Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Thanks for your festive wishes x

Hello Tinsel-trimmed lovelies,
This update comes to you from the sofa where I'm engaged in the serious business of Green & Blacks consumption. It was lovely to see my sister, B-i-L & nephews - they are very easy to talk to, which isn't always the case with teenage lads so it was nice to have a catch-up. They were with us till Boxing Day tea time. Since then, it's been non-stop laundry, packing away camp beds, moving furniture back, etc, but very much worth it. I have so little family & I value the time we spend together.
You're probably thinking "What's wrong with Foxgloves? One whole para in & she hasn't mentioned leftovers yet?" Ah. Well, fear not! They have been (or are about to be) dealt with. 
You remember I was hitting a couple of survey sites & cashing out vouchers to put towards the cost of the turkey? Well I managed to squeeze an extra one out as Christmas Eve approached, so we actually only paid £14 of 'our' money for a large free-range bronze. It made answering all those questions worthwhile. 
Anyway, it did 6 Christmas dinners, 6 Boxing Day lunches, 1 sandwich, 8 portions of Turkey bhuna (now in freezer) & 8 portions of soup (ditto) - also 4 containers of stock & a pot of dripping. I was pleased with that. 
The ham (£11 from our market butcher) also achieved a good s-t-r-e-t-c-h. I used it to fill sufficient rolls for 6 people on Christmas Eve, it supplied 6 decent slices to go with Boxing Day lunch, made 2 sandwiches & also did ham, eggs & home made jacket wedges last night. I've frozen a small amount diced ready for a pizza & also gave my sis a big chunk to take back for sarnies after their long drive. I absolutely can't abide food waste so was pleased all the meat has been used.
Today has been my Big Budget Day, which went went ok - it took a while while I jiggled around the figures to work out different options - a significantly bigger CC bill turned in by Mr F this month because it had my presents on it. Decided not to do a transfer from the Presents Pot as we have 3 February birthdays, but I did pay it in full. I don't want any Christmas expenditure carrying into next year.....I've not only been there, done that & 'got the t-shirt', as people say, I could have PRINTED the t-shirts, so reliably did I begin Jan & Feb of over 2 decades of new years with the drag-over of a proper big wodge of unbudgeted festive debt. 
I've got some ideas for our budget as we sit on the cusp of 2023 in the midst of an economic crisis, but that can wait until another post.
Suffice to say that horns will need to be pulled in on the financial front, as I'm sure will be the case for very many people to varying different degrees depending on circumstance.
For now, I'm enjoying the 🌲 lights, the sound of the 🐱 🐱 chomping their dinner & feeling gratitude for all that I have.
Hope everyone is getting at least a bit of festive relaxation.
Love Fx

Onebrokelady

Sounds like you had a lovely time 😊 I love this week when I know I don't have a huge credit card bill about to drop through the door 😊 mind you I've just read my meters and sent that in so I expect the bill will be a shocker this month. I'm consoling myself with the fact that I don't have that AND a credit card bill though 

foxgloves

Coincidentally, @OBL, Mr F said exactly that today. I mentioned that we would need a tighter year to accommodate the vast rise in energy prices & he said how easily we could have carried on living on credit like in the bad old days. Before the LBM struck me like a ton of rocks, he'd been considering consolidating our loans/cards for the 4th time! Thankfully the arrival of the LBM stopped that idea in its tracks because I vetoed it.......but yes, if we'd carried on roughly as we were with no budget & zero attempt to live within our means, I think we'd be in a precarious position now with soaring energy & food costs, not to mention interest rates.
So I'm defo with you on that good feeling of knowing there isn't a load of horrible January payback waiting in the wings.
F x

Humdinger1

Yup @foxgloves on all fours with you there! I too have been shivering with the thought of how it would have been pre-LBM. I didn't overspend, have transferred from my Christmas pot and paid off my credit card but it still felt worrying. Without being masochistic, I do always tell myself that feeling the pain of paying off my credit card monthly is a necessary part of avoiding enormous debt building up.  Burying head in sand can feel better for all of 5 minutes but it's unhealthy; facing up to reality is essential for me at least to live a life that's properly aware.  Conscious consumerism perhaps? Retreating to a fantasy world is only to the benefit of companies that want to push debt.  Sorry if this is too ranty for your diary or the time of year @foxgloves; happy new year to us all.  Love Humdinger xx 

