Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Sun_Addict

Your savings pass books reminded me of the savings stamps I used to buy from the Post Office as a youngster. I used to love filling those books with stamps. It’s the visual aspect of it. 

I’m sorry you had to cancel your visit to friends but if you’re not feeling at your best you wouldn’t enjoy it. I hope you’re managing to get a decent night’s sleep tonight and wake up refreshed tomorrow. 

Another one here joining in waving a large brolly outside incompetent council offices 😞

Humdinger1

Dearest @foxgloves, every time I see a pink primrose, I will consider it a present from you! What about other colours; other plants even? Would we all like to be associated with a particular colour/plant? Love Humdinger xx 

Moorviews

Your mum’s pink primroses sound a delightful reminder of her. Primroses are very generous plants in the way that they clump up, are happily divided and spread by seed. I am trying to get my wild ones distributed all around the garden and occasionally there are some pale pink ones that crop up too. 

When I was in primary school, I think it was the TSB that came in to bank our sixpences and shillings and enter it into our savings books. Such a good idea to instil that principle of saving in us. The advent of credit cards did for me later though, when credit and borrowing became not only normalised but actively advocated as a positive thing. I remember when in the 1980s, direct unsolicited mailing became permitted by the government and suddenly we were all being targeted with credit offers galore and persuaded into endowment mortgages. It was like the opening of Pandora’s Box from the point of view of getting the nation into debt. 

I hope you are feeling better today and had improved sleep. I also woke up at 2:00am on Friday night but managed to get back to sleep around 5:30 until 8ish. It left me feeling out of sorts for the day. I am a bad sleeper myself and weirdly feel worse if I get back to sleep late and then sleep beyond 7. It seems to be a curse of being older for many of us. 

DawnW

I once planted a pink primrose - nothing exciting, just one from a supermarket. It disappeared after just one year. However, since then, white / cream primroses with yellow centres have been springing up all over the place. I am assuming that the cheap pink one was a hybrid, self seeded and the colour didn't remain true. I now have lots of clumps of creamy coloured primroses with yellow centres

foxgloves

Thanks for all your comments.
@Sun_Addict - I used to like buying those stamps too. It was very satisfying seeing the pages fill.....before cashing them out to buy strawberry bonbons & that Frys chocolate cream bar which had all the different fruit flavoured segments in one bar.

@Humdinger1 - I do like pink, especially with shades of green, but purple is my favourite, as it was my Mum's. She was known among her church friends as 'the purple lady'.

@Moorviews - Yes, I remember school banking day circa 1974 when classmates used to queue at the teacher's desk to pay in their 10ps & get their little TSB cards stamped. I agree with you on coming of age at the beginning of the real hard-sell credit era. It did me no good whatsoever. I had a 24-year overdraft & a flexiloan. What a truly fabulous product that was.....for the bank!
Last couple of nights have been better sleep-wise, thanks. I too feel grotty if I sleep beyond 7am, but early morning is my favourite time of day so I'm happy to get up.

@DawnW - Yes, sounds like an unstable hybrid. I get the very occasional cross between a wild primrose & Mum's pink ones, usually manifesting as pale yellow with pink edges, but this is very rare & their bright pinkness is generally stable.
F

foxgloves

And Monday greetings to everyone else,
It's been on & off for sunshine here today, but no sign of any showers yet. I feel I've been quite productive - small budget-friendly efforts as follows:
*Not a no-spend day as I placed our order with the Grimsby fish folk but that will be included in next month's budget so isn't relevant to April's.
*Baked a wholemeal loaf.
*Did my Monday morning budget updates & am pleased to say that the spreadsheets (or rather MS) behaved. I wanted everything straight before Mid-Month Budget Check-In which I'm intending to do on Wednesday. Last week's grocery spend higher than I'd like, though Mr F assures me that he won't require extra Easter beer as he's "bought it already".
*Did 2 surveys
*Entered a prize draw.
*Watered greenhouse plantlets.
*Sowed courgettes, tromboncino & squash.
*Clipped a few twiggy bits from the garden &
decorated as our Easter 'tree'. I love pretty Easter decorations but couldn't fit any more on there so I clearly don't need to buy any more!
*Sorted clean laundry from the 3 loads I managed to line-dry yesterday. There was nothing which required ironing, so a bit of electricity saved there. 
*Today's home care task was vacuuming staircase & upstairs. 
*Zero-effort on the catering front as I'm intending to cook pasta with some of the tomato sauce I batch-cooked recently, topped with cheese. 
April is simply whizzing by, isn't it? It's always the same once January is finally over.
F x

Twolabsandacat

'It's always the same once January is finally over' - This is soooo true Foxgloves.  January feels like the month of 365 days and then the rest just whizz by!

weenancyinAmerica

I remember the 10 cent stamp in a book banking when I was in school in California. It was a part of my allowance for doing errands at home. Don't remember what I did with the money though. 

foxgloves

@weenancyinAmerica - I remember how we could boost our pocket money if we answered the door to let in Mum's music students when they knocked without moaning about it later. It was 1/2p a time! It was the 1970s when we still had 1/2p coins here in the UK. At first we (my younger sister & I) used to run for the door as Mum had multiple students, mostly in 30 min slots from straight from school to usually 8 or 9pm at night & on Saturday mornings. Then the novelty wore off & endlessly getting up & down seemed more effort than it was worth. Sometimes Mum forgot & opened the door herself or the next pupil turned up just as the previous one was leaving so we thought that was a bit of a rip-off, lol!
F

foxgloves

Afternoon Sunbeams.....though it took quite a while for the sun to decide to put in an effort today. Pleasant enough day. Mr F is on one of his occasional very late shifts which involve an afternoon start time, so we popped over to the village farm shop cafe for breakfast & took the Sunday crossword with us. Paid from our Personal Spends, so budget-neutral. Right......has there been any budget-friendly action today? Maybe a little.
*My CC statement landed in my inbox so I've printed it out ready to reconcile against receipts & payments tomorrow during my Mid-Month Budget Check-In. Brief glance didn't show any obvious nasty surprises.
*Did a few surveys. Cashed out a £5 JL voucher from Taste Nation. My stash of these is currently at £90 which is being treated as Tech Replacement Savings Pot money. As a new TV will doubtless become necessary before too much longer, I thought I'd get ahead by putting aside these vouchers which can be spent in store (often our preference with tech because of the longer guarantee period & ease of returns) or if an amazing tech offer turns up somewhere else, we can swap out the vouchers to the grocery budget & put in the equivalent cash iyswim.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Priced up the garden bench I have my eye on for our veg plot refurb which is currently underway. Comfortable to sit on, a decent price & this can be reduced by £30 by not buying the seat cushion which I didn't much like anyway so would be pleased not to have it. However, didn't buy straight away. The old 'us' would have paid up & got it into the car in the twinkling of an eye, but we felt we should measure the space first, & probably need to build the bigger of the raised beds first to make sure the bench will fit where it needs to go. Felt quite virtuous leaving it in the shop & walking away to be sensible! I don't want to miss out though, as this particular bench feels nice & sturdy & is around £100 less than I was expecting to pay. Think constructing the new raised beds (kit form) is Mr F's Easter job, so not long.
*Mr F's 3 x bargainaceous 1/2 price T-shirts arrived in the post. An indie business we have used for years is closing as the owners are retiring so we took advantage of the sale as their T-shirts are lovely as well as being a good fit for Mr F who is quite tall as well as being a chonk. 
*No housework of any kind today.....just because. But I got a good free bending & stretching session in the garden digging out bindweed. I shall be achey later, but I did take an almost savage satisfaction in unearthing whole juicy nodes of the wretched stuff & knocking back its predatory progress across a large garden border. Bindweed & hawkweed are on zero-tolerance status here this year. Meanwhile Mr F has had instructions to remove any bramble & white briony. Most other wild flowers are welcome at least somewhere in our garden, but I'm afraid these 4 just take the p*ss!
Right, time to think about my entertainment this evening as I am that rare thing tonight.....Queen Foxgloves of the Remote Control. I'm thinking of watching a charity bookshop DVD so it can be added to the WoB pile afterwards & maybe an episode of 'Grace'......or I may just decide to continue reading my book. Soot & Ash don't like it when Mr F is working this very late shift. They know things are 'off' when I feed them their dinner instead (Mr F usually does cat dinners) & after they've eaten it, they usually do zoomies until they get fed up (which isn't half as quickly as I do!). Soot will do lots of pacing around checking he isn't hiding somewhere & Ash will disappear off outside to wait for Mr F, popping back in now & again to check the sofa just in case he might have managed to sneak past unseen. I can but hope that at least one of them might settle down to watch a film with me, but can tell you now that their absolute highlight of tonight will be Mr F's very late return & serving up cat biscuit supper!
Right, off to close the greenhouse for the night.
Cheers m'dears,
F x