Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Evening Sunbeams,
A pleasant day today. Met up with an old friend in town, went for a coffee & them we had a trawl of the charity shops. I saw a few things I'd have bought in the Spendy Years - a pretty but too small dress 'to slim into', an ok top (style nice but not my colours) & a glass cake stand (exactly what I'm looking for but not quite big enough to enable the cutter to get at the cake). All left in the shop for somebody else. I did buy a selection of birthday cards from the Cancer Research shop. They sell nice cards & had 2 boxes of surplus which they'd reduced to 49p each. That's a good price for decent cards so I had some.....a good buy for less than £3.50.
Other money saving wins:
*This week's grocery shopping was under-budget.
*Today's garden pickings: courgettes, a basket of tomatoes, red onions, chillies & blackberries

*Been paid for 3 more PA surveys so am up to £34.40 for this month so far.
Oh, & Mr F like a dog with two tails......he's had a bag of ancient old tech hanging around the Man Cave for ages & finally took it to £££ Converters this morning to see if he could get anything for it. He reckoned he'd get £35 tops. I was less optimistic & thought maybe £28 if he was lucky. Well, stuff my old boots! How wrong was I? They checked everything over & offered him £105 cash or £120 credit note!! He had asked me if he could have a partial loan from the Tech Savings Pot to buy a good used X-box, which would have been fine, because it's better to borrow from ourselves rather than use credit. He'd just have paid it back over a few months from his Personal Spends. As it happened, he didn't need to borrow anything & a big bag of clutter is getting a 2nd life too. 
So worth bearing in mind if anyone has one of those cupboards shelves where old tech goes to die! 
Well, I'd come out onto our sunny bench to read up some more about bottling tomatoes, but 2 tomato plants in pot rings have just blown over in the wind, so I must go & see if I can rescue them without turning too yellow. Think will try staking them with a couple of strong long handled garden tools - damn things.
F x

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, that's interesting about the tech!

Sun_Addict

I have lots of old tech so that is very interesting indeed. Well done to Mr F 👏

ladyholly

I wish I could get MrLH to part with old tech but it might come in useful.

With regard to parliament there are over 750 sitting Lords each of whom can claim up to £323 per day they attended plus subsided restaurant and travel exes. Interestingly travel exes include 20p per mile on a bicycle.

foxgloves

Yes, the Lords, @ladyholly - not even democratically elected, too much cronyism there for sure. Needs abolishing imo. And anyone who is visibly asleep when it is in session should have their £323 for that day deducted. Our ridiculous system needs to change.

Re the bag of old tech, yes, we were SO surprised. Mr F has a tendency to hang onto techy stuff in case it comes in useful, but I think even he had come to the realisation that this stuff had run out of road, as he'd actually sorted & packed it all into a big bag 'to take somwhere'.......& there it sat.....& sat......& sat some more, until today, when he decided it was time to take it into the shop & see if it was worth anything or whether they'd split their sides laughing when he unpacked it all onto the counter! I think this proves it's worth a try if anyone does have old tech cluttering up the place. What's the worst that can happen? That they say 'Sorry, there's no market for these', or similar. I think even just a few quid is more useful than an old, unloved, no longer used item taking up cupboard space.

Mt F's cooking night tonight. He made Spanish eggs with home made jacket wedges (very nice) & while we were eating it, he said we had grown almost everything in it, which was true - red onions, garlic, courgette, tomatoes, jalapeno......we did have to buy a red pepper as mine aren't ripe yet, eggs as we don't have chickens, & potatoes as we didn't grow any this year. 
Well, I must get back to my pile of preserving books.....plus a really useful post from @Suffolk_lass about bottling, as I am nearly feeling brave enough to try bottling a few jars of chopped tomatoes. I also need to decide which apple chutney recipe I'm going to make as need to deal with lots of windfalls pretty soon.
Wishing everyone a nice evening.
F x

milann

Think I’ll keep your good news re tech stuff to myself…..many moons ago I got rid of dhs ZX whatever it was and all his old computers ……which apparently were worth quite a bit 😳😳 he was saving them to make his fortune some time in the future. Which could well be about now 😂😂 I wasn’t popular but……it was getting ridiculous- we had no space😳

foxgloves

Lol, @Milann. I never got over my Mum giving away my big 1974 Barbie campervan complete with awning, all the interior fittings & fixtures, etc, & an open-topped car for Barbie to enjoy days out from the campsite! It was awesome. It was dug out of the loft & given to a neighbour's children when I left for university. Even at the age of 18, I'd imagined it would have a collector's value in decades to come & I felt I'd been well & truly swizzed.
F

ladyholly

My mum cleared out my teddy bear after I left home. I had been given it when we visited my Mothers aunt in Switzerland and was purple. He looked quite different from a modern bear in that he had a large nose more like a pig one.  He was stuffed with wood wool. I was not pleased. For all I know it could be worth a fortune now.

Sun_Addict

My mum gave away my life-sized handmade rocking horse to a neighbour for her grandchildren 😢 My kids and grandchildren would’ve loved it plus it must’ve been worth a fair bit, it even had a real saddle and bridle. 

QueenJess

As an alternative view… my parents kept absolutely everything from my childhood. I’m the only child with kids and now I’m absolutely drowning in stuff! Plastic does also not keep well for 30+ odd years..

That rocking horse sounds amazing though!