Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Onebrokelady

Go on buy the yarn.......you know you want to:rotfl:

foxgloves

Oh you temptresses! I am going to cast on Stash Busting Challenge project #7 today, which will be a little cardi. I think I have sufficient l/o yarn to complete it. If it turns out to be slightly too structured a design for me, I can gift it or sell it. I do like the design, there's just a bit of a question mark over whether it's up to the foxgloves boobs, lol. Tho' 2lbs back off this week. Surprising what a difference not actually cheating makes!! Since my big weight loss of 6 stones a few years ago, I've regained 2 stones & just repeatedly lost & regained a stone of it. It hasn't helped losing both my parents in a year, as life became stressful & chaotic, esp when I was living between two different parts of the country. Still, no-one to blame but myself. Weight loss uses exactly the same skillset as budgeting - planning, tracking & making the right choices. It's nice to feel back in control. And a big gardening day planned up in our veggie garden today, so lots of free fitness outside in the fresh air.
I'd better get moving - I need to get the slow cooker all ready to go on nice & early.
Cheers all,
F x

crazy_cat_lady

Buy the wool, and make it your next project. It's not for you so it doesn't properly count. It only counts if you intend to make it into a gift but then it just becomes part of your stash. That's my rule and I'm sticking with it

foxgloves

I think I kind of agree with you, CCL, as I will be buying a gift anyway, & it's for someone who really does appreciate a nicely handcrafted item. I shall get my current Stash Busting project finished, then assess whether I can get the gift item made in time for a summer birthday, or if it's more realistic to knit it & pop it away for Christmas. Actually, as it's a lovely chunky throw, it will probably be more appropriate as a Christmas gift, maybe with a ncie box of chocs & a DVD. I'll see x

foxgloves

Oh, I don't know about writer's cramp, I think I have 'Calculator-user's cramp', as today is my Big Budget Day & basically I've been sitting up at my desk in Foxgloves HQ, budgeting my socks off.....& everything else too!
Nothing untoward on the budget....it's always noticeable when the water & council tax bill payments kick in again, isn't it? But all looking ok, as long as we stick to it, as usual.
As an ex-spender, it sometimes surprises me that since the LBM, I never saw budgeting as a negative thing, which curtailed all the shopping activity I used to love. It's funny how things change. Both mr f (also a naughty big ex-spender) & I often say now how we feel that budgeting actually facilitates us being able to do things. I could see a few examples of this earlier when I was working out our April budget. For instance:
*Remembering to budget some money for treating our nephews to some Easter choc & sending a few Easter cards (no, I'm not going to be making any this year....remember last year's Easter pterodactyls?)
*Checking the budget AFTER all the essentials had been accounted for, to see if we could go ahead with a Chinese take-away this weekend to celebrate mr f finishing one job & starting his new one, after so many months of wondering if he would still have a job at all.Pre-LBM, we'd have just ordered that in plus an accompanying little trippette to the off-licence without once thinking that we were, as usual, spending the overdraft!
*Saving for things - As I paid our Savings Piggies (basically an envelope system), I calculated as I popped this month's money in the Holiday Piggy, that we are going to be easily on course to pay our campsite fees plus have a nice little wodge leftover for a holiday meal out & all the rest of our holiday expenses, hopefully also including the cattery fees for His Lordship. Because I will keep paying into the Holiday Pig AFTER our camping trip, by next year, we should already be building up a deposit should we decide to book a cottage for 2020.
I know these are just little examples, but they are all indicative of what I'm trying to say, that budgeting doesn't always have to mean denial, it can also help facilitate things happening. Even in the leanest of months, & most of us will have experienced at least some of those, even a small saving on a weekly grocery budget can facilitate a tiny treat elsewhere.
Back when I was spendy, the concept of budgeting had the same effect on me as dieting....all about denial & going without the stuff I wanted. If someone had explained to me that's a very negative way of looking at it, would I have believed them? You know, I don't think I would. My spendy years began when I was 19 & lasted until I was in my 40s, so my habits were obviously very entrenched.
Oh well, better late than never.
It's great to be able to say "My name is Foxgloves (well, obviously it isn't!) & I find budgeting empowering!"
Hope you're all getting a bit of this Spring sunshine today.
Love to all,
F xx

