Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

Evening
I've been out for a walk with a friend today.  While out my neighbour mowed my lawn I called at the c00p to get sourdough bread and it had gone up in price again - it's now 50p more than it cost at xmas.  Going for a lie down now ....
love Deni x

ladyholly

foxgloves While of course it is always nice to hear 'I love you', Mr F came out with some more of my favourite words this morning, when he came in from mowing the lawn & announced that he could do with me WRITING HIM ANOTHER JOB LIST!!!

I wish MR LH would ask for a job list but only if he would actually do it.

2Scratters

Evening Peeps,

have spent some time in the last couple of days listening to Frugal Queen in France. I like some of her ideas and sharing some faux pas that we have all made in the past. We have and still are working on reducing the under the sink cupboard in particular of the very many products. I don't pay any attention to dates on items all all! We are working our way to basic items. Need to find a good bleach in a large 5ltr bottle preferably which we can then dilute. 
There are some new ways that Frugal Queen came up with that will help us too and has helped me re focus as have not been behaving very well. (Too many take away meals is a big one for us). 
I am pausing when making a decision on making any purchases and they are becoming more thoughtful. i.e do I need it right now? am also sticking to the shopping list more rigidly and there is only the odd item that ends up being purchased. I seriously could save a fortune if I planned our meals and would be eating very well. I have an extended smaller sized wardrobe of clothes(I am sure I'm not on my own with this - hangs head in shame ) I will only need new underwear & socks for the rest of my days. Its got to be cheaper me eating more veg than I do at this time

2 Scratters xx

Suffolk_lass

foxgloves said:

Hello Sunbeams,
Another of these days where I don't really intend to do much in the way of jobs, but somehow begin pootling around & then realise I'm actually achieving a string of stuff. So far, I've batch cooked apple sauce & portioned it up for the freezer, done a load of laundry so that it can benefit from a free blow in this breezy sunshine, re-filled the bird feeders, printed some docs which are part of a research project I've been doing, written a friend's birthday card, pruned the grapevine & thinned off the smallest not-likely-to-do-much bunches. I've dosed some dodgy looking bedding plants with seaweed solution, watered the veg & got my diary filled in with stuff I need to do this coming week. 
Not a no-spend day as we popped to the village farm shop cafe for breakfast this morning, but I'd budgeted for this - it had just been postponed from the day we originally intended to go.....& we did have enough loyalty card stamps for a free coffee so a big yay to that.
I'm intending more pootling & some leisure time this afternoon, as it's Mr F's cooking night - he's roasting a pork joint. It's not even in the oven yet & I'm already eyeing it for its rubber pork potential.
While of course it is always nice to hear 'I love you', Mr F came out with some more of my favourite words this morning, when he came in from mowing the lawn & announced that he could do with me WRITING HIM ANOTHER JOB LIST!!!
Oh my! I'm on it like the proverbial bonnet!
Take care, m'dears. Let's keep our mitts on our pence over the coming week - I think I will also do a little stock take of my toiletries stash to ensure I don't go buying things I already have. I've got form for doing that.
F x

Rubber pork! - whatever happened to rubber chicken?!

I love that - I have a computerised "Futile list 387" I think you can determine its status!

In light of fuel prices I have ordered fuel oil last night. 500l £535.pp - I bought oil in May 2020 (1000l was just under £250) and again in April when we had been under the last mark for nearly a month 500l for 84.7ppl - 4 times more than in 2020

foxgloves

@2Scratters - Spending too much (of the bank's) money on take-aways used to be a big problem for us too, back in the Spendy Era. Looking back, I can see exactly how it used to happen - Basically, just select any of the following in any combination:
*Had a bad day, need a treat to cheer us up.
*Had a great day, let's order a takeaway to celebrate
*Didn't used to do meal plans so couldn't decide what to cook.
*Didn't do meal plans so often the thing we intended to eat that night was still in the freezer because neither of us had remembered to take it out before work.
*We are both greedy pigs who like tasty food like pizza, curry & chinese.
*Habit!
*Any number of other justifications why we should have one, each of us enabling the other's poor food & money choices.
Well, once we'd started debt-busting, this had to stop. Not should, but had to, as suddenly I could see how much it was adding up to over a month & it was ridiculous, especially as we both like cooking! We now have a takeaway about 4 times a year, maybe 5 & we enjoy them MUCH more. We always meal plan. I honestly think that meal planning is one of the most money-saving habits we implemented. I like to cook curries, spicy foods, home made pizzas (v easy as I bake most of our bread anyway) & so if we think we are going to be tempted to blow £30 on an Indian takeaway, we plan in a curry night with my home made curries. As meal planning also lends itself well to batch cooking/freezing, I always make plenty so we can freeze some for another night. We've currently got a Chinese take-away planned in for the end of this month IF the money is budgeted for it properly on my next big budget day & IF we have both got our weight shifting back downwards again (even if it's just a little bit). If we fail to meet those criteria then we will wait another month. 
I utterly recommend meal planning - I don't know how we ever managed our weekly food shops without it.......well, actually I do, we just used to amble around the supermarket with a trolley putting in absolutely anything we fancied.......which of course meant top-up shops later in the week. Ridiculous. No wonder we always spent more than we earned!
So come on, Missis......how about some meal plans?
F x

foxgloves

Lol @Suffolk_lass, I do rubber everything here! Chicken, pork, whatever we've roasted for Sunday is expected to do another 2 meals absolute minimum!

