Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

And now for today's budget-helping positives:
(a bit hard to concentrate as Soot is headbutting me in the leg to remind me he hasn't had his afternoon treats & that this is not good enough).
*Sorted out meal plans for next week bearing in mind a less than illustrious grocery budget balance atm!
*Wrote grocery shopping list.
*Fed sourdough jar ready for baking tomorrow. Might mix it up tonight as it is looking very bubbly.
*Potted up aubergine babies, added individual home-made bottle cloches & brought back inside until it is warm enough for them in the greenhouse.
*Sowed rocket trough.
*Investigated all my trays of greenhouse seeds. Loads of stuff coming up & cosmos won't be all that long off needing to be potted up. Watered everything & gave some seaweed to the sweet peas.
*Cut half of last year's overwintered chard. It had developed lots of smaller new spring leaves, so I have shredded it & am using it in tonight's curry instead of buying baby spinach.
*Simple cheap meal tonight - chickpea & spinach curry - a slow cooker recipe from the 'I heart my slow cooker' book. It's tasty & with a portion of basmati rice & a dollop of home made rhubarb & date chutney, it makes a nice warming, but healthy bowlful.
*Mr F texted me to say he has bought me a malteser brownie. Yay to that! Not money saving for Mr F. but a personal win for Yours Truly!
*Did a couple of surveys. Have had to re-read the PA info on payment in dollars. If I have got this right, these payments will show as US dollars but will be converted by P*pal. Not a lot of survey action going on this afternoon but I was otherwise engaged a lot of the time tbh.
*Made tomorrow's work pack-up - a sandwich for breakfast & a mug of useful leftovers from the freezer for lunch with a buttered roll. (Remember our joint annual bill  pre-LBM for buying work lunches every day was around £2000!)
*Will progress the last side of my cardi tonight. I have knitted the left side, the left armhole, then right across the back to the right armhole, sorted that, now I just need to finish from that to the right front edge. Then it will be sleeve-knitting. Not sure I can get it finished for my humungous birthday holiday, but I will try.
Well, that is my day.....I intend to put the seedlings to bed, then jump in a hot bubbly bath!
Hope, dear readers, that you have all had a decent day,
Love F x

joedenise

That’s how I’ve read the PA dollar payments.  Not doing that well this month - just under £20 so far but still a bit of time till the end of the month to catch up!

badmemory

I don't doubt that it was a deliberate move so that people would blame their local councils instead of the key budget-cutting culprits. 

Totally agree with you.  I would also like to know why they are still using population figures from 2011 instead of 2021.  It isn't like the 1961 census when it all had to be put on punch cards to go in a computer that didn't have as much memory as my very old & not very smart mobile.  Don't ask how I know official secrets act signed & all that.

PennysIntoPounds

No distance is too far for an umbrella march! 😁 

My mum had a very unpleasant letter from the gas and electric company today saying they were increasing her bill from just over £100 a month to just under £400 a month. She was understandably upset and I was absolutely fuming.
Fortunately she called them and they're sending someone out to update the meters but only after she refused to get off the line after they'd told her it was because her account is in debt. It's bloody well not, she checks her bill, sends readings and pays direct every single month. 
I wonder how many people, especially pensioners who are more likely to trust that 'the authorities' are right, haven't been able to make sense of the opaque way utilities payments work and are now going to do the right thing and pay their bill, and starve to death while shareholders get fatter. I am absolutely disgusted.

Foxgloves, we're going to need a bigger umbrella 😂

Four_Seasons

Hi, when you cash out of PA you choose £ or dollars and as usual it goes into paypal must admit I was a bit flummoxed so did a cheeky cash out xx

teapot2

I noticed with PA that they have increased the cashout minimum to £6 from £5 and if you do cashout, its now not possible to cash out again for another 72 hours.  Shouldn't bother anyone who waits till the end of the month to cashout I guess?

Onebrokelady

My council tax went up by £6 which I was surprise by, it thought it would be a bigger increase than that. The water bill went down from £49.50 a month to £17.00 so I’m very happy about that as it’s less than I budgeted for 😀

foxgloves

@Onebrokelady - I'd be pleased with that too!

@teapot2 - Yes, I spotted that the minimum pay-out had changed. I cash-out monthly, so it won't affect me personally.

@joedenise & @FourSeasons - Yes, I think that is right re the PA dollars payments, as I can't really see how else it could work. I'm hoping to meet my £40 minimum monthly target, but I haven't been online as much this week & surveys are a bit thin on the ground today. I'll see how it goes. I do only need another £3-12, so hopefully I can get that in the bag fairly easily.

@badmemory -Very many years ago, I used to learn the occasional snippet from someone I knew who had signed......but who also liked a drink. I have always been cynical about the ruling party, but it is their overwhelming conviction that we are all stupid that really annoys me. One of the worst wind-ups for me is when they send whoever the daily idiot is out to do the morning media rounds to pretend that whatever has just been announced is 'new money'. It is almost never what it seems. It is quite easy to find out information which is in the public realm & we did not all come upstream on bloody water biscuits! 

@PennysIntoPounds - That is just ridiculous about your Mum's energy provider. I have a horrible feeling that had this happened to my Mum once she was on her own, she would have just paid it. She had a real phobia of talking on the phone, particularly phoning people & so my Dad used to do all the phone calls. She also belonged to a generation which largely still thought that officialdom was generally right, decent, honest & trustworthy. How she produced a couple of bossy assertive cynics like my sister & I, I'll never know!
Re the 'bigger umbrella'....fret not, the resident umbrella here at Foxgloves Manor is truly enormous!
F

Baileys_Babe

Me and my sister are also bossy and assertive, in our case I think it a reaction to the fact our Mum isn't, despite her being intelligent and articulate but she doesn't want to been seen making a fuss 🤦

EssexHebridean

foxgloves said:

@EssexHebridean - Yes, the v large bins can take some filling, can't they? I'm sure you already do this, but don't overlook chompable stuff like loo roll tubes, flour bags, shredded paper, brown paper packaging & envelopes, coffee filter papers, torn up cardboard, etc. I'm having a push on adding more of this sort of stuff atm, as it is defo needed to balance out the 'wet' green stuff going in from garden clearing & kitchen veggie waste. Have just been using some very nice rich crumbly compost, so we must be doing something right!

Ahh well, we already save loo roll inners for use for sewing seeds - they pack nicely into trays or old mushroom tubs and work a treat - plus of course can be directly planted into the ground! Flour bags and just about any other form of paper goes on the fire - the only exception to that are highly coloured "shiny" pages which go to the paper recycling as not only would I not fancy burning them, I don't think I'd want to compost them either! You have reminded me though that we used to occasionally shove some strips of torn up newspaper into the compost bin - must get back to doing that!  it does occasionally get a small amount of ash from the fire, as well. I definitely like the challenge of seeing quite how little we can end up putting into the main rubbish and recycling bins - and in turn how much use we can make of various things which would otherwise be "rubbish"! 

I'm a long way behind you on PA but not doing too badly by my standards at just over £12 confirmed. I'd like to get it to £20 before the end of the month but we'll see!