Put away your purse & become debt-averse

2Scratters

Well we are still sat here in our dressing gowns!!! It has been a very productive day with my payday and DS's as I do his too. Opened up 2 savings accounts for DH and myself individually with better interest rates than we currently have. I am going to check monthly in my Nwide account about certain accounts as the interest rates seem to by climbing slowly and have at least 2 accounts finishing this year where the interest rates drop back down. I am trying hard to max out savings as best as I can. I am a late comer to savings due to bad handling and overspends (debt).
We really are at the bottom of the grocery purse this month - turns out DH had given DS £30. We are not keeping a proper eye on the ball with this by not documenting the deductions. The fridge is really bare. I did by chance pickup 1 dozen eggs from our Morri@sons local for 30p yesterday when I cashed in the council tax refund.
Going to take out the frozen turkey LO to make curry for me to take to work tomorrow for my dinner.

keep that purse zipped
2Scratters xx

foxgloves

Me too, @Deni_debt-free_dreamer, re the O'-level maths fails. My problem stemmed from not seeing any point to it beyond having a good level of functional arithmetic, plus percentages & fractions. I did have to pass coursework & an examination piece in statistics for my Masters degree, & also managed a reasonable sized budget & regularly produced & handled statistics in my professional role - never had any problem with any of that that side of things, but trigonometry, equations, number bases/binary, etc......simply couldn't see any relevance to my life at the time or my future life, so switched off mentally, messed around a lot in lessons & by the time I thought it might be useful to have an O'level maths pass, I was too far behind.
Your veggie lasagne has made me think that I haven't made one for ages. I'm not vegetarian, but cook plenty of meat-free meals & I used to do a nice lasagne filling made from red lentils, onions, peppers, etc. Must resurrect it at some point.
F

foxgloves

Sounds like a useful money-sorting day, @2Scratters, even if you didn't actually make it out of your dressing gown! Agree about keeping reliable notes re deductions/commitments from the various budget strands. I update our budget every Monday morning & Mr F is now well-trained to drop all till receipts onto my desk so that I can ensure every transaction is accounted for. If it isn't a purchase, but is another kind of transaction, such as withdrawing some cash or a charity donation, he scribbles it down onto a post-it. The thing with budgets is that they have to be accurate to do their job. As we all find out sooner or later during the process of learning to budget, if things are missed off & not accounted for, we can think that we have more money available than we really do, & that way lies budget cack-up!
F

Suffolk_lass

Maths, being one of the core subjects, can be taken at evening classes if you ever wanted to "catch up" on the messing about lessons foxgloves 

In my fifth form of senior school we had a new maths teacher who announced that we had not been studying the right things. We all had to take a mock and only people with 33% or more were allowed to take the O' level (we were the last year before they switched to the merged GCSE). I got 32.9% (apparently) and was fifth in the year. Facing the prospect of just four in the year group taking O' level I asked to see the head teacher and suggested the reputation of the school depended on good results and that my percentage and that of 3 others with 32.5+% should be permitted to take it. She agreed. Five of us passed, including two plus me who got less than 33%.

It was probably the first time my head was above the parapet and that lesson has formed the pattern of my life (often not to personal advantage, as I have been thought of as militant and a trouble-maker by some - I prefer advocate for others).

