Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Morning Campers!
Busy morning until the triangular-finned vacuum friend ran out of charge, so I've been cracking on with other stuff, including piano practice & chatting to you.
Very domesticated day, but needs must:
*BIg house clean underway - bed & household linens changed, upstairs & stairs vacuumed, bathroom & kitchen cleaned, just downstairs to vacuum & it will be finished. I usually do my big weekly clean on Fridays, but I am otherwise engaged tomorrow morning......& am already getting in a tizz as it's a visit involving TEETH! Not the main surgical bit, but that is hoving into view, along with an enormous bill as this work is not offered by my NHS dentist. Can feel my innards butterflying just typing this!
*Finished next week's meal plans - needed to consult HFW's leftovers book for something.
*Grocery shopping list will be written this afternoon.
*In tandem with this, will also be writing a pantry stock-up list for visiting A*di at the beginning of next month. Re food stores, I'm closer to the 'zombie apocalypse' (borrowing a quote from Friend @Humdinger1) than 'spare tin of beans & a jar of fish paste' kind of person. Food prices are still rising & I think it makes sense to get stocked up on a number of our staples.
*Didn't get my friend's wrap finished last night due to my lap suddenly becoming exceedingly attractive to cats - will knit some tonight. Will knit a bit more of Mr F's presents sock over my lunch hour while he's out of the house.
*Have done a couple of surveys, putting Feb's PA earnings at over £21 so far & will continue to check.
There'll probably be other things as I go along. I am keeping busy so I don't work myself up about the dentist. It doesn't help that it involves a trek into the city each time, but never mind, the work needs doing & I'm only kicking the can down the road if I start bottling out & postponing appointments. 
Cheers m'dears,
F x

foxgloves

Well, I cracked on with my pantry re-stock list for (most likely) the first week of March's monthly budget cycle. Coincidentally, I was reading the news online at lunchtime & there was a piece about the rate of food inflation slowing but slowing doesn't mean falling prices, just that they aren't going up quite as rapidly as they have been doing. Then I read that the big company (can't remember which one) which owns the 'Marmite' & 'Dove' brand amongst many others is planning a price rise, so overall, I think my take on this is that grocery prices are not going to be falling any time soon. 
I've fed this into my stock-up list - we use Mr All Dee, I would say, quarterly for a re-stock & I've included numbers of items on my list, based on what we already have in & what I think we will need until the following visit. It seems worth doing if prices are going to be higher next time around. 
As for this week's grocery shopping list, unless I've had an aberration & left things off, it looks pretty small, which is good, as we are a little further into February's grocery budget than I'd like. It will involve visiting a supermarket, the eco-refill shop, the market butcher & greengrocer, local bakery & also the C**p as I'll need to call in to drop off our bag of stretchy plastic for recycling. Our local C**p is very good for that, as they also take crisp packets & pet food pouches, which are usually destined for the wheelie bin as I don't know anywhere else locally that takes them. I will make sure I cast an eye over the yellow-sticker/out of date shelf to see if they have any more 38p bags of coffee. I don't think they will, but there's no way I'm going in there & not looking!
Right, that's all today's jobs done. Mr F is cooking (jacket potato night) so as he's going to be making Epic Man Stew, I think I will just mix up my tuna mayo & grate the cheese for my tuna melt. Then, I shall settle down with the cats & my book - a charity bookshop find for 99p which I'm enjoying.
F x

badmemory

Personally I am getting a bit sick of the cost of living only 10% increase.  They don't seem to be living in the same world as I am.  As for this shower in power well.  Short version, I have a friend (well currently if my irritation doesn't get the better of me), who is about to declare bankruptcy.  HMRC £15k & what is worse £35k in a loan re the pandemic which his son talked him into taking which I seriously think may turn out to be fraudulent.  But then the banks did these loans without doing due diligence because the gov backed them so basically what did it matter they were covered anyway.  He says he has 2 business acquaintancies who also took the £50k loans who promptly sold up including their homes & moved abroad, obviously with no intention of repaying.  These banks have a lot to answer for - yet again.  They seem to be keeping this second bailout very quiet & when people cannot pay their mortgages we will be on the third bailout.  Sorry it wasn't actually that short a version but I am so annoyed right now because we will be the ones paying as usual.

foxgloves

@badmemory - I think that there was a lack of due diligence in various matters during the pandemic. I suppose an element of this was due to it being unchartered territory for governments, banks, businesses, etc. You'll doubtless remember the government exercise which was run a couple of years before Covid struck, when a fictional serious flu pandemic was used to test the resilience of the NHS, etc, to cope should it happen in reality. The report apparently made it clear that there would be insufficient critical care beds, PPI, etc, but the recommendations were not acted on. What surprised me when I was initially reading about this simulation exercise/modelling, was that there was no aspect of the economy looked at. It seems fairly common sense, I'd have thought, to have measures in place which could unroll in such a situation......as of course we did all find ourselves in only 2 or 3 years later. Just taking all the panicky buying of PPE alone (some of it paid for & completely unusable)  - this is how so many contracts ended up being handed to friends & family  - no putting out to tender, which as a public sector employee of many years, I know is how things have to be done. I think the loans were problematic too. It's a known fact that many were obtained fraudulently & I don't think the Gov't has not done a lot to recover the lost money, which I believe is a significant amount. 
So yes, I understand entirely how crushing & anger-inducing it is to be suffering 10% inflation (higher on food) & budget-crippling energy bills & agree with you entirely.
F

