Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Lol, OBL. Haven't seen our naughty squirrel for ages. Hopefully he's now busying himself trying to gnaw through somebody else's peanut feeders!

foxgloves

Oh..... Number crunching headache still lingering. It's my regular mid-month budget check-in today. I really have found this useful since the LBM & becoming a committed born again budgeter. It gives me a chance to reconcile how the current month's budget is progressing, whether anything needs tweaking, etc, & if there are any little errors lurking in the wings, it's best to find them mid-month instead of the few days before payday. I lived in my overdraft for 25 years (usually unofficially) & still take pride in not having gone overdrawn at all since the LBM (except just v slightly on one occasion ages ago when Mr f's work failed to pay his petrol expenses on time in a month when he'd done loads of mileage).
So I didn't expect March's halfway check-in to take long, but it has actually completely done my head in! I'd got more money than I should have.....not a vast amount, but a decent enough wodge for it to be obvious I'd got an error somewhere. I came up with some really complicated reasons why this might be, working them through every which way on paper, having to go downstairs & fetch more coffee, going back to my desk & having another go. Ohhh, & what a waste of time, Mrs Numpty, because I suddenly realised what it was, & it was the simplest thing in the world...... just a single cheque, which I accounted for when I set my original March budget, but which hasn't yet been cashed. Can't believe I missed it & can only think it's because there are very few payments by cheque these days. Of course being a woman of a certain age, I can remember when my cheque book always came shopping with me. And very useful it was too in the Spendy Years because a cheque written for another top or pair of boots gave a few days grace before it cashed, unlike those nasty debit cards which the bank could instantly decline, making one look like a prize t*t in the shop in front of a queue of people! I never ever had a bounced cheque though. I don't know how I avoided this. I had my card declined on occasion, but despite being in permanent overdraft, my bank always honoured my cheques..... even though it was their money I was spending. Ah well, those naughty days have gone, thank goodness.
F x

foxgloves

Well, Good Afternoon Campers,
Sill blowing a hoolie here, but we are now in for the weekend, apart from tomorrow night which is date night.
Grocery shopping came in a bit over budget, which didn't delight me, but it wasn't unexpected as I did include a few extra things for the store cupboard. It could have been more too, as I revisited my shopping list over breakfast first thing & was able to cross off 5 things which to be honest we don't need to buy for another week or two yet.
In the supermarket, I always think you can spot the frugalistas - sometimes they 'recognise their own' & join in when they hear my leery remarks about how much prices are going up, etc. Today, our frugal conversation & mental arithmetic was mostly going on in the meat department. We had chosen a large fresh chicken to fulfil current meal plans of roast chicken tonight, cold chicken & home made jacket wedges & salad tomorrow & stir-fry with noodles on Monday (plus the usual stock or sometimes soup from chucking the carcass in the slow cooker). For an extra £1, we could get an extra large one. We sort of dismissed this, then I said to hang on while I just worked it through in my head that paying an extra quid would probably facilitate getting enough meat for at least an additional meal (probably for the freezer) as well as at least one filled roll or some sarnies for packed lunches. As I can stretch what we already have in to go into making that extra meal, plus I do keep a really good herbs/spices cupboard, suddenly that extra £1 looks like a great deal. So we swapped & I am going to see just how good a 'rubber chicken' I can achieve with it. I shall report back! (So it goes without saying that if you are bored to the end of your rope with the thought of reading about somebody's chicken-stretching activities, do give my diary entry on Monday a miss, lol, because yes, it will be frugal & it will certainly be chickenny).
Well, it's starting to drop a little colder here now, so I think I'll make a hot water bottle to tuck up behind my back while I snug up on the sofa to finish ready my book.
Wishing all fellow money savers a peaceful & pleasant weekend. Keep your hands on your pennies - they can't leap out of your purses on their own!
F xx

