Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
I haven't had a very productive day at all today. That's because I'd planned a gardening day, which has had to be entirely abandoned because of rain. It was raining when I got up at 6.15 & it is just slowing now. If it stops, it will be the first time today & it's nearly 3pm. So I've spent the day pottering around - doing a bit of tidying, next week's meal plans, wrote the grocery shopping list & put tonight's dinner in the slow cooker. I'm trying a new recipe from the slow cooker book I bought earlier this year. I'd previously borrowed it from the library & as soon as I saw how many interesting recipes were lurking within, I decided to buy my own copy. It's lamb mince with squash & green chillies. I just need to stir in a handful of chopped mint & some harissa paste at the end of cooking time, then it just needs serving with warm pittas. It was so nice to be able to pop down to our herb bed for the required oregano, mint & thyme......even if I did get so soaked in the 4 minutes it took me that my coat is still not yet dry! 
I've also done quite a lot of typing - my family history research on a line I've worked on for over 30 years is just about complete & I am really enjoying typing it all up into a document (more like a book once I've printed it out!) & finding photos of relevant places, buildings, etc, with which to illustrate it. So I've kept busy (I'm truly hopeless at doing nothing) but not my usual level of practical productivity. Gardening day now back on for tomorrow, which Mr F assures me is going to be nice weather.
I have, however, done quite a lot of thinking about various elements of our budget.....particularly the monthly grocery budget. Before we paid off the last of our mortgage nearly two & a half years ago, I was budgeting noticeably less on groceries. I suspect that I increased it very slightly (I could refer to my trusty Money Book to check) once the mortgage & small car loan remnant had gone, but what really pushed it up was the chaotic period which followed. Do you remember the shortages of various items just prior to the 1st Lockdown? Things like flour, yeast, loo rolls, tinned tomatoes, paracetamol, etc, etc. Well, I have an emergency plan in the back of my diary which includes a list of things on which to stock up in times of disaster, so we used that & stocked up our pantry with not-stupid-amounts of things we felt might continue to be or become scarce. I think a lot of us did this & it meant that grocery budgets went a bit peculiar because while we might buy a bag of flour or a couple of tins of tuna, etc, as part of a weekly shop, we wouldn't usually buy 6 bags of flour & 8 tins of tuna, so our grocery budget was increased. The thing we've found (I'd be genuinely interested to know it any of you are finding this too) is that once the bigger stock-ups have ceased & pantry stores are being used up, the monthly grocery spend hasn't fallen back as much as I thought (hoped) it would. We shop around - we tend to use A*di for a pantry stock-up every 5 or 6 weeks, M*rris*n's or Sainsb*;s depending on what vouchers/offers available for main shop, Waitr*se for certain items we either particularly like or can't get elsewhere plus local market butcher & greengrocer. Admittedly our spend is higher during what our ancestors would have known as the 'Hungry Gap' months when there isn't much to harvest from our garden & lower when we are not buying the range of fruit & veg we grow ourselves. We are not going over budget atm, but my feeling is that this is at least partly because I am budgeting a generous amount at £85 to £90 per week, whereas I budgeted £50 or £60 pre-pandemic. We can afford to spend this, for which I am grateful, but I am conscious that the cost of living disaster/inflation/stratospheric energy bill rises, etc, will first hit our savings pots & the money I via into those is the difference each month when I budget between the amount left when all the outgoings have been stripped out & the £200 I always leave in our buffer zone. So (if anyone is still reading.....) my thoughts today have very much been pootling away on this subject, as reflected n the meal plan I've written, which apart from some unextravagant celebratory BBQ items for the weekend (because the work on our house is finally complete) involves all meals from stuff we already have in stock. I think one thing I do need to be realistic about is just how much grocery prices have risen & will continue to do so now that inflation is soon predicted to reach 10%. So I'm not beating myself up here - we cook everything from scratch & we grow a decent amount of food ourselves - but I have had this niggling little pixie in my head today telling me it's worth having a look at the whole grocery-buying scenario.
Long post.....need a cup of tea. Think will also squidge down the garden now the rain's finally stopped to check that my plant babies aren't too soggy.
Love F x

