Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

PennysIntoPounds

Hope you have a lovely Saturday night and that the various shopping and travelling isn't too awful.

Well done getting the conservatory windowsills cleaned upon noticing them!
As someone who mentioned on the last OATs thread that one of my day's achievements was picking up a bit of fluff off the carpet that had been annoying me for days, I am in awe 😂

Sun_Addict

Just noticed the photo of your Christmas cake - it looks amazing. Hope you’ve survived the Swedish emporium visit. It’s nowhere near where we live either, the opposite side of town from us. We’ve only been once. 

Suffolk_lass

I hope your Swedish emporium trip was both possible and not too traumatic in terms of OP! At least you are going before the January sales start. When we lived a bit nearer, we used to go to Lakeside and I have queued for a mile to get off the A13 before now (we abandoned, two roundabouts away) - it was carnage.

Over here a large M&S has just got planning consent to replace the near derelict, long empty Toys are them site that is on our side of one of the nearby towns. Both the others are the far sides of the towns and a complete PITA to enter and leave due to the car parks having been designed by a toddler with crayons (we believe)

foxgloves

Thanks for all your comments & contributions.

@daisy_1571 - Yes, that's a good idea. back in the Spendy Era, I constantly told myself (& everyone else) that I didn't earn enough to save, which was complete rubbish. I was also looking at things entirely the wrong way. Saving just £10 per month from January would have provided a useful £120 to help with the following January's horrible bills. Doubling this to just £20, which I could have funded from my magazine & coffee shop habit with consummate ease, would have given me a nice £240. If at the time, anyone had said, "Would a 'free' £125 (or £250) help my post Christmas financial situation, I'd have bitten their hand off, yet I never twigged the common sense of putting it aside myself, or indeed of doing any budgeting whatsoever. It feels like a lifetime ago now, but I lived that way for many years.

@PennysIntoPounds - Those sills/frames would have annoyed me once I'd spotted them & they didn't take that long at all to sort out. Now I shan't need to waste any mental energy on being cross with myself for putting the job off.

@Sun_Addict - Thanks. I always enjoy baking & icing a Christmas cake. I used to live just 5 miles from our local Swedish Emporium, as my previous house was on that side of the city outskirts. It was TOO handy for popping in, tbh, as the LBM was still years away.

@Suffolk_lass - That sounds like my early Swedish Emporium trips to the Wembley store, where I'd occasionally go while staying with my parents, before our local branch was built. Awful queues, 1 out, 1 in on the car park, & it still all felt worth it as was very much back in the Spendaceous Era. 

foxgloves

Morning Christmas Campers!
Yesterday's trip was absolutely trouble-free! I had heard how bad that retail park was on Friday - you know, packed, gridlock, grumpy people, everywhere rammed, but can only assume that for some reason everyone decided to go then, because we not only had a traffic-free drive over there, but when we arrived there were lots of car parking spaces. We went into the M of S cafe for a coffee thinking it'd be a scrum for tables & not only were there about 15 empty ones from which to choose, but Mr F realised he had enough loyalty stamps for a free one! And a lovely night visiting our besties too. Enjoyed all the festive lights on our cross-county drive home with a faint veil of fog just descending & frost crisping the more rural verges. Anyway, onto today's budget-helping efforts:
*Bake loaf - dough on 2nd proving.
*Changed bed linen so as do get on with pre-Christmas laundry. Estimate about 3 loads, but I don't intend to do any over the festivities. Am double-spinning everything now so as to reduce heated airer time.
*Checked bank account in case the water rates refund had materialised. Nope, but the compulsory changeover to metered supply letter stated within 14 days of receiving the letter, so it could be a few more days. The letter did say that we were over-paying on the current system & strongly implied a refund so that has naturally got my hopes up.
*Unpacked yesterday's purchases from the Swedish Emporium. We stuck to our list & got everything on it except something we reckoned we could source elsewhere & more sustainably (I.e non-plastic). The only little item we bought which wasn't on our list was only because we didn't know it existed - an adapter to turn an old bayonet lamp fitting into a screw-in one. We have a vintage coffee pot which was turned into a lamp, but the funky big light bulbs it requires only now seem available in screw fittings, which was a problem as I really like the lamp. Anyway, now sorted for a very low spend. Mr F wanted large lidded storage boxes but only bought one to "see how he gets on with it". I think the actual reason was that he knows I am planning to skim the House & Garden Savings Pot for a chunk of money towards the new roof, so as to leave a little more in our Emergency Fund, so he didn't want to deplete that Pot any more than necessary. I am so relieved we are on the same page when it comes to our financials - at the beginning of our debt-free journey, it didn't look as though he was going to be, but his attitude changed when he saw how well my debts were starting to coming down & wanted this for his own situation too.
*Did a rather miserly survey & cashed out another £5 coffee shop e-voucher, which will be nice for our New Year city centre trip.
Mr F has just shut himself away in the Man Cave to wrap my Christmas presents & I am Not Allowed In. I bet he still keeps them hidden away until the 25th. Tbf, I am a shocking present-feeler. It is all part of the excitement for me, shaking & feeling presents & trying to guess, but he reckons I peep (I don't!) & am therefore not to be trusted around presents!!!
 Right, apart from putting that loaf in the oven & dealing with laundry cycles as & when, that is it for tasks today & I intend to read the Sunday paper, do a bit of crosswording & read my book. 
Wishing everyone out there in Diary Land a calm, non-spendy day.
F x

scandimore

Glad all worked out with the tooth and the ikea trip, both can prove painful! 

