Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Suffolk_lass

Best wishes from me too. I see we have both had parallel experiences once again (your bank scam vs my JLP-CC fraud, both picked up by the issuing authority) and both with sickness in the house (Soot and Mr Sl) - both greenhouses reaching the final set up for the year. I am curious about the giant squash leaves you have on the left of the picture - are these your grafted cucumbers or something else? If cucs, what variety?

As you may recall, I lost all the "mini crisp" cucs we were trying for the first time after Mr Sl assassinated them (and all the squash seeds that had germinated) - I have four mini-munch in their final pots now, with three chillies (one is Jalopeno, the other two are unknown, gifted spindly things that have started to grow now). I also have some veg seedlings to transplant (winter spinach is one) - I was hoping the garlic and 2nd early (charlotte) potatoes might be providing a bit more space for my squashes but the squashes are ready to go and the harvest is still a week away (although the rain has helped. I might go for it tomorrow. The leaves on the garlic are starting to yellow and there are flower buds forming on the potatoes. 

I do love a good gardening update!

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers,
Thanks so much for all your supportive comments. Mr F seems to feel reasonably ok about work tomorrow & Soot has been thundering up & down the garden this morning.....while Ash busied himself picking a quarrel with a small rock (!).
I did give a lot of detail re the scam because I agree that one of the ways to fight these clever, pernicious crooks is to share experiences, together with the resolution process, to spread awareness of what to look for. If I ever again encounter a transaction in which I exit the payment screen to discover another one 'underneath', I'll be on it like the proverbial bonnet.
@tiddles - There were defo scams around HMRC payments, so it might be a good idea to investigate.

Re the greenhouse pic, @Suffolk_lass, yes the big squash-type leaves you can see on the left are indeed 2 grafted cucumbers. I'm new to grafted plants because it is an expensive way of growing when I usually raise successful cukes from seed. This year though, they all decided to turn their toes up the same week & as I'd have had to buy more seed anyway, I decided just to give a couple of grafted plants a go. Priced at 2 for £12 so pricier than seed for sure. Have had 3 good size cukes from them so far. Mr F has priced up organic cukes in Waitbl00m so we can see if we get our money's worth. Variety is "Bella" which is an all-female one like "Carmen" & "Tiffany", all of which I've grown from seed in the past & they are juicy & non-bitter. I don't know much about grafting science but I think young 'Bella' vines are grafted onto some kind of vigorous squash rootstock.

Today's efforts:
*A no-spend day.
*Garden pickings: lettuce, rocket & baby carrots.
*Free exercise was doing a trot round the long way to the post box to ensure I got my target steps, gardening & de-gunking the pond.
*Kitchen garden progress: Mr F dug over the kale bed, planted & netted the cavolo nero, planted the final Guatemalan blue squash into position & watered. I divided the new large raised bed into sections with old CDs & planted beans & sowed more carrots & spring onions.
*Drained liquid from worm composter into a container for use & made up some seaweed solution for the squashes, which would like some warmer weather.
*Easy nosebag tonight as Mr F cooked the garlic chicken for tonight's salad while he already had the oven on for something else, so we'll only need to do a few potatoes. Think I mentioned we did meal plans yesterday up to the end of June as we want both to prioritise food we already have in & to free up some freezer space.
Nothing else needs doing today apart from putting a laundry load on later so I can be pegging it out first thing tomorrow while the next load is churning. So some reading time beckons......
Hope you are all managing a bit of leisure time today.
F xx

foxgloves

@PennysIntoPounds - Yes, nothing about Mr F's work issue has changed our future plans. We are not wealthy but have ensured we have sufficient funds & common sense in place to stand up to adversity. Thank goodness our ridiculous frittering stopped in time to get debts paid off & savings in place.

@Moorviews - Yes, I think working lives/workplaces have changed a lot even since I took VR from my public sector profession. So much de-professionalisation, cutting back on specialisms, etc, all to save money. The cuts to Local Authority budgets have left a hollowed out service provider needing to do more, but with 40 to 50% less funding. I don't have children but I do think about our lovely nephews & how much more difficult it will be for them to buy a home...or even rent somewhere decent. I may have mentioned this previously.....if all goes well, we intend to relocate to Suffolk when Mr F retires (not yet, as he's a few years younger than me). I've been keeping an eye on bungalow prices in the area we'd like to live. One of these was  modest 2-bedroom & affordable. I just happened to see the 'expected mortgage payments' provided for it. I was shocked to see that on an almost £30k deposit, mortgage payments were over £1100 per month!! Thankfully, we have a house to sell & will be cash buyers, but how on earth are young people on average earnings who will have been spending a high % of their income on renting manage that. I do feel so angry on their behalf.
F

ladyholly

1100pm is not unusual for a 2 bedroom rental in my area and this is not a high earning town. Some friends are being forced to move because they cannot afford the rent their landlord has recently raised. 

