Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Wednesday Pence-Wranglers,

Finally got over to the car dealership in a neighbouring town where useful things happened, all of which have budget implications. We confirmed the model of car we intend to buy, found out lots of info -now in my notebook - such as price, when the current offer ends (March 31st), what 'optional extras' are included (so we can delete those in which we would find little benefit), etc, & had our current car valued. This came in a little lower than we were hoping but still a perfectly respectable amount. Nothing was signed. Oh no. We took away a full breakdown of costs & decamped for an inexpensive lunch where we did some numberwang. We will almost definitely place an order by the end of the week but need to give more thought to the 2 extras we are thinking of having. NOT having them would take £1000 off the price. More thought will go into this in the next couple of days. We can cover the price inc the extras as we have been saving up for the past 6 years so as to avoid using our general savings or taking out a car finance package but we need to decide if keeping £1000 is worth more to us than extras.

Did our weekly grocery shop - will need to pick up a couple of out of stock items over the weekend - but even with those, we should come in under budget. Used 2 money-off vouchers for a couple of items on our list.

Oh, & helped our budget by NOT spending £10-99 on the rather tempting budget journal/notebook I spotted alongside the magazines in Waitbl00m! My own system works perfectly well & I could see I'd need to tailor it significantly to fit the pre-printed pages. If I was just setting out in Budget Land, I'd probably have bought it but even then, it'd still be £10-99 that could have gone towards paying down debt, as we were initially doing. Back then, I'd maybe have found it a motivating purchase though, idk.

Checked veggie seedlings. Time for them to get their big girl pants on as will now be switching off the propagator during the day.

Am pondering another Thursday of doing random jobs tomorrow as found it useful last week. I'm thinking I could count them as I go along for motivation.

F x

PennysIntoPounds

Ooh I am gripped as to whether the extras outweigh the 1k in your pocket/emergency fund/Project Surbiton pot!

Sun_Addict

If you can manage perfectly well without the extras the £1k is better in your pocket.

I bought a journal from the same shop before Christmas. Not a budgeting one a reflections/goals type one. It’s a lovely book and just my type of thing but have I written in it yet, nope 😬

rtandon27

If the extras will make your car journey's more comfortable and you spend a lot of time in the car (lots of commuting) then definately go for them, but if the car will mostly sit in the driveway (as ours does) then a plain and basic model would get my vote!

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,

I can hardly hear myself think with the wind howling around the windows of Foxgloves HQ from where I'm chatting to you. What a grotty day. Cats think it's thoroughly rubbish & have opted for extra snoozing……& unlike me, they weren't wide awake from 3.15 a.m either, grrrr.

Thanks for your comments re the 'extras' on the new car. We reconvened for a chat about this over a coffee first thing & decided that of the 4 optional extras included in the price we were given, 2 were 'nice to have in theory' but unnecessary so we deducted the cost of both of those. The other two we discussed & have decided to pay for. One of these is front & rear dashcam which Mr F has been researching for a while & says that we would be unlikely to be able to get it retro-fitted at an equivalent price - a little of this cost should be recoverable through lower insurance, though will still be offset by this car, I imagine, being more expensive to insure. Anyway……onto today's budget-helping activity:

*Mr F placed the order for the car, paid the £99 deposit & as it won't be available for about 3 months, I started a folder of all the relevant information & financial workings-out including how much money will be left in our Car Fund once we've paid the balance. I pay into this fund every month on Big Budget Day & like to track how it is growing. It's a big outlay & I have said to Mr F as the Chief Budgeter in the relationship that we will be keeping it for at least 8 to 10 years. He does always look after our car very well though & agrees with me that we want to get our money's worth out of it.

*Contacted the builders who did most of our refurb work a few years ago & asked if they have any space in their schedule to come & sort out our problem bedroom wall. Obviously our Emergency Fund has taken a huge hit with the Roof Saga but I would rather get this (& another more routine repair) done than leave it to get worse. Knowledge is power in these things, is it not? Once we have the figures, we can press ahead with working them into the budget.

