Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - Mr F was also pleased to hear that I was proposing to set up a new car fund. It's such a big outlay, isn't it, that almost everyone just turns to using credit. We had both used car loans before (though not the current variety) as well as a bank loan which we added to our saved deposit & made sure that we made overpayments to get rid of it earlier (although that was post-LBM). When we bought our current car, it coincided with me having £6k of my inheritance from my parents left over from the house renovations so I did some number crunching on paper & worked out that we ought to be able to afford a replacement car after 6 or 7 years of using that as a basis, then paying £100 a month into a savings account plus factoring in what we would hope to get for our car part-ex. So far, I haven't missed a single month. That account also holds our Emergency Fund so when the annual interest land, I also add that to the Car Fund. I think it is possible to do this but it needs starting well in advance of intended purchase year. I prefer a situation where I hold the cards, as in there is a vehicle which we own & it is still worth money. I don't want to get into the grip of these monthly finance deals where really, one is only paying off the depreciation on the car, have large deposits & balloon payments at the end. I know these cars can be handed back, but then I have nothing & have to start again. So that's why we have a Car Fund & it is 3 years old as of this month if memory serves correctly. 
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams....OK, that's pushing it, it's sunny here atm, but the garden is still absolutely frozen & a bigger frost coming tonight according to the walking weather forecast that is Mr F!
Gently productive day so far:
*Tonight's meal is sorted as I made sufficient butternut curry yesterday to feed us for 2 nights, so just some bread & butter to cut.
*Wrote the grocery shopping list as Mr F still wants to carry on picking up the shopping on his way past the supermarket on his way home from work. It does free up more time for other things on his alternate Fridays off & weekends too, when we don't need to fit in the main food shop as well. He says the weekly money-off vouchers have landed & most of them are for stuff on our list. He is hoping to get a free coffee but the machine has been broken on our last 2 visits, much to his disappointment.
*Also wrote list for town tomorrow & our postponed city centre trip which we bumped to this Saturday. 
*Sorted & did a quick audit of my toiletries stash. Made a list of items on which I'd like to stock up if I see some good offers tomorrow or Saturday. Noted the products I don't need, which when saving money is just as important.
*Finished the rest of the paperwork required for ID verification at the PO tomorrow.
*Wrapped 2 packages for posting at the same time. Used envelopes from my stash of recycled packaging, weighed & used stamps I already had at home.
*Did a couple of surveys. 
*Updated Spreadsheet 1 (Bills/DDs) as received Car Tax reminder & it has increased by £10. 
*Resurrected a warm pair of patterned tights which I had completely forgotten about & hadn't worn for 2 years. Absolutely nothing wrong with them & they go with 4 of my dresses, so this feels like a little Shop from Home win.
*Bake muffins to use up some odds & ends of fruit unearthed yesterday when I was sorting out the pantry. They can be dessert for tonight, I'll leave a few in a tin for the weekend & freeze the rest for any forthcoming chilly picnic scenarios - I should add that there is a photo somewhere of Mr F & I having a picnic in over 4 ins of snow & the flask is half buried! It was altogether less messy than an earlier winter picnic when in trying to manoeuvre the waterproof bag for life I was sitting on, the chicken & sweetcorn mayonnaise fell out of my cob & into my hiking boot! 
Why do I digress into this rubbish? 
Right, just finding a list I added to this morning to pop in my next post.
F x