Re your heating oil - That is a shocking rise, for it to have quadrupled since 2020. I know there are rural households which rely on it, especially when there's no mains gas laid on. When we finally move to EA, I'm going to have to make sure that we don't live anywhere too far out in the sticks. It surprised me talking to an ex-work colleague who lives not all that far north of us atm. I'm sure she & her partner bought a relatively new house, but she says they are on heating oil & don't have much in the way of options for heating. I wouldn't have described where she lives as particularly rural, so perhaps there are other factors involved too.
Worth maximising your food growing to offset rising costs generally - that's very much what I'm aiming to do. And I'm upping efforts on the make-do & mend front too.
F x

foxgloves

@ladyholly - To be fair, Mr F is very good at doing his share of household tasks. We used to split everything on the domestic front 50:50 when we were both working full time, but when I went part time, I said I'd take on the laundry/ironing as I had more time. Then one of the factors when we were deciding whether I should take VR was that I would take over running the house (especially the finances as that time coincided with our 'final push' to get debt-free). So I probably annoy people when I'm filling in forms as I always tick 'other' whenever possible for my work status & then write in 'Domestic economist'. I'm not a 'stay-at-home' anything as I go out, I'm not a parent, I don't know what a 'home maker' does, but I don't describe myself as that & I don't regard myself as 'unemployed' as I took the decision to take VR & am not seeking work (although I would if our circumstances changed & I needed to). I run all the household finances (except mobile phone & broadband contracts which send me to sleep!), grow a decent amount of food & oversee all our domestic arrangements so 'Domestic economist' sounds like the right title to me!
However, going back to the job list.......there are some jobs which only Mr F is built for! Tasks requiring big physical strength/endurance like moving stuff, digging things out, the ability to reach up higher than my 5'3 & a quarter inches, being better up ladders than me, etc. Hence the job list. I once asked him if he minded me writing one for him. That was ages ago to progress some tasks/projects which weren't getting done. Now he asks me for a new list every now & again. I just pin them on the fridge & he gets on with them in his own time. He also cooks 3 nights a week Fri-Sun & does all the car cleaning & maintenance. I have arthritis in my hands & he does try to help control my pain levels by volunteering for heavy tasks, hence the job list request, I think. 
F x

foxgloves

A few bits of usual Monday money saving today:
*Laundry all done  - 30 degrees & pegged out to dry for free.
*Rubber pork duties yielded a decent amount of further meals. Roast dinner yesterday. Leftovers divvied up for hot pork rolls with apple sauce tonight, a container of slices in gravy frozen for a 'free' Sunday dinner another timer, a sandwich made for tomorrow's packed lunch & the rest chunked up & added to the growing man-stew box in the freezer. (I've put jacket potato night on the meal plan for Friday.......what's the betting that there'll be a portion of Epic Man Stew atop one of them....not mine!)
*Did budget updates - mostly grocery budget & personal spends. Spent more on groceries than we thought but tbf, it did include our 6-weekly pantry stock-up at A*di & an extra box of cat food to see if Soot & Ash can be tempted to eat an own-brand variety of fishy stench. 
*Garden jobs: I'm just about to head off to do these & they'll include picking strawberries for tonight's dessert, cutting the back-up half dozen chard plants I kept just in case the main ones didn't transplant well (will add to a stir-fry) & de-gunking the pond again - wretched duckweed, although it will be nice to see the taddies up close as they are getting their back legs now & looking more froggy. It's also quite a good bending & stretching session 
*Finish knitting the back of the first of my handknitted winter cardigans. This is part of preparing for winter's much higher energy bills. I don't usually knit in 100% acrylic (am a yarn snob) but this was well-reviewed & it does seem to be decent quality. I got a 15% off discount code & so each cardi (I'm knitting one in magenta to go over my black clothes & one in black to go over my more colourful stuff) has only cost me just a little over £15 to make. I couldn't buy one for that. Of course another benefit of having 2 chunky 'chuck-on' cardis in acrylic rather than high wool content is that they will dry pretty fast after laundering. Anyway, I want to have cast off the back & cast on the first of the fronts by bedtime tonight.
OK, off to raid my stash of recycled plastic gloves & fetch a suitably pondy bucket. Ooooh, the glamour of my life!
F x

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

evening 
I made my own pizza the other day, can't claim to have made a bready base but i had some YS ciabatta rolls in the freezer so i defrosted one and put tomato puree and my own favourite toppings then cooked it - it was lovely!  I have mozzarella cheese that needs using up so i shall probably have HM pizza another night soon
Dx

2Scratters

@foxgloves thankyou for the kick up the backside. You are right, we have enough stuff in the house to do that. Even at late lunch DH asked did I want to got out for something to eat (that's because he'd been to an appointment and was all clean) I declined as was thinking about eating what we already had in. We enjoyed the throw together left overs. Yet have done nothing for tea for us. I did take out yesterday some cooked shin beef which will do 3 meals each but CBA To be fair as we ate late the planning for hunger did not arrive. We will probably have just cereal for supper followed by strawberries and cream that needs eating up. That saves money too. 
I am sat here doing a meal plan for this week from the food we have in stock. For the next 3 nights it will be the beef in onion gravy with different variations. i.e  jersey potatoes with asparagus tips and cauli. Jersey potatoes again with broccolli and cauliflower cheese. Mash and beans (sorry if that is too wet for some - needs must) If Thursday turns out too hot then it will land back in the freezer till the wet weekend.

2 Scratters xx