IzzyBee

Just popping in to say I do love to read your posts foxglove 

foxgloves

Aww, sweet of you @IzzyBee - Do always feel welcome to comment & join in.
F

EssexHebridean

I've decided to join the grocery challenge on Old Style for this month as I want to refocus on what we're spending on groceries and also on where we could do better - and I felt that reading the thread there and seeing what others do is as good a way as any of getting some new inspiration. It's not that we can't afford to spend more - indeed we put our budget up at the start of the year as it had been unchanged for a good while and was starting to feel squeezed - but it is more that I want to be sure we can manage the increasing prices without feeling that we "should" cut back more than we want to - and so refocusing my mind on some of the thigs we used to do was a good way forwards. I also want to reorganise our storecupboard a bit, and amass a slightly larger store of certain things where I can't see beyond prices increasing. 20p spaghetti is one - how long has that been 20p for? It's got to rise before long, surely!  So yes - essentially, I'm with you on trying to align meal plans with "!things we have already" so far as possible!

Garden wise we're hoping for parsnips, chard, tomatoes, french beans and assorted herbs this year, plus the gooseberries and redcurrants. We've got a couple of "Hungarian Black" chilli seeds planted as well but they're being terrifically slow to do anything much - so I'm hoping they've not decided to just do nothing! Also hoping that my tomatoes don't do what last year's did - get to a handful of leaves and then basically stop doing anything at all! 

foxgloves

All that rain today has really perked the garden up. Can't see any damage to plant babies. Onwards with gardening day tomorrow.
F x

Four_Seasons

They look beautiful x

marionmgcars

I agree with the increase due to the crisis over the last 2 years.  Watching my budget settle again I’ve noticed I am still spending 50% more money on petrol than on food.  Something I need to focus on more.  

Whatlifeis

Stunning irises. So lovely

Humdinger1

@foxgloves yep,  totally agree re food budget.  3 Brexit stockpiles followed by lockdown stockpile has left me with cupboards groaning but also a much bigger bill.  I have consciously dropped this week's O*ado delivery for the first time since March 2020!  Partly because I had vouchers from another shop but more because I'm worried about their possibly abusive management.   My daughter goes to uni in September and I want to practice ordering less...remember when you couldn't get deliveries in lockdown! I'm still
 scarred!! We are also.in a veg box weekly delivery scheme.  The cost of all this is astronomical (£500 per month for 3 people) but I do feel it's one thing I can control and is a major contribution to our health.  Am having a root through cupboards to see what we have to use up.  Love Humdinger xx 

foxgloves

@EssexHebridean - Yes, those are the kind of thoughts that have been going round in my head re grocery budgets. I'm conscious that when we come in a little under budget, we tend to feel pretty pleased with ourselves, but as I regularly tell Mr F, I think I budget quite generously for just 2 people & 2 cats, especially considering that this sum doesn't include our milk (we have a milkman) or our 6 times a year fresh fish box delivery. I suppose I'm trying to future-proof a bit......will keep thinking. I think even just the thought process will have a psychological knock-on effect. Have already prepped, blanched & frozen carrots today, as I know they won't be used this week, & have tweaked tonight's meal plan to use up l/o new potatoes, which means that wraps can stay in the freezer for another meal.

@Humdinger1 - Yes, I also stocked up for Brexit. I think the impact on food imports hasn't really started yet because the Gov't keeps postponing the date for the new food checks to begin (they're worried about shortages on supermarket shelves). And I made sure we had plenty in during the pandemic because it felt sensible to go out to supermarkets less frequently & also to have plenty in stock in case we became ill with Covid ourselves. And....@marionmgcars I think we all want to return to normal with our grocery shopping but we now have these swiftly rising prices plus shelf shortages of products impacted by the war. 
I feel that it would be a sensible move to stock up on the sort of products which will almost certainly rise in price - I'm thinking flour, oil, spread, pasta etc. 
Interesting topic of discussion & underneath it all, the desperate need of so many families, which is made worse by the deep structural inequality in the UK & conveniently masked by additional factors such as Covid & the war.
F