I'm sure you'll be glad to have had the roof sorted once it's done. We had the same issue with the previous owner and the spray foam. That stuff should be illegal. We also needed a new roof. Awful, stressful, expensive and so unnecessary (if they had only not bothered having the insulation). Apparently she was a tenacious elderly lady and said about this and other issues "I'll be dead soon, then it's someone else's problem!" 

But there is such a safety and satisfaction in not being rained on in your bed during storms 😆. Also once all the slates were off it was clear that the water damage to the timber frame was extensive, parts had been reduced to rotten toothpicks over our little boy's bedroom, if we hadn't replaced it who knows how much longer it would have lasted.

8.5k is a good price too I think. All in all, it'll be satisfying for the frog to be fully digested! 

foxgloves

@scandimore - Sorry to hear you have had the same issue. Yes, our problem roof coating is ancient as we have lived here for 23 years! It was about the only 'improvement' (said with bitter irony) that the previous occupant made to the house, which needed a lot of doing-up when we bought it. I have looked at online photos of the newer sprayed-on insulation & our older incarnation of the wretched stuff is much thinner than that, but it is still a load of plasticky stuff which has to come off for the health of the roof, to enable roof repairs even to take place (if we didn't have this stuff, a repair - much cheaper -  would be possible) & to maintain the value of our property. I even read online that some of this spray-on stuff is a fire-hazard! Who wants that sitting in their roof?! 
So yes, it will be a relief, though an expensive one, to get the frog swallowed once & for all. We think it is a fair price & thankfully we can cover it from our Emergency Fund. I just want it done now so I can have all the faff, noise & mess out of the way. It's going to be a chilly time of year for roof-removal but at least it gets it over with early in the year. 
Of course, a few years further down the road, we will be able to put our house up for sale with 9 or 10 years of new roof warranty left, instead of having big trouble selling, & then probably at a significant loss.
F

foxgloves

Hello my favourite little mince pies,
I'm getting more into the festive spirit now we've had the solstice. The living room looks so pretty in the evenings lit by just the Christmas tree & candles with a bit of soft lamplight for reading or knitting and I am playing some carols every day - piano sounding lovely after its tuning last week.
Anyway, onto today's budget-friendly efforts:
*Another use-it-up meal prepped rtg tonight with 3 freezer items out - we are starting to see a little bit of space in there now. Am doing baked salmon fillets rubbed with za'atar with spicy vegetable couscous. 
*Baked a batch of little white dinner rolls. I often make these for high days & holidays. They freeze well & work well with festive buffet sort of food.
*Did the remaining laundry. Am regularly jigging heated airer stuff around to get it all dry a bit quicker. No laundry should need to be done now for several days, which was the idea of having a big push.
*Did my regular Monday morning budget updates. Not much to do - a savings Pot transfer, a Personal Spends update & a revised monthly bill amount to input on Spreadsheet 1.
*Got out Christmas tablecloths, pinnies & crockery. Still have a packet of festive paper napkins from a past Wilk*s January sale. 10p a pack so we stocked up!
*Fed sourdough jar. I shan't be baking a sourdough for a good few days so need to make sure there is sufficient nom-noms in there for all those good bacteria. Have kept this culture alive since 2017 so don't want to lose it.
*Had a look at this month's energy bill & added the figures to my log-sheet. More spent on gas this month as it has been a little colder so that CH has been coming on more, a bit less on electricity. Overall, we spent a bit less than the same period last year. We are now using our credit balance, but as this is still at £500 (more than we had in December 2024), we should be fine until Spring arrives.
*Entered a competition.
*Did a couple of surveys.
That is my planned tasks done. I am going to watch 'Love actually' this afternoon while casting on the 2nd of the cable socks I started knitting for myself on holiday. I postponed this as needed to get both Mr F's birthday pairs finished in time. I have also had instructions from Mr F to "do some reading or something today, not just jobs", which I am more than happy to follow! 
Well, Ash has eaten very little today as what he was given this morning doesn't seem to be what he was hoping for. Considering that he probably spent the first 2 years of his life scavenging from bins, he is becoming a fussy little so-&-so. I can hear Soot chuntering to himself downstairs because it's their lunchtime, so off I go to feed them........& then myself. 
F x

Sun_Addict

Our youngest cat is fussy despite being semi feral when we adopted her. She was used to sharing a bowl of cheap cat food with two other cats. She’ll only eat the high end brands now and won’t share a bowl with our other cat. 

PennysIntoPounds

Very much enjoying being called a mince pie 😊😂

Hope you have a lovely restful afternoon, one of the things I love about Christmas is giving myself rare permission to occasionally relax (a little. In small bouts. Carefully timed. Let's not go mad 😁)