Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

PennysIntoPounds

The shawl pin sounds a lovely gift @foxgloves. The heating has been on all day here set at only coming on for under 18 degrees and we're in the balmy southern climes so I do feel for everyone in chillier parts of the country. Hope the flood prevention measures went okay.

Sending a hug @Makingabobor2, having a row always leaves one feeling like a slither of their usual self doesn't it. Hope you've addressed the issue and made up now x

foxgloves

@Blackcats - Yes, that mincemeat! Exactly the sort of small but often regular little money leakage that we are trying to stem this year to concentrate on strong growth in all 10 of our Savings Pots. I can defo recognise that as a 'wrapping paper' incident.

@Makingabobor2 - I don't like rows either. I am quite feisty by nature & Mr F & I are can both be stubborn but I'm lucky in that while we might get chippy & sarcastic with each other now & again, we almost never row. It's a shame you are not yet quite a team with your financial reformation. I know that people often remark that I am lucky that Mr F & I are 'both on the same page' when it comes to budgeting, but it wasn't always like that. You see, I was the one for whom the anti-debt lightbulb flashed on. After a few weeks (it may have been 2 or 3 months, I can't quite remember), he could see how my debts were decreasing & he wanted in on the action. That's when we started working together & when the time was right, we combined our finances together into a joint bank account to be largely managed by me. In the early days though, I was planning my new debt-free existence with all the zeal of the newly-converted & can remember us having a terrible row in the car & I ended up crying nearly all the way to Bath (I'm not usually a cry-er) - I should add that we were actually in Wiltshire at the time.....tears all the way from the East Mids would have been a lot of crying, lol! He said he was sick of hearing me talk about money, etc, etc, & I said I was tired of still having the finances of a broke bloody student when we earned 2 decent full-time professional salaries & that something had to change!! Looking back, I think what caused his own personal lightbulb to ignite was that I started framing budgeting as something which would facilitate us doing things. I am convinced that after a similar timespan of endebted years as me, he heard the unfamiliar word (from my lips anyway!) 'budget' & interpreted it as something that would instead mean curtailment, cutting back, not having things. Having our 'Personal Spends' was a breakthrough because at first, I was new to budgeting, trying to get to grips with it & although Mr F was on board with it verbally, I noticed there were still quite a lot of packages dropping through the door. After a while (when it was pretty obvious that they had been ordered post-supposed LBM, I asked from which part of the budget they were bought. He looked q bit surprised & said 'Oh, it's ok, I used my credit card' & I said that although I was new to the concept of budgeting, 'credit card' wasn't a budget heading, except in terms of paying off what was already on it. It was clear that we needed some monthly Personal Spends money for our own use, as no budget heading (when trying to clear down debt) is going to be the 'Yet more monthly purchases of more CDs & blu-rays for Mr F' Pot. This is also where the 2 Personal Spends rules originated - that this money can be spent on whatever we like without judgement, but also that when it's gone, it's gone. That's one rule which takes out any potential for digs or sniping & another which means purchases are limited to the amount of Spends available. I don't know if this tale will be remotely helpful, @Makingabobor2, but I thought I would tell you that we were definitely NOT singing from the same page of the school hymn book back when I first started debt-busting. I am really glad that we are now, though. In fact, hr often thanks me for keeping all the finances straight & making sure that we have savings for our future, even though we have come even later to the latter than to budgeting.

@PennysIntoPounds - Thanks, yes, the prevention measures were duly rolled out & up in that part of the the county, the river levels are dropping. Here in our village, however, they are rising & only about a couple of cm off the level at which water starts entering properties. There has been virtually no rain today, but there's a lot of water to work its way through the system - rain, snow melt, etc. The fields surrounding our town are flooded & one of the main A-roads in & out is impassable, as well as a couple of local sections of the A1. Hopefully river levels will start to drop soon.
F

Makingabobor2

Thanks FG. The strange thing is, he has only got like this since we've cleared the mortgage. He was fine before.  We aren't normally the type of couple who row, which is why it upset me so much. I think I was just so frustrated that I had worked so hard to clear the mortgage and start to save, and then he said...."let's buy solar panels"!!   It just tipped me over the edge. Anyhow, after a long discussion yesterday, he appears to be back on board, and realises what a stupid idea that was.   And if you think you were late in life coming to budgeting, we were even later.  I was 40 when I married DH, I had been married before and didn't come out of it well, financially, and it turned out DH didn't have a head for being sensible or budgeting either.  We just used to think we could pay it off next month, but of course we never could. Then when I got made redundant (twice), that really messed things up.   So I was actually 56, when I had the LBM. But at least we know what we are doing now.  And TBH, I actually don't enjoy spending money these days....how weird is that? 

