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Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend
Comments
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Just enjoying catching up with the posts. I’ve tried to keep busy today, as when I stop I just want to eat ! Trying to be healthy, so at least lots of jobs getting done. I had the last portion of veg soup for lunch, so am going to make a batch of curried parsnip soup for the first time. Gifted parsnips from Olio, so don’t want to waste any.Having a try at knitting “two at a time socks”, it’s been a while since I have knit some this way, but am really enjoying it. They will go in my gift stash.Break over, back to the grind. Pizza and salad with homemade coleslaw for tea tonight, I’ll try and keep off the snacks till then 😊5
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Tromboncino - THAT was the name of the squashes I was trying to think of when we were talking the other day! And yes - growing upwards or at least onto some form of frame most definitely had occurred to me so thank you for rekindling that thought. When we were at the flat our next door neighbours grew what I suspect was exactly that variety and built a rather wonderfully engineered frame for them to climb over - and then promptly grew other things underneath it which we felt was very clever!🎉 MORTGAGE FREE (First time!) 30/09/2016 🎉 And now we go again…New mortgage taken 01/09/23 🏡
Balance as at 01/09/23 = £115,000.00 Balance as at 31/12/23 = £112,000.00
Balance as at 31/08/24 = £105,400.00 Balance as at 31/12/24 = £102,500.00
£100k barrier broken 1/4/25
Balance as at 31/08/25 = £ 95,450.00. Balance as at 31/12/25 = £ 91,100.00
SOA CALCULATOR (for DFW newbies): SOA Calculatorshe/her6 -
@EssexHebridean - It's worth giving tromboncino a try. You also get to use them for fun mimes on their way to the kitchen!
Hello Diary Readers,
Well, it has been notably more chilly here today, despite some sunshine. I'm wearing warm tights, hand-knitted socks & chunky boots & my feet still feel cold! Nobody has signed on to read tedious accounts of my cold extremities, however, so I will crack on with today's small budget-helping positives (in no particular order):
*Cheapo nosebag tonight - pav bhaji using the veg curry portions I froze last time & 2 of the bread rolls I baked yesterday. Just some stir-fried greens needed to go with it.
*Did a bit of maintenance on my October-sown sweet-peas, gave them some seaweed & pinched them out. Sowed some extras - a packet I received as a gift - in recycled tall yoghurt pots & labelled them with labels cut from empty spread tubs.
*A tiny bit of free fitness weeding, clearing & forking over a small border & trotting down to the post box with a friend's birthday card. Am spotting several useful plant freebies which need potting up ready for filling gaps in the borders without succumbing to garden centre spendiness. Must go round with a wheelbarrow of pots getting those rescued before Mr F steps up weeding.
*Did a couple of small financial updates.
*Put away some freebies from a course Mr F attended yesterday, which he thought I might like - a nice A5 notebook, 2 hand sanitizers & 5 pens! They also fed him & the coffee apparently wasn't too dire!
*Postie brought the CC loyalty vouchers I was only mentioning yesterday - £14's worth plus some 'extra points' deals too, some of which will doubtless come in useful.
*Picked next week's meals from our master meal plan & added in a new slow cooker recipe to make for a nice meal on Valentine's Day. It will make sufficient for 2 days & possibly a freezer portion too.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Surveys - There are a few around on PA this afternoon, meaning I banged another £5 onto my February earnings quite easily. I have another online task to do next, so will keep the tab open in case any others pop up.
*We have run out of yoghurts & most fruit a day earlier than usual, but I baked some sultana flapjacks yesterday & they will do for dessert rather than the dreaded single item top-up shop.....which is generally anything but!
*Keep knitting! I put a few rows in over my lunch hour but need to keep at it if I am to have this cardi ready for dazzling the seagulls in a couple of months time!
Peace & love,
F x
2026's challenges: 1) To rebuild our Emergency Fund to at least £5k.
