Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Afternoon Frugalistas, & thanks for your comments.
I have had pretty much a standard Monday here at Foxgloves Manor. Been quite busy. The budget-helping activity was as follows:
*2 eco-washes' worth of laundry pegged out & actually got a good way to being dry! Now on heated airer finishing off, but I won't need to leave it switched on all night, so in terms of electricity use, it was well worth pegging out - we actually had blue sky & sunshine today as well, after days of grey gloom. 
*Very low effort nosebag tonight as I made sufficient fish pie last night to feed us twice. Only need to find the last of our home grown french beans in the freezer & prep some carrots to go with it before retiring to the sofa.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & porridge pot.
*Did my usual Monday morning budget updates. Took a while doing these properly as there were Savings Pots transfers to do. Also updated Personal Spends. Had to laugh as Mr F reckons I've done him out of 30p. Well, it's only 30p, but I don't like to make mistakes with figures, so I looked at the receipt again & he has indeed been done out of 30p but by the cafe, not by me, ha!! There will be more updates to do tomorrow as I want all aspects of our November financials smack-on accurate for Thursday, which is my mid-month budget check-in.
*Did 3 surveys. Slow & steady atm rather than the bigger payers. Tbf, I have declined some of the bigger paying studies recently as I have felt that they were wanting quite a bit of faff for a better, but still not that enticing payment.
*Wrapped 4 presents. Yay, have made a start! Sick of my HQ looking like a warehouse so will continue with this all week.
*Ordered another 2 presents from the list. Very little left to buy now. A gift for oldest nephew which can wait until we are in the big city centre later this month & a couple of things to buy for Mr F when he's not lurking. 
*Found a different online supplier for a supplement I like to take. Went to order from usual website & they only had the small size in stock, which even though it was on offer for £3 less than usual, is an expensive way to buy. Found the bigger sized box at a different retailer & the price differential worked out at paying £5 less for an additional 2 week's worth, so it was a no-brainer.
*Still working on getting this 2nd sock done (last pair required for a gift). Knitted the heel flap, turned the heel & picked up the sts for the foot over my lunch hour. Nice yarn to knit with - from a small indie dyer. 
Although there is still tons to do in the garden with our Autumn clearing & planned refurb of our veggie plot ready for next season, I can now look out of the window & actually see that we are making good progress. Hope to get a few sessions out there this week, especially as it looks colder & brighter, which is how I like it.
Ok, money savers....that's been my frugal efforts today.
Have a cosy evening all,
F x

PennysIntoPounds

Love that Mr F was looking out for his 30p. Mr PIP carried compost for me today that I had budgeted for so I let him keep the 1p change 'for his trouble', a favourite saying in our family 😁

rtandon27

Haha - I love that are collective men-folk have learned the ways of being frugal!  I gave mine some cash in hand several months ago, knowing we would be frequenting food trucks as our evenings out until the end of the year.  Turns out most of them take cards so he still has the cash in his wallet.  He tried to give it back today, saying it felt 'wrong' to have it sitting in his pocket doing nothing.  I tried not to laugh, but just had to point out that there was a time when the cash would have been frittered away, so I was well impressed it had stayed put.

Suffolk_lass

Sun_Addict said:

I’ve heard that saying Charlie’s dead re under garments showing from much older work mates 😆 No idea where it originates from though.

There are two schools of thought, both taking us back to the times of the Stuart monarchs - theory one is that KCl had been beheaded and replaced by Oliver Cromwell and the dour no-frills of the puritans prevailed. So if you wore any lace under your frock, and it was spotted, you could get into trouble, so your female associates would whisper to warn you to hoick it up - "I'll go and see George!" was the correct response (much later) - meaning I'll go to the toilet to sort it out

Theory two was that after the very frilly KCll dies, women showed they were in mourning by showing their frilly petticoats. 

Personally I prefer the mainland Europe version "are you looking for a mother in law?! which is best in German, "Du suchst eine Schwiegermutter?" implying you were a very loose woman looking for a husband! I'm sure this only goes back to the days of pencil skirts with stockings and suspenders hidden under a slip. How times have changed!

foxgloves

Yes, it did make me smile about the 30p! He was still going on about it at bedtime! If anything, he was more profligate with money than me, back in the Spendy Years, so I love how seriously he takes his Personal Spends.

@Suffolk_lass - How interesting about the possible origins of that saying! I love things which have deep roots in history or folklore.