foxgloves

Not at all, @Humdinger1, I'm.not averse to a good rant myself. Even though it is now about 15 years since my LBM, 11.5 since we became debt-free, 3 since our mortgage-free date, I still feel out of control if I am later than usual doing my monthly Big Budget Day & my mid-month budget check-in.. Even being a day or two late with post-weekend budget updates will niggle at me. I don't know if this will ever leave me..I'm a confident budgeter now & my drive to spend constantly stopped while we were busy debt-busting, but I have still spent more years of my life as a silly spender than I have as a person committed to living within her means. I read news articles about food & fuel inflation, enormous rises in energy costs, mortgage increases & it strikes me that yes, in different times, we'd have been dealing with all of those plus 2 car loans, 3 pretty maxed out credit cards, 2 loans (one of them a 3rd consolidation loan), 2 overdrafts & a loan from my parents. I'm not sure we could have continued servicing all of that with living costs as high as they are atm. Thank goodness for lightbulbs, that's all I can say! I always say that I came to.budgeting & living within my means quite late in life, but you know, I'm not sure there is such a thing as "too late" - something in ones mindset changes, most likely from an external trigger or series of circumstances & something inside says "Enough!" The feeling of having some control or agency over one's financial affairs begins practically the same day.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Christmas diary readers,
Well, a peaceful day here so far. A few glimpses of normal household routine as we picked some meals for the rest of this week & next, wrote the grocery shopping list & I am now back up to date with boring stuff like laundry. 
Main activity today was popping out to my favourite big garden centre to peruse their sale. Suffice to say, the Old Spendy Me would have just about gone crackers - so many lovely scented candles, upmarket soaps, stationery, posh chocs, homeware, etc, not to mention all the reduced festive items. But I was restraint itself. We bought 5 small inexpensive items to pop away in the presents stash for Christmas 2023 plus a tiny gift to add to my best friend's birthday bag. Yes, we both had a cappucino in the cafe (budget-neutral as this is an expense which always comes from our Personal Spends) but I was cheeky & snuck in a couple of contraband gingerbread biscuits from home.
Mr F's cooking night & he's apparently intending to get creative with an assortment of leftover festive veg & cheeses. I shall await the outcome with interest! We both fancy watching a film tonight during which I need to be knitting, as I'm sick of the very sight of this sock.
Peace & biscuits,
F x 

Makingabobor2

Love the idea of taking your own biscuits. We did that once on holiday in the summer, sat outside the cafe with the coffee and I told DH to eat the biscuit quickly in case anybody spotted him....lol. 

Enjoy your film. We watched one last night as there was nothing worth watching on TV. I had seen a clip of an old Robin Williams film called Patch Adams. DH found it for downloading and it was a really lovely film.  Can't believe I'd never seen it before. 

Sun_Addict

I always take my own low calorie snack to coffee shops. Mainly because I refuse to spend that many calories on their huge cakes/muffins then feel sick for the rest of the day. I always sit somewhere out of view to snaffle it. 

It will be interesting to see what Mr F comes up with from the leftovers. I’m still waiting for him to make another Epic Man Stew 😆

foxgloves

Lol, @Sun_Addict, there will almost certainly be one of those next time we have any kind of roasting joint on the menu. Had to laugh at him on Christmas Day.....he has some of those big plastic lidded microwaveable mugs, which are useful for packed lunches he can heat up at work. I was clearing away plates to make space for the Christmas pud, walked into the kitchen & he was busy squirrelling stuff into one of the mugs. I asked what he was doing & he said he'd had the "genius idea" of layering a bit of everything in then freezing it so he could have a Christmas dinner (in a mug) for packed lunch.when he's back at work. Honestly, he'd fitted in bread sauce, braised red cabbage, sprouts, gravy, stuffing, a pig in blanket, carrot & parsnip, a chunk of turkey & even a spoonful of flipping cranberry jelly on top!!
F 

2Scratters

Well our left overs this year turned out a bit different. Wanting to get stuff out of the way quicker than normal, the mash were converted into potato cakes we didn't have any chives or spring onions to add but they were very nice for a first attempt by me, I added paprika loosely to mine. All the veg, gravy, stuffing became soup and someone on another site had mentioned of slicing up the pigs in blankets and added them when reheating. DH not struck on it - Oh well that's my work dinners sorted all through January.
I have stayed away from the sales as there really is nothing that we need. I do have some vouchers to spend and I am intending to get the best from them by checking the sales without panicking.
Mrs F love the hubby for his initiative 
See you all in 2023

2 Scratters xx