopping from home' is going to be a massive theme of the week ahead - see post to come.

OBL - Have you tried the M&S ones? Box of three walnut whips - a standard one, a double chocolate one which has chocolate sauce at the bottom under the mallow fluff & a toffee pecan one which has toffee sauce. If not, I think you defo need to put those on your Santa list!

F x

:j guess where I'm going tomorrow:rotfl:,Im just worried they aren't vegetarian though,I haven't had one since I've been vegetarian

Onebrokelady

Chrystal wrote: »

What happened to the COFFEE walnut whips!! I've looked for them for ages and never seen any. HELP!

Coffee walnut whips are my absolute favourite and they are nowhere to be found anymore:(

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

Our latest energy bill landed in my inbox last night & I've had a look at it today. The good news is that we are £266 in credit towards the coldest months. That's always a relief this time of year, isn't it, to see a credit balance? However, I always like to compare this year's bills with the same period last year, & that was interesting, & not such good news, as we have used more units on all 3 tariffs. Our gas use for the period in question is 324 units higher, our daytime electricity is 135 units higher & our night time electricity is 232 units higher. While I'm obviously really pleased we have a credit balance, I am currently baffled by where exactly we are using extra units of energy. I compared units rather than cost for this, as I know our provider (like most of them) has increased unit costs since last autumn, so I've been directly comparing amounts of units used. The only things I have come up with so far are that we had a holiday at the very beginning of November last year, so that would have been a few days where our heating was either off or turned down to an absolute minimum, plus no hot water use (mr f is a bit of a hippo with baths, I'm afraid) at home for that time.....I guess that would make a difference. We haven't acquired any additional appliances & I can't think that we have made any significant changes to our energy use habits. I do think, however, that all the little energy-saving measures I used to do regularly on a daily basis when I was actively trying to reduce our bills, may have been dwindling. I'm talking about only boiling sufficient water for one coffee if that's all I'm making, switching lights off all the time - actually, I'm really hot on this, but mr f will have the kitchen lights on all through the daylight hours & that's a minimum of 6 bulbs.......10 if it's all of them. We do have a dark kitchen, but it's not so dark as to require artificial illumination all day - I think I will step up my annoying (to him!) habit of switching them off when it is perfectly light enough to see what he is doing! Our current washing machine has shorter cycles than our previous one, so I have been using those on 40 degrees instead of mostly using 30 degrees, which I often did with the old machine in order to reduce the ridiculously long cycle times. Now that energy prices have increased, I think I will revisit using 30 degree cycles when appropriate. I mostly find that 30 degrees gets our laundry perfectly clean, so that's maybe another 'green' habit which has slipped a bit.
Anyway, I shall revisit all my good habits, as they have served us well before. Our energy account is well in credit, so I don't want to sound as though I'm moaning, as my heart absolutely goes out to the many people in this 'austerity'-driven country who are struggling to choose between such fundamental needs as heating & eating. I mean more that it is noticeable that we have used more energy than the same period last year, & as energy prices are only likely to keep rising, I think I would like to explore how we have increased our useage.
I think I shall save a little bit now, by switching this laptop off & going to fetch the laundry in!
Hope everyone has got off to a good start to the week - if not, I've said it before, just have a calm evening then start the week again tomorrow.
F x

My energy bill just seems to be going up and up,I owed them money becasue my direct debit wasn't covering my fuel use but I didn't realise,so I'm paying extra for that and now they have just put it up again,I can't understand why because we are just coming out of the summer months when I would have used less fuel,I'm going to phone them and ask why it's gone up again,I can't move companies until I pay the money off that I owe them so I'm stuck:mad:

joeyjimbles

Chrystal and Onebrokelady - they sometimes have these in our M&S Foodhall but only rarely. To be fair, they have a huge display of them at the moment so perhaps they're seasonal?

https://www.marksandspencerfoodhall.co.uk/product/cappuccino-whips--e752bc4e-549c-48d4-804e-4b4b5ca3623d

And our electricity has shot up too - not the gas - but I know the culprit is DH as he now works from home 2-3 days a week. It's not just his laptop, chargers and the light in the office but the endless cups of tea and coffee. leaving the lights on in the bathroom and hall. A stern word has been had.

foxgloves

CCL - Thanks. Yes, I did know that, but perhaps not the extent of it. For instance, I would still assume I'd save money by, say, turning the towel radiator off for a couple of hours in the middle of the day, but mr f says it will most likely cost more because the element has to heat up again when I switch it back on. One saving I could make is not to assume night time tariff works out cheaper. I mean, it does in terms of unit cost, as it's half the price of our daytime tariff (we're on Economy 7) but I mustn't necessarily think that I'm saving money.by running the heated airer for 7 hours overnight on the half price tariff if my laundry could actually finish drying (I still peg it out if I can) in just an hour. One hour standard rate is much cheaper than running it all night on the economy tariff. It's these little things I need to revisit because they do add up. When I was taking weekly meter readings (I did this for 4 years but stopped about 18 months ago), it was very noticeable how even turning a couple of bedroom heaters down just one notch made a difference.
Also, my 3 times a week hair dryer use got cut right back to almost nil after staying at a very 'green' campsite. The hairdriers were coin operated at cost & took 20p pieces. It was eye-opening to find out how much electicity one actually gets for 20p. Suffice it to say that the next time I washed it, I left drying to a nice windy walk on the pier! I do use my straighteners once or twice a week, but they heat up very speedily & as they are very efficient, my hair is ironed in about a minute.....but hairdrying only happens if drying naturally isn't possible for some reason.
Another little saver - my long handled dustpan & brush makes a great job of the kitchen floor & saves on using the vacuum.
I can't see energy prices coming down. We need all the little savings we can think of!
F x

Onebrokelady

I have some very sad news to share...........I went out today and forgot to buy myself some walnut whips,this is the third time I've done this now

joedenise

Onebrokelady wrote: »

I have some very sad news to share...........I went out today and forgot to buy myself some walnut whips,this is the third time I've done this now

Perhaps subconsciously you don't want to spend the money!

Denise