Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Humdinger1

foxgloves said:

Afternoon Saturday Savers,
Town & a few jobs for me today. Mr F is listening to geeky podcasts while painting the shed.
Today's small budgetary wins:
*Posted my sister's big parcel & got the price down by £6 simply by selecting Tuesday for guaranteed delivery instead of Monday.
*This week's grocery shop hasn't been added up yet, but will be under budget.
*3 more £1 coconut body creams bought from the shop that rhymes with toys, now that I've thoroughly tested it.
*1 x Scandi-crime novel bought in charity bookshop plus went halves with Mr F on a dvd box set.
*Things I didn't buy: Greens (decided to cut a bunch of homegrown chard), Cheese scone (I did have a skinny cappuccino but thought of weigh-day & saved my pence), bird seed (they can finish off the last of the peanut bag & have new seed when I've cleaned & disinfected all the feeders).
*Today's garden pickings: Tomatoes, courgettes, jalapeno chillies, a pepper, blackberries, french beans & rhubarb.
*Borrowed Thomasina Miers' new meat- free Mexican book from the local library. Nice book for a summer browse..Have started off a fermented vinegar drink recipe from it already, as I had all the ingredients.
We chatted about small aggregate gains theory over coffee - we both think that this is our current approach to money-saving, but that it needs to be cranked up a few gears in the face of the coming recession (the one that Ms Truss thinks we can talk ourselves out of!)
Off to see if the shed painter requires a drink, then off down the garden with my book.
Wishing everyone a peaceful weekend,
F xx

Recession? Pull yourselves together, my good citizens...that Ms. T @foxgloves?

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

hi foxgloves and friends

Happy Saturday Enjoying the views on Ms T - i love the Dead Ringers impression of her on R4!  Won't be laughing so much when she's PM though My approach to the financial situation has been to throw every penny i can at overpaying my mortgage.
I've been going to the library and got a cookbook out for a bit of inspiration - found a lovely butternut squash soup - I know it's not really the weather for soup but DD2 and I will eat soup 12 months a year

love Deni x

marionmgcars

 Very productive day for you Foxgloves.  I had long car journey , but prepped well with drinks and snack.  Stopped half way through drive and popped into local charity shop to stretch my legs.  Got lovely T-shirt for £3.45, looks new 👍

ladyholly

I only have one questionre Ms T. How does a tax cut help someone who does not pay tax and is unable to work for whatever reason. ? I am intrigued.

foxgloves

@marionmgcars - Well done on the T-shirt. I think some people do just wear things a couple of times then donate them. One person's trash is another person's treasure, as the saying goes.

@ladyholly @Humdinger1 & @Deni_debt-free_dreamer - What a ridiculous sideshow it is for sure. I can't think why anybody in their right mind would want to be PM in the coming sh*tstorm & I can't see either of them having much of a clue re tackling the cost of living crisis. To do that effectively would involve understanding how years of austerity, low pay & structural inequality has created a society with little resilience in the face of recession & other crises. A couple of pence in the £ off income tax on the average salary won't even touch the sides. The only point of these people being in power is to continue asset-stripping the country & transferring as much as possible to their wealthy donors. Oh, & as for the 1 Brexit bonus cited so far.....that I will be able to buy wine in plastic bottles....I have no interest in doing so. Glass is greener & less chance of chemicals leaching than plastic. What a steaming pile of cr*p!
F