foxgloves

Morning Campers,
Ooooh, I almost wish I WAS camping! What a glorious day - icy cars here first thing but fab sunshine now.
I've just topped myself up with more coffee & am shortly off down the garden to edge my herb bed. It's not a huge one, but is quite productive. Everything's just coming through & I'm looking forward to later on the year when I can go out with my basket to gather & tie some big bunches for drying. This morning, I've just crumbled the last of late summer 2018's bunches & topped up some of my big herb jars..............I like a big jar - I cook from scratch all the time & I can't get on with those titchy little supermarket jars which hold about 3 tablespoons. My herbs & spices are mostly in big clear recycled coffee jars, you know the instant coffee brand with the glass stopper lids. We don't drink instant coffee i our house, but I was given a load of these jars from my F-in-L years ago & they are perfect. Nice & airtight & plenty of room to write the contents straight onto the glass with a marker pen. I wasn't even sure what I'd still got hanging from the kitchen beam - turned out ot be two bunches of rosemary & one each of oregano & thyme. Now crumbled up over newspaper & funnelled into their jars.
Had a wander down to the herb bed & there's lots going on - the bronze fennel (grown from a stray seedling that popped up next to the rhubarb!) has already come through & is a fab feathery clump, the oregano, thyme, mint, vervaine & lavender are all doing their thing, also feverfew, golden marjoram lemon balm & comfrey. As we've not had much cold weather, all last year's parsley plants (all self-seeded) are still productive & growing nicely & nowhere near low enough temperatures to damage our rosemary bush. Not so good.......the sage plants all look a bit feeble, so I'm going to give them a dose of seaweed feed, as my sage jar is empty & we do use a lot of it in winter stews, stuffing, etc, so that's one to work on. Our tarragon hasn't made it through the winter.....I suspect it was scoffed by something in the autumn & I didn't notice because life became so chaotic, & everything in the onion line - welsh onion, garlic chives & ordinary chives is either struggling or has vanished. I think I am going to blame onion leaf miner pest for this one. We didn't grow garlic, onions or leeks last year, so this is probably all the nasty little plant-hoovers had to eat, grr. Never mind will sort it this year.
I also sow basil & coriander every year - coriander not up yet, but the first basil seed has just stuck its head out. Lemon basil not up yet though. I find it more tricky to grow but it is yum chopped into mayonnaise for summer BBQs, so I'm going ahead with it.
Enough catching up on here - time to get the shed key, fetch the edging tool & get that herb bed nicely edged.....it'll give the plants a bit more room too.
Enjoy some sunshine all - even if it's just sitting on a back step with a coffee at work.
F xx

Blackcats

Dear Foxgoves, I've now finished reading your entire diary and enjoyed it so much. You and your contributors are so witty and honest and I recognise so much of myself in them. I'm a similar age and find it interesting that intelligent, educated and articulate women should have been so bad at managing money. One of my classic debtisodes shocks me now. About 15 years ago I got a new credit card (to add to the many that I already had). A good plan rapidly emerged and I used it to book tickets for a 3 week trip to Australia, all the holiday spends including drawing out cash on it! When about 2 weeks into the holiday I reached my credit limit I momentarily felt irritation with B'card that they would spoil my holiday. Of course the answer was obvious just use another credit card. I dread to think how much that holiday really cost me as I then made minimum repayments on that card. At that time never even thought about interest I just spent the money that the cards allowed me to spend, never for a moment recognising that it wasn't actually my money to spend.
Anyway, I love the diary and look forward to your updates and the input from your other readers.

