Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Ooooh, what a nice lot of comments to read. Thanks for all your contributions.
@cbsexec - Yes, I think you are probably right. 
@Suffolk_lass - Agree. Water privatisation never fitted the claim that it would improve competition & therefore prices because none of us have a choice as to which company to use. We are all stuck with whatever overcharging, polluting company covers our region. 
Good point re tomatoes ripening at different times. Also makes a difference whether they are grown in a greenhouse or not. Some varieties, while better in a greenhouse, can be grown outside but will take longer than their indoor cousins. I might be tempted to try growing 'Roma' outside if I lived in the South, but experience to date shows me they need a greenhouse here.
Thanks for your heads-up on the cat food, which I agree  is a good price. Unfortunately, if you mean the 'big river' that flows through South America, it isn't a company that we use, so any Persian Queen reductions we find tend to happen in supermarkets. Both our cats love it, though Soot also enjoys a slightly cheaper variety. Isn't it always the one that's been a poor bin-raiding feral (Ash) that develops expensive tastes as soon as they get their paws under the table?!

Re email receipts - The 1st time I was offered one was when I asked for a receipt, having not been given one & the assistant asked for my email address. I asked if the till still printed receipts. It did, so I had one of those. Mr F is fine about having emailed ones, but I don't want the junk emails which will surely follow.
Re unsolicited mobile calls - I do get these occasionally, & block them, but not nearly as many as I used to get on the landline when we had one. Even signing up for the telephone preference service didn't stop those, although the caller used to disappear pretty sharpish when I mentioned it.
Anyway, better get today's post on.
F 
 

badmemory

Funnily enough my landline which I have had for over 30 years with the same number except for when they stuck those 1s in there only gets those computer generated type that are dialling even numbers that don't exist.  I do worry about not having access to a landline though as I may not always be able to walk over 200 yards uphill to get a signal.

foxgloves

Afternoon Campers,
Well, the weather forecast first thing showed no showers further south than the Humber, so I was surprised when it rained pretty briskly on my washing, grrrr. The sun's out now though & no harm done. 
Enjoyed the weekend. Visited historic parkland further up county on Saturday. Saved a decent wodge of money by taking a packed brunch & flask of coffee which we ate in an old orchard. Had a gardening day yesterday & took the opportunity provided by a warm windy day to wash a heavy (vintage patchwork) door curtain. Mr F cooked, so I got on with winding the gorgeous yarn skeins I received for Christmas & cast on for a fancy shawl. I love shawls!
Anyway, today's budget-helping stuff:
*3 loads of laundry done & pegged out.
*Baked a wholemeal loaf.
*Chilli in slow cooker for tonight (using some leftover roast pork chunks I froze a while ago)
*Today's garden pickings: Tomatoes, 1 aubergine, 1 cucumber (no.17), a courgette & some coriander. I love that it's food metres instead of food miles.
*Fish box arrived so divided it into appropriate portions & have frozen.
*Did my usual Monday morning budget updates. When I set July's grocery budget, I mentioned that I set the usual amount but with the target of underspending by £100 so as to free this up for a pantry stock-up. We overspent our target by........43p, so because I have a tidy mind, I subbed in 43p from our buffer zone & I will be doing a pantry inventory at some point this week.
*This month's bill from the Cephalopods arrived & I did the usual number-crunching. Overall, we used £6-72 less than last month & added another £50 to our credit balance, which I estimate will be about £400 by the time we reach the 1st bill involving central heating use. We tend not to switch on until October.
*Did some admin, including a few minor financials, & got some dates in my diary which will enable a bit of useful forward planning.
*Did a survey. Will check for others. July's PA earnings currently at £36-03, so not too far from my target of £40. 
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & cereal pot. Will be making use of last night's leftovers.
*Postie brought Mr F's credit card bill, so I know he will soon be going through that highlighting what needs to come off his Personal Spends. Honestly, neither of us barely used to look at bank statements & credit card bills in the bad old Spendy Years. I always say Mr F was a bit worse than me with cavalier attitude to money, but there again, he did not receive the parental bail-outs that I had, so without those, my debt total would doubtless have been the same size as his! (Or, would there have been a very slight chance that I'd have had that lightbulb ping on a bit earlier? I shall always wonder. I was so grateful for being helped with money back in those days, but with hindsight, I don't think it helped me in the long run because it kept me sufficiently 'out of the poo' to carry on my frivolous ways. Ah well, am thoroughly reformed now!)
Right, time to sign out, have a little tidy-up, then a stroll up the garden.
Hope everyone's off to at least a reasonably decent start to the week,
F x