foxgloves

Morning Campers!
I'm trying to keep busy so as to control the pre-dentist nerves.....not that I'm even having much done today, but that makes no difference to the butterflies dancing the fandango in my innards!
Not much to report.......2 useful shopping from home items & a weird letter in the post.
Items shopped from home  - a bottle of something nice to take to our friends later, which was found in the back of the pantry, leftover from Christmas. Also a new phone charging cable. I noticed yesterday that mine has worn & the wires are showing through, but I remembered a box of phone bits & bobs from when I was clearing out one of those drawers earlier this week, checked in there just in case & found a brand new unused one! I think I must have just continued using my old cable when I changed phones a while back. Anyway, that was a result.
As for the weird letter......well I'm baffled by this. Postie brought me a letter from HMRC this morning. I was surprised to see this, as I haven't paid tax since I took VR several years ago & as I was on PAYE, all of the finishing work tax stuff was dealt with at the time. This morning's letter informed me I am due a small tax refund - & it IS small, but, nevertheless a useful amount for adding to a savings pot. The letter informs me that I am owed this from £157 interest earned on savings between 2021 & 2022 & that they need to refund me £31. I am being refunded because this £31 is under my personal tax allowance (of course it is!). The oddest aspect is that the £157 doesn't match any amount of interest I earned that year (or just to check.....the previous or following years either). 
Anyway.....to add to the weirdness, I went onto the website as instructed by the letter to claim the refund online & discovered I first have to set up a 'Government Gateway' account. I'd got all the info so started doing that, but the website rejected my information, saying it had 'no match' for me. .......this is despite me having used the very details (correct) which they had used in this morning's letter! As I was thus unable to claim the refund online, I will be sent a cheque within 6 weeks. 
I am baffled as to how I can actually be owed a refund as have not declared any interest earned, with all of it in aggregate being well below my personal tax allowance. My prediction is that having filed this letter, I will receive another in a few weeks time to inform me that it was sent in error & I am owed nothing. 
Weird though, no?
Anyway, it took my mind of teeth for a little while.
F x

Cheery_Daff

Very weird! I suppose just sit tight and if the cheque arrives, get it in the bank! 

Good luck with the dentist. I have a 90 minute appointment in a few weeks myself so I do understand the need for distraction!

Makingabobor2

Ooh, hope the HMRC thing wasn't some sort of scam to get you to go on computer & put details in, or something sinister. Hope the cheque arrives ok

badmemory

The problem with HMRC is that their left hand doesn't seem to speak to their right hand.  Also the self assessment doesn't work the same way as simple assessment does.  Also do not trust the figures the DWP give to HMRC as I've not noticed them ever getting it right yet.  As for the interest on savings accounts, well maybe one of these days.  Self assessment was so much easier but the major difference is that they can't charge you penalties for not paying if they haven't told you you need to.  I sat with £1k in a savings account for over 2 years because they couldn't get their act together.  I'll pay every penny I am due to pay, after all I'm not an MP, but I won't pay a penny more.

ladyholly

badmemory said:

The problem with HMRC is that their left hand doesn't seem to speak to their right hand.  Also the self assessment doesn't work the same way as simple assessment does.  Also do not trust the figures the DWP give to HMRC as I've not noticed them ever getting it right yet.  As for the interest on savings accounts, well maybe one of these days.  Self assessment was so much easier but the major difference is that they can't charge you penalties for not paying if they haven't told you you need to.  I sat with £1k in a savings account for over 2 years because they couldn't get their act together.  I'll pay every penny I am due to pay, after all I'm not an MP, but I won't pay a penny more.

Your final sentence msde me chuckle as Mr LH once wrote a cheque to HMRC with the words not one penny more after the amount on the words line.😀

Onebrokelady

2Scratters said:

*** rant warning***
Had a discussion this morning with DH about the costs to the consumers of utilities.
 In particular the electric companies and house builders.
We remembered 14 years ago when our son was looking at a house purchase there was a small newbuild site locally to us at the time and those houses were built with solar panels already installed on them. Yet all the new builds around us, when we moved here over 7 years ago, not one property who were supposedly "affordable homes" have any solar attachments. Properties that cost a quarter of a million pounds and above.
 This to us is political and scr**ing it's nation. No ethics here then. Also why are large manufacturing/storage businesses - those with massive warehouses not using solar panels? As a small island we should be capable of reducing the demand for fossil supplied power stations making inappropriate business choice purchases from around the world.

I would love to retire early (2 years to do now) but the cost of heating the house has put paid to that. I now need to save much more than I had planned as we will be poor pensioners when that time comes. Even though we both have private/work pensions too it will be taken up by the utilitities. It's a shame the UK never matched the pensions with the rest of the EU when it had many years to do just that.  :'(

2 Scratters xx

Things are changing. I have two estates being built across the road from me and all the houses have solar panels. They are being built by a housing association so are a mix of shared ownership and rented housing