2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

PipneyJane

Thank you for sharing, @Laura_Elsewhere. 

I've never had much of an income, and often very unreliable (I've only twice earnt enough in a year to pay income tax, for example...) so I became very good at living right up to my income but not going beyond it, so I was rarely in debt but similarly I rarely had any spare and never any savings to speak of. There was a lovely few years when my income shot up and I lived the life of Riley, but that income stayed the same for the next 12 years, whilst of course everything else went up, so I ended up having less and less actual money in real terms and cut back and back on everything. 

Your comment above reminded me of another trick that I learned, this time in order to build up savings: when your salary increases, don't give yourself a pay-rise.  Put the extra money into a savings pot, instead.  The woman who told it to me explained that she realised that every time her pay increased, her spending went up to match it.  She'd been living quite comfortably on her previous salary, but once she'd adapted to her new pay, she couldn't go back to it and set aside money for savings so she had to do it proactively on that first payday and not give herself a raise. 

I've lived by this rule for at least the last decade.

My Intended has had a steady income all his working life, but his last wife (!) was terrible with money (eg when he moved out, despite now paying his old half-mortgage plus his own rent and supporting his offspring, etc., he found himself with eight hundred quid spare at the end of each month!!!!!). He thinks I'm a marvel with money, whereas I know I'm a wild spendthrift - it's just that my idea of being a spendthrift is to blow a tenner on something, rather than three hundred... 

We don't cut corners, really, but our money seems to go further than I expect -

My ex-husband (aka "Dumbo"), bled me dry during the 1990's.  I was always broke. I paid for everything and then he'd "borrow" money off me.  I remember looking forward to April each year, when our tax codes changed,  because that usually meant an extra £25 a month in my take-home pay.  Those were the days when I'd be lucky to get a £500 annual pay rise. 

My current DH couldn't be more different.  We have a "yours, mine, ours" system where we contribute in proportion to our salaries to the joint costs/joint savings.  The exception is the housekeeping budget - groceries, garden, bulk fund, Christmas food - where we go halves. (£125 each/£250 total a month.)  We discuss money all the time.  There are no secrets.

- Pip

PipneyJane

PollyWollyDoodle said:

Okay, just adding my two penn’orth (pun intended!) I use a budgeting software called YNAB (You Need A Budget). I first heard about it here on the forum, I had a free version for a while but I now pay for it. I think it repays me 10 times over! I enter my expenditure manually, you can link it up to your bank account but I’ve never done that. It really doesn’t take long, I have a mobile app so I can add some transactions as soon as I do them and direct debits and standing orders come up anyway. 

Within the app I have different ‘pots’ and you can set these up exactly as you want. I have a budget for “hobbies” which includes fees for my calligraphy class, sadly I will be leaving that after this term, it covers yarn, fabric, in fact anything to do with making stuff. If you have overdrawn on category it alerts you, and you can decide whether to fund it from somewhere else, eg if I have exceeded the amount in the hobbies category I can take some out of “spending money”. I don’t track every single cash expenditure, although of course there are very few of those these days. 

I’ve always been “good with money” e.g. I never run out at the end of the month and knew what I could afford but I never quite knew where it was going before. Because I am self-employed I also use this to track my business expenditure. It’s worked brilliantly for me, and I actually look forward to reconciling my bank account each Monday! I’m sure a spreadsheet would do the job, but I’d never manage to set it up properly. 

@PollyWollyDoodle I know of several people who rave about YNAB.  I’ve not tried it.  I did try a budgeting app - the one that was featured in the original iPhone ad - but found it a little inflexible.  It couldn’t cope with multiple budget pots.  I know YNAB can, just haven’t got around to it.

- Pip

PipneyJane

Liverpool_Anne said:

@Laura_Elsewhere, thank you, very interesting and informative. I suppose the thickness of the yarn also depends on what it is made from, looking at how thick the shetland looks compared to the other yarns even though they have the same weight name. If I ever come across some I will know what to expect. I must admit I love the idea of combining different yarns, the results are stunning but I don't have a stash to experiment with atm but I can foresee a time when I might .
@Cherryfudge, I also find the confusion with USA things difficult, maybe there is a market for a translator

I can explain about “ply” and thickness, @Liverpool_Anne.  In Australia, yarn weights are driven by them.  Cobweb yarn is the original 1-ply. Laceweight is 2-ply, i.e. double 1-ply. 3-ply and 4-ply contained 3 or 4 strands of cobweb, plied together.  In Britain, 4-ply used to be called “knitting”, hence “double knitting” is the thickness of two 4-ply yarns held together and, in Australia, it’s called 8-ply. My oldest jumper was knitted in 8-ply yarn, which consisted of 8 plies of Cobweb!

- Pip

CAFCGirl

@Liverpool_Anne Cherry and I are actually in a wee North Yorks market town. I've not long moved here so I'm still finding all these wonderful little places LOL
But this Otley charity shop pricing scale sounds promising!