foxgloves

Well this was the quoted mortgage figure, @ladyholly, which is usually lower than rental, but that is high rent & leaves people very little or nothing to save.
F

scandimore

Just caught up with your diary, wishing you a more peaceful forthcoming week! 
Your greenhouse is looking lovely.

ladyholly

foxgloves said:

Well this was the quoted mortgage figure, @ladyholly, which is usually lower than rental, but that is high rent & leaves people very little or nothing to save.
F

I am not doubting your figures but it shows that people these days are left with very little money after they pay the essentials. My dd and sil are very fortunate with their rent for a small 2 bed house but my young dgd pays a fair bit more for her single bed flat in the same area of our town.  Rents have risen so much that many young people cant even afford to move out of home let alone buy somewhere. 

rtandon27

We rented for many years because it was much very much cheaper than a mortgage.  The only reason we bought the house we are in is because the landlord of the converted hop kiln we lived in tried to put the rent up to higher than a mortgage payment would cost us.  As a consequence of us leaving (long-term tenants), his place sat empty  and I hear it is now empty again as the tenants who had a one year contract have left.  Had he been less greedy, we'd have still been living there & he'd have had years of a steady income.  We on the other hand are currently still paying slightly less for our monthly mortgage than we did for rent 4 years ago.  I think rent vs owning is very much dependent on the area you live in.

foxgloves

@ladyholly - Yes I agree. I once looked up the monthly rental of our home  - not that we were thinking of renting it out, I was just curious - & was shocked to see that it was nearly £300 more per month than we were paying for our mortgage. It does make it very hard for people to save. It makes me angry that so many of the council houses which were sold off under 'right to buy' are now in the hands of private landlords with much higher rents than they would have carried while under local authority ownership.

@rtandon27 - There used to be a Rent Council in the UK - abolished many years ago as it was far too fair & sensible! Before I bought my first house, I rented privately - quite a nice flat, but nothing special. Decent rent, but then I suddenly received a letter informing me that it would be increasing by 33% because it had 'fallen well below market value". I remember I wrote to the landlord (who also owned a city estate agency) & said that I would not be receiving a pay-rise of 33% so unless he implemented the rent increase more gradually over the next 3 years instead of all at once, I would be contacting the Rent Council. I also pointed out that it was his, not my fault if the rents had fallen below the market value. Surprisingly, my proposal to pay gradual increases was accepted, although I didn't get anywhere even close to the 33% because I had my offer on a little house was accepted & I moved out. The problem now is that landlords can charge what they like, even for complete sh*tholes which don't meet decent standards for habitation. The housing situation in this country really does wind me up.
F

foxgloves

Anyway, onto today's budget-helping efforts......
*Baked a wholemeal loaf. 
*Did my regular Monday morning budget updates. Groceries, Personal Spends & the vet bill money to transfer from the Meow Pot.
*Easy meal tonight - shall be baking some salmon & serving with veggie couscous. 
*Pulled another small bundle of baby carrots.
*Did 4 loads of laundry - all pegged out for free drying. Could do with a bit more sun for the bath towels but at least they are getting a blow.
*Did a couple of surveys - am on a longer study atm so the modest daily payments for this are mounting up & with a couple of bonus payments too, I should achieve a decent cash-out at the end of the month,
*Entered a competition.
This afternoon, I intend to:
*Start off a new layer in the worm composter. I want to entice them all upwards to yummy banana skins, cabbage & coffee grounds so that I can more easily remove the lowest compost tray which is ready for use.
*Free bending & stretching session weeding then planting out more cosmos.
*Ditto a planned replant of an area under the hedge which doesn't thrive, but could do, if I had a more suitable plant there. This won't involve a purchase, as I have earmarked something I already have for dividing up & moving.
*Home pedicure & new summer toenails. Love painted toes with sandals.
That will be it for jobs, though tbf, I don't know how long the garden stuff will take, as even after the rain, the earth is still quite hard for digging/planting. Leftover time will be spend finishing the Observer, having a crack at getting a couple more clues n the Guardian Saturday crossword (am braving the full-fat one these days!) & trying to finish my book. If my daily steps look like they might be hovering around the cusp of being sedentary, I will trot down to the post box with my friend's birthday card & run the vacuum around downstairs.
And into another week we go!
F
P.S You might like to know that a certain black-furred gentleman who was poorly, very much off his food & needed the vet last week stole Ash's dinner last night & gobbled it all, in addition to his own. Ash's dinner was covered with a large bowl, but Soot has learned to remove this, then reward himself for his dexterity.