Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Evening Saturday Savers,
Well we did have our postponed city centre trip this morning  - a few things to tell you on the financial front today, so I'd better divide my post into chapters. We'll start with Chapter 1  - Sort of general common sense:
Our old city centre trips were terribly spendy back in the day - we'd have breakfast out, followed by lunch if we were still in town (which we always were) & way too much impulse spending (of mostly the bank's money). Very different these days.
*Decided to limit parking to 3 hours to keep car park costs down. 
*Mr F had a free coffee voucher on a loyalty app so we just split the cost of the remaining one between our respective Personal Spends.
*Did not buy a scone, cake, biscuit or any other of my downfalls as had breakfast before leaving home. (N.B This wouldn't normally stop me!)
*Sensible behaviour in the shop which sounds like somewhere you'd go to buy a new body: I wanted 2 products from this shop & very much hoped I'd find one of them in the sale. I didn't. I must have looked at all the lovely sale products/gift sets about 4 times, as the reductions were good, but I didn't buy any. It was more economical to buy my moisturiser & body cream at full price than to buy a basket of stuff I don't need at sale price..........when I'd still have also needed the 2 products I originally went in for. I did buy 3 little tubes of festive hand cream to pop away in the Presents Bag - they were half price & on 3 for 2, so will be nice cheap little stocking fillers for next year. Also used a £5 loyalty voucher to reduce the cost further.

On to Chapter 2 - The Coat.

F

foxgloves

Chapter 2 - The Coat
So, I had planned to visit the 'Marine-condiment' shop & as expected they had a rather fab sale. Had pretty quickly earmarked 3 or 4 garments to try on, then Reformed Foxgloves (the Mark II version) kicked in & I recognised my old sales behaviour of yesteryear emerging. Told myself to take a minute to think about clothing items I actually NEED. No contest - a waterproof coat which is also warm but not like a wearable sauna. That was it. I don't need any other clothes at the moment, so I put my armful of tops & dresses back & went to see if there were any suitable coats. None on the sale rail, but the only one I actually liked in the entire shop was on a 20% off offer. It was priced at £160, which was more than I wanted to pay (had been thinking around £80 - £100) but the 20% reduction knocked £32 off it & I also had a £20 giftcard from my loyalty points, so that was £108. By then, I'd got an assistant extolling the coat's many virtues & telling me it looked nice on, etc, & I STILL said I was thinking about it because it's a little more than I'd wanted to pay. I tried it on again, made sure I ran the zip up & down (the zip on my current coat was very poor & I wished I'd taken it back). Zip fine. Other essential criteria checked - machine washable (yes) & sufficiently roomy to fit a jumper or cardi underneath but not tenty (there's a hidden drawstring inside to pull the waist in to make it more fitted if preferred). 
 I sucked up the extra £8 over my notional amount & bought it. I'm very much hoping it will last better than my current coat - I only bought it in Autumn 2020, have obviously only worn it in the colder months, yet it is frayed around the cuffs already & somehow looks permanently grubby despite being washed fairly frequently. So I left the shop thinking "I've just spent a £108 chunk of our Clothes Pot, but also "I've made a sensible purchase based on need & quality, rather than come home with a bagful of nice sale rail tops, tunic & dress which I really don't need". It felt like a win.
As I've said in my old diary, sale rails were a huge problem for me during the Spendy Era.
F

foxgloves

Chapter 3 - Back to our tummies (again!)
Hungry on our drive home. Mr F suggested stopping off at various places on route for lunch - it was tempting........but then I said, "Could you eat an egg-mayonnaise sandwich cut from a lovely white crusty loaf?"
Him: Yes, I definitely could.
Me: Well, we've got eggs & mayo at home & a nice fresh loaf I baked yesterday, so you can make one, & one for me while you're at it! 
(Probably £15 saved, maybe more as we'd have had more coffee too)
F x

foxgloves

And finally......this afternoon's job has been gathering all the facts & figures, interest rates, spreadsheets, etc, & jotting down an agenda for our Annual Money Summit tomorrow morning. I've also found the Minutes from last year's, so we can see if there's anything outstanding from those, or if any current arrangements agreed back then need to be changed. The main agenda item this year is our 10 Savings Pots. Hoping to have a useful, productive discussion  - we know we are both on the same side with managing our budget, but it really does seem to help us as a team to have this annual meeting to underpin our financial goals.
And that's the end of today's saga!
Peace & Love, F x

pennywisepoundstupid

Evening Foxgloves, loving your new diary and have subscribed.

Well done on keeping tight hold of the purse strings today and happy new coat. xx

Tescodealqueen

Well done on your coat purchase. And on the skincare products too. A really practical spending day

ladyholly

Well done on resisting temeptation.  Good luck with tomorrows summit. I wish Mr LH would show some interest but all he says is do what you think which isnt helpful.

marionmgcars

Great restraint in the sales Foxgloves, well done.   I keep looking at a box full of clothes that were too tight to wear last year.  Hoping my smaller portions of food will lead to smaller clothes that fit, ha ha !  One can but try 😊

Moorviews

I am very impressed with the idea of your Annual Money Summit and with your organisational skills Foxgloves. Thank you for continuing to share this in your diary. 

We hadn’t been into the city for many months but had a very successful and restrained trip in recently whilst our car was being serviced. My husband loves to get a coffee (and obviously something to go with it!) as soon as we arrive but I persuaded him to have a free one at the garage. I don’t go to the sales typically, so I was amazed to find the few items that were on my list at absolute bargain prices. I did get a bit spendy when choosing the family birthday cards for the year ahead but hopefully offset it by buying Christmas cards in the sale. 

The Marine condiment shop in a local town had an offer on just before Christmas. This was enough to persuade my husband to buy me a lovely new raincoat as my present. I haven’t had one from there before and I too hope that it lasts well. I am certainly getting plenty of use out of it at the moment! 

angela110660

Hilarious Foxgoves and Moorviews- The Marine condiment shop ! Love it. All the peeps who dream up these alternative names on MSE are so clever.