Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Friday Diary Friends,
Busy day so far, but am now at the point where I need only to remember to fetch the laundry in before dusk & can enjoy some time with my book. Anyway, before my brain goes off on a ramble, here are today's small budget-helping positives:
*This morning's town list was so small we could make use of a supermarket car park & park for free.
*Fresh veg from local farm stall on market - £4.60 for 2 bags of onions, a big bunch of carrots, sprouts & a huge bundle of cavalo nero - & just 8 food miles.
*Cleaned the house between us with the usual minimal products & microfibre & recycled cloths from the ragbag.
*Washed household linens - will need heated airer to finish off, as load contained some huge bath sheets, but currently pegged outside to make use of this breezy sunshine.
*Collected the new iron - no charge so must have met the threshold. Made use of one of Mr F's Waitbl00m vouchers while there - £3 off cat food which we would need to buy next week anyway. That took a 40-box down to £12-something, which theses days, is very much worth having.
*Sent photo of my dental implants to dentist. This was his idea as with it being about a 50-mile round trip from our village to the dental practice on the other side of the city centre, he said it was a long trip for what would most likely be just a 5-min check-up to see that they are bedding in ok. Hopefully he will think they are looking normal & I won't have to present myself in person. Appreciated the saving both of time & petrol.
*Tiny unexpected gains: My pretty little cat post-it notes fell down the back of my desk yesterday & as it is a very heavy piece of furniture (circa WW1 - somebody's chuck-out which my Grandad restored it for me when I was a student) & I can't move it. Asked Mr F if he could rescue them & he found them, plus 2 pencils, a pen & 3 ribbons! No money down there, though. That would have been nice, wouldn't it?!
*Shopping from home: Two items. decided to re-gift a hand cream from my ample stash to add to the Christmas bag for a very elderly relative who is in a care home. She doesn't remember who I am any more, but I thought that some nice toiletries & some chocolate buttons would at least give her a sparkly bag of something to open. She has no relatives closer than my sister & I and we are distant relatives. Her decline into ill health & dementia has been an eye-opener into the circling of vultures looking to gain big-time from the estate of someone they perceive to have no family. I shan't detail these stories, but there are a couple of shockers. One righted itself.....the other was cut off at the pass by my sister. There are some awful people about. I digress (again!)
The other shopped from home item is for a nephew present bag. I like to make sure that our Neffs receive roughly the same amount of gifts - not that I think they count them, but it's just what I like to do to be fair. While wrapping yesterday, I realised that the older one (of two brothers) has got more in his bag than the younger one. I hadn't really planned to spend any more money, but Mr F had a pristine copy of a book (geeky subject matter which is a shared interest with said nephew) he was happy to re-gift, so that is going to make a very nice addition to youngest neff's present bag. Cover price £14.99, so am happy with that. 
*Did a couple of surveys - I don't do many sites: 'Taste Nation', Ips*s i-say & PA, though have done more in the past. Struck lucky with an £8 one on the latter - interesting too, I enjoyed it.
No more jobs with my name on them today. I've put the voucher for a free B*dySh*p gift in my purse ready for tomorrow's city centre trip, as it looks like 2 full-sized products which I do use.  I also have a list as am hoping to pick up the rest of Mr F's birthday & Christmas presents. We are planning to split up for a couple of hours while we are there for secret shopping. 
OK, time to go & fetch that laundry in. Then me-time!
F x

Baileys_Babe

That is very thoughtful of you to send a gift to your distant relation.

You are very organised with your gifts, well done on being at the wrapping stage already.

This weekend I would like to review what is in our gift cupboard particularly the bits for the stockings, I think for some people I have nearly everything and for others barely anything.

PennysIntoPounds

Fantastic work as ever. And retrieved post-its, pencils, pen and ribbons are money as you won't have to buy them again so soon!