foxgloves

@badmemory - That's the only downside, isn't it? When we got rid of our landline, we had a good mobile phone signal pretty much everywhere in the house. Since then, this has become quite a lot more random & calls answered or made downstairs have a high drop-out rate. If I need to make an involved phonecall, say to HMRC, an insurer or hospital, for example, I make sure I go upstairs where the signal is much better. So if I ever need to phone anyone in an emergency, let's hope I can drag my carcass up a flight of steep stairs to do so, lol!
F

Sun_Addict

I don't know how I managed in the days pre banking apps 😆 I'm in the cc and bank ones every day checking everything going in and out. I suppose the equivalent was mini statements from the cash point - I think I was printing them off every day at one stage. 

badmemory

How did we manage.  I can't think how I would now deal with a bank statement coming in the post several days after it was all over.  I have a friend who still has postal bank statements & no online access.  Luckily he does have the text warnings "you are about to go overdrawn".  Although I always knew exactly what should be in my accounts, that is not the same as being able to see.

Cheery_Daff

We have a decent mobile signal out here in the wilds, but friends come round with other providers who can't get a signal at all, so it might be worth checking and switching. I liked having our landlines here for use during an occasional power cut, but sadly since they did that stupid thing where the landline phone now has to plug into the back of the router, it's now entirely useless as that won't work during a power cut either 🙄 Might see if we can get a discount on the broadband, although I suspect they'll just say we're paying for Internet and the labdline was 'free' anyway 🙄

foxgloves

Actually, I do still opt to receive postal bank statements, but obviously the difference now is that I can easily hop online & print out the newest transactions before I get down to budget setting tasks. Even if I had online statements, which I do for my credit card, I would still print them out, as I use them as a budgeting tool, annotating various things with coloured pencils & making a little note next to anything I want to remember or investigate. I thought I may as well use the bank's ink & paper as mine.
 I do agree how tricky it was when the most up to date info we could get used to be those little receipt-sized print-outs from the cash-point listing the last few transactions. It wasn't fool proof either, unless you requested them very regularly, as you never knew if they hadn't included a particular transaction because it was so recent, or that it wasn't quite recent enough to appear on the print-out. Mind you, I very rarely requested these things, as back in the day I definitely didn't want to know the state of my bank account because it was always somewhere between 'grim' & 'bank stopping my cards any day now' level of dire. As with everything, knowledge is power, is it not? And this especially applies to our finances. Absolutely the first thing I do on Big Budget Day is reconcile the closing month's budget so as to begin setting the new one with bang on up-to-date figures. I do very much appreciate online banking for that. It's pointless trying to set a workable budget if the starting figures are not accurate. 
F

