Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

PennysIntoPounds

Oh dear, bless him, what a thoroughly random obsession 😂

foxgloves

POST CHRISTMAS SALVAGE
Well, Foxgloves HQ looks like a mini-warehouse at the moment, with crates we took out of the loft. I can't complain as the bulk of them did go in the (bigger) Man-Cave. My declutter continued with sorting through 2 big bags of salvaged Christmas wrappings, ribbons, etc. I trimmed several decent pieces of nice paper for re-use next year & added them to my wrappings stash box, as well as some nice, highly reusable gift bags. I went though all the Christmas cards we received, saved a couple for bookmarks, one was printed as a postcard (as as to re-use it) on the back so that went in my writing paper basket & most of the rest were cut up for gift tags. I am still using the gold ribbon yarn I rescued from Mum's craft mountain, so they look nicely festive, as well as being a free resource for next year. I also cut up a long hanging decoration which, having been savaged by our previous cat, received further 'help' from Soot this year. Yes, he pretended it was nothing to do with him, but when you walk into the hall to find the decoration swinging wildly, a small piece of regurgitated fir cone & Soot disappearing at top speed up the stairs, I consider that 'guilty as charged'. Some of the (unchomped) fir cones were in nice condition so I added them to my box of wreath making gubbins & the wooden reindeers wearing woolly jumpers will be used to trim up presents next year. 
Felt motivated by this, so followed it by sorting my big bag of salvaged outer wrappings - paddibags, bubblewrap, etc, & having come to the realisation that I have too much of everything, did some more decluttering to the extent that all these materials now fit into my big wooden wrappings crate along with giftwrap, ribbon, tags, etc. 

More sorting out this afternoon. Mr F altered a tall shelving unit for me so that I can fit my huge family history box underneath. We both have our decluttering heads on atm so we also decided to have a thorough sort out of an old wooden chest (which we use as a coffee table) to see if we could free up sufficient space in there to store our photo albums. Success! We were pretty ruthless. I have a pile to try on 'used to be Ziffit', another for the charity book shop, some music belonging to my sister, which after over 20 years, I thought I would like to return(!) & felt a sense of joy being reunited with my vintage postcard collection, some of which I sold years ago, but I kept the most valuable ones because I like them so much. We got a little sidetracked looking at old photos but decided that we will get them out properly (now they are easily accessible in our chest-come-coffee table) one weekend & enjoy looking through them properly over a bottle of wine.

Oh, & a brief interlude to contact our bank. I received a text purportedly from them saying there was a suspect transaction on my bank card. I didn't think the text was genuine as couldn't see anything pending when I signed in, so I phoned them on their fraud reporting number & it turned out it WAS them! It was our annual payment for our Micros*ft package & as it is a rare one for us which is claimed from my debit card, rather than a dd, the bank thought it might be a fraud & declined it, putting a 'stop' on my card. I explained what the payment is & the advisor unblocked my card so that the payment can be made. I would rather they were cautious tbh, better to spend 10 mins making a phone call to the bank than risk being scammed. Mr F thought that the alert might have come from vigilance around gaming payments, I don't know, just pleased it wasn't the 3rd attempted banking scam in less than a year.
F

foxgloves

AND SO IT BEGINS........
At the same time we are preparing to be roofless, the weather forecast is helpfully suggesting 'snow bomb chaos' for our wider region over the next couple of days. Progress is being made & the roofers are due on Monday. I sat at my desk yesterday & sorted out the financial side of things. We were gutted to begin the new year with such a huge bill, but we now feel grateful that we are actually able to cover it from our Emergency Fund. We were latecomers to budgeting & saving, as you know. I have used the last (previously unallocated) £500 of the money I inherited last year from our elderly relative to pay the deposit & it will also cover cattery fees for the 2 monkeys for the duration of the work. I was able to skim £2250 from our House & Garden Pot (which we had funded well in the anticipation of probably needing a new FLAT roof at some point, never thinking it'd need to be raided to help with the main roof). The remaining £6k has been transferred from our Emergency Fund which thankfully does still leave us with enough to cover another emergency (though defo a smaller one than a roof!) should Fate be unkind enough to lob something else in our direction anytime soon. A theme of this year will defo be rebuilding our EF. This will be a top agenda item at our annual January money summit meeting.

I had intended to contact the roofer-in-chief today to check that we are still all-systems-go for Monday. We were just heading out first thing this morning, there was a knock at the door & it was a workman asking if they could come over & put the scaffolding up this afternoon, ready for Monday! We had a quick trot around town (which was welcome as there was some good butcher's deal, plus I had a coffee shop e-voucher burning a hole in my handbag) but I then opted to be the person to wait in for the scaffolders as there were a few jobs I could usefully be doing at the same time, so Mr F went off to Waitbl00m with the list, & nearby cheapest petrol in our town. Scaffolders arrived early & our house is now fully......well, scaffolded! I took them all a hot drink & I honestly don't know how I didn't drop the mugs as I stepped outside just as one of them was calling another of his workmates an "f*****g sausage". I don't know what he had done to deserve this or why I found it so funny. I put it down to having been stressing about the whole roof thing & that seeing some preparatory roof action plus having moved the funds into place, probably had a bit of a calming effect. 
F x

PennysIntoPounds

That is a top insult 😂
Glad it's getting going!

Sun_Addict

The building trade is a whole different world, they don’t mince words 🤣 Anyone saying that to someone where I work would be reported for bullying and harassment and the recipient of the insult would be off sick for 6 months with PTSD. 

I’ve also cut up my Christmas cards into tags today 🙂

Humdinger1

On tenterhooks for roof updates @foxgloves! Well done for being able to pay for it; you must bless your LBM  every hour? Should Soot change his name to Funky Gibbon? Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

KajiKita

Being married to someone from the building trade @Sun_Addict means I must remember to moderate myself sometimes in work!  😉😂

KK

Sun_Addict

KajiKita said:

Being married to someone from the building trade @Sun_Addict means I must remember to moderate myself sometimes in work!  😉😂

KK

Mr SA was a roofer before his illness and if I ever complained about someone at work he used to say 'just tell them to f*** off'. Erm it's not that cut and dried in an office - although don't think I haven't been tempted and my facial expression may have said it for me 🤣

Makingabobor2

You were so lucky to have such big savings pots to fund the roof. Think we can all take a leaf out of your book. 

Suffolk_lass

Just a thought - have you told your home insurance provider that you have a scaffold up at the moment? - we had to, and of course they charged us. It might only be because we are thatched as I don't recall doing so at our previous house (and we did claim as the garage was broken into just after the scaffold was removed - it was almost as though they "cased the joint" while using the garage to get replacement tiles into the back garden to refurb the roof).

Oh and I have a pin on my jacket that Mr Sl bought me for my birthday last year that says "somewhat sweary, remarkably articulate". Moi?