Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Four_Seasons

Merry Christmas Foxgloves hope you are having a lovely time. Many thanks for all your posts. Sending love xx

Humdinger1

Happy Christmas one and all! The chatter about fudge took me back decades.  As a child, I lived with parents, grandparents and aunt.  One day, while my grandma and I made fudge, the conversation turned to when anyone had last seen a neighbour.  It went round and round until my father and grandpa decided to go over and check on her.  No reply, so they broke in with a ladder and found her unconscious.   The fudge never did set; in some way we felt that the two things were connected.   Heartlessly, I adore fudge and always think of that day when I see/hear about it.   Love Humdinger xx 

Elisheba

Hope you had a lovely Christmas, @foxgloves 🌲🎁🎉❄️

foxgloves

Hello Diary Friends,
Thank-you so much for all your Christmas wishes. We've had a lovely time down in London with family (my sister, B-i-L & 2 nephews) Neither of us much enjoy driving in London but the journey both ways was fine. We missed a turning near Brent Cross on the way there, which was annoying as I knew we needed to go under a particular bridge but missed the crucial sign when a delivery van dived out in front of us & we couldn't see the signage in time. Never mind, we were able to turn around before we got far in the wrong direction. We have had some awful journeys back in the past but apart from bumper-to-bumper traffic caused by the stream of cars pouring out of Wembley IKEA, we actually got all the way home after that with no issues at all, which made a nice change. Really enjoyed catching up with everyone. Youngest nephew won £12 playing cards & was so pleased with himself, none of the rest of us could even remotely mind losing! I received some lovely presents. Everyone knows (especially Mr F & my sister) that I like useful presents 'which are also lovely' & I do feel thoroughly spoiled. Everyone else was pleased with their presents too.
I haven't properly caught up with diaries yet, so I hope you have all had a pleasant time. Now, has there been any money saving activity since we got back? A little...... the main thing is that I.....
*Managed to get my Big Budget Day done on the correct day (27th) & I felt better for having done it as it means we enter the new budget cycle & New Year in control of our pounds & pence. I made payments to our general savings but not to the Savings Pots, other than knowing the total available to divide between them. We will be having our annual Money Summit next week & will be discussing pots as a major agenda item so I thought it made sense to have the discussion before dividing up January's pots contributions.
*While I was budgeting, Mr F popped out to get the Week 1 grocery shopping. This included fresh stuff for a Christmas Lunch we are hosting tomorrow but was very heavily subsidised by the £60 underspend on December's grocery budget so I know we will have got off to a good start with January's food.
*Bargain find by Mr F was Waitbl00m's Christmas coffee blend yellow-stickered to £1.50 a bag!! It is really nice coffee & isn't Christmassy in any other way than there being some holly leaves on the bag. Well worth stocking up if you like a decent ground coffee. He bought 4 bags & wished he'd bought a couple more.
*Soot & Ash back from the cattery & I had overestimated the fees for their stay so that's an extra £12 for the Savings Pots.
*I've made sage & onion stuffing for tomorrow, also put aside & labelled the amount of bread I shall need to make the bread sauce (so that Mr F can't accidentally eat it!). The turkey is almost defrosted. Glad we remembered actually to take it out of the freezer as we usually have a fresh one & we will bard/prep that tonight so it just has to go in the oven tomorrow with no messing around. Mr F is cooking it. My contributions will be the stuffing, aforementioned bread sauce & the sponge in the trifle! Oh & a slice of teatime Christmas cake, of course. 
*I included on the shopping list the items I will need for a good turkey leftovers batch-cooking session. Turkey dismantling day will be Monday so I must remember to ask Mr F to reach down my cauldron for the stock. I wonder how many meals I will manage to get out of it this year. Am quietly confident, so let's see!
Right, I am going to unpack my presents now & pop them away, then I am going to catch up on reading & a bit of TV later. I've done a laundry load & got it dry on the HA overnight but no way am I getting the iron out today. Not festive at all is my thinking on THAT as an idea!
Love to all,
F x

Sun_Addict

Welcome home, glad you had a lovely time. How lovely to be doing Christmas again tomorrow. Are Soot and Ash sulking after you abandoned them 😆

PennysIntoPounds

Glad you had a lovely time and the London traffic didn't treat you too shoddily. What a bargain on the coffee!