foxgloves

@Cheery_Daff - That is how we came to be with our current mobile provider. The coverage from our previous provider was poor in our village & when we checked a coverage map, wouldn't you just know that the poor signal was worst at our end of the street! We said that was why we were changing provider & they said, "Oh, that's a shame, as we were just going to do something which would have improved the signal in your village". We still changed, as who knows if that was just BS, & the signal was great with the new provider. But something obviously changed as call drop-out started becoming more frequent until people would sometimes have to phone me 3 times before managing to sustain a connection. I use WhatsApp to make calls a lot of the time.....the rest of the time, I'm quite unsociable anyway. For such a chatty person, I do like my own company!
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams,
Seem to have achieved a reasonable amount so far, mainly through pottering about & listening to my audiobook when possible. On the budget-helping front, there have been a few minor wins, but first there was a most UNHELPFUL thing. Mr F's CC statement arrived yesterday & he casually opened it in the kitchen while we were catching up about our respective days, then said, "Wow! This is a LOT higher than I was expecting", & indeed it was over £700!! Here at Foxgloves Manor, credit cards are used for certain regular planned expenditure such as groceries, petrol, etc, as well as irregular (but planned) expenses, i.e booking a holiday, replacing the washing machine, as well as other bits & pieces from our Personal Spends, but the methodology is always the same - to transfer funds from the relevant Savings Pot for the big things & to pay the item off. It works really well & after a lengthy period of living in the Spendy Era, it also does sterling work in reminding us that ALL our spending has a category - 'Just put it on a credit card' not being a viable decision on its own because 'Credit Card' is neither a meaningful budget heading or a pot. Well, there's me dishing up chilli & rice & Mr F started reading out transactions from the absurdly high bill & when he got to that wretched new lawnmower (which we haven't even used yet because the old kaput one started working again (eyeroll...), I knew it was that. I checked my credit card payment log sheet & could see that I had, unusually for me, forgotten to make funds transfer & pay it off. Mystery solved. Chilli & rice could be enjoyed. So first on today's list of budget-helping things had better be.....
*Transferred £310 from the Appliances Replacement Pot & paid it across to Mr F's credit card! I just wanted this sorted out by Friday, which is Big Budget Day. I really don't like seeing a dip in these Pots totals, but that is what they are there for & Mr F assures me that it is only a matter of days before the old mower (which is held together by rust) carks it for good.
*Watered all the veg. 
*Today's pickings: Lettuce, spring onions & basil.
*Defrosted leftover pastry & baked a pastry case. There was sufficient for my big flan dish, which I wasn't expecting so I have changed the meal plans as there will be enough quiche for tomorrow night too. We still have plenty of home grown new potatoes so I shall serve it with those & salad tonight and cold with roasted vegetable couscous tomorrow. I will drop off pesto pasta as those pesto pots are very useful to have in the freezer.
*Made 4 little jam tarts with the pastry trimmings - an opportunity to try out the strawberry & rhubarb jam I made the other week. They will do a free dessert for tonight as we've run out of yoghurt & I am defo not going to break into that July £100 grocery underspend at this late stage in the game!
*Mended a sock.
Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast. (bet you he will be adding a jam tart to it later, or my name's not Foxgloves....actually, my name isn't Foxgloves, but you know what I mean!)
*Started a new book - another 99p charity bookshop find. 
*Did a couple of surveys. Have received some more small payments so have now defo met my July PA earnings target as am currently up to £41-78.
*Sorted all the clean laundry & did the ironing - too much of it for my liking, but it was nice to find that my much-loved vintage patchwork door curtain has yet again laundered & ironed well and I have re-hung it. I am sure I've mentioned this paragon of money saving before, but if not, the origins of this curtain began as one of those fabric sample books which my Mum was given in the 1980s by a friend who knew someone in the industry. It was very good quality fabric - Sanderson, some of the patterns are William Morris. Anyway, Mum removed all the samples, patchworked them together, lined it & made a double bedspread. When she no longer used it, she gave it to me & it became a throw in my flat. When I moved out, I gave it a good wash & a press & it became my bed spread for a while in my new house. Then I used it as a throw on an armchair. When we moved here, Mr F removed the kitchen door because it looked like an idiot had hung it & we needed fur friend access through to the cat flap, so I re-lined the patchwork with a plain cream throw (from the Swedish Emporium I think, but shopped from home because I already had it from the Spendy Years) , added some tab tops which I made from the piece I cut from the bottom & ever since then, it has been a now very much vintage kitchen door curtain! Mum patchworked all those samples together in the1980s & it came to me as a no longer wanted bedspread in the early 1990s, so it really has done absolutely sterling service & is still going strong! 
And after that ramble, I must administer afternoon cat treats before Soot starts on a pester. He was unbelievable this morning trying to get his biscuits early. He kept getting right in front of me, then sitting down so I couldn't miss him, & he is a very solid cat. This post is far too long. Am aware it would have been a no-spend day had it not been for that bloody lawnmower, grrrrr.
Love to all, keep it in your purse!
F x