Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Makingabobor2

You sound as busy as usual. Love a visit to a refill shop. That's one thing I miss since breaking my wrist. Our nearest refill shop is 11 miles away and I normally combine it with a visit to a friend/massage therapist,  who lives in the same town, but not able to drive yet.  Although I was told today at hospital appointment that I could give it a try now, its all today with pain levels and emergency stops apparently. So at the weekend I will go out with DH to a quiet road and give it a try. Then definitely a trip to the refill shop soon as I can. Had to buy a bottle of washing up liquid the other day and was mortified, I'd been refilling the same bottle for years. 

Blackcats

I'm listening to the latest Strike book too - the narration is fantastic and it's so well written.  I'm listening to it with MrBC so progress is slower than I'd like (it seems to make him doze off, but as he is a terrible snorer I know very quickly that it's sent him to sleep). However, it's nice to be able to chat about it.  We listened for a while during tonight's energy saving 90 minutes which was fun.

Makingabobor2

Love Strike. Can't decide whether to read the latest book though, or wait till it comes on TV

milann

Enjoy playing your Christmas music 🎄

foxgloves

Good luck with getting back to your driving, @Makingabobor2. I am lucky never to have broken a bone, but I remember my sister struggling to do all sorts of everyday tasks when she fell on the ice & broke her wrist years ago.
Thanks everyone for your comments, which I enjoyed reading over a coffee.
A useful rather than exciting day today, but have adhered to good money saving habits & small positives as follows:
*Hair cut at my favourite little salon in town. Was pleased to see they have increased their prices.....you won't often hear anyone on here saying that, but they had kept them the same right through the worst of the energy bill hikes last winter, & businesses do need to make money if they are to stay on the high street. Cost of a very good cut now £13. Can't say fairer than that, really. She's done a lovely job as always & I will follow it up with tackling my pesky roots next week.
*Did my weekly Friday house clean. Very boring, but looks nice & fresh for the weekend.
*Got the last of the grocery shopping list in town - just eco-refill shop for a couple of Christmas cake ingredients & cleaning product refills plus market butcher for some stewing beef. Updated grocery tracker page with December Week 1's groceries. 
*PA + Ips*s earnings for the month pulled into our account. Updated our Personal Spends & sent the Ips*s money to the Leisure/Entertainment Pot.
*Did a couple of surveys to start working on December's earnings.
*Had a look at Spreadsheet 1 (DDs/Bills) to see why January's total outgoings look so noticeably higher than other months. No mystery there at all. January's bills figure includes both our Microsoft annual subscription & annual car tax during a month where we are also paying Council Tax. I usually pay for car tax online pretty much as soon as I get the reminder, but as it doesn't actually expire until Jan 31st & our new budget cycle begins on the 27th of the month, I have moved it to February - a month when we don't pay Council Tax, as can easily get it sorted by then. This is such a little thing, but will make quite a difference. Current bills totals for those months are Jan @ £856-30 & Feb@  £453-57. After just moving that car tax payment to just a very few days later, the figures for 2024 have moved to Jan @ £701-30 & Feb @ £608.57, making a better spread of outgoings. Honestly ONLY on here, could I share this level of budgeting detail secure in the knowledge that we all at some point consider these sort of tweaks to keep our budgeting on the straight & narrow.
*Not my cooking night. Mr F is making tuna chipotle wedge melt, a lovely recipe which I think originally came from the free Waitbl00m weekend paper. It is tasty, cheap & cheerful & apart from a yellow pepper, is made pretty much from store cupboard ingredients.
NOT money saving - we have been promising ourselves a trip to the opera in Spring. I have looked at ticket prices & all the cheapest seats have already sold out. There are a few restricted view seats which I think we have sat in before & are actually fine at £40 each, but if those sell out, we are looking at more expensive tickets or not going. We can just about squeak £80 from the Leisure/Entertainment Pot, but that will clear it out until next budget day, so I am going to insist we book tonight while there are still £40 tickets available. Buying concert/theatre/comedy gig tickets in bulk used to be our usual behaviour back in the Spendy Era because we'd be looking at individual ticket prices, but then booking several things at once x 2 people so we would often end up loading quite a depressingly large chunk onto our credit cards. We do go to fewer events since we began budgeting properly but I think we give more thought to what we want to see. We also have the option of using our Personal Spends money for this if the Leisure /Entertainment Pot isn't looking too flush......something which concentrates the mind perfectly, as it makes us prioritise. 
Well, the ice hasn't melted & the fog is descending again as I type - a downside of living in a town/village on a big river. Enjoy your Friday nights, all.
F x

Makingabobor2

Thanks for your well wishes FG. x
Sounds like another useful day. £13 is a brilliant price for a hair cut still. I am currently paying £20 for a lovely girl I discovered who has a home salon only 10 mins walk away. Previous to that it was £21 for a mobile hairdresser, but she went on maternity leave and there's only so long I will let my fringe grow before it needs a good trim. Pleased to say the new girl is excellent and I much prefer the way she cuts and I will stay with her, even when the other one starts up again. 
Dinner sounds very tasty

Blackcats

I like reading your detailed budget musings.  I suspect that both of us probably made tweaks to our budgets in the spendy era but that was because we hadn't budgeted at all and needed to shuffle bill paying into a future pay period just to have enough money to cover the costs.  The "posting a cheque to pay the final demand phone bill and hoping it wouldn't be cashed until the following week" trick was one of my specialties.
We've bought concert tickets today for next June.  Usually the tickets for this particular series of concerts are released in mid January and artist by artist but an advanced email alerted us that tickets for all the shows went on sale today.  MrBC was poised ready at 10 am to get the tickets after a quick tweak of the entertainment budget.  We nearly had enough in the pot and as today is pot filling day the money shuffle was done at about 9.55 am.  We got great seats 4 rows from the front in a very small venue so we are very happy with that.  It's a real highlight for us each year as you can picnic in the gardens of the venue before the show.  It's Henry VIII's very famous riverside residence so it's a truly beautiful place to listen to great music.  

milann

Finances are sounding good. 

It’s always nice to have tickets some sort of show to look forward to..

Humdinger1

@foxgloves I adore your description of your piano-playing.  All well and good channelling Les Dawson but can you pull the same faces? I also hail from the Midlands originally and am not sure if gurning is a local word? Mardy (for a spoilt, sulky attitude) definitely is.  Love Humdinger xx 

Tescodealqueen

Very envious of concert ticket talk. My OH has been pestering about my birthday as there is nothing I really want or need. Since he wouldn’t let me go to Aston villa FC in 1988 to see Bruce Springsteen (to be fair I was 6 months pregnant and standing only) I have wanted to try again. There have been gigs the last few years and some went on sale last month but very limited venues. I was 36000 in the queue when sales opened and refuse to pay the secondary sale prices as they are ridiculous so I guess still won’t be going despite his generous offer