Suffolk_lass

Good to hear you enjoyed your Christmas, we did too! Well done to Mr foxgloves on the coffee bargains! I popped to the SM on Boxing Day and all the meat related leftovers had been removed from the fridges and freezers. I did pick up a shoulder of pork and two packs of reduced beef; some minced steak and some braising steak. I also picked up two packs of individual Cumberland whirl chipolatas that I portioned into two from each pack of four and re-bagged for the indoor fridge-freezer. They are so handy to just have one each for a simple supper with mash and veg, and a favourite of Mr Sl's. No veg or fish reduced in ours and that was fine with me if they gifted all the fresh stuff to the local food bank and their staff.

foxgloves

@Suffolk_lass - Yes, if the unsold meat has gone to charities who are helping the poorest, I'd be happy with that too.
I deliberately haven't started a broad-brush January meal plan yet, even though our Jan budget cycle started on 27th Dec. I want to see how many meals I get out of today's leftover turkey (just waiting for our friends to arrive for our 'at home' Christmas lunch as we were away for the main festivities) when I dismantle it tomorrow for batch cooking so that can help inform the meal planning process. I know there's a big chunk of that bargainaceous whole pork loin left in the fridge, some earlier batch-cooked stuff from when I was dealing with our garden gluts, & plenty of fish & pesto. I also still have the larger of our homegrown pumpkins to use, some of which will go into a curry recipe we like & a sack of potatoes from the village farm shop. It will be easy enough to pull a varied meal plan together, it's just a case of doing it when I know exactly which turkey cook-ups I can add to the mix, as I'd like January's groceries to come in under budget if possible.
F

foxgloves

@Sun_Addict - No, they weren't sulky. They were very excited to be home, friendly & cuddly before racing around exploring everywhere. Both being fussy with their meat though (very unusual for Soot) so we think they must have had a different brand at the cattery.

@PennysIntoPounds - Yes, we thought that coffee was an excellent bargain. Coffee has really increased in price over that last 2 or 3 years so stocking up on one we know we really like at such a low price was a no-brainer.
No, the London traffic was surprisingly well-behaved compared to previous experiences. It's a 130-mile drive & our homeward bound journey was almost all in the fog, but we kept ourselves entertained by chatting, listening to a festive folk music programme & when we'd exhausted that, we concocted an alternative ending to the 'Gavin & Stacey' finale. It's ridiculous what we find to entertain ourselves on a long drive. On one occasion, we were trying to remember the order of songs on a particular John Lennon album, another involved singing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' taking alternate lines but we had to go back to the beginning if either of us made a mistake. Ditto a long drive back from Cromer in torrential rain, singing alternate lines of Squeeze's 'Up the junction'! It sounds a bit tragic, but it's free entertainment, is it not? 
F

Suffolk_lass

I am pretty sure the veg, at least, will have been donated as they are always being thanked by one of the Facebook groups I am in. No idea about turkey.

In contrast, my son and I did the M&S Christmas Eve hangout about five years ago and the store manager was directing that only things like platters were reduced. All the meat and fish had a 26th December date on it but she refused to let any be reduced. A lot of people went without because they were banking on a reduced joint on Christmas Eve, and twas ever thus. My Mum used to go to the market and M&S at 3.30pm on Christmas Eve, on her bicycle for the same bargains, back in the 1960s. I understand the manager then tried to give the meat that was going to be wasted to the staff in store. Some of them took something reluctantly but they all explained to her that they had made their arrangements, months before, and I am told over 20 turkeys were skipped on the first day after they reopened (she would not even let them go in the skip that evening in case the "scroungers, as she called us" skip dived to get them). As a result, I never set foot in that store again and it has since closed and been moved to a very congested shopping estate that I would not visit at Christmas or in the sales because of the road congestion. I am told several staff wrote to head office and told them about this episode and that manager is no longer there. Untold damage done to their reputation locally and a prime example of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing