Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Thanks all - Firstly, I'm glad I am not the only person who has or has previously owned a cat hooked on biscuit delinquency…..& @ladyholly also made me laugh with her comment that doggy Miss W wasn't averse to extras if she could find them!

Thanks also for the large cat-proof container suggestions. We do need to top up our bird food supplies with them all so busy foraging & nesting, so one way around it could simply be to buy a big tub of fat balls, wash it out & decant the remains of the ravaged sack of biscuits straight in. I will just check a couple of cheapish shops in town on Saturday & see if there is anything else similar, but I will definitely go ahead with getting this sorted out. Biscuit sack currently rolled down to cover the big jagged hole ripped by Soot, & held with 2 pegs. I don't doubt that he could get through that in a very short space if time, if the pantry doors were to be left even just a claw's width open, as he is persistent & can piggle them. What a baddie!

Today's money saving. Has there been any? Well, a few old-style bits & pieces.

*Did 3 loads of laundry - all pegged out to line dry for free.

*Did a few surveys - all low payers, but it all adds up.

*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.

*Mended another of Mr F's big hiking socks.

*Watered seedlings both in greenhouse & outdoor troughs. Carrots & white spring onions just peeping through, not sign of the red spring onions yet. I expect they like it warmer.

*Renovated strawberry troughs. Have lost a few to snail attack, though I did find the mollusc hideout & weeded it back to gravel so that they will be very visible to our local thrush. Added a few new runners I potted up last autumn, top-dressed with garden compost & watered.

*Paid a transaction off my 'just for points' credit card & updated my Personal Spends. Also updated Mr F's Spends as he had done a cash swap. No point setting budgets if the different strands are not maintained regularly as things get forgotten. My desk is usually a sea of notes tamed by my Mum's old glass treble clef paperweight!

*Wrote 2 thank-you cards - both from my writing paper stash. I'd completely forgotten I'd got them, so as they actually said 'Thank-you' on the front as part of the design, they were perfect (& free).

*Use-it-up kind of meal tonight - last two of the (Delia) spicy chickpea burgers from the freezer, which I batch-cooked a while ago served in the last 2 cobs from our local baker which will almost certainly be stale by tomorrow so defo need using.

*Nobbled Mr F over breakfast about what we might want to eat this BH weekend. Last week's grocery shop was about £25 over where it would usually be (but contained birthday treats plus a few chutney ingredients) so as the freezer is fit to bust, we both agree that this is where our coming meal plan needs to focus. Think will buy a chicken to roast on Sunday & provide a couple of knock-on meals, & use freezer supplies for everything else.

And I think that's about it for today's MSE efforts.

F x

EssexHebridean

Sounds like we're both going to have a "from the freezer" bit of meal planning coming up then Foxgloves - as we decided when chatting things through yesterday that we need to do the same, too - partly because of wanting to get freezer 2 empty ahead of going away, and partly because of wanting to nail grocery spending down a bit too.

I started earlier on with putting together a base list of stuff I know is in the freezers and also meals that I know we could make from stuff on that list, so hoping to keep the spend right down next weekend!

foxgloves

Thoughts about that bargainaceous gammon……..

I mentioned that we bought a pack of 4 small pieces of gammon from our local butcher. They turned out to be 'ends' of much bigger gammons which clearly get removed before the bigger hams are cut & vacuum-packed. Our butcher sells these packs for £5, which seemed very reasonable indeed so we bought one to try & we will definitely buy again. I cooked them in the slow cooker, all together, with just water, a few black peppercorns & a bay-leaf. I didn't bother saving any of the stock as while I like it in golden lentil soup, that's a rather wintery recipe & I didn't want ham stock taking up valuable space in the freezer until the colder months.