foxgloves

Morning Sunbeams......although after a blue-skied sunny start, we just have clouds here atm. Annoyingly, I've woken up with a bout of IBS this morning - I'm trying to get on top of it before it gets any worse - not sure what's caused it as it usually involves a degree of stress & I wouldn't say I feel particularly stressed at the moment. So Mr F has pootled off into town to do the grocery shopping without me, which means this will be a speedy process, as he doesn't wander about looking at stuff as much as I do. We revisited the meal plan & shopping list before he set off & crossed quite a lot of things off the list. This is because the unusual bank holiday days mean we will probably do our next shop on Thursday or Friday next week, not even a week away, so although we've meal planned for the long BH weekend, there is no need to buy stuff for it until next time. 
My plans for today are finally to get the last 7 outdoor tomato plants planted into place in the veggie garden, staked & tied in. Then, I will get half the courgette plants in too & start clearing the bed for the rest of them. I'd like to get the climbing beans out as well this weekend, but I will need to harvest the rest of the lettuces which I grew under their frame as a catch-crop first. We shall need some salad tonight & on Monday, so I will prep that & wrap it in a clean damp tea-towel in the fridge, but the rest will need to keep a bit longer, so I will leave the roots on, give them a good rinse & stand them in a big bowl of water to take as we need them over next week. They were essentially a free crop as leftover seeds I just shoved in to make use of a temporarily spare stretch of ground, so even if the last of them end up in the wormery, it won't be a problem.
Mr F is making noises about a possible early tip run tomorrow, so I think he is likely to be continuing with his major shed sort-out.
No effort required for food tonight - 1/4s in rolls with coleslaw & salad - the burgers being another Mr F BBQ meat over-buy from earlier in the month & frozen when he realised he'd 'done it again'. 
Nice to chat, must go & unlock the shed & crack on now,
F x 

Tescodealqueen

Failed my maths o level and managed a CSE grade 2. Took a GCSE on a course offered to parents at my sons school and finally got a Grade B GCSE at the ripe old age of 46. Not sure what I have don3 with it but was thrilled to be able to use a scientific calculator rather than a logarithm book (no calculators allowed in my exams back in the day) 

foxgloves

I also had that reputation at work, @Suffolk_lass, but it was more that I was one of the few people prepared to, as you say, put my head above the parapet by often raising things that everyone moaned about but never tried to solve. I think it was fine at first when specific difficult things in my service area needed firm management, but once I was seen as someone who stood up to more senior managers & called out hypocrisy & complacency, I think it probably didn't do my career any good in later years leading up to when I took VR. I remember it used to infuriate me when everyone due to be at a particular meeting would say they'd definitely back me if I raised whatever the difficult issue was, then go on to sit there in absolute silence like the blimming cowards they were. I guess many people have found themselves in that situation.
Interesting about the maths. I wonder if I would pass it now, simply because there is no pressure & it wouldn't affect anything whether I passed or not. Over lockdown, I did briefly consider taking an additional A-level for my own amusement, I thought perhaps Economics, but I didn't make any decision & I think really, it would be displacement activity for what I should be doing, which is finishing my novel.......one of the reasons in my 'Pro's' column for taking VR ages ago & still not even finished the first draft.
Interesting with exams how sometimes the people who are told they are 'borderline' or not really good enough to enter an exam at all then end up doing better than expected.
My Mum used to tell this story about the 11+, which of course back in her day, was taken by pretty much everyone. At her village primary school, the teachers decided there were only two children in her year who were likely to pass the 11+, so they arranged extra lessons for them, special tutoring, etc. Well, two children did indeed pass, but not the two selected for all the extra tutoring. One was my Mum & the other was her friend, so despite being 'written off' with all the kids who were going to fail, they both went off to the grammar school in town with their heads held high. If she hadn't defied expectation & passed, I wouldn't exist, as she met my Dad at that school & by the end of their time there, they were apparently spending their lunchbreaks walking hand-in-hand around the school field. 
F 

amber03

Evening Foxglove, I worked in the CS when I was in my early 20’s and that’s where I learnt to speak up. If after a meeting(and there were many) and you weren’t happy with something said at the meeting but had kept quiet, then you were “shouted down” for not speaking up if you later complained. Which looking back I agree with. Have come across people who put thoughts  into your head, then sit back and watch whilst you speak up about an issue as they don’t want to cause trouble whilst you are labelled a troublemaker.xx

Baileys_Babe

That all sounds horrible familiar @amber03 reminds me of various places I've worked in the past. I do agree with speak up or don't moan, some people complain and mutter no end, getting everyone down but won't ever take responsibility and speak up.

Suffolk_lass

Baileys_Babe said:

That all sounds horrible familiar @amber03 reminds me of various places I've worked in the past. I do agree with speak up or don't moan, some people complain and mutter no end, getting everyone down but won't ever take responsibility and speak up.

When part of the management we used to treat these as the happy moaners; only happy and normal if there was a low level of moaning that meant we could ignore them.

Speaking up definitely hindered my career progression but I received several messages saying thank you for standing up for me when I retired.