Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Yes, I think back in the day, @Blackcats, catalogue shopping was our cohort's 'online', wasn't it? I too spent plenty of money with them. My worst money fail with clothes though was always sale rails. These days, I really do try to avoid my old pitfalls. If a garment doesn't fit properly everywhere, is only 'ok' or 'quite nice' or doesn't gel with the rest of my wardrobe thus necessitating spending more money on stuff to go with it, it stays in the shop. Buying less random clothing has also given my wardrobe more of a 'look' as I do now try harder to pick garments which go with things I already have. Clothing was a big spendy area for me in the past.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers - just a quick one from me. A no-spend day. Two loads of laundry done to make use of decent free drying weather, bread baked, last pick of strawberries done for this year & all the netting, etc, packed away. Will weed the troughs thoroughly & choose a few strong runners to peg down next week. A bit of bending & stretching taking the secateurs to an overgrown corner where the birds could no longer access their bird bath. Mr F has removed a dead tree trunk & taken it off to Beetleopolis behind the shed, taken some algae remover to the courtyard & wrestled a dying shrub out of its pot as I was utterly unable to move it. 
Have been wanting a bird table for a while - have a feeder pole & a ground feeder thing, but wanted something a bit higher so that I can see the birds better but also so that they can see if crafty felines are sneaking out ready to jump them. Was surprised how expensive bird tables are when I looked, so have shopped a solution from home. Mr F brought some spare bricks down & built them into a little pillar shape, topped with a small spare sandstone slab from our new driveway. With the little ground feeder table on top of that, it's going to do the job just fine. I'm going to put some food out shortly to test it. I have snowdrops, Mum's pink primroses & other stuff growing around the base of the bricks, so they will blend in.
No more jobs for me today - Mr F is roasting a chicken later - I'd be lying if I said I hadn't already got my eye on that for future meals! We've been discussing a few places we can go for outings while he is off work without travelling silly-amounts-of-stupidly-expensive-petrol distances & we did come up with a couple of places we haven't been to in years which would be nice to visit again. 
Right, I must get signed off, fetch the laundry in & I think I'll get on with my book.
Love to all,
F x

BlueJ94

Hey @foxgloves

We went to b&q today to get a storage bin for the garden and on the off chance I managed to grab two potted plants that I can't pronounce and a half grown tomato plant. For the grand total of £2.50 due to them being under watered. The two plants should of been £12 and the tomato plant should of been £5.75! 

Four_Seasons

Hi Foxgloves, looks as if the weather might be kind for your days out next week, fingers crossed.  If you are over my way (east coast) the kettle will be on! have a brilliant week x

foxgloves

Always worth a look at the unloved/plant hospital shelf at garden centres, @BlueJ94. I once got a nice big bright red geranium for very little money & when I got home & went to repot it, there were 3 in there, so one each for me, my sis & my best friend.
F x

foxgloves

@Four_Seasons, Yes, the forecast isn't looking too bad. I don't mind if it's cooler as neither of us enjoy very hot temperatures, but I do want it dry for beachcombing.....one of my top-favourite activities. How nice of you to offer 'virtual kettle'! We are certainly heading east but much of it is too far for us to do in a day trip. Mr F & I are always saying that for two people who love the seaside, we have ended up almost as far inland as we could be! Lincs coast nearest to us, Norfolk & Yorkshire coasts do-able but a long run. Anywhere in EA always my favourite, esp Suffolk (am 1st generation of my family never to have lived there (booo!)
F x

Elisheba

I hear you on clothes buying @foxgloves. I used to think I would rather get it and regret it, than regret not getting it.  That was literally a mantra I had.  I mean It was mainly charity shopping as I was brought up to love a bargain, but even still.  And Simply Be - on my goodness, the best thing I ever did was shut that account.  And half the time I couldn't be bothered to take/send things back that didn't fit.  So much wasted money!