foxgloves

Morning Diary readers,
A small win already this morning. A busy morning of gardening planned & Mr f was seriously fancying popping to the local farm shop for a breakfast. Then he re-tuned back to Money Saving FM, found some leftover sausages in the freezer which he is now planning on serving in home made cobs with a dollop of our 'house' brown sauce. Our own coffee machine has also provided good coffee for considerably less than the £2,20 per cup we'd be paying if we'd gone out. When we stopped buying work lunches in favour of packed lunches, we worked out that we saved a total of around £2k per year, but thinking back, I reckon our regular cafe spends on breakfasts & lunches would also have been eye-watering. We did this so often that it stopped even feeling like a treat. It just became the (expensive) norm. #reformedcharacters
Can't wait to get out in the garden this morning. It's not raining (yet), the birds are singing & Mr f has offered to help me with some heavy lifting jobs so I can get the new look courtyard finished.
Enjoy your Sundays all,
F x

Kantankrus_Mare

Looking forward to rubber chicken story

Chicken dinner is my least favourite sunday roast though I love chicken in other dishes such as stir fries and curries. Talking of curries........I took a leaf out of your book last night. OH is away in London watching the rugby and I had promised myself a takeaway curry. I couldnt justify the delivery charge for just myself and after a long day at work, just couldnt be bothered to go back out to pick it up. Spaghetti hoops or eggs on toast just wasnt going to do it for me so I got my gousto book of recipes out to see if there was anything I could throw together from what was in the house. I ended up with a delicious linguini puttanesca. :T All ingredients I had in the house, a bit of chopping and prepping and a very tasty meal for one :T

foxgloves

Great stuff, Kantankrus. Yes, there are defo big savings to be made by cooking something tasty from stores to avoid the lure of the takeaway. One of my go-to 'Fakeaways' is the spicy kebabs in Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible book - Kaati Kebabs. It's strips of beef (I use frying steaks) cooked with various spices & fresh flavours & stuffed into a warm pitta bread. If I don't have quite the required amount of meat, I make the weight up with finely sliced onions & that works fine. It's quick & tasty and goes a fair way to quashing the 'takeaway temptation' thing..... which, nice as they are, is basically us saying we cba & paying for somebody else to cook our food for us.
F x
P. S The rubber chicken is on Day 2. I will be cutting it up properly tomorrow & assessing how far it can stretch.

foxgloves

Useful morning in the garden. The only spend on doing up the courtyard has so far been the £40 I used to buy a huge terracotta pot for replanting a witch hazel, & that was fully budgeted for in March's household pot. Everything else today very resourceful:
We replaced our old broken birdbath with Mum's old one, I filled a gap in the borders with a clematis which freed up a whole chain of terracotta pots to pot on other pot-bound plants & I underplanted the bigger ones with gifted primulas I divided up last year, rescued wild primroses from the veggie garden & snowdrops while they are 'in the green' & easy to move. We also opened one of our compost bins & used that for all the re-potting, with just a small layer of bought compost on top to discourage naughty weed seeds. As Mr f offered to help with the grunt work, I also supervised him digging up the rhubarb, chopping it in two & replanting as two separate plants. I think this will improve crops as I've over-forced it over the last 6 years or so, & it needed a boost. Everywhere is starting to look like Spring is coming, the courtyard is looking nice enough to sit out with my coffee & I haven't been hurling cash into garden centre coffers like the bad old days.
A hot bath for the ageing bones, lol, & now I'm dressed & made up for a night out. I spend a lot of time grubbing around in the garden, but I do scrub up, you know!!

Kantankrus_Mare

The spicy kebabs sound beaut!! Anything with a bit of spice is right up my street.

Have a great night out. :beer:

foxgloves

Thanks Kantankrus - Yes, we did enjoy our night out. I'd budgeted the money to get in & because I was doing a lot of yakking, managed to make one drink & a small bag of nuts last all night! Did have to pay £1 for parking though......I know £1 is nothing these days for parking fees, but I couldn't help feeling a bit miffed that all our sneaky little bits of free street parking had already been taken, grrrr.

PositiveBalance

Gosh, foxgloves. - your garden sounds amazing!



I went mad buying plant pots and stuff when I moved into my house but I have been so busy since I moved in that I haven't got round to doing anything with them, or my awesome seed collection.


I'm in awe/envious of anyone who does!