*Did a considerable amount of pension numberwang. Haven't had this year's statement yet (for my work pension) so worked on last years to give me a realistic if not quite up to date idea of figures. It is my intention to take my pension this year or next so I also calculated the effect of the actuarial % reductions for taking it 3 or 2 years early. I also investigated the '85 year rule' in case I am covered for this in terms of less of or no reduction being applied. I felt the rules did apply to me, but the website did (wisely!) say that it's complex & better to get in touch & enquire, I think rather than assume, then be disappointed. So I have emailed the relevant department to ask for information on this, as well as a forecast based on taking my pension either this August or next. Apparently the turn-around time on this is "up to 2 months" & they are "currently very busy", which reminded me of the issue I had with radio silence from HMRC a couple of years ago. Feel I've got the ball rolling anyway. My thinking is that I take my pension 4.5 years earlier than Mr F because he's younger than me, & as we currently live perfectly fine on his salary, I can be bunging my pension into savings in the interim. That's the theory, Will update you when I have any news on any of that.

*Did a few surveys. Not as many relevant PAs around this afternoon, but plenty of Ips*s, so I managed a nice boost to my points balance on those.

*Did a few minor budget updates. Mid-Month Budget Check-In is hoving into view (early next week) so I am keeping everything nice & straight. Back in the Spendaceous Era, the more I was spending, the more I had my head in the sand & fingers in my ears going 'La,la,la"……it's the exact oppositive now. We will have a lot of outlay this year, starting with the wretched roof - & I find that when there is a lot of money flowing outwards, even when all planned & saved for like the new car, I am more pernickety about having budgets & Savings Pots, etc, absolutely accurate & up-to-date. Mr F was delighted when I pinged him to say that I'd be covering our cafe lunch yesterday from March's 'petty cash/sundries' rather than from Personal Spends, which feels like a nice treat, but tbf, we did spend almost our whole time there with steam coming out of our phone calculators as we worked through all the ramifications of various car options. I'm calling that a working lunch!

I'd got various garden tasks planned for this afternoon but it's so squally it'd have to have been greenhouse or shed-based, so as tomorrow's forecast looks drier, I have deferred a really good planty session until then. Very little effort required for tonight's nosebag as am going to bake a couple of salmon fillets glazed with oyster sauce & serve them with Crank's macro-rice…..am going to try a leek in it instead of onion as my friend brought us some from her allotment on Tuesday. I might suggest heating up some of the home-bottled blackberry & pear compote for dessert.

Right, that's a lot of time today sitting at my desk. Time to get moving before I get too 'crone-ified'.

Don't get blown away! Hope the winds have dropped by tomorrow.

F x

rtandon27

It's windy where we are as well! Found our recently emptied recycling bin two houses down, having been moved the by a gust and then had to go outside again later in the morning to remove a stray plastic bag from our quince bush! While out there, I gathered up several armfuls of leaves which had been gathering by the car against our staircase wall. They were not there earlier in the week!

PennysIntoPounds

Definitely a working lunch. If anything, next time include a pint/glass of wine and make it an executive working lunch 😂

So windy here too. Hoping the couple of nice days we got were the typical false spring and real spring is on its way soon!

Very pleased for you that you've made the car decision and are happy with your choice, often the deliberating about these big things is much worse than the just getting and paying for. And since Mr F drives long distances in sometimes unpleasant conditions for work, those don't sound like excessive extras at all

Humdinger1

Dark and stormy night here too @foxgloves! As ever, you turn budgeting into an art form. I too often think back to times of ludicrous spendiness and wish I'd had my current mindset. Still, I do now and that's good. Love Humdinger xx

foxgloves

It sounds as though the squally weather has been countrywide then, doesn't it? It was just awful last night - wind howling, rain lashing at the bedroom window, yet somehow I managed to sleep better than the previous night. @rtandon27 - I noticed today that we've been quite lucky with leaves blowing around…..the wind seems to have huffed loads of them off one of the big flower borders to under a hedge, which is a far more welcome solution than me having to rake them up!

@PennysIntoPounds - Yes, Mr F has a 53-mile round trip drive at least 4 days a week for work - it was 5 until he requested compressed hours. We also live in an area which is extremely flood-prone, as is his place of work. We have gone for another 4-wheel drive car because a drive to work last year when there was really only one passable route left in & out of our town, even that was flooded at one point. He had no option but to drive through it as no other route home & he said he felt our current car's 4-wheel drive kick in, which he was sure helped the situation. We have never had dash-cam but he works in a dodgy area so decided he'd like it. Our experience the other year when someone drove into the back of our car also informed our decision. All of the repair work & cost of a hire car for us was paid from the other driver's insurance as he took full responsibility for the crash from Day 1. If he hadn't, then dash-cam evidence would have been very useful to us. Mind you, I personally think that one of the worst places for atrocious driving bar none is our local Waitbl00m carpark!