foxgloves

OK, well now that I have had a chance to pack away all our Christmas stuff, including my bag of salvage, as well as make a start on other sorting & decluttering, I now have quite a list of things we won't need to purchase this year because they can easily be shopped from home:
*Christmas paper napkins (still have a pack left which I bulk bought for pence in a Wilko's new year sale ages ago)
*Raffia 'straw' for making up this year's hamper (there was some packed around a gift I received).
*Sock yarn for knitting 2025's Christmas present socks for both B-i-L's. 2 nice half-price self-patterning sock yarns in my stash already from the unexpected haul I got last year from local charity bookshop.
*Most of 2025's Christmas cards - only need an additional 12.
*Any new craft projects. I have plenty already & also received 2 for Christmas. 
*The vast majority of this year's seeds - only need to buy 4 packets.
*Whole candied peel for my 2025 Christmas cake. Had some left so froze it. 
*Ribbon for Christmas cake & door wreath. Have enough left & also salvaged the one from this time's cake as it came away perfectly clean & crisp. Also have 2 silver cake boards.
*Christmas gift tags (have a few of the Christmas tree ones left which I made last year & have turned our Christmas cards & various little bits of ribbon & gold thread into a heap of new ones.
*Christmas wrapping paper. I have some decent pieces which I salvaged & about half a roll left but I have 3 very large rolls of plain green, bright red & gold paper which is the stuff Mr F rescued from the skip pile at work. I tried wrapping a gift in it recently & it worked fine. I don't really have another use for it & it's far too good to waste so 2025's Christmas wrapping paper it is!
*Christmas gift bags. I have a few, but will use nicely covered boxes where there are quite a lot of presents to go to families.
*Washing-up scourers. Well, we will buy these when there's a need, but first, we are going to use up the remaining pile of loofah pieces which we used until Mr F went off them. Tbf, the biodegradeable washable scrubby cotton things we have been using do last a long time, but we bought the loofah pieces & so we are damn well using them up!
*Desk calendar - have adapted a free planner from a magazine as I really only use this for very dully specific budgeting-related dates.
*Next year's Christmas jigsaw. I realised I still have one I bought (during Lockdown, I think) which I have never so much as even tipped out of the box!! It looks tricky as every piece is the shape of a cat. THat's just been shopped from home for sure!
*Birthday card for Mr F! Because I had an idea for a homemade one which I know will amuse him. 
*Bathroom curtains - Have found it difficult to find exactly what I want so have assessed the situation again & decided a bloody good wash following a soak in some green bleach will do for this year.
*My next notebook (I always have a notebook on the go) - I came across a part-used one while decluttering so have ripped out the used pages & will use up the rest.
 The things on this list (apart from the candied peel, my notebook & jigsaw is all stuff which would come from the Savings Pots, so definitely very much in the spirit of Project Surbiton. I want these Pots looking sparklingly full by the end of this year, no excuses.
Right, time to find some lunch & doubtless be ambushed by Soot & Ash who will take the opportunity to try & score a 2nd lunch for themselves.
F x

Makingabobor2

You are just always so busy and so full of great ideas. I agree about having a note book on the go. I have found it very useful lately, as I always seem to forget something. So I make a note of things I need to tell DH about, books I have seen that I want to read, things I need to put onto my shopping lists, things I need to transfer onto calendar later, ideas I have.  So not so much a specific day to dayTo Do list, as I use my A5 size diary for that, but more a launching pad for my diary, calendar, spread sheets etc etc. I found some I had bought ages ago, so think I have enough for a few months at least. 

foxgloves

That's exactly how I use my notebook, @Makingabobor2.
F

Suffolk_lass

Makingabobor2 said:

You are just always so busy and so full of great ideas. I agree about having a note book on the go. I have found it very useful lately, as I always seem to forget something. So I make a note of things I need to tell DH about, books I have seen that I want to read, things I need to put onto my shopping lists, things I need to transfer onto calendar later, ideas I have.  So not so much a specific day to dayTo Do list, as I use my A5 size diary for that, but more a launching pad for my diary, calendar, spread sheets etc etc. I found some I had bought ages ago, so think I have enough for a few months at least. 

Me three. I love a good list. My problem was having more than one on the go last year (I had one for bees that may have been misplaced). What ensued was personal organisation carnage! Back to one notebook this year. I still have some of those little post-it style index strips that I can use to mark the page and go back to the last entry on a topic, so they can hopefully coexist in the same book

Debsnewbudget

@Suffolk_lass
if you leave 3 pages free at the start of each notebook for an index. You can then number each page and add anything significant to the index so you will know where is in the book. 

You can also buy page numbered notebooks with their own index pages already printed - but they are a bit pricier.

peacocking

I'm just throwing this out there 😁 We took out a huge loan for solar panels and storage batteries. We also bought electric cars. The money saved by the not buying petrol for two cars, using the sun to power the house and cars and being able to fill the batteries with cheap rate electric every night to use the next day during peak rate nullified the  loan so it cost us roughly nothing extra. When it's cleared we will be much better off long term. Lots of spreadsheets and sums involved.

I dont count our solar loan as a loan anymore - it costs equal to what we would pay without having it and will pay us in about 7 years x

Blackcats

I love using a notebook.  It channels my never quite grown out of girly swot happiness.  I have an A4 hole punched book and use this as my rough book (we always had a rough book at school for prepping and planning and a bit of doodling).  I then write things out in my best writing with coloured pens, underlining and all that jazz and then the sheet can go into the appropriate section of my folder which of course has an index and dividers 🙃. My children would insert an eye rolling emoji here as they think I'm completely crackers!

Sun_Addict

I have a lifelong obsession with notebooks and pens and despite having more than enough stationery at home I still get a thrill opening the stationery drawer at work and seeing all the nice new notepads 🤣 Not the pens though as they’re of the cheap and nasty variety 😆