Put away your purse & become debt-averse

ziggy2407

foxgloves said:

Oh you have been making me smile with all your guessing.
@ziggy2407 - I hope your sudden realisation at 2.30am didn't mean that my obfuscation kept you awake! I pinged awake at 4am myself for absolutely no good reason that I could think of. Insomnia is so draining....not to mention infuriating, isn't it?
I didn't mean to set everyone puzzling, I was just trying not to advertise. 
F x

Sleep is illusive at the minute, will be glad to see the back of this year - mum is quite ill, DS ha been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and a liver problem, he has a procedure on Wed which is preying on all our minds but he still going to work and still trying to live his best life at 19 and today hubby has started to feel unwell.  

foxgloves

Lots of fans of the marine.condiment shop then! I think the clothes seem good quality & they are generally quite forgiving styles for womanly curves. 
I agree about versatility. The longer tunics work as dresses with chunky tights & boots as well as they do with leggings & jeans so that makes me think I've got my money's worth.
I shan't be allowed to have them until Christmas Day. Mr F thinks I'm very naughty for wanting presents early & doesn't cave in to pestering, so I choose to keep my dignity & wait.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Monday Money Savers,
I woke at 4am for no reason and lay there formulating a mental list of all the things I was going to do today. By coffee break, it was clear that this was an utterly unrealistic list, although I did a fair bit of it:
*Baked bread

*Did 3 loads of laundry - a bit too much for the heated airer really & have also got de-humidifyer on to assist. No free outside drying today - one long wazz-down here today, unfortunately.
*Took jellybag down & jammed 10 jars of cranberry & apple jelly (using some of our stored homegrown apples & frozen cranberries). 
*Vacuumed upstairs & stairs.
*Finished last panel of mitten & cast off. Still need to pick up the stitches for knitting the thumb. 
*Made mushroom soup for lunch (& 2 portions for the freezer).
*Studied statement from the Tentacled Ones, which arrived in my inbox today. Credit balance has only gone down by £10, but not a representative month as we were away for a week & left the thermostat set very low.
My regular Monday morning budget updates plus financial & other admin did not get done, so I've deferred them till tomorrow rather than rush them & make silly mistakes.
I've got my glass decanter of fairy lights on plus a couple of candles, a hot water bottle tucked up behind my back & Soot draped over one leg so it feels quite cosy. I certainly haven't been tempted to turn the heating any higher than 18°C, even though it was icy this morning & Mr F had to scrape the car windscreen. Long-sleeved top for me today with a jumper over the top plus my hand-knitted cable wrap. Despite buying some warmer tops, Mr F seems to be reverting back to his former cold weather solution of 2 t-shirts & calling it 'layers'. Hmmm. 
F x

foxgloves

@ziggy2407 - I'm sorry to hear it's been a rotten year for you. What a worry about your son. My oldest nephew, who is the same age as your DS, is also waiting to hear if he needs surgery after being admitted to hospital as an emergency in August. It is a shock when these young & usually resilient teenagers suddenly become ill, isn't it. No wonder you're not sleeping well with having your Mum to worry about too. Hope you manage at least a couple more hours tonight.
F x

Baileys_Babe

@ziggy2407 sorry to hear about your family's health problems. Understandably, it is playing on your mind and causing sleep problems, especially with this week's procedure. Hugs to you and I hope they all improve 🤗

2Scratters

Keeping that purse of mine available for other spends  the use of soda crystals on my Yorkshire flags whilst the weather is wet has done a great job of shift the moss along with my deck brush giving it a scrub and rinse. We are on a water metre so this is the cheapest time for me to throw the water around and swill it off. 