Anyway, what was the verdict? Well, it was lovely tasty ham & cooked very nicely. It did us a 'roast' dinner on Sunday with home made parsley sauce, carrots, spring greens & roast potatoes (leftovers frozen in a microwave container for Mr F to take as a hot work lunch at some point). Yesterday, we had sliced ham with home made jacket potato wedges & poached eggs. There is a container of chunks in the fridge for tomorrow's meal, for which I shall be making ham & sweetcorn pizza & salad. Another (bigger) box of chunks has been frozen to make a pasta bake later in the month, & it also provided a lunch - a nice well-filled ham & mustard roll. Finally, the 4th little gammon was frozen whole, untouched. It is bound to come in useful for something. I do think that is a lot of meals for a £5 outlay. I've also been thinking that we would probably never see such a pack of gammon 'ends' (as that is effectivley what they were) in supermarkets. They would be a good buy for a family in these straightened times. I think this is one of the reasons it can benefit our budgets to use a proper traditional butcher's shop. Our local butcher sells from a big refrigerated van on the market, has an exemplary hygiene rating, a loyalty scheme, exceedingly competitive prices but also, sells cuts I have never seen before, even as a person VERY much on the 'wrong side of 50' (since that blimming birthday last week!) who has always cooked from scratch. It's interesting to try different things, but it has shown us how small a range of what I would truly call 'budget options' are available at supermarkets.

Anyway, that was my thoughts on bargainaceous gammon……overall, very much worth buying.

F x

themadvix

Another one joining in on the freezer eating! Actually, we have so many random bits, that I'll probably extend it to further than the freezer - there's a jar of hoisin sauce in the cupboard, kept from an Olio collection that we should really make a plan for. Having just settled the accounts and done the invoicing for last month, I definitely need May to be cheap (which current plans suggest it will be anything but!).

foxgloves

Thoughts on Savings Pots…….

Or really, that should be 'Savings Pots gaps' as that's what I've been looking at this morning. Our savings pots had mostly dropped too low by the end of last year, so we identified rebuilding them as our key financial goal for 2023 (keeping solvent, saving & budgeting are now such firm planks of our household management, they no longer appear as 'goals', they just happen…….the exact opposite of the bad old days, when they very much DIDN'T happen, ever!).

We have 10 Savings Pots. Three of them are currently full - by that, I mean that they have reached the maximum amount we agreed we would hold for this year. Another is technically full but could wobble if my private dentistry comes in top-end of the quote rather than the average I am hoping. The Holiday Pot doesn't have a maximum, as it is based on what we need to pay, by which dates, plus cattery stays for the furry fiends, & worked backwards so that the exactly correct amount is paid in each month. The remaining 5 savings pots are still works in progress with getting to the agreed maximum holding. Today, I decided to look at these in particular & to work out the gaps.

*Car Maintenance - £690/£800 - Only £110 short. If I sub in the 2 vouchers I've earned recently via the grocery budget, that is £60 I can put in straight away, meaning the rest could probably be transferred in as part of June's budget. Felt encouraged by that, actually.

*House & Garden - £411.96/£3000 - OK, we are a long way off on this one, but there's a reason for this. Maximum used to be £500, but I spent quite a while pondering this & trying to decide whether, if our elderly flat roof had a la-lah, would that be a true 'emergency', as in 'Bring on the Emergency Fund'. I couldn't decide. It struck me that if we know this is going to happen in the not too distant future, doesn't it then become something we have planned for, at least to some degree? Ditto boiler going off on one, etc. Decided to increase desired max holding for House & Garden Pot to £3000 to cover some expected work. It will take some time to get there, but the method will be snowballing. As the other pots reach agreed capacity, I shan't need to pay into them & can prioritise boosting this big one.

*Clothes - £231/£400 - Neither of us really needs much atm, so this ought to be doable in a reasonably short time frame. We don't spend a huge amount on clothes (not like the naughty Foxgloves of the Spendy Years) but I arrived at the max holding of £400 because of the off-chance of footwear gremlins striking us both one after the other & needing to buy 2 pairs of decent boots.

*Leisure/Entertainment - £110-64/£200 - Only need another £89.36 to top this one off. Mostly it is used for concert tickets to ensure that if we see something we defo want to book, we do have the money to go ahead. Ticket booking was a problem back pre-LBM (wasn't everything……) because Mr F tended to do the bookings all at once, which would then produce a hideous credit card bill. We didn't pay our cards off in full each month back then, of course we didn't, but the bulk bookings ensured that the cost dragged on & incurred interest. Mr F is a real muso & it does concentrate his mind when he hears what is in this pot, as any shortfall would have to be saved for or come from Personal Spends.

