Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers,
Useful morning, although I am not intending to any further jobs today, except for my share in cooking dinner. Budget-friendly bits as follows:
*A no-spend day. 
*Have got the laundry underway because I shall be taking advantage of having the wheels tomorrow & will be going out instead of doing usual Monday chores.
*Write a list of everything I could usefully get done in town.
*Added a few more bits to charity bag as I can drop that off while I am in town tomorrow. 
*Mr F has defrosted both the main & small freezer. All my little pots & tubs of foodie bits & bobs have been put in a plastic tray so I can find them more easily. As I cook pretty much everything from scratch & aim to be a zero-food waste household, I'm always saving bits & bobs into little pots for the freezer, so I think it will be useful to keep them all together.
*Decluttered the settle. Removed some items for recycling & others pressed into use. For example, there were 3 pretty ornamental glass bottles in there doing precisely nothing. Meanwhile, I'm using bog-standard jam jars & sauce bottles for rooting cuttings. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but makes sense to use the attractive bottles as they are out on the conservatory windowsill. The no-longer-required re-purposed ones have gone in the glass wheelie. Also took the opportunity to put all the tea-light/candle holders with the solar/wind-up lantern so that they're all in the same place for power-cut purposes. 
*Did a survey & cashed out of Ips*s for £10 which will go into the Savings Pots.
*Printed off a perfectly good copy of the index I typed yesterday for my new handwritten recipe book...despite the fact that the printer has been telling me that our cartridge is 'very low on ink' for weeks. Glad I didn't change it when the message first appeared.
*We are sharing cooking duties tonight. I'm going to make a fish pie base, using all the trimmings & smaller fillets I saved when dividing up the contents of our last fish box, & I am going to make sure there is sufficient to feed us tomorrow as well. Mr F has volunteered to do the mashed potato topping & the accompanying veg. 
Right, time to get on with my reading pile - today's paper plus current library book. Cats scrapping on the landing - although Ash has been out for a walk, they are pretty much on wet playtime today as the rain has set in & is forecast until the early hours now. Tempers frayed when cat lunch was not served up at 10.20am, which it never EVER is, there had to be zoomies, Ash had to go on all the scratchers, including the one Soot happened to be sitting on, then things got feisty. Hopefully they will have calmed down by now & be wanting to sit on a lap so they can 'help' with the crossword.
Take care, m'dears & stay dry! I have put 2 umbrellas in the charity bag so they should sell those this week, I should think!
F x

foxgloves

Oh, & I forgot to add that I think the theme of the week ahead here at Foxgloves Manor will be "Free Plants Week".
F x

KajiKita

foxgloves said:

Oh, & I forgot to add that I think the theme of the week ahead here at Foxgloves Manor will be "Free Plants Week".
F x

I look forward to hearing more about this, this week … 😊🌱

KK

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
A slow start, as wasn't feeling great first thing, but it actually developed into a decent day. No need for a home care hour today as I did one yesterday instead, when I cleared out & cleaned the settle. Today's money saving efforts as follows:
*Moved everything around the heated airer to improved drying. Considered pegging the larger things out. So glad I didn't, as despite it being a lovely sunny afternoon now, the heavens opened earlier & we had a downpour which would have rendered my nearly-dry laundry back to square one.
*Baked a batch of bread rolls.
*Made up a porridge pot for tomorrow's packed breakfast.
*Did my regular Monday morning budget updates. February's grocery budget came in at £8-67 underspent so I added that to the mystery £6-75 in the general budget, topped it up to £18 with a very small amount from the buffer zone, & that paid for a present I bought last week without dipping into the Presents Pot. I love an underspend & deciding what to use it for.
*Updated my energy costs log-sheet with the latest bill from the Cephalopods. Checked their recommended monthly amount & it has increased to £129-19. We are currently paying £130-00. We are still in credit, but the next bill will wipe that out. I am going to do some number-crunching at some point over the next couple of weeks to see how much we would need to pay per month to build what I consider to be an optimum credit balance. I like to go into the Winter with a decent amount of credit, without tipping over into the company sitting on too much of our money. Will do some work on it.
*Did 2 surveys. 
*Sowed aubergines, peppers & more chillies (the latter being a single variety to replace the similar ones which failed to germinate).
*Free plants - When I mentioned yesterday that this week's theme looks likely to be free plants, it was because pretty much everywhere I look at the moment, there seem to be opportunities for freebies! Today's free plants are 2 penstemon cuttings from a beautiful plum-coloured one I was gifted last year. I rooted them in a bottle of water over Winter in the conservatory so today they've been potted up & moved to the greenhouse. Also 4 geraniums. These were cuttings which my friend started off for me in the Autumn & I've grown them on. They are now getting to a good size so I have potted them up properly & brought them back into the conservatory until the warmer months when they will be planted in outdoor containers with the others.
And I haven't even done my usual garden freebie plant-hunt yet!
Well, I had better sign off & go downstairs. Mr F has just returned from a work meeting & I can tell that he has been ambushed by Soot & Ash who are telling him, even as I type, that they have not had their afternoon treats. They are being fibby Mcfibfaces & I need to make sure they don't secure a 2nd helping, the greedy little chancers.
Hope you all got to see at least a little sunshine today.
F x

KajiKita

I love penstemons … 🤩❤️ I have one growing like a triffid right next to my front door 😊

What do you consider an optimum credit balance to go into winter for energy bills? I am pondering similar things here …

KK

Suffolk_lass

Yes, flattening the payments is the way I do it with the electricity bill. The amount would shock most of you. It is because the electric aga is just on in the winter and costs a fortune. Doors are opened upstairs so the rising heat is used to essentially heat the rest of the house apart from the sitting room. No gas, and apparently our oil consumption is much lower than everyone else's, locally. It is only hot water and heating. I also use a 19k bottle of propane in the summer on just a two burner domino hob, a bit less than a canister a year. In a well insulated 17th century cottage, we are probably over warm

Spendywendywoo

@foxgloves, I hope you are feeling better today. Great news re the overspend, and thanks for the laugh (Fibby McFibfaces  , we have a canine version here so can relate). 

I see mention of surveys quite a lot, is there any information I can access on here, or otherwise which will provide a breakdown of what they are, which are best use of time and how they work, please? Anything that keeps me off social media and is earning me money is a bonus

Blackcats

I've just caught up after a few days and the thought of Ash pole dancing and Soot looking helpless up the tree are making me smile.  Cats are so funny although my mum used to insist that you should never let a cat see you laughing at it as that would offend their dignity.

like you our 🐙 credit balance is diminishing as the winter edges into spring.  I feel reassured having a credit balance to help over the colder months.  I did take back £150 in January so I'm happy to still have any £'s left.  I think I will pay approx £25 a month more than recommended from March to September which should give a winter 2025 buffer.

foxgloves

Thanks for all your comments & contributions.
@KajiKita - Yes, I think penstemons are good 'doers'. They seem to flower right through to the first frosts & they're not difficult to propagate from cuttings whether done in compost or water. I've also managed to layer one, when I wanted a bigger clump, simply by taking a long shoot which was growing horizontally & pegging it into the soil at a leaf node where it rooted pretty easily.  Re energy bill thinking - having had a natter with Mr F over this, I am thinking very much along the same lines as Blackcats. (Comment to follow).

@Suffolk_lass - I now have historic country cottage envy! I would dearly love to live in a period property, though I'm sure I wouldn't be as keen on complex maintenance issues. I'm sure there are people on here who probably think I live in a lovely old pile, because I often mention tying bundles of herbs & hanging them to dry from our kitchen beam, but I should clarify that while this may LOOK like a big old interesting beam, it is in fact a support-joist from when a previous owner decided to knock out a major supporting wall & our house dates back only to 1936!

@Spendywendywoo - Thanks, yes. I have an IBD which I thought was planning to flare up yesterday, but it was a false alarm, thank goodness. I thought I'd answered your query about surveys, so apologies if I didn't. I just signed up to 3 or 4 sites which I'd seen mentioned on here. Prolific Academic has been the best payer, & I like that the surveys often require more input than just clicking boxes & cover a very wide range of subjects. I like to think I am assisting people with their academic research too. I also do Ipsos-i-say, YouGov & Taste Nation. There may be a general list of survey sites somewhere on the wider MSE website, perhaps under something like side hustles, Idk. I started doing online surveys back when we were working on getting our debts paid off & since then, participation has allowed us to pay extra money into our Personal Spends, Savings Pots, whatever we decide at the time. It is a good way of boosting funds while sitting with a coffee at one's own desk.

@Blackcats - Soot & Ash are certainly entertaining! Yes, re energy bills, I think it sounds as though you & I are on the same page of the hymn book. In 2022 & 2023, we entered the Winter months with about £600 credit on our account. The first year, this felt like a lot & I wondered if I should request a rebate, but I left it to see what things looked like by the end of March. I did the same the following year & in both cases, we ended the financial year with £200 credit left. This meant that between April & the end of September, we were able to build up the same amount of credit (about £600) again. 2024 was different, however, because the Cephalopods reduced our monthly DD by £41, I'm sure because they thought we were accumulating a lot of credit. I was pleased to see such a big reduction but as prices rose, we entered October with about £400 credit & we will definitely have burned through all of it by the time our next bill lands next month. I have been monitoring our projected use & recommended monthly DD amount on their online tool thingy & raising our payments just enough to keep slightly ahead of it. i.e We currently pay £130 pm & they have pegged their current recommendation at £129-19. So my intention is to increase our DD to £150 from April to September, monitoring it as we go, then see what our balance is looking like as we head into October. I liked having the extra £200 credit balance, the security of which we did have when we entered Oct with +£600, as I knew it was there if we had a cold-spell or world events meant greater instability in energy prices. Yep, that's confirmed it, I will up our DD to £150 & assess the lay of the land at summer's end.
F 

Spendywendywoo

@foxgloves, ah glad it was a false alarm and you're feeling better. Apologies, I think you may have explained about the surveys, my memory is failing me atm... I am sorry

I'll look into PA, thank you. Sounds like you're really utilising them in the best way which is my aim too x