foxgloves

Hello Blackcats & all my readers,
Thank-you, what a nice thing to say. Really, my diary was to show anyone who thinks their spendy habits are too entrenched to change, that this just doesn't have to be the case. I know we smile about some of these debtisodes, & I'm trying to be very honest about how wasteful I was, but the truth is that nothing really got me into debt other than my own bad choices. I often read comments like 'I've got no willpower', but I've said before, I don't really think this is helpful. Believing this 'special power' is required to develop good financial habits, beginning with a budget, gives people a get out clause....."I can't do it because I have no willpower". There are no powers involved, just choices. Where overspending is concerned, we have that choice right up to the moment we make the transaction. Do we want the lovely expensive brand of cosmetic we have in our hand MORE than we want to start shedding that horrible scary feeling in the 2nd half of the month when cards might be refused or overdrafts recalled, or making it harder to get a decent mortgage in the future because lenders all look at outstanding debts. It's really just about choices & I freely admit I made the wrong ones for far too many years.
I totally get your story about feeling cross with B'card. I often used to be in supermarket queues towards the end of the month hoping my card wouldn't have been stopped & I don't recall EVER thinking this was down to my own money-squandering behaviour! In my head, I'd be thinking "I bet those b******s at the bank have taken my card down & I'm going to look like a t*t at the checkout".
It's very much the acceptance of oneself being to blame which underpins so many LBMs. It certainly did with me. I had been wondering why two people, both working full time on a professional salary, had so little spare money. Surely we were exactly the sort of people who could go out & purchase a nearly new camper van. We had a good solid joint income. That was the moment I sat down & added up every single monthly payment which was servicing debt. We never missed a payment or got ourselves into trouble, but there was absolutely no doubt in my mind from that point on, that this was what was stopping us doing some of the things we really wanted to do, & would continue to do so in the future. So there was the LBM......the proper one, not the 2-day flickers I'd had for over 20 years! The biggest change for both of us really has been to stop the endless frittering. It's then a knock-on effect because if you are not frittering, you can save, so when there is a bigger than expected bill or a new household appliance required, there is more chance of being able to pay for it without recourse to more credit.
We gradually become free of the cycle where we're borrowing for everyday stuff.
Our money becomes our own again.
It sometimes shocks me that when I took redundancy a few years ago, it did not noticeably change our lifestyle, despite halving our income. That is how much money was previously being wasted.
And on that bombshell, lol, I shall take myself off to the greenhouse to pot up a few more plant babies (all free ones, of course!). Dinner already in the slow cooker, laundry pegged out & drying for free, so it will be a nice day of gardening & leisure with just a few jobs for me today.
Best wishes to all,
F xx

foxgloves

Good Morning Campers,
A new month, a new week & maybe a new start too, for anyone who has been experiencing a little slippette off the DFW wagon recently. Actually, I'm pleased to say that isn't me atm. I'm just popping a quick post on before making some coffee & cracking on with my job list, but I've just spent the last 40 mins sitting at my desk up in 'Foxgloves HQ' updating budgets, following our city centre trip yesterday. There was none of the silly behaviour of the old now long past Spendy Years. We stuck to our list, I secured a £20 refund on a faulty item, I remembered to take cash from the appropriate 'Savings Piggies' for a couple of purchases we needed to make & although we did treat ourselves to a coffee & cake in a lovely little indie coffee shop, we paid using our Personal Spends money, so the effect on the budget was a nice big fat zero. 'Find of the day' for me was a top I must have looked at heaps of times. At £55, it wasn't that I thought it was overpriced - I don't like fast throw away fashion - but I just didn't want to spend that much. So seeing it on the sale rail in the right size at £25 felt like such a find. As I liked it a lot when it was full price, I knew it wouldn't turn out to be a sale rail bad buy....so many of those in the past, especially that damned dress I kept chopping bits off. So that was bought from our Clothing Piggy & no silly budget damage done. Mr f (apart from his coffee) spent the grand total of.......75p!! There was an item he'd been wanting & he spotted it 2nd hand in CEX!
We also made some much smaller sensible decisions which while only small, all add up, as we know, over a year. One was deciding on paying for 3 hours of parking instead of 4. We just walked round a bit faster & didn't spend quite so long yakking in the coffee shop. Another was deciding not to call in the garden centre we pass on route for more coffee on our drive home. Mr f was quite keen, but I said as we were only 11 miles from home, we may as well wait & crank up the coffee machine when we get in, when we could also have a free top-up. Another 'win' was buying the item on my list from a certain store where the staff are clearly told to jump on you & start demonstrating products on any exposed body part! I didn't mind the demo as had no intention of ever buying the product, but then it was pointed out that the product I went in to buy was on a '3 for 2' offer. I did think about it & got the impression the assistant though I was crackers for not making use of it, but the simple truth is that I had budgeted for paying £8 & did not want to spend £16. This may sound like false economy, & I get that, but I also 'get' that if I spend too much of my Personal Spends cash early in my budget cycle, I will leave myself short at the end of it - rationing - that's what budgeting is, really, isn't it? So I said 'Oh thanks for letting me know, but I don't want to spend £16' and felt quite pleased with myself for not weakening. Back in the Spendy Years, I used to get tempted by loads of this kind of offer - perhaps more of my past relationship with a certain cosmetic counter later.......
But for now, best wishes for the new fresh month ahead. Spring - time for a little change if you've been slipping, or just a damn good de-clutter!
Cheers all,
F xx

crazy_cat_lady

Sounds like a really productive and lucky trip out foxgloves It's so good when everything comes together like that.
I'm one of those people needing a fresh start for April... I've been too busy to do anything other than what I'd planned today but I definitely need to keep an eye on myself this month.