Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@Blackcats - Yes, I am thinking along the same lines regarding my work pension.

@Makingabobor2 - As we are fine on Mr F's salary, my thinking is that everything from my work pension would go straight into Savings for a few years. I am still some years away from my state pension & Mr F is 5 years younger than me so he is years away from everything.

@BrilliantButScary - I've had a cursory look at this before & thought not, but I will be investigating more thoroughly shortly as part of the fact-finding process.

@KajiKita - I don't really know offhand, but intend to ponder your question, as I am intending to start work on February's master meal plan later this afternoon.

@ziggy2407 - Welcome back! Hope you are ok x

KajiKita

Thank you foxgloves, I look forward to your musings on this …

KK

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers, WHAT a soggy day….so you will understand how surprised I was when a large truck rumbled up outside our house first thing & the scaffolding was taken down as soon as the rain slowed from downpour to reasonable levels. It was supposed to be my Big Budget Day today, but with all that going on, I decided to defer it until tomorrow.

Decluttering is still going on apace here. As we had to empty the loft, it's been a perfect time to assess everything thoroughly because as I said to Mr F, keeping things 'just in case' is one thing, but having the same conversations about the same items in 2, 4, 6, years time is just time wasting. Am pleased to report that both of our heads are in the same space atm where decluttering is concerned & he happily did another tip-run on Sunday. We asked ourselves why we were hanging onto all our camping gear (minus tent which you may recall I fell through on our last camping trip before Lockdown put a stop to things) when we have decided we won't camp in future but will instead, book the weather-proof en-suite hostel rooms we like at our fave campsite. We couldn't think of any good reason except we loved our camping trips & neither of us wanted to draw that final line under them by getting rid of our outdoor stuff. We agreed that it now makes sense to do this as even if we stayed on other campsites, we would (for several reasons) be looking to book a pod or similar, so would only need to take fairly general stuff with us. So there's a good pile of things heading for the charity shop. There's also been a great opportunity here for shopping from home. We always took a big plastic box on camping trips filled with everything we needed - our tent was always a bit of a home from home, fairy lights, bunting, etc - & sorting out the contents liberated lots of useful things:

A trivet, food cover, a sieve, tablecloth, 3 kitchen hand towels (which coincidentally I'd only been looking at in town that same morning), 1 loo roll, 1 kitchen roll, 3 bowls (perfect for cat bowls, esp. as I smashed Ash's bowl on our unforgiving Belfast sink this morning), teaspoons, a substantial amount of tealights, matches, 2 strings of handmade bunting, a string of fairy lights, emergency sewing kit in a pretty tin which I have put in my going away bag & the crate itself has been repurposed for storing vintage linens including a hand stitched patchwork bedspread which my Mum made for me in 1983 when she saw how horrid the provided ones were in my halls of residence.

In addition, the following items will be added to my soon-to-be upgraded power cut emergency supplies box - camping gas stove, gas lamp & 3 extra tealight glasses. Instead of a slightly sad sort-out, it actually turned into a very positive shopping from home experience. I have also saved an elasticated curtain I made to go around our camping shelving unit because I know I made it from 3 £-shop tablecloths & they are definitely pretty enough to use as a nice summery table-runner once I have unpicked the casing & removed the elastic. Our tent wouldn't have been everyone's cup of tea, but it was as near to glamping as we could get with a very much NON-glamping budget at the time!

Lots of the stuff we didn't need to keep has been packed ready for the charity shop….Oh & I added those earrings which I took to be tested as had a niggle in my mind that they were actually bronze instead of gold. They ARE bronze, with a malachite drop under the knotwork. They will be going to the charity shop too. I could tell that the assistant was hoping they'd be gold (& that I'd cash them in) - just for info I will add that she told me the daily gold rate for those earrings (which were not that big) was £138 !! Yes, It's have been nice to add that to our EF but I was so sure by then that I had remembered them being bronze from back in the 1980s when I was given them, that it wasn't the disappointment it might have been. I considered selling them online, but we all know it's a time-consuming process & my time is money too. Yes, I am always saying 'it all adds up' & it does, but I have to balance making a few quid for a faffy amount of effort against other things I could be doing which also save us money, such as batch cooking, batch-baking, prepping the veg garden & growing food & making things for presents. Also survey-doing time, of course. Hope someone spots them in the charity shop & loves them!

I am going to see if there are any surveys, wrap a birthday present, then I shall head to the kitchen (where I shall doubtless be ambushed by the rascals wanting their afternoon treats) to make a concerted start on February's meal plan.

Supposed to be less of a soggy day tomorrow, although I shall be spending a fair bit of it number crunching.

Love F x

EssexHebridean

I'm quite pleased with myself for having already got my meal plan to the middle of February I must admit - and I plan to add the following couple of weeks quite soon. Although a lot of what is on it might be somewhat "mobile" in terms of when it eventually gets eaten, it's nice having it in place to reduce the mental load!

Well remembered on the earrings, although a shame they didn't add a nice chunk to the EF!

Makingabobor2

Excellent news on the decluttering and shopping from home. I have done a bit more decluttering today as well, just 2 drawers while cleaning the bedroom, but it all adds up….little and often is the way to go.