Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@ladyholly - Actually, he has been complaining about a sore back muscle this last couple of days so I wonder if he pulled it in his quest to get that last bargain pack. He once lay flat on the floor at a supermarket to procure the last jar of mayonnaise during the sunflower oil shortage last year. I was hoping that fellow shoppers could see what he was up to, & didn't think he was throwing a tantrum because the budget maybe wouldn't stretch to extra beer!
@suffolk_lass - Thanks so much for that link. I hadn't seen that proforma before & it will be very useful (see today's post)
Everyone else - thanks for your good wishes re the local floods. 
F 

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers,
A bit of an odd day today, as our area has been hit much harder by the storm than we expected & the ramifications of this are still very much ongoing. In the north of the county, 500 people have been evacuated from their homes today & the river level of the major river running through our village & town has not yet peaked. This was expected to happen some time between overnight & midday, but it is still rising & so people in certain streets have been warned again that extra properties may be flooded this time, compared to previous occasions. We cancelled our planned outing today as wouldn't have been able to get back if the river came across the remaining route back into town in that direction, so treated ourselves to breakfast at the village farm shop cafe instead. On our way back, we took a little detour down to the river to see exactly where the water has travelled. It has surrounded a pub & the village restaurant & the roads there are underwater. Most houses are on slightly higher ground which will help them. We also had a walk up the farm track which is the nearest route to the river from our house. We could see that the water has indeed come up further than usual - we hadn't seen it this high since 2002. The marina has over-topped (it's quite 'boaty' around here) & the footpaths round the back of the school playing fields & down to the wildlife ponds completely underwater. The farmer's field which stands between the river & the first cul-de-sac of houses was also completely underwater. 
So, although the water would still have a way to come as yet to reach us, I am a planner & am minded to draft a basic plan of what we would need to do should the extreme weather events continue to worsen/become more frequent, to protect our home & vehicle. So many thanks, @Suffolk_lass for your link to that planning document because it covers exactly the things I needed the prompt to think about. The other issue is more about the fact that with all the riverside bits & tributaries around here, town itself is quite easily cut off. For instance, it isn't clear yet whether Mr F will be able to get to work tomorrow, simply because of current road closures due to floods & another major route in & out of town which may well flood before today is out. We are fine for supermarkets & shops in town, but it did occur to me that they could struggle with deliveries for a few days until roads become passable, so I will also revisit my emergency supplies list which lives in the back page of my diary & consists of the items which need to be in stock in the pantry in case of emergencies. I do keep a decent stock anyway, but some UHT milk would be a useful addition in case the milkman can't get through, that kind of thing. Anyway, our road is not on the list of those currently expected to flood......it's just that I know we are not very far beyond it. I will have a little trot down there tomorrow morning & see if the water is any closer. It's easier to take in visually, isn't it, rather than reading stats about river guages & metres?
ANYWAY, has there been anything budget-helping today?
*Breakfast was from Personal Spends so was nicely budegt-neutral.
*Spotted a Christmas present item in the farm shop which I promptly purchased so as to be able to cross another item off the list - an item from a local small business bought from another local small business. That will redress the balance of having ordered that other item from the big company I usually avoid yesterday. Actually, that should have arrived today & still isn't here. I expect the delivery driver is having to divert around all the closed roads, poor old sausage.
*Spent a useful hour sitting with Mr F over a coffee. We synchronised our diaries for the week ahead, so we know what we're doing. He supplied me with a redacted copy of his current CC bill, ready for Big Budget Day on 27th (it apparently contains some of my Christmas gifts so I mustn't see it in its entirety, lol). 
*Went through the Christmas present list ticking off the items I have already bought. made a sub-list (I bloody love a list!) of those things we still need to buy. I will get onto ordering a couple of those this coming week & most of the other stuff is small items which can be picked up locally or failing that, on our city centre trip next weekend. No reason I can't start wrapping the presents for my sis, B-in-L & neffs this week, as we are seeing them next month & I really do want to have everything ready & looking festive, rather than having to pay for postage on potentially heavy parcels. Wrapping always takes so much longer than I think it will.
Well, that is me done for the day. Mr F's cooking night, so I am going to close all the curtains & put the fairy lights/lamp on to make for a cosy evening. Then I will crack on with trying to finish my book. It is quite twisty & the perpetrator is clearly not going to be the character the author has cunningly made us think it is going to be. I am so intrigued, I just want to read the rest of it right through to the end tonight.
Take care, everyone, especially anyone who is feeling low, poorly, generally cheesed off or is worried about flooding.
Love F x

milann

Don’t you hate that feeling when you’re eager to finish the book - go fit it big time….but when you actually have finished you wish you hadn’t because you’ve reached the end 😂😂😂
The flood water all sounds terrible.😳 Stay safe 👍

PennysIntoPounds

Blimey that sounds worrying, I hope everyone who was evacuated are okay. And I hope Mr F's work aren't going to insist he travels. Very good idea to have a list and a sub list!
Wonderful that you could get another present ticked off and support small businesses 😊
What book are you reading that's so gripping? Hopefully not 'The tale of the cats who were unable to go outside so spent their time working out how to open the fridge'...
Mr PIP and I are reading as our bedtime story (on the rare occasions we're together and not knackered!) E.E. Benson's ghost stories. I never stop marvelling at how effective and much more unsettling it is to say 'might not have been' rather than 'this scary thing happened', such a skilled story teller 