@Humdinger1 - Yes, there are some right ex-spendy madams on here & I think you & I definitely have to hold our hands up to being on that particular naughty list.

foxgloves

Dear Friday Frugalistas,

Still very blustery out there, but dry & fairly bright, so I did get some of my greenhouse tasks done. I don't need exciting days atm, I just need to catch up at a steady enjoyable pace. A few budget-friendly efforts, but nothing earth-shattering (is there ever?):

*Baked a wholemeal loaf as the bread in our tin didn't look like it would stand up to Mr F being at home for 2 days.

*Used some of the leftover pork I chunked up & froze to make a smoky chilli. I can't remember where the original recipe for this was, but it involved raw stewing pork, whereas my adapted version just needs about 225g leftover roast pork to feed 2 people generously. I like to add a tbsp of my blackberry vinegar too. Anyway, it's simmering away nicely in the slow cooker so nothing left for me to do except boil some rice later.

*Did a couple of minor budget updates & also wrote myself a note to remind me on next Big Budget Day that there is quite a lot of March's petrol expenditure on my CC instead of Mr F's where it would normally go. It doesn't matter in the scheme of things, but it occurred to me that I might think 'Whooo' when his CC bill appears & it is a really low one, forgetting that it will be low because petrol transactions have gone on mine. The reason for this is that Mr F's CC has suddenly stopped working in the payment machine at the cheapest petrol station in town, which is of course the one we use. No obvious reason for this intransigence as it apparently works perfectly fine everywhere else!

*Re-jigged our weekend plans so that we can do garden tasks tomorrow on the drier day, swapping our planned city centre trip to Sunday, when rain is less of an issue. This gives me more time to do a list of toiletries stock-up items.

*Did 3 surveys.

*Had a useful greenhouse session. Potted up aubergine seedlings, now under home made bottle cloches & on the windowsill of Foxgloves HQ. Then potted up 2 varieties of tomato seedlings - 'Roma' & 'Red Cherry'. Also under bottle cloches & on living room windowsill where they have usurped the chilli babies to the much-colder conservatory. They are still cloched so will also wrap them up tonight until temperatures warm up. The other 2 tomato varieties were sown a little later so will have a few extra days in the heated propagator. Sorted out which seeds to sow tomorrow morning. We are currently doing the Plastic Count Week, but two items which aren't getting counted as they are so far avoiding the waste stream are plastic bottles - instantly converted to home made bottle cloches & spread tubs, which barely have 2 seconds on the draining rack before I've chopped them into free plant labels! I get through so many at this time of year, but it's worth it as we love our organic homegrown produce & I batch cook so much stuff with it, as well as bottling tomatoes, pears & blackberries since @Suffolk_lass encouraged me to have a go at that.

*Oh, & we have saved 40 miles of petrol as Mr F has been told he needn't go back to the car dealership to sign the necessary paperwork as it can all be done online. With the upwards trajectory of fuel prices since the start of the latest illegal war, I was certainly pleased to hear that. Have been trying to research other commodities which are likely to increase in price because of the situation in the Middle East & it wasn't that clear a picture. It seems as though products in plastic bottles could well be affected as oil is a component of the plastic-making process, also foods which require fertilisers as it seems some of those components need to come through the blockaded strait. I wondered about things like nuts, dried fruits,etc, but there doesn't seem to be much clear info available as yet. Of course, there will doubtless be the usual price-gouging, as there always are in times of conflict……big corporations seeing an opportunity to sneak in extra price rises as they did during the recent pandemic. Ah well, we shall just have to hope that it doesn't last much longer or spread to other countries - so much destruction already, including children. The world seems such a volatile place atm. I was only saying to Mr F the other day that I think we could increase our food stores a little.

Well, it is cat treat time, so I had better go & distribute those or I shall be getting a very vocal indignant visit - then I shall get on with piano practice & a few chapters of my book.

Keep those pence in your purses, m'dears,

F x