foxgloves

Morning m'dears,
Not much to report but am posting to say I am keeping the renewed frugal faith. I've got 2 loads of laundry blowing dry for free on the whirlygig, I've baked a granary loaf, tackled my regular Monday morning budget updates & done my admin.
I've also been for a walk before it got too hot.....which didn't really work, because although it was before 8am when I set off, it was already too hot! I rashly agreed to a steps challenge with Mr F this week & now feel like a numpty because the heatwave forecast means it'll be far too hot for me to feel like walking. I'm not dropping out though, will have to see how it goes. 
Haven't done garden pickings yet today, but I've had a stroll down & can see that it's going to be tomatoes, courgettes, blackberries & chillies at least. I think I will also pull my small beetroot crop (I don't grow much as I'm the only one who eats it), cook them, put a few in the fridge to add to my lunches & pickle a couple of jars. I can listen to my audiobook while I get on with that.
Other savings - 2 baths from a single fill of warm water & I am going to bail it out onto the back garden borders later when the sun isn't so strong. A decent saving yesterday.....popped into Waitr*se to peruse the yellow-stickered bread rolls & also went to price up lamb mince as Mr F makes a lovely WW recipe with it this time of year when we have heaps of courgettes. Well, it had gone up to £6 for a single 500g pack. He said he wasn't paying that, but then I noticed it was actually on a 3 for £10 offer. Obviously £3.33 for a 500g pack is a very different matter, so we took advantage of the offer & froze them. We can get a decent amount of portions from that. This particular recipe takes 400g (& will feed us over 2 days), so the spare 100g can be used to make a tamale pie base & other options will of course be lamb & mint or spicy lamb burgers, curried mince (slow cooker), shepherd's pie, or whatever. 
Well, I have been sitting still for a good while & I bet Mr F has noticed my steps are not going up much atm & is thus diving around at work trying to overtake me  - I took advantage by putting some effort in myself while I knew he was in a meeting, which was maybe a bit sneaky, but I don't care as he always does more steps than me & will win anyway.....I just don't want to make it TOO easy for him. So I'm off to do some up & down the garden laps before lunch - up to the top & back down again is about 200 steps, so I can bang an extra 1000 on quite quickly. I'm also planning to tell him to relax on the sofa tonight as he had a busy weekend, while I clear up the kitchen, etc, thus more steps for me!
Have a good week all,
F x

Cheery_Daff

Ha, love you trying to sabotage Mr F's attempts at winning the challenge 😂 Although I fear you may end up putting more effort into that than just walking more, especially if it means you have to end up doing the washing up rather than just going for a walk! 😂

marionmgcars

Good luck with the walking.  I’m having to wait till the weather cools to start my efforts. 

foxgloves

Thanks for comments about the steps challenge. I defo did more steps than him yesterday as he had meetings most of the day. I did over 12k steps, which would be a small amount for somebody very fit who does loads of walking like @Sun_Addict, but is a lot for me. My daily target is usually set at 7k as I listened to a Radio 4 prog years ago featuring a fitness expert for 50+ women. She said that 7000 steps a day is where the benefits of walking really start to kick in. So I decided to set that as my target rather than 10,000, but I am always pleased if I manage more. I'm still ahead, but will need to do some serious striding up & down the garden while my chutney finishes cooking if I am to stay that way!
F 

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams,
Very depressing reading the news today & hearing that the guesstimates for the January energy cap is now looking bigger even than the vile figure already cited. And there is nothing we can do about it, except remember that these are average figures based on what households generally use. We don't have to use that amount, so I'm still working along the lines of cutting out all waste so as to be able to continue using our heating when needed. Something will have to be done or there will be unrest. I'm not holding my breath though while the 'beauty contest' is going on. Re Ms T's plans to alleviate the cost of living crisis by cancelling the NI raise? I read that for somebody earning the median UK income, this would be £170 a year, or about £14.15 per month so I can't see this making much of an inroad into these colossal DD rises or indeed much else! Is anyone else thinking of doing more preparation for winter this year? I am feeling a strong drive to do so, which I know is partly because I turn into a squirrel at this time of year with pantry-stocking, but also because of the uncertainty around things which have previously been fairly firm planks in the scheme of things.
Small aggregate gains methodology will occur in all areas thus today's frugal activity:
*Loose change gathered up & added to the shrapnel jar.
*CC reward voucher arrived - filed in voucher stash.
*Cashed out of a survey site with a £10 voucher for same store - ditto.
*Did 2 PA surveys
*Dealt with yesterday's garden pickings.
*Did today's pickings - a few more blackberries & a pepper.
*Did the ironing & pressed last garment with residual heat, which is now back to being a regular habit.
*Labelled the jars of beetroot I pickled yesterday & added to pantry.
*Tomatoes had reached glut proportions so I have made a batch of tomato & ale chutney. It's just on its last half hour - cauldron bubbling away - then I shall bottle it. At least one jar will go into the presents stash as makes a nice gift with a decent little local cheese or some posh crackers.
*A bit more seed collecting from the garden. I've saved & dried cerinthe & woad seed already. I want to do calendula this afternoon plus investigate a couple of seed heads from a lovely perennial poppy called 'Coral Reef', which I thought I had lost until it popped up & flowered a couple of months ago. What a pretty surprise that was!
Right, must attend to this molten chutney before it begins to stick.
Love F x