Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Elisheba

foxgloves said:

Hmmmph! Well, today has been a day of two halves & we've ended up having to spend an unplanned £529 which I was not at all happy about! Have an online talk booked for 6pm so will post tomorrow.
F x

Ouch on the unplanned spend! At least you have it tucked away though, and its not like the spendy days when it would have caused all sorts of panic and maxing of credits cards 

foxgloves

Thanks for all your comments & contributions.
@Florafauna - Hope you are feeling better soon. These things can drag on, can't they? I had to look up 'Sashiko embroidery' - very effective. It reminded me a little of the sort of pictures/designs which can be created by blackwork - not that I have ever been an embroiderer.
F

foxgloves

Hi Diary Readers,
Well, when I said that yesterday was a bit mixed, this is what I meant......& how we ended up with an unwelcome £529 spend.
Put the first of 3 intended loads of laundry on nice & early.
The call I was expecting from Grimsby to take our fish box order came good & early too, so I had the exact cost ready to factor into my usual Monday morning budget updates.
Did the updates, all looking good apart from (as I've said before), some of the Savings Pots looking a lot lower than I'd like. Had a think about best use of Dad's royalties money & decided to renew our annual pass for a lovely local gorge which we like to visit, add a little to our Leisure & Entertainment Pot towards a future concert & to throw the bulk of it at the Presents Pot with it being 'that' time of year - we also have the bulk of family/friends birthdays falling from Oct to Feb. All looking good. 
Realised neither of us had heard the washer beeping, so popped downstairs to see if the laundry had finished. Opened our mini-utility room door & was met by a weird smell. The digital display screen was showing something different to normal. Opened the door & realised it hadn't spun. Set a 10 min spin & then watched as the machine did precisely b*gger all. Tried it again & thought the smell was getting worse. This was confirmed by Mr F calling out 'Why can I smell burning plastic?' This machine has not been a good buy. It leaks (the machine itself, not the plumbing pipes), it became unreliable to set on timer because quite often, it would get stuck 3 mins before the end of the spin & on occasion, would have just ended up spinning forever if I didn't intervene & switch if off. And more concerning, last week when I used it, it got part-way through the spin cycle & tripped the electrics. Time for it to go (& given that the 'build' on a fridge-freezer from the same well-known brand has also been less than illustrious), we are not buying this brand again. Mr F has had a couple of days off so he got on with measuring the old machine, disconnecting it & researching new models, while Yours Truly dragged out oodles of soggy bed linen & towels for attempted line-drying! At least it all stopped dripping by late afternoon & I was able to get everything properly dried on the heated airer overnight.
In the interim, I went back to my desk & remember that chunk of money I'd just added to the Presents Pot? Well, out it came & went into the Appliances Replacement Pot instead & it STILL doesn't quite cover the entire cost of the damn machine. This is because there have already been 2 purchases to replace broken appliances this year & so the pot had not yet filled back up to my target amount. So bloody grrrr to that! 
Although, as @EssexHebridean & @Elisheba quite rightly & sensibly point out, at least we have the money these days to deal with these domestic emergencies, unlike in the Spendy Years, when replacement white goods & anything else would be bought on credit. Honestly, we get these Savings Pots together, don't we - I have 10 of them - & then when we get an occasion where we need to call on them, we are just so annoyed to have to use the money! My aim with this is not to have to use any money from our Emergency Fund. A washing machine replacement is a perfectly foreseeable expense....it's just so annoying that the damn thing picked its moment for accelerating its skullduggery. We found a decent-sounding A-rated machine with a reasonable charge for plumbing it in (Mr F has done this before, but we are leaving it to the professionals this time as washer is in a tricky spot to remove again should we need to revisit it) & will take away our old one for free.
So that's why I spent most of Monday morning grumpy.....my great start to the week went to plop. It did pick up after lunch, as our flu jab appointments went smoothly & we managed to do a good stock-up at the local eco-refill shop.
Oh, this is a long post, isn't it? I haven't even got to today's efforts yet. I know, new post......
F x

KajiKita

Sympathies on the WM. They always ‘go’ just in the midst of something critical or when the house is full of dirty clothes … 🙄🤷‍♀️😉

I don’t bother having a specific budget for different white foods appliances - just a £1K ‘lump’ in the joint savings (though we are rather below that atm due to various other significant household expenses… )

KK

PennysIntoPounds

Oh what an absolute pain. I would also be feeling very aggrieved, a foreseeable expense is not the same as shoddy brand work! Well done you for being able to get the money together though

foxgloves

OK, well this one will be shorter, as I have spent this morning walking around the aforementioned gorge enjoying the water, greenery & wildlife.....albeit in drizzle. Budget-helping efforts today as follows:
*Renewed our car park pass to the above, as planned. It had increased to £25 but we were perfectly happy with this as we only need to visit more than 4 times a year & it pays for itself. We usually go between 6 & 8 times.
*Treated ourself to breakfast in the cafe but used our Personal Spends, so budget-neutral. We were just paying when I spotted a sign saying 20% discount for customers aged 60+ on Tuesdays! I didn't have anything on me to prove that I am 60, but the assistant said that's fine & I could have the discount. I explained that as we don't get our pensions until we are 67, ditto things like bus passes, I hadn't really got any relevant ID, but I suppose I did have my driving licence in my purse. Anyway, a nice surprise actually to qualify for a bit of money off!
*Did not succumb to the lure of the gift shop, even though there were candles.
*Realised that the anti-evil weevil nematodes I've had in the fridge for a couple of weeks were coming up to their deadline for effective use, so made up the solution & watered it onto the problem containers. Take THAT, weevils!! A waste of over £10 had I forgotten to do it while nematodes still viable.
*Picked some cavolo nero. This stuff has been ridiculously trouble-free to grow. Mr F is already planning we should grow some every year.
*Very low effort meal tonight as Mr F made enough lovely butternut macaroni cheese yesterday to feed us tonight too.
*Discussed the lack of space in our freezers & wrote meal plans until the end of the month. Had planned to do a roast chicken next weekend, but have bumped that for a future weekend as we have plenty of varied meals in the freezer, which will be good to use from both a space & a budget point of view.
*Did 3 surveys  - I am not going to get anywhere near my monthly target of £40 this month at this rate.
*Arranged all the geraniums I potted up to overwinter indoors around the conservatory & a few on the bathroom windowsill. They will almost certainly continue flowering & a more planty presence will provide a little bit of a free refreshed look in there.
Tomorrow's forecast looks very wet here. I've already set up a litter tray for the mogs in anticipation of all-day sogginess & accepted I shan't be doing any garden clearing. Never mind, I have plenty of indoor stuff which needs doing, so will hopefully be able to turn in a decent list. 
F x

Sun_Addict

I thought the expense might be appliance related. What a pain 😞

Makingabobor2

What a pain to have to get a new washer. But hopefully it will last you a good few years. 

kayannie

It's good to find a benefit to growing older! There's a couple more discounts for over 60's that you may not know about. Bee&Q give 10 % discount on Wednesdays, garden dept only,  & Icy land give 10% discount on Tuesdays but they ask for proof. 
KA

PennysIntoPounds

Glad your 60s-ness is starting to bring mse benefits!
Well done for resisting the candles