Obvs no worries if not but if you feel comfortable to do so, please do share what the main issues/culprits are regarding those preying on your relative. As I said on my diary only t'other day, very few things make my blood boil like elderly and vulnerable people being taken advantage of.
I'm not from a well-off family but awful so-called human beings always seem to pop up for someone else's horrible situation don't they. Thank you and your sister for being good 'uns x

weenancyinAmerica

Our supermarket has some wonderful holiday bags - they have three different themes for their reusable bags with no advertising to be seen. Only 99 cents each (82p) so I am getting a few for wrapping the rest of the presents. They will be reused by my nieces.

Baileys_Babe

weenancyinAmerica said:

Our supermarket has some wonderful holiday bags - they have three different themes for their reusable bags with no advertising to be seen. Only 99 cents each (82p) so I am getting a few for wrapping the rest of the presents. They will be reused by my nieces.

A friend (before they passed away) use to buy the better quality reusable shopping bags for present bags as they were cheaper and they knew they would be reused and we received an extra gift. 

foxgloves

Hello Saturday Savers,
Thanks for all your comments, which I've enjoyed reading as always.
@PennysIntoPounds - Re the skankers to whom I alluded in my last post - I don't intend to provide details here, as one never quite knows who may just happen upon things, & both tales are very specific. It's a cautionary tale I'd tell to any of our diary regulars over a coffee, but I don't want to publish it.
Well, a very useful city centre trip this morning. Budget-helping highlights as follows:
*I suggested paying for 4 hours of car parking. Mr F reckoned we could do it in 3. He was right. Money saved.
*Started with a coffee but shared a toasted teacake - from Personal Spends, so budget-neutral.
*Bought a very nice fragrance for Mr F which was less than half the price of the brands I used routinely to buy for him for Christmas or birthday. Once these started to hit £50+ (& one shot up to £85), he said he would no longer enjoy them because of them being 'silly money'. The one I bought today is very similar to one I used to buy & I think he will like it.
*Discovered that a book I'd ear marked for another Mr F gift is actually now available in paperback, so that obviously knocked a chunk off the price.
*Did well in the Shop where you would go if you need a new body.....I wanted to buy a couple of jars of my moisturiser, knowing I had a £5 loyalty voucher. All skincare was on '3 for 2', so I had a free jar. In addition, I had a voucher for a free gift which I received through the post & it did turn out to be full sized products - a body butter & a body wash plus a shower scrunchie, worth a total of around £30, as I know the butters cost £19 & the body washes are £8. Although I have added these to my toiletries stash, I am just adding for anyone who received this mailshot (a couple of weeks or so ago) & has forgotten about it, that it is nicely boxed & doesn't say 'free gift' on it, so would make a very acceptable present. Minimum spend of £25 required, but I had gone in for the moisturisers anyway & had also got the additional £5 off voucher sitting on my loyalty card.
*Another excellent freebie.....popped in the Lakeside Shop to buy a very small edible gift & a pack of cupcake cases. At the till, I presented my loyalty card for scanning & the assistant said there was a freer gift for members atm & handed me a lovely festive oven gloves! I was so surprised as it is a really nice design & priced at £12-99 !! Again, I shall keep this, but if anyone with a loyalty card is needing to visit the store, this would make a very nice gift for somebody & stretch the festive budget a little further.
*Pulled into a supermarket on our drive back home as petrol always a little cheaper there than in our town.
*Baked a pear & ginger cake - almost certainly the last one this year from our homegrown pears. It's a tea-loaf really & one I've mucked about with over the years by trying with various different combinations of sugar, fruit & spices. I wanted a bonfire night vibe to this one, so used dark muscovado sugar, a large pear, ginger & a use-it-up amount of mixed dried fruit leftover from mincemeat making. It is supposed to be served buttered, but we like it on its own. 
Well, it isn't my cooking night - Mr F is making Moroccan chicken with bulghur tonight - so I am going decamp to the sofa & read the Guardian, which will get in at least 3/4 of my weekend anti-government chuntering done, then I intend to finish a sock - only the toe to knit now - & read some more of my library book. I think I will just sort out new cat litter - although they are free to come & go through the cat flap this weekend as much as they wish, we decided to bring in a litter tray for Soot & Ash as they were safely tucked up in the cattery this time last year & so we don't know how they are with firework noise. Soot seemed quite perturbed by some on the next street last weekend, so we would rather have them able to stay indoors while all the bangs are going on, if they prefer.
Enjoy your evenings all,
F x