foxgloves

Yes, I can see that would be a very tempting catalogue/website @Elisheba, as I like companies which are inclusive with their sizing. I have spent the last 9 years going up & down, as dieted down from size 26 to a 16 between 2011 & 2013, then have yo-yo'd between then & now (tho have never regained all the weight lost, thankfully). However, I absolutely HAVE to try things on. I'm short - just 5'3 & a 1/4 " - which is an annoying height to be because I'm too short for regular clothes but too tall for petite, esp when buying trousers. Since the LBM, when clothes purchases have had to be made much more mindfully, I have only ordered online when there's been no alternative (i.e first Lockdown) because either I would end up keeping something that's only 'ok' or have to go through the faff of returning it. So this has broken the old clothes catalogue habit.....something I'd rather hadn't developed in the first place tbh!
F

foxgloves

Hello Monday Money Warriors,
Useful sort of day - not an NSD because we've been to the garden centre to replace a couple of items which had worn out - planned expenditure & from the correct budget pot, so no worries there. We did have a coffee there, but shared a scone as they were so big (even for a cheese scone hoover like myself!). Then it's been my usual Monday tasks - budget updates, rubber chicken activity (roast dinner last night, chicken salad tonight, chicken sandwich for Mr F today, sweet & sour on Weds, some for the next Epic Man Stew & all the gribbly bits put with another carcass I'd frozen & bubbling away in the slow cooker for stock. Also on the catering front....another lettuce & more spring onions gathered for tonight's salad & remembered to defrost picnic items for tomorrow.
I think many of us will be thinking & tweaking things atm to mitigate inflationary pressures on our budgets. I mentioned recently that I've changed quarterly TV licence DD to monthly, also NT membership as it didn't cost any extra to pay this monthly. We also have EH membership as we do like visiting historic places (even if it's mostly the more local ones atm with fuel costs) so when the renewal letter arrived today, I decided to phone & get that changed to monthly DDs as well. I don't know why I hadn't thought to do this before as the annual amounts went out in consecutive months - I suppose it can take an economic crisis to make us look at everything with fresh eyes. 
Another thing I've been discussing with Mr F is our fresh fish box. It's lovely quality fish & we want to continue with it but I've done a few sums today before phoning in my order. I've ordered £81.50's worth of fish. It always seems like quite a big amount so today, I looked at the figures. There are 6 deliveries to our area each year & they are every 2 months, so working on the box I've just ordered, that's £10.18 per week. As we would usually eat 2 fish meals per week plus use smoked mackerel & similar for lunches, making pate, etc, we have concluded that this probably compares well with supermarket prices. I also think we gain by cutting up/trimming (though it's always gutted & filleted) the fish ourselves as all the trimmings are frozen in a mixed container to use for a fish pie (which feeds us twice) or fishcakes (ditto). The quality's always excellent, delivered on ice, & although it's in a big plastic box, I am able to recycle these as nice deep seed trays in the greenhouse or as shuttle trays. So we've decided to stick with it for now. It's one of those things we will cut if our budget takes a hammering elsewhere - I'm conscious our monthly energy DD payments will be going up at some point, & grocery shopping is rising in cost all the time.
Despite buying 2 big boxes of cat meat on Grocery Week 1 (my budget cycle starts on 27th of the month & runs to the 26th), plus some beer for Mr F, we came in just under budget, so at least we are not taking a big week 1 spend into the rest of the month.
Honestly, only on here could we witter on about the minutiae of this budgetary stuff! I regularly think 'Do I even need a DFW diary any more?' as I am gratefully now both debt & mortgage-free, but it does keep me focussed & there is always something new to learn or think about, isn't there, when chatting about our money management habits.
I'll leave it there & go & see if the greenhouse veg needs watering - aubergines are flowering their socks off - not long till we start picking them.
 Love F x

Elisheba

It's also great that you still post on here @foxgloves as it's very inspiring for all of us who are still trudging up that debt busting hill. Good to help us remember there is light at the end of the tunnel