milann

That’s some list FG. 👏👏
Sorry to hear about the health problems Ziggy. No wonder you’re finding sleeping tricky.
The things that go though our minds in the wee small hours are crazy. After a visit to the loo at 3.30am just as I was nodding back off i suddenly realised I’d not cooked the eggs I’d intended to go with tea….we didn’t miss them so why was I tossing and turning ruminating about blooming eggs 🤷‍♀️

foxgloves

@2Scratters - I think soda crystals are really useful. I've never tried them on flagstones, but use them frequently for other stuff, including pre-soaking laundry as a stain remover, adding a bit of 'oooomph' when washing whites, getting coffee stains off belfast sink, cleaning the oven, keeping plugholes running freely, etc. Most money saving use to date was when our outside kitchen drain blocked. Mr F tried various ways of unblocking it & was just getting insistent about it needing a plumber, when I said 'Just let me try one more thing' & went out to buy a bag of soda crystals. I made up nearly the entire bag with boiling water in a bucket then poured it down. With a bit more poking, it cleared & I've tried to keep some in stock all the time since then. We would have had to pay a call-out charge for the plumber plus his hourly rate, so a 99p bag of soda crystals was a result!
F

Makingabobor2

Another vote for the soda crystals here. Unblocked our basin in the bathroom, no problem. Also as you say, they are great for other things....such good value. Another thing I always have in is a big box of bicarb, great for getting stains out of tea cups, putting through the washing machine, cleaning stuck on pots & pans. The old fashioned ways are the best. 

foxgloves

Afternoon Diary Readers,
Useful day so far. I've done the Monday morning budget updates which I deferred from yesterday & moved funds around accordingly to ensure purchases are 'charged' to the correct pot/part of the budget. We have £57 left in November's grocery budget & one more shop to do, so that should be ok if I stick to meals from the masterplan I did to ensure that we prioritise what we've got in between now & Christmas. At the supermarket on Sat, we had a trolley each to try & keep our 2 lists separate for budget purposes. Mr F had Week 4's grocery shopping list & I had the Christmas food list as we had saved nectar points all year to get as many of the store cupboard type items as we could. We went over by £15, so I took that from Week 5's budget rather than fund it from elsewhere. C*-*p dividend bonus should be imminent & we are doing a similar thing with those points too. Every little helps, as we keep telling ourselves on here, don't we?
Other financial stuff:
*Ordered the remaining presents I needed to get online. Made a list of the last few little bits & it is very small - just a couple of nice packets of artisan crackers to wrap up for a couple of people with a gussied-up jar of my home made chutney, a nice bag of coffee beans & a few inexpensive little edibles for Mr F. I like to get presents sorted by the end of November if possible so that I can address fund shuffles when I set December's budget, rather than still be faffing with them in January. (Of course back in the Spendy Era, I spent all of January & February living in dread of the bank stopping my cards because my account was in such a parlous state - a situation which went on for more than 2 decades).
*Caught up with a few surveys & added over £9 to my November survey earnings total.
*Trying an experiment with the CH thermostat  - Yesterday, which was the first day this season that we had visible ice outside first thing, I noticed that the heating was coming on quite frequently during the day. I didn't feel particularly cold, although I did have a hwb & blanket on the sofa in the evening. The smart meter indicated that we used well over £5 of gas (tbf, I did bake bread & jam the cranberries & apples too). The thermostat sits in the hall, which is an open plan cold space - our builder who installed the system suggested keeping it there on the grounds that if the 'cold spot' is warm, everywhere else will be warm. This morning, I moved it to the lounge & shortly afterwards, the temperature had gone up a degree. Since then, the heating hasn't come on at all. I might do this in the day & move it back later, I'll see. 
*Did 3 move-arounds on the heated airer to finish getting yesterday's laundry dry. I always want to get as much on there as possible to ensure it is used for one, rather than multiple laundry days, but I think I need to balance this with the fact that I obviously had it so rammed this time, that everything took quite a lot longer to dry. Couldn't believe how damp everything still felt this morning even with dehumidifyer on too. All switched off now - the bigger stuff is all items I usually iron so that will air any last moisture out. 
*Pick up thumb stitches from mitten & aim to have it finished today & the 2nd one cast on. It's a fancy scandi-style pattern & even the blimming thumb has a separate pattern both front & back.
That will be it for today, I think.
No rain so far today......Soot went through the flap with extreme caution this morning, just in case it was only pretending not to rain.
F x