foxgloves

Oh, I meant to tell you this.....I have made no secret, either in my original diary, which contained several 'Debtisodes', or in this one, that the reason I ended up with debt was none other than that old tried & tested combination of consistently outspending my income & never budgeting. My attitude to money since the LBM in my early 40s is now completely different. But you know, every so often, there is a little bit of behaviour which just reminds me of how I used to be. Today was a prime example. I was walking along in a shopping centre & just as I was coming up to a shoe shop, I turned my head & saw a pair of chunky boots with a fur trim around the cuffs & silver sparkly laces & without even thinking about it, I swerved right & straight into the shop! I picked them up, stroked the fur, looked at the price (£100) & my first thought was, "We have more than enough to cover these in our Clothes Savings Pot". Thankfully, my 2nd thought was, "But I haven't come shopping for boots today. I am here to finish the Christmas shopping & buy some toiletries for my stash". Unlike in the Spendy Era, the 2nd thought won out & despite the rapt attentions of THREE assistants simultaneously, I said "Thanks, but no, I won't try them on today. I'm not shopping for boots today, but I like them very much & will certainly consider them if I decided to buy some in the next few weeks". Then I walked away. Back in the Spendy Years, I wouldn't have been able to do this, even knowing (unlike now), that I didn't have the money to cover that £100, I'd have bought the boots & spent even more of the following weeks before payday worrying every time I presented my card in the supermarket or at a cashpoint, that it would be refused. To make matters worse, I'd have tried to pre-empt this by going to a cashpoint asap & withdrawing some cash, just in case the Evil Fun-Deniers at the bank did decide unjustly to punish me in this way. And this depleted my bank account further. You know, I look back at those decades & in one sense, it feels as though I am looking at a different person, but in another, I know it was most definitely me, an earlier stage of the Foxgloves who later became debt-free, encouraged her husband to become debt-free & who has stayed debt-free despite our income halving when I took VR.
If anyone has stumbled across my diary who is still in the position of the old Foxgloves, I want to tell them that even very longstanding bad, irresponsible financial habits CAN be changed. If nothing else, I am proof of that.
I may yet decide to buy those boots, but if so, it will be as part of a planned spend, not an impulse buy because I happened to be lured into a shop by some (fabulous) sparkly laces!
Onwards with the halo,
F x

Cheery_Daff

Excellent swerve there Foxgloves, well done! I often think of that type of shoe as "Buy me, they whispered" shoes, after an old credit card advert 🙄😂 

I'm far more of a small-time fritterer than the scale of your spendy era, but I do enjoy your tales. I've always been more likely to have my head swerved in charity shops, but of course that adds up too! 

Thanks for the voucher reminder - I did get one of those in the post, put it aside and promptly forgot about it, thinking partly that I wouldn't have bought anything from there anyway... But you're right about presents, of course 😊 Will investigate (and also figure out where our nearest one is as I have no idea!)

Sun_Addict

Sounds like you got some good deals there and well done for resisting the boots. I was just like you back in my own spendy era mostly spurred on by Mr SA who was a terrible influence. I’m also a reformed character these days. Oh the money we wasted back then! 

The boots sound fabulous though and I’d be keeping an eye out for a hefty discount on Black Friday 😉

milann

Well done on resisting the boots. I’m in a stage where I can resist things for myself but do tend to over indulge for others. A prime example was yesterday when I bought several pairs of jeans for dh….I’d already bought a birthday present and one pair of jeans would have probably done the job. But he was enthusiastic (something that doesn’t happen often) anyway it’s done now and my cc will be paid off in full at the end of the month…..but I could well have done without the purchase 😏 One day I’ll learn 😵‍💫