Evening all diary readers!
Dusk is falling & it is already too dark for my planned trudge down to the bottom of the garden to empty the compost bucket. However, as Scarlett O'Hara said, (though admittedly not in reference to her compost bucket!), "Tomorrow is another day"......& I'm glad about that, because having found myself cracking on so well up in Foxgloves HQ, I have bumped garden tasks to another day. Anyway, m'dears, onto today's budget-helping activity, such as it is:
*Only a small amount of items for the ironing pile, which meant I got through it quickly on minimum electricity (this is much to do with my loathing of ironing as any potential energy savings)
*Defrosted 2 portions of the gigantes plakis I batch-cooked during our tomato glut. We will be eating those later with either eggs or cheese on toast, whichever we fancy. 
*Wrote 10 more Christmas cards.
*Wrapped 5 presents - am re-using recycled gift-wrap saved from last year as well as the rolls I bought in January from the charity bookshop's sale. Gift tags are the home made ones I cut from last year's cards, be-ribboned with various festive odds & ends.
*Ordered a present which by lucky hap was reduced by £5.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Did a few surveys.
*Entered a competition.
*Postie brought £6 loyalty vouchers from Mr F's credit card plus some other 'extra points' offers. Added to vouchers stash.
*Did a few financials - mostly transfers from a couple of Savings Pots & paying a few transactions off my credit card.
*The present which arrived damaged seems to have been sorted out promptly  - I sent a photo with the packaging & delivery note & a replacement is now on its way. Fingers crossed for that one arriving in one piece!
*Did a bit more present knitting over my lunch hour, though difficult with Soot sitting on my lap as he likes games & moving yarn was just too exciting. Even took his mind off his tummy for about 5 minutes!
*Discussed 2026 holiday with Mr F. We'd love a week at a very special historic site - we've stayed in the apartment twice before - it would be the week following our actual anniversary as we need to wait for the big price drop with the change in season. It's an NT place & they do a late departure time on Sundays, so Mr F has proposed that just book 6 nights instead of 7 & that will free up some money towards a lovely lunch out while we are away. We almost always book & pay for 7 nights, then decide to drive home the night before anyway, so even though that is our choice (a lot less traffic around for usually quite a long journey), we are technically losing out on the money paid for that 7th night. We are going to discuss it again tonight & will almost certainly book it. Gone are the days where holiday payments sit on credit cards attracting interest & being paid of in silly little amounts. I shall re-write my holiday payment schedule, which I look at how much money is needed when (including cattery stays) & work backwards so that we are putting away the correct amount each month into the Holiday Pot. At the moment, it is based on our 2025 holiday to Northumbria & having enough left for a deposit on 2026, but I shall need to re-write it to integrate 2026's holiday if indeed we book it tonight (we will, unless some herbert has jumped in & beaten us to it!)
Darkness has pretty much fallen while I've been chatting to you, so I'm going to sign off, distribute this afternoon's cat treats, then close all the curtains & light lamps for a cosy evening watching GBBO. I hear that Mr F is to arrive bearing Cadb**y's snowballs.....& if they're made of snow, they are almost certainly calorie-free, are they not?
Chat tomorrow, if I can still move after the time I need to spend upside down in the herb bed.....
F x

Makingabobor2

Ooh I do love planning a holiday. Although I sometimes feel guilty that we have them while we are still paying off our debts. But, who knows what's round the corner, and we have to make memories and like you say, at least they are not going on the CC.  Like you, I always work out how much pre week/month we need to pay. Wish we'd done it years ago, instead of getting so much in debt with holidays.  Hope all goes well and its still available when you come to book

PennysIntoPounds

Goodness you're doing well with your Christmas cards! I shall have to step up my Christmas preparedness game!

Baileys_Babe

I am in awe of you thinking about holidays in 2026. We haven't made plans for 2025 yet, but that is mainly because OH's job is up in the air likely to either be redundancy or promotion, which is making planning for anything difficult. In the meantime, we have been putting a small amount away each month to give us some funds for either a cheapie camping trip - we have all the gear or a last-minute deal at a holiday pack with some of the extended family - we did that this year for 5 nights and spent less than £300 (3 adults 1 teen) for accommodation, food, fuel, entertainment etc we did make use of our membership passes, plus free activities like bike rides, playing on the beach, hardy souls went in the sea, playing board games, we also went out for meals, had ice creams and visited other local attractions - it was great fun.

