Put away your purse & become debt-averse

scandimore

You get loads done foxgloves, good luck to Mr F for the food shop! 

foxgloves

I knew he'd done really well with it, @scandimore, because when he came through the door, the first thing he said was, "Well go on then, guess how much I spent......" before announcing a grand total of £22-46. He stuck to the list apart from 2 small items of Easter chocolate reduced to 16p. We do still need to buy cat biscuits, but will still be within our budget.
A while back, somebody said in their diary (I think it may have been @Blackcats) that having £xx left in ones grocery budget should mean that is the actual amount available, rather than a kind of notional amount. I think we also tend to do this. If there's £50 left for our final shop of the month & we spend £68, I'd just accommodate that extra £18, when really we should have taken the £50 as our actual limit. As I said to Mr F, we can usually accommodate an overspend but a better way to think of this is as a subsidy from a different part of the budget. It may have facilitated a grocery overspend but it will have prevented money going into savings pots or eaten into our buffer zone. All areas of the budget being scrutinised -  probably the same in many households atm.
F x

Cheery_Daff

(Sneaks out of lurkdom - hope you don't mind me joining in) 😊

Well done to Mr F! Certainly the same scrutiny going on here. We too are guilty of just overspending the groceries budget... I've used YNAB for a long time now, although frequently been rubbish at putting things in the app as I spend them. I'm making a conscious effort to do that now though, and it tells you instantly when you're going over budget, and asks which pot you want to take the excess from 😮 So if you want to spend more than you've budgeted, it forces you to say 'yes, this is more important than my holiday savings/car maintenance/whatever'. It's quite annoying! 😂😂

Excellent Easter chocolate reductions there though 😊

Blackcats

Phew - just had a mammoth catch up on your diary.
going back a good few days to say that I was a pre school reader and my teacher was very supportive - her main aim was to get everyone in her class reading well.  The "good" readers helped the less advanced - I remember pairs of 5 year olds sitting together reading.  

My youngest child was a very early reader - we found this out when we were having a family lunch in a local pub.  My mum had taken 3 year old to the loo and been asked "nanny what's a d u r e x?"  Thinking quickly mum responded it's a special sort of soap.  They emerged from the loo with 3 year old having a tantrum and protesting quite loudly because nanny wouldn't buy her some d u r e x 🤦‍♀️

Sorry to hear about your freezer - I need to build up my appliances pot - I've had a message from my mobile phone provider telling me that my phone is too old to support the upgrades to their network ... kindly offering me a 36 month £38 per month contract to upgrade with "only" a £29 upfront payment needed.  Thanks but no thanks to that offer.

foxgloves

Oh that's funny @Blackcats, about the vending machine.
We now need to build our appliances fund back up. I cap it at £600 because that amount would cover a large appliance carking it & requiring replacement, as well as a smaller simultaneous appliance-based meltdown. Annoyed me that we had to use it because I'd just built that pot up to capacity. On the other hand, I was grateful we had the funds available & that's what the savings pots are there for. Back in the day, a new freezer would have gone straight on credit & I'd have been moaning about it being an 'emergency'. White goods replacement is absolutely a foreseeable expense though, so I added 'Appliances replacement' to our savings pots when I expanded them from 6 to 10 a few years ago.
F

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

Morning foxgloves and friends
I don't have specific savings pots just one general one, but i think i should definitely do that.  
In MSE-ness I have 3 lots of washing on the line, one load was done on the speedy/economy setting.  I've also been unplugging my clock radio as soon as i get up.
My fave sourdough bread from the c00p has now gone up to £2 - sorry if i've already said that on here but i'm traumatised!!  
love Deni x

foxgloves

@Deni_debt-free_dreamer, Savings pots work well for us.....well, I manage them & decide the balance of what is paid into all, some, or very occasionally none of them each month. When I knew I could cope with 6 pots, I upped it to 10. It does help me to have categories. Just as a simple example, Mr F asked me if I wanted to go to a garden show this weekend -I think tickets are £7.50 ish. I said if we go, the entry cost will have to be from our Personal Spends, as I know the Leisure & Entertainment Pot currently only has £10.19 in it! That's not for a bad reason, just that we've recently bought tickets for a folk gig later this year & an opera in early 2023. We both agreed to cap this pot at a maximum of £200 at any time, so it will be built up again but will take its turn with other pots which need replenishing. 
I genuinely thing this system helps to keep us straight.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams, Woke with a horrible headache & thought today was doomed, but Mr F brought me coffee, toast & paracetamol in bed & dealt with arrival of the builders. And I perked up! That is the magic threesome in headache vanquishment in my opinion!
Went for a walk around the village further to blow out the cobwebs & felt fit enough for some gardening. Raked a large bed even & planted out 1st lettuce sowing - 'Salad bowl' - my Mum grew this variety when I lived at home. She liked it because you can harvest a few leaves from several plants & they'll keep growing, rather than cut a whole one & it's gone & what doesn't get used goes wilty in the fridge - I wrap unused leaves in a clean damp tea towel but Mum wouldn't have faffed around with that. I digress......anyway, I rigged up some canes & netting to stop errant beaks getting to work & it felt good to have a food crop in the ground. As with all garden jobs this time of year, getting one thing done, meant another could move forward - 2nd sowing of lettuces (Lollo rosso -v easy to grow) now moved outside on covered wheelbarrow vacated by their leafy cousins for hardening off. The strong winds today have fetched half of Mr F's greenhouse shading off. He went a funny colour when I said I was about to climb up & re-attach it & says he'll do it tomorrow.
Energy saving - two baths from one lot of hot water, my hair has blown dry since I've been sitting out her chatting to you. Received monthly statement from the Tentacled Provider today. Of course the prices increased midway through the billing period & we didn't switch off our central heating until halfway through either. However, our credit balance has increased by about £9. I'm thinking that May:s statement will give a better picture of how much credit we are likely to be able to build up by October. Our monthly dd has not been increased yet. Also, we reckon (as do the builders) that we've got about another 4 or 5 days of work left. The cement mixer has been running pretty much constantly plus other power tools, all of which are obviously powered by our electricity supply so that should be a visible reduction, I should think, when the work has finally finished.
Ash has just come to join me & is trying to rub noses. I think I'll give him a fuss then read the news headlines to see what PantsOnFire has been up to today.
F xx

Sun_Addict

Apparently paracetamol works faster if taken with coffee 👍 I’m still waiting for 🐙 to let me know my direct debit increase for May. I’m over £100 in credit at the moment but I’d like to know what it will be as it will go out while I’m on holiday. 

foxgloves

I think it's the waiting getting to me as well, @Sun_Addict. I don't know whether our direct debit will increase in May or not, as the letter from the Tentacled People just said they'd be monitoring it & letting us know in the next few weeks, or words to that effect. We currently have over £360 credit, because as I've said before, our usage patterns changed when we had a new heating system installed in 2020 & I'd fully intended to arrange both a rebate & a decreased monthly payment at the end of March because it had become obvious that the new system was a lot cheaper to run than the old one & that we were over-paying. Of course by then, we all knew the manure was going to hit the fan with 54% price increases, so I left the credit in place. We currently pay £119 pm. If we continue just to pay that amount between May & September, that's another 5 months of adding to a significant credit balance. I am wondering if this means they won't increase our monthly dd just yet, I don't know......& it's the not knowing I don't like, because knowledge would inform my actions. 
F