Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Onebrokelady

Always time for an extra coffee,I'm just sneaking one in before I go to work

carrielovesfanta

foxgloves wrote: »

I love Christmas baking, OBL. Re peppermint creams. I discovered a good 'cheat' on these a couple of years ago. I had some leftover fondant icing from decorating a cake, so froze it until inspiration struck. I ended up kneading peppermint essence into it & making peppermint creams. I half dipped them in melted dark chocolate & they were nicer than they had any right to be!

Thanks Foxgloves! I have a load of fondant in the freezer that got coloured into a nasty brown by accident. I can make peppermint creams! Or maybe some coffee creams too as it's brown!

foxgloves

Oooh, coffee creams, CLF. I don't see why they wouldn't work? Maybe with a cheeky little shard of dark chocolate sticking out of the too? Or a white chocolate button for a 'cappucino' version?
And all this talk of leftover fondant icing reminded me that I had 3/4 of a pack in the freezer, left over after icing the fruit cake I baked last month. It was the cake I did for the afternoon tea following Mum's funeral. I was very stressed at the time but still thought to wrap & freeze that l/o icing. It should be enough for my Christmas cake. If not, I'll improvise. Just off to fetch my notebook to cross it off my festive food list. I have ribbons, china decorations, silver balls & a recycled cakeboard, so I only need to buy marzipan.
Anyway.....must hie me away up to my little HQ room to make a start on my Big Budget Day. Update to follow, probably.
F x

Thick_n_Thin

I’m loving how creative you are, you’ve inspired me to have another go at baking. Used to make a mean carrot cake but for some reason I stopped, maybe need to start this up again as I used to find it very therapeutic!

foxgloves

Oooh, I love a good carrot cake, Thick n Thin. I've loved baking since I was about 12 & can"t see me ever giving it up. I'm going to bake an apple & cinnamon loaf cake tomorrow, as I'm currently using up our windfall apples before they go squishy.

foxgloves

Payday today, so my Big Budget Day. Reconciled November's budget first & then set December's. No nasty surprises but I think December can be a tricky one with extra expenses & we also have a few days away for Mr f' s big birthday. The cottage rental was saved for & has already been paid, so only expenses while we are there to think about. We like to have a 'holiday cash bag' while we're away so I've budgeted for that, mostly by using some of the money I've made recently from Ziffit & eBay.
I also remembered to budget for a family meal we're going out for & include a bit extra for a drink & a coffee. Then the big one.. ...how much to budget for groceries in December..I worked through a couple of options & decided to be generous. I decided I'd rather be realistic & allow us to include a few bottles of wine & some treats, rather than budget a more conservative amount then find that we are dipping into other 'pots' & having to re-budget. So I think I've allowed plenty & have explained to mr f (who can eat his bodyweight in posh crisps, beer & fancypants cheeses) that we won't be spending more than that unless it comes out of his own money. To be fair, he thinks it's ample, so it's just a case of tracking food spends from Saturday, as we will be shopping around. I do keep a monthly grocery budget tracker in my bullet diary though, so that won't be a problem.
And I still refuse to waste food. Meal planning will still be done for Christmas week & I've already mentioned that my festive food shopping list has featured a good bit of shopping from home. The amount of meals I can get out of a turkey is legendary in my family & I'm already looking forward to the challenge!
Hope everyone staying cosy - what a cold wet old night out there. Am by the fire with large snoring cat!
F x

joedenise

We're at our DD1s for Christmas Day so just the two of us after that before our big holiday to Goa in January. All meals planned for December, most of which will be coming from stores and freezer! Hoping shopping won't be any different to the rest of the year! But we'll see. We have a few £s available if we go over but hope not to.

Denise

Onebrokelady

Sounds like a sensible plan,I've been moving funds around tonight so they are still available to get at if I really need them but are out of my main account so they don't get frittered away on fripperies

foxgloves

I move funds around quite a lot. Once I'd developed a budgeting system that worked for us (it took 3 goes but the 4th 'go' was 'the One'), I decided it's a pretty pointless exercise putting money into various 'pots' if you then fail to keep these different pots straight. It does take a little bit of time after a shopping trip just to get everything updated, but I've learned that these regular updates are what makes the difference between 'having a budget' & 'budgeting'. Even back in the Spendy Decades, I'd have the occasional very brief lightbulb flicker & get some figures down on paper, but that's where they stayed, while a couple of days & a few lentils later, spending levels continued as normal.
So budget updates are good. Tedious at times, but essential.
Just finishing a huge mug of coffee - hoping for a really productive day today. Rubbish night's sleep so am a bit zombified, but am hoping to rally once all this caffiene hits my bloodstream.
Might be back later with another big spendy waste of money from my past........the Christmas Outfit. See you there xx

