Getting FIREd up 😀

themadvix · 16 October 2022 at 8:59AM

@greenbee agree with the first, but I tried the second (for a good long time) and it just didn’t work for me! Shampoo bar or buy in bulk faith in nature works though 😉

What about passata instead of toms? I avoid tinned toms because of their high acidity combined with unknown tin linings, so we just use passata - less texture but it works.

South_coast · 16 October 2022 at 9:48AM

I've not needed the former in over a year, and this is the first time I've wanted to buy tomatoes in at least 6 months - just very frustrating that when I actually need things they aren't there (plus other things I have been trying to buy for months are repeatedly not available). I don't want to have to constantly think about substitutions, or where else I can get something, or whether I can leave it another week. I just want to be able to go to the shops and buy what I want 🙁

I will report back after Sainsbury's later....

South_coast · 16 October 2022 at 12:45PM

It took two days and four supermarkets, but I have finally procured all eighteen items on my shopping list.

Now I just need to muster up the energy to actually do something with them....

South_coast · 16 October 2022 at 1:09PM

Moving on, this week's money-saving/making actions were:
* £75.00 received from TVision - this is the set-up payment for the jazzy new box I have by my TV which monitors what I'm watching (plus a webcam to see if I'm actually watching it). I was a bit wary initially, but it's completely painless so far and I'll be paid £20/month to keep it running
* £20.00 received from Shop & Scan
* £8.82 received from ZipZero (credited to my electricity account)
* £2.50 cashed-in Nectar points
* Scanned a 250 bonus Nectar points count up to Christmas voucher that someone had left on the self-checkout last week. It had their card number on but the points have gone through, so that's a free £1.25 for the second it took to snaffle the voucher
* Bought a 3-month prescription pre-payment payment certificate, which I'll use to build up a little stockpile over the next couple of months. I don't like having to do it this way (always feels a bit like I'm cheating the system 🙁), but it gets a bit pricey otherwise at £9.35 per item, as I have medication I need every day
* Opened a Santander 2.75% savings account following a tip-off from PiggyBankShaker. This fulfils my requirements of being a) a decent rate; and b) with Santander (so I can "see" the money, as opposed to just "knowing it's there" and feeling I need to keep logging in to see it's still there). I've dumped everything in there together at the moment and set up a spreadsheet to show me what it's actually meant for, but as not having it separated out tends to stress me out (due to the aforementioned checking), we'll see how that goes!

So quite a productive week if we gloss over the hours spent supermarket shopping!

South_coast · 16 October 2022 at 7:36PM

Also, slightly more obliquely on the money-saving front, I have booked myself a weekend away with the sole intention of dissuading myself from buying a second home 😳!

There is a seaside town a couple of hours away that I've become slightly obsessed with over the last few years, to the extent that I've been giving serious thought to buying a little flat that I could pop over to whenever I wanted, with it being used as a (managed) holiday let the rest of the time to try and cover some of the expenses. I've had a Rightmove search set up for the last few years to get a feel for what's there, with the emails getting less and less frequent as prices have gone up. Anyway, they're clearly dropping at the moment, as I've received a few in the last couple of weeks for properties which have piqued my curiosity. This is not good, as in reality I have no genuine appetite for having a second property to maintain - or a second mortgage to have to pay off 😱!

So, this trip will be all about seeing what it's really like to drive there after work on a Friday and not get "home" until late evening, what it's really like to spend a whole weekend there, how quiet it really is in the depths of winter etc. And if I genuinely really like it, then I've had the epiphany this week that I don't actually need to own somewhere there to be able to go and stay there whenever I like, there is plenty of accommodation out there that I can stay in whenever I want, for a lot less cost than purchasing a second property 😅! Disappointingly, the self-catering options were about double the price of the cost of a (good) hotel, so I won't have the real "living there" experience, but it'll be good enough as a fact-finding mission.

Wish me a terrible time 🤣🤞!