2) To read 50 books (12/50) 3) The Re-Shrinking of Foxgloves 8.1kg/30kg
Remember....if you have to put it on a credit card, extend your overdraft or take out a loan to buy whatever it is, you probably can't afford it, as that's not your money, it's somebody else's!14 -
I've also come away from a work event with notepads, pens, a trolley coin and some biscuits. Got to love freebies 😆I get knocked down but I get up again (Chumbawamba, Tubthumping) -.literally have been run over by a bike, mobility scooter and a car - still here 💪6
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I agree, @Sun_Addict, though we couldn't work out what exactly one of the freebie items is! We decided it is a windscreen scraper, but I am not sure that explains the crenelated edge on one side or why one side is also a ruler! Mr F reckons he never needs ice scrapers, but I shall be putting in the car anyway.
F2026's challenges: 1) To rebuild our Emergency Fund to at least £5k.
2) To read 50 books (12/50) 3) The Re-Shrinking of Foxgloves 8.1kg/30kg
Remember....if you have to put it on a credit card, extend your overdraft or take out a loan to buy whatever it is, you probably can't afford it, as that's not your money, it's somebody else's!5 -
If it isn't branded, could you post a picture of it, and we can all chip in, perhaps...foxgloves said:I agree, @Sun_Addict, though we couldn't work out what exactly one of the freebie items is! We decided it is a windscreen scraper, but I am not sure that explains the crenelated edge on one side or why one side is also a ruler! Mr F reckons he never needs ice scrapers, but I shall be putting in the car anyway.
F
Save £12k in 2026 #2 I have banked £9004.48 so far, against a £10k target The 2026 Save £12k in 2026 thread is here
OS Grocery Challenge in 2026 I am sticking with a £3000 annual budget for 2026 - currently £1111.79 and most of my May purchasing made
I also Reverse Meal Plan on that thread and grow much of our own premium price fruit and veg, joining in on the grow your own in 2026 discussion thread
My keep within our budget diary is here4 -
Oooo a mystery to solve!!!
Debt as at 5 June 2023 - £15,600.89
Current debt - £0!!!!4 -
Loving the idea of a mystery item!
MrEH also returned from a seminar last week with freebies - a couple of rather smart A5 notebooks, one of which has already been pressed into service as our garden planning book - I was planning to purchase a diary for that purpose but the notebook will do equally as well - the other is stashed away for future use. A couple of useful charging devices with lightning, mini-USB and USB-C, and some tubes of smarties... All good, and he has been informed (by me - lol) that if further CPD opportunites from the same organisation become available he should take them up immediately!
🎉 MORTGAGE FREE (First time!) 30/09/2016 🎉 And now we go again…New mortgage taken 01/09/23 🏡
Balance as at 01/09/23 = £115,000.00 Balance as at 31/12/23 = £112,000.00
Balance as at 31/08/24 = £105,400.00 Balance as at 31/12/24 = £102,500.00
£100k barrier broken 1/4/25
Balance as at 31/08/25 = £ 95,450.00. Balance as at 31/12/25 = £ 91,100.00
SOA CALCULATOR (for DFW newbies): SOA Calculatorshe/her8 -
@Suffolk_lass - Lol, Yes I could do that, couldn't I? Except one of you would probably say, "Oh Foxgloves, you idiot, it's clearly a ???". My thinking is still ice-scraper for car windscreen......but that doesn't explain the wiggly edge on one side or the ruler. I am probably overthinking this. I think I will call it a wompom after the Flanders & Swan song, "You can do what you want with a wompom", which as a child I found hilarious, & actually still do if I'm honest!
Well, it has just stopped snowing. The ground is really too wet for it to lay, but as it had kept it up all morning until about 5 mins ago, it was just starting to settle on the lawn. A cold day. The heating has been on pretty much all morning so far & cats glued to the big lounge windowsill (it's a bow window) above the radiator, so far only moving to come & tell me it was biscuit time (Soot) & both of them actually to the kitchen for a few minutes to crunch them down & return to their warm windowsill blankets.
Not too much money saving activity to do today:
*More freebies from Mr F who had a meeting with an external partner yesterday who arrived bearing free stuff, so a nice pencil & rubber, another pen & a cloth bag which is just the right size for gifting 2 or 3 jars of home made preserves.
*Blitzed the heel of a stale loaf into breadcrumbs & froze.
*Rescued Mr F's parcel by removing the outside packaging which was wet through - I should think poor Postie was a very soggy man indeed this morning - I knew it was deodorant refills & as they are in sustainable packaging, knew they would spoil if the water got through. Thankfully all ok inside.
*Wrote grocery shopping & town list for tomorrow.