foxgloves

Hello dear readers,
I promised you a bit of a Debtisode last time, didn't I? Or more to the point, to discuss my past dubious relationship with that additional festive budget-buster, the Christmas Outfit. Oh my days, how many failures have I had over the years in this confidence-sapping department?!
So, I didn't used to budget at all.....I've already explained my past method of dealing with the arrival of bank statements, those arriving in December being particularly horrid, because they were a herald for the even worse ones to follow in January & February, when my festive spending really came home to roost. And I always spent more than I earned. This happened every month. I didn't even have to look at my statement properly (just as well, as I never did) to know this, as every 6 months, my bank at the time would send me a helpful mailing showing a series of bar charts, one for each month, simply showing 'Funds in' & 'Funds out'.......no prizes for guessing which bar was always bigger than the other one!
So With no budget whatsoever in place, no tracking of funds, I'd set about my usual gift-buying, which I've always loved, & would never have a target spend per person or overall amount in mind......I'd just buy until it 'looked like' each recipient had enough. Then there'd be extra going out, extra food & treats, new bits & pieces for my house inspired by tempting articles in all those Christmas magazines I also used to buy, & crafty bits & pieces for making Yule-y things..........& just when you'd think I really should have been about ready to shut myself in my big old dark spidery circa 1900 pantry in order to stop myself spending money that wasn't mine, I'd realise, shock horror, that I HADN'T GOT ANYTHING TO WEAR ON CHRISTMAS DAY!!!! Not literally nothing, of course, as in I'm the only one eating my turkey sitting there in my bra & pants, maybe draped in a couple of tea towels for modesty's sake. No, I mean as in I hadn't got a new Christmas outfit. Back into the city centre to try & find something. This would always be the last thing I'd buy, so it would be getting very close to Christmas & I'm quite a difficult size to fit, as I'm reasonably plumptious in the womanly sense, but not very tall. I don't know why I got into the mindset of needing something new for basically one day, which would be spent with my family, anyway, not going out anywhere dressy. And of course I could never find anything I really liked, & would end up buying the 'best of a bad lot' option, not really liking it, & barely wearing it again, before it schlepped off to the charity shop. There is a photo of me, taken on Christmas Day, back during the Spendy Years. I'm sitting on the sofa with my Gran. She looks perfectly happy in what she's wearing.....her usual black trousers with a nice baggy floral jumper. I am wearing a hideous pale purple top with a shocking pink sequin rose, although it looks like a sort of sparkly triffid attempting to crawl over my shoulder. I hated that top. You can tell by my facial expression in that photo that I am grudging every single minute of wearing the bloody thing. And as for the black culottes I bought to go with it? I haven't even got them on! I remember thinking they made me look even shorter, so I wore a black skirt I'd already got instead. I do still have the earrings. I have maybe worn them a total of 6 times in all those years, as they hurt my ears & I don't really like the colour. What a waste of money all of that was - at least I don't recall buying new boots that year......I used to be the most dreadful sucker for new boots.......I still could be, actually, but it's well under control now. Anyway my dears, put that tale on rinse & repeat, sometimes buying a second outfit if I decided I didn't like the first one even enough to wear under duress, pretty much every year, until I had my damascene conversion & decided I utterly detested permanently being in debt.
Things are so different now.
On Christmas Day 2016, I felt really confident in my outfit. It looked good, was comfortable to wear & cost £5.98. A sheer slinky black top with a purple velvet maxi tube skirt (two lucky charity shop finds earlier that year). With some kitten heeled boots I have owned for years. Last year, I did have a new dress, but it was one I'd had my eye on for a while & I bought it using my treat money from when I opened my 2017 sealed pot. I wore it with my DMs. This year, I will either be wearing that again because I love it, or if my tummy is feeling a bit podgy (I've taken my eye off the ball with my dieting since all the stress with my Mum), I will wear the nice short black dress I swapped with my sister - we both had a dress we no longer wore, so swapped with each other for a free outfit. I have some outlandish tights I received as a gift, which I can put with that in vivid patterns in shades of green, so with black boots, that will also be a good spend-free outfit.
I really dislike the photo of me in that bloody horrible sequin top, but I've kept it as it's a good one of my Gran. In the unlikely event that I get the urge to go shopping for an unnecessary outfit to wear for pretty much one day, I shall be able to get that photo out to deter spending, unless it's on something I will wear a lot & that I totally love.
I know we've a few ex- big spenders on here - anyone else been lured by unsuccessful sparkly purchases to wear at Christmas? OBL, I reckon you've maybe bought a few, lol!
Enjoy your Friday night, all,
F xx