*Presents - £278.46/£1000 - This one is a long way off & I will be working on in between now & Christmas. I should add that it isn't all funds for Christmas presents. We have quite a small family but birthdays are very much concentrated during the winter months. This Pot would also usually cover giftwrap, cards (not that I need any as stocked up in the sales), as well as Christmas stamps. I do always have money left in this pot after Christmas.

On the good side, the Tech Replacement Pot, Appliances Replacement Pot & Meow Fund are all full.

While this has quite likely bored the very pants off all of you, it has been a useful exercise for me to see where I need to concentrate my efforts for the rest of this year. Having savings pots, which actually began in the simple form of 6 cash envelopes back when I first started experimenting with budgeting in my early 40s, has put a stop to the mentality of the credit card almost being a budget heading. How shall we pay? What money shall we use? Stick it on a credit card. So I do try to work hard on making our Pots work.

Right, I have yakked on quite enough. Must go & wrestle all that laundry off the whirlygig now…..defintely a task for which I could do with being taller!

Cheers,

F x

Makingabobor2

Oh no @foxgloves , you haven't bored the pants me. I find your posts so interesting and inspiring. As you are someone who has already got rid of your debt and started saving. I find all your ideas of savings pots so helpful. Nice to see what savings pots work for different people. At the moment, my pots seem to get money in and then get "borrowed" out….lol. So hoping that things will change soon. Keep posting, 'cause I for one am definitely reading. Also your great gardening tips.

foxgloves

@themadvix & @essexhebridean - Yes, you're on, let's really make some serious inroads into our freezer stocks. It will free up space & more importantly, save money.

Mentioned to Mr F about buying a chicken to feed us Sun through to Tues & he said, "Well why spend out on a chicken if we're prioritising freezer contents, there's a leg of lamb in there!"....& indeed there is. Will defo nail next week's meal plans tomorrow.

@makingabobor2 - I find that once I get the savings pots up to a decent level, I start to resent spending money from them. If it isn't an expensive item, I'll often include it in our wider monthly budget or squeeze it out of our buffer zone. I should have said regarding low amount in our presents pot......it's actually partly due to a good reason, in that I've bought quite a few things already & popped them away in the presents stash. I don't tend to borrow from them, because then I'd have to pay them back, as well as keep topping them up. Mr F did once have a loan from the tech replacement pot to buy a camera lens but he just paid it back in monthly instalments from his Personal Spends, so it wasn't a problem. We were both quite impulsive spenders back in the day & having to stop & think about how much money we have available for different categories does slow us down & invite a lengthy thought process about what it is we think we want to buy.

milann

Your pots are looking good. I tried pots many moons ago when they were envelopes and cash. It didn't work for me as I was forever robbing one to pay the other and found it very stressful. I do separate cash for Christmas and have a savings account for anything special like Dh big birthday later this year. I take cash out each month for incidentals and any surplus gets puts away for treats. I keep a set amount to pay my cc off every month and surplus goes into an instant access saving should I need it as I did today for my car insurance. I'm not organised enough to have more pots 😂😂 You have my full admiration 👏👏

Sun_Addict

It's always interesting to read about what others do. I've adopted many good ideas from this forum. I wish it had been around in our spendy years, like you I'm a reformed character now, not so sure about Mr SA but he's so much better than he was in those days. I'm really tight with my savings pots now and reluctantly use them 😆

foxgloves

@milann -The key thing (especially when transitioning between being a non-budgeting persistently endebted spender & a sensible person who budgets) is finding a system that works. We are all different & I bet there are heaps of different budgeting methods going on even just amongst us diary regulars. Tbh, it took me a good 3 attempts to come up with a system which worked, & several early malfunctions came down to savings pots stuff. First, not having any, then not paying enough into the new improved system, then not having enough pots! I'm happy with the set-up now. I think one of the truths of budgeting is that what works for one person or household won't necessarily be right for another. And I kind of like that we are all different.