Cherryfudge

Liverpool_Anne said:

@Cherryfudge and CAFCGirl I am thinking I need to pay a visit to Otley, it sounds brilliant.

It probably is, but you'll find us in Northallerton. (Probably at the back of Yorkshire Trading, looking at yarn).

TwibbleDee

I’ve never managed to find an app that could handle 2 different pay schedules (he gets paid every 2 weeks, I get paid 15 & 30), plus carryover the correct amounts for our sinking funds, AND divvy it up by what needs to be paid from which paycheck.

All our money goes into one account, but we each have our own category of spending money, which we use for lunches out, clothes, and whatever else we’d like.  Mine gets used a lot for online courses and books.  I’m actively trying not to add to ANY of the craft stashes, as I haven’t been using them much lately.

Laura_Elsewhere

PipneyJane said:

I can explain about “ply” and thickness, @Liverpool_Anne.  In Australia, yarn weights are driven by them.  Cobweb yarn is the original 1-ply. Laceweight is 2-ply, i.e. double 1-ply. 3-ply and 4-ply contained 3 or 4 strands of cobweb, plied together.  In Britain, 4-ply used to be called “knitting”, hence “double knitting” is the thickness of two 4-ply yarns held together and, in Australia, it’s called 8-ply. My oldest jumper was knitted in 8-ply yarn, which consisted of 8 plies of Cobweb!

- Pip

Ah, but that one runs into problems with things like the Jamieson & Smith Shetland yarn which is equivalent to a 4-ply but has two strands so is technically 2 plies, but is not a 2-ply... And quite a few of the bulky or chunky yarns are 1-ply, like Rowan Cocoon or Wendy Norse. 
Hence why, if using a pattern, it's so important to knit a tension piece (aka swatch in American) to find out what your actual tension is, how many stitches and rows to the inch/cm...

Liverpool_Anne

@PipneyJane a small notebook sounds like the way forward when I return to cash. The key still seems to be to set different budgets for things and have different bank account.
@PollyWollyDoodle, apps, another thing I don't use, (luddite), although this does sound useful I know I would come up against my lazy ways and not enter things straight away.  I too have always been"good with money", very rarely in the past 48 years have I been overdrawn and on those occasions it was always due to ex buying something and not telling me. He wasn't a real spendthrift but somehow always managed to buy what he wanted.  I remember 1 xmas when I had asked all the family for money towards a new winter coat and he spent it all on a new tracksuit "needed" for his running. When he finally left the house and I remortgaged to buy him out so ended up paying more monthly I still seemed to have more money.
@Laura_Elsewhere yes it is a brilliant trick and as a student I always had enough money to live comfortably. I agree with you about never having to hide stuff, never do it, also about "having to drink". I had a very good friend who drank herself to death and used any excuse rather than face up to the terrible truth that she had an alcohol problem. Sadly by the time I realised she had a problem she wouldn't admit it even when I tried to talk to her. Even her OH didn't see the problem. Very sad and I was angry with her for a long time after her death as I felt it was avoidable. People can be much more fragile than we realise even when we know them very well.
@PipneyJane, thanks for the info about ply, makes perfect sense to me, pity the whole world doesn't adopt it
@Cherryfudge and CAFCGirl,  Northallerton is now on my list of places I must visit
Sorry for the long post, this is a tea break from clearing the carp from in front of the boiler cupboard so the plumber can get into service it next week, back to work now
Take care everyone

PollyWollyDoodle

@TwibbleDee I believe you can download a free trial of YNAB. It copes very well with my erratic income, I get paid as and when! Basically you don’t enter money until you actually have it, and once you have it you make sure it’s allocated somewhere – one of the straplines is “give every dollar a job”. It’s not for everyone I agree, but it works really well for me. I know I have the money for my car service, car insurance, road tax etc saved up so when they are due in a couple of months there’s no panic. I used to manage very well before but this way I can see that the money is there. I can also see if I haven’t spent my “hobbies” budget for a while then perhaps I can treat myself to something. 

I was always amazed by friends who said “I’ll sneak this in while X is watching TV, he won’t know it’s a new dress if I take the labels off”. My marriage wasn’t brilliant, and eventually it broke down, but hiding things from my husband or pretending I hadn’t bought them would have signalled a serious problem to me. 

Nonnadiluca

I use a free spending tracker app on my phone, ( the one that's a brown wallet). I have several different accounts eg. Current account, savings, xmas, shopping etc and find it really easy to keep track. I find the shopping one great because I enter what I've spent while I'm still in the shop as it's on my phone so always with me. I'd definitely forget to do it if I waited until I get home!
We've never had much in the way of income, having always prioritsed time over money, but have everything we want within reason and no debt. We don't spend money on stuff that isn't important to us, so what we do have is spent on things that are important. I guess the secret is not wanting much!