foxgloves

And now for today's post.
Hello Diary Readers, Well, here at Foxgloves Manor, I'm still trying to get back to normal routines following the festive period. This morning, I went round simply dealing with random things which I was sick of seeing & it does look tidier now - things like the cats' travel bedding which was in a heap waiting for laundering (now done), various piles of newspapers I wasn't sure if I'd read or not (now sorted out) & umpteen similar silly things which I just wanted to get cleared away & dealt with. Budget-friendly activity as follows:
*Did the ironing & packed away Christmas tablecloths, pinnies, etc, ready for next year. Nothing new required in that line, however much I might like looking at them in the shops!
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Sorted though my bag of Christmas wrappings salvage. Added 4 nice gift bags to my stash as well as some carefully opened wrapping paper, ribbon & a pile of pretty printed festive tissue paper, all of which can be re-used. Sorted through the Christmas cards we received this year & made the suitable ones into next year's gift tags, for which I used all the little pieces of ribbons & gold thread in my ribbon bag which were too small for anything else. I had a decent pile once I'd finished, all packed away now until they're needed.
*Also cut up one of those tall thin calendars to provide some free new sheets for my bulldog-clip desk pad.
*Got a grip with February's birthdays (4). Have 2 nice cards in for friends, just need to buy one each for nephews. One nephew has already been given his birthday gift when I saw him at Christmas as didn't want to post it as something I posted to London earlier this year, which looked 'birthday-ish' was clearly stolen. So I need to sort out a present for younger nephew, which I think will be money transferred straight to his bank account on the day & buy another 1 or 2 very small inexpensive items to add to the presents I already have for my friend. As birthdays are a Savings Pots area of expenditure, I'm thinking more carefully about this in terms of more needing to go into the pots than is coming out! *
*Did a survey & got quite a long way into another one before I was stymied by an error in it which meant it couldn't be completed. Emailed a complaint about time-wasting. Not many surveys around. I expect they will increase as people get properly back into the swing of work & study.
That's about it for today. I am planning on auditing my seed box tomorrow to make sure I don't waste money buying stuff we already have in stock, ditto my toiletries stash & then I am intending to sort out the pantry now that the Christmas food is no longer taking up space in there, so I can have a good look at what we have in stock & where we could do with stocking up.

*The salvaged Christmas gift bags for re-using were an example of Project Surbiton in action. I counted up the gift bags, then worked out how many I'd need to buy. I was just making a note on my sort of general Christmas audit list when I thought 'No, hang on. Does everybody require a gift bag? Our best friends (couple) can share one & in terms of transporting stuff securely (next year will be a pre-Christmas meet-up with my family), it's often more effective to use a strong cardboard box, which I can salvage & cover it with festive loveliness like I did for that hamper of preserves. I can also make up a similar festive-looking box for S-i-L's family. Now, I know that 5 or 6 gift bags, especially at sale price this time of the year, won't be remotely expensive, but the idea of Project Surbiton is that we channel our inner Tom & Barbara & make do with what we already have. I also have a few large brown paper unbranded shopping bags which I actually saved to use as brown parcel paper, but they would also look suitably festive as gift bags with some origami stars & a tinsel bow (am happy to get rid of tinsel as we never have it on our tree & unlike the old 1970s tinsel, I suspect it to be a bit of a micro-plastics nightmare). Another knock-on positive of this apart from the Savings Pots themselves, is the decluttering aspect. I am well up for that too!
Look, I've yakked quite enough, shall doubtless be back to bore you with seed box & pantry sorting tomorrow!
Cheers,
F x

PennysIntoPounds

Ooh I do like a good bits and bobs tidy.

Great thinking on the gift bags. I nearly bought a reduced one in sainsers for 50p the other day then they took ages to work out why our transaction wasn't the right price and by the time they'd told us that item was no longer included in the deal I'd lost my patience and abandoned everything. This turned out to be a good move as I hadn't clocked that we still had a couple of Christmas presents of wine in gift bags, so they've been put aside and will cover all the wine based gifts we'll give next year 

Makingabobor2

I'm loving your Project Surbiton. Looking forward to seeing paper hats made from newspaper this coming Christmas.  

ladyholly

Makingabobor2 said:

I'm loving your Project Surbiton. Looking forward to seeing paper hats made from newspaper this coming Christmas.  

Doesn't everyone make their Christma hats from newspaper. Oh for the days of free ones.

Makingabobor2

ladyholly said:

Makingabobor2 said:

I'm loving your Project Surbiton. Looking forward to seeing paper hats made from newspaper this coming Christmas.  

Doesn't everyone make their Christma hats from newspaper. Oh for the days of free ones.

Don't remember the last time qe actually had paper hats...lol. I stopped buying Christmas crackers about 5 years ago

foxgloves

Crackers are so expensive for what they are, aren't they? I buy a box if we are hosting on Christmas Day (which is every 4 years) but not if it's just the two of us. My sister bought a cracker kit a few years ago so she could choose a tiny gift suitable for each person. Mine was the best, most useful cracker item ever....a little nutmeg grater which ia still going strong & lives in my jar of nutmegs.
In the spirit of us having done almost a whole year of Project Surbiton by then, I might make us a funny recycled cracker each, as we do usually watch the Christmas special & I know it'd raise a laugh from Mr F.
F x

Makingabobor2

Making your own crackers with a decent gift inside, is a good idea. I might think about trying it