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - Yes, that is the way forward with holidays & big purchases. Working out the monthly amount to put away is I think the most sure-fire way of avoiding credit card debt. I've done the same with planning for our next car purchase & with cars being so expensive, I began it the same month that we bought our current car, calculated what we'd hope to get for it at around the time we will be thinking of exchanging it, then worked backwards to provide a monthly figure & so far, I have managed to put that sum away in the Car Fund every month without fail. 

@PennysIntoPounds - I am enjoying getting ahead tbh. I really like the season, as does Mr F, especially the simple stuff - fairy lights, frosty (hopefully!) walks, reading by the fire (when I am not too tightwad to light it), getting 'Love Actually' out yet again.......but I enjoy it even more if I am looking at pretty labelled bags of presents & a rtg pile of cards which only need a little trippette down to the postbox. 

@Baileys_Babe - That sounds like our kind of fun too. I loved camping until I bounced spectacularly off a guy rope & fell through our tent, but we did enjoy the campsite's ensuite hostel rooms earlier this year, so will probably not bother replacing the wrecked tent now.
 We do like to book cottage holidays ahead, but we have only booked so far in advance for 2026 because it is our Silver Wedding, which we decided we'd really love to celebrate somewhere we love.
F

foxgloves

Hello Wednesday Pence-Wranglers,
Well, so much for bumping my garden session to today. I opened my emails over breakfast & discovered that 4 parcels were on route to Foxgloves Manor & all of them from different carriers. I have taken delivery of 3, which did make me think I might get an hour working on our herb bed this afternoon, but the 4th parcel has yet to turn up, so realistically, it will be too dark to bother. Never mind....3 out of the 4 are presents, so more things to tick off the list & it's been a reasonably productive day. Here goes with the budget-helping bits:
*Topped up the worm composter with a layer of kitchen scraps. They are currently munching through tray 2. Tray 1 is ready to harvest but will wait till Spring. I will start them on tray 3 if it doesn't get too cold & they stay active over Winter. Anyway, free rich compost from scraps.
*Baked a batch of bread rolls.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & porridge pot.
*Selected next week's meals from November's master meal plan.
*Wrote 5 Christmas cards.
*Wrapped 8 presents.
*Made a template for the ideal size of cake board I require for the bigger of the 2 Christmas cakes I shall be baking. I have a large board but it won't fit in the cake carrier, so Mr F has offered to take it to work, where apparently lives a guillotine, to chop it to size. Sadly, our incredibly useful little indie baking shop closed - another lovely local shop which couldn't make hard work pay, so I usually have to get this sort of item online now. I did buy 2 boards from one of the bargainaceous chains but sizes were limited to much too big or a bit too small. Slicing down the big one is Option 1 but will avoid buying a 3rd one & paying delivery charges. is anyone still awake? I've bored myself just typing that!
*A bit more present knitting over my lunch hour.
*Gathered up a bag of library returns.
*Dismantled my autumn basket display & packed decorations away for next year. The warmth from the windowsill had actually ripened the homegrown pumpkins which were part of the display, so there will be a batch-cook using those at some point.
*Not a lot of effort for tonight's nosebag. I am simply making pesto pasta from one of several pots of the pesto I froze from our summer basil crop & serving it with a sprinkling of cheese, accompanied by some roast Guatemalan blue squash, which I must go & chunk up in a minute. It takes me a while to cut these big squashes up with my hands being a bit arthritic -  oooooh, the poor old dear!
Oh I'll just mention a bit of money-saving salvage. Earlier this year, when I was decluttering, I cut up one of those strong papery tablecloths which came from Mum's house. I don't think she'd used it, but we used it one Christmas & it promptly acquired a red wine spill. Annoying, as it was at one end, but once I'd cut that section off & binned it, the cloth was no longer the right size for the table. It seemed a waste of a pretty festive design, so I cut it into wrapping paper-sized sheets & have today tried it on a couple of parcels - one a glass bottle & the other quite a fragile candle....& it's worked fine, as it's so soft & pliable. As it looks very much as though I am going to run out of wrapping paper, I'm intending to make the most of all the recycled options from my stash. 
Right, I must stop yakking & convey 2 bin's worth of cardboard packaging out to the recycling, close the curtains & tackle that King Kong of a squash.
Cheers all,
F x