Suffolk_lass

I also bloody love a list, and a nice spreadsheet! I am working my way around the new computer that has migrated most things from the old, but has apparently deemed the order of my bookmarks is not to its liking, so my shopping bookmarks (another list of links to sites) is all over the place and will need reordering. I'll just err, add it to the list 

milann

Lists don’t do it for me at all 😳😳😳 Puts me in panic mode at the thought of everything that needs doing…..then I don’t do anything. 😂😂😂 
on the rare occasion I do make a list it’s a very short one 👍👍👍 I do make lists in my head but seeing it on paper or worse still on a computer leaves me running to the hills.
Love the way everyone I’d different 😜😚😏👍

EssexHebridean

Loving the different takes on lists, and also how many of us are very much ardent list makers! 

Alarming stuff about the flooding - I was just looking at the trail of the road closures on the maps site belonging to the googly people and can see that were I intending to head up towards Lincoln for anything at the moment I'd be well scuppered. That is a massive stretch of A1 that's closed - I imagine that it is only the combination of people being reluctant to travel alongside it being half term week for many that is avoiding complete chaos us in that neck of the woods.

Nicely combining a few of the recent topics of conversation into one, you have also reminded me that I need to add a trip to one of the local charity shops for books to my list for next weekend - we have a couple that still sell paperbacks at 60p each which is wonderfully bargainous - I'll be buying some for Mum as part of her birthday or Christmas present, too. 

foxgloves

@milann - Yes, it sometimes feels like leaving friends behind. Re lists....I often do the '3-task list' method if I have a potentially overwhelming number of jobs to do. That seems to work for me, as also builds in prioritisation.
@PennysIntoPounds - It's "Different Class" by Joanne Harris. It's one of her novels featuring a small old-fashioned private school. I read the first one years ago & enjoyed it. It is quite twisty & I keep thinking I've sussed it, then realising I haven't yet. I quite alike a good ghost story too - I have a nice edition of MR James.
@Suffolk_lass - Sounds like your computer setting-up is progressing. It's never the most exciting job, but good when it's done & feels all new & nicely organised.
@EssexHebridean - Yes, the A1 is still closed so traffic is trying to get around this by coming through our town. Not currently a very effective idea as another of the main routes out of it is flooded & completely closed - basically just water with the rugby club clubhouse sort of sticking up in the middle. East Mids defo somewhere to avoid for the moment.
F

foxgloves

Hello Monday Money Savers,
I checked the river levels online first thing & wasn't too happy to read 'still rising', so I decided to lace my boots on & head off & see if the water had come any further. It certainly had, by quite a long way. The spot where we stood yesterday to look along the farm track at the water is now just a couple of metres away & the other track on which we were able to walk halfway to the marina is completely underwater. The farmer's field has filled up more & there was a bit of a 'tide' on where it was running across the flooded track. Still quite a long way for it to come before it gets to the main road next to ours, but still quite a worrying thing to see. Was cheered by.........(hang on, let's make this today's Small Budget-Helping Positives No. 1):
*...spotting a small foraging opportunity, which I could make use of if I had some apples. Might return with a little basket.
* Did 2 loads of laundry & pegged it out as it's been quite sunny. Will finish it off on heated airer.
*Today's garden pickings: a couple of decent windfall pears & another saucer of blackberries.
*Free exercise picking up all the mushy windfall pears & trugging them off to the compost. Enjoyed the fresh air so much that I spent another half an hour vigorously de-mossing a section of our courtyard, as had noticed that the moss had loosened in all Friday's rain.
*Baked a loaf.
*Did my regular Monday morning budget updates. Now that a week has passed, I decided to have another look at the £55 surplus which I have so far been unable to explain. Even weirder now, as the surplus has now increased by ANOTHER £60 !! What is going on? I refuse to believe there is a bank account gnome sitting in there dispensing magic money, so there is clearly a discrepancy there somewhere. I just can't for the life of me see it. It is my Big Budget Day on Friday, so while I reconcile & close down October's budget, I am thinking it should come to light & will be keeping my eyes peeled - especially around what I always think of as the 'Twilight Zone' - that few days between Budget Day (27th) & the 1st of the new month. It's surprising how many anomalies can be traced back to happenings during those very few days. 
*Tonight's nosebag could hardly be easier or cheaper. Mr F made sufficient lovely butternut macaroni cheese on Sat to feed us twice.....& what's more, he's just announced he'll heat it up & cook some french beans to go with it! He has been wfh today as hasn't been able to get to work with all routes northbound from our town closed off due to flooding. He thought he might have been a clever trousers by finding a route which goes south, then across, before heading back north, but I reminded him that it would involve driving over a bridge in a waterside village where the river would almost certainly be all over the road as it is even worse for over-topping than our village. He conceded defeat & is hoping at least one route might be open tomorrow.
Right. Time to go & fetch the laundry in, close the curtains & make the place cosy.
Take care, m'dears,
F x

EssexHebridean

Looks like the A1 closure has reduced considerably during the day - it's now North Muskham to Carlton-on-T which is a heck of a lot better than it going all the way up to Markham Moor as it was earlier isn't it! 

As for the surplus, are you absolutely sure you don't have a magic money tree in that wonderfully productive garden of yours?!