*Sorted out a minor financial muddle caused entirely by me. I set our youngest neff up as a payee on our bank account & pinged him some birthday money, having first transferred that sum from our Savings Pots account. Then I realised the figures didn't tally & I had mistakenly transferred it direct from the Savings Pots account. Pinged the £50 back again. Idiot! But nowhere near as bad as that time years ago when I accidentally transferred £3k into the bank account of a complete stranger!
*Did a few surveys. Feb's PA earnings currently at £14-17. Must keep at it. I also do YouGov (on the exceedingly rare occasion that they send me an invitation), Ipsos & Taste Nation. I am also on 4 brand/shop panels where participation gets entry into a prize draw, but I am thinking of dropping at least some of those, as compared with other similar things I have been on in the past, the pay-out has been precisely nil.
*Defrosted the last of the home made tomato pasta sauces I made back when we had our glut. This got me thinking tomatoey thoughts, or rather how useful that crop has been. I had a bit of a freezer rummage & found one portion of tomato soup, 2 portions of lentil & tomato and the last container of Hairy Bikers basic curry sauce, which features on next week's meal plan, so will soon be eaten. In the pantry, there are still 3 jars of home made tomato ketchup, several jars of smoky tomato chutney & plenty of bottled tomatoes - can you believe we haven't used tinned ones for so long, we actually have one in the pantry which is a month or so off its BB date?! Anyway, it made me think that yes, growing more tomato plants than we used to is extra work, but not so much extra work that it isn't worth it for what we get out of a good crop. Of course we were eating them in salads, for cooking from fresh & all the usual stuff too. I used always to grow 12 plants - always 6 in the greenhouse & 6 outside in a narrow strip of bed alongside the greenhouse. One year, several of my home-sown plant babies looked too sick & pathetic to survive, so anticipating the worst, I bought another 6 plants in from the village garden centre.....of course then, mine rallied, & I had no choice but to plant 6 surplus plants out in one of the veggie beds, where they were joined by yet another one swapped with a friend for an aubergine plant! So for the first time that was 19 plants. As we already had to water & feed the original 12, the extra ones weren't a problem & we welcomed the extra crops. So after that, I have grown 18 plants each year & given that even just taking the frozen stuff into account, & not all the bottled ones, we are still eating soups & sauces we made from them in February, I think they have been worth the time & effort. I will be singing a different song if blight strikes, but tbf, we haven't been hit by that for many years & I always make sure at least one of the varieties we grow is blight-resistant. It feels like a breath of summer chatting about tomatoes while it is snowing outside, Yes, it has started up again while I have been typing this, but I will be surprised if it managed to settle to any degree, other than the current icing sugar lawn.
Well, that is it for me today. I joined an online genealogy society recently & am going to spend this afternoon looking at what resources, etc, I can access from it - only £15 for the year, but I may as well get my money's worth.
Stay cosy. I am already planning to make a hot water bottle to put up behind my back, it's that kind of day.
Hope you are all having a decent day & that for Peak District folk, the snow isn't as bad as it looked on our regional weather forecast this morning.
Take care now,
F xx2026's challenges: 1) To rebuild our Emergency Fund to at least £5k.
2) To read 50 books (12/50) 3) The Re-Shrinking of Foxgloves 8.1kg/30kg
Remember....if you have to put it on a credit card, extend your overdraft or take out a loan to buy whatever it is, you probably can't afford it, as that's not your money, it's somebody else's!10 -
Tomatoes are something I definitely want to find as much as space as possible for - this year will be using the seeds we already have - from memory that's Moneymaker, gardeners delight and Minibelle - then in future years we'll look at other varieties. Those first two have long been solid favorites of mine though.🎉 MORTGAGE FREE (First time!) 30/09/2016 🎉 And now we go again…New mortgage taken 01/09/23 🏡
Balance as at 01/09/23 = £115,000.00 Balance as at 31/12/23 = £112,000.00
Balance as at 31/08/24 = £105,400.00 Balance as at 31/12/24 = £102,500.00
£100k barrier broken 1/4/25
Balance as at 31/08/25 = £ 95,450.00. Balance as at 31/12/25 = £ 91,100.00
SOA CALCULATOR (for DFW newbies): SOA Calculatorshe/her6
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