Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,

Not a lot of activity going on here as persistent showers have thwarted our garden plans. I've been down to open the greenhouse & to check veg & plant newbies are ok & have taken all the overwintered pelargoniums outside to the courtyard. They can enjoy a big drink of rain & acclimatise themselves to being planted up in tubs & baskets fairly soon.

What else on the budget-helping front?

We did May's master meal plan & selected a week of meals from it to run from next Saturday.

Have prepped a crumble for tonight to use some of the blackberries & pears I bottled last Autumn. There'll be enough for tomorrow & Tuesday too if it is served up by me 😆!

Fed sourdough jar.

Gave laundered bed linen a stingy hour on the heated airer as the arrival of rain yesterday afternoon put a stop to a full line-dry, but that was all it needed so not much electricity used there at all.

Mr F is cooking tonight - Madhur Jaffrey's whole roast Indian-spiced chicken, which will provide the basis of the next two days' meals too. I'm going to read the Observer, try to progress the crossword & cast on my new knitting - I received some fab kid-silk yarn for my birthday. I finished my cable socks & now have a pair on the needles for 'TV knitting', so-called because I can knit that pattern in 3 different sizes from memory so I don't need to concentrate. The yarn for those is the last ball of self-patterning bargainaceousness I bought from a charity shop a couple of years ago.

But as rain has stopped play in the garden, that will be my lot for today.

Hope everyone's having a good weekend,

F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary Friends,

What a grey old day it is today - I don't think the sun has so much as put in a 2 minute appearance. Have been quite productive on the money saving front:

*Mixed up a sourdough.

*Divvied up yesterday's Indian spiced roast chicken - will be having some cold with jacket potato wedges & salad tonight & have put a container aside for tomorrow's meal too. Also added some to a box of leftover garlic rice & dhal for the freezer as that will do for a microwaveable meal next time Mr F has one of his occasional v long shifts. Last portion mixed with a bit of mayo to fill a roll for tomorrow's packed lunch. That was a medium chicken (yellow-stickered) so I'm pleased with 8 good portions from it.

*Leftover crumble for dessert.

*Planted out 2 dozen lettuce plugs (free seed).

*Potted peppers into their final containers.

*Dosed all the tomato plants with seaweed.

*Found some shuttle trays at the back of the shed for transporting my sister's plants. Had intended to visit garden centre to pick up some free ones so now I shan't be tempted to spend money while I'm there or slink into the cafe for a naughty cake.

*Planted my birthday dahlia tubers.

*Dug out more bindweed.…free bending & stretching session.....a thankless neverending task in one way, but also strangely satisfying yanking it out as it makes me feel the battle is winnable if I stick at it.

Apart from a nice hot bubble bath & hairwash to deal with vague aura of compostiness, I am not intending to do any more jobs today. Sofa, book & knitting beckoning.

Hope some nice BH activities have been enjoyed among our little community on here.

F x

MillQueen

Hello, your bank holiday sounds lovely. Really impressed with all your cooking and growing things.

foxgloves

Aww, thank-you, @MillQueen. I do love gardening & cooking. The silly thing is that I had those skills back in the Spendy Years but was so busy frittering money right, left & centre that I never used them to help me live within my means. I suppose the lightbulb pings on for different people at different times, doesn't it, & I was in my early 40s before mine flashed on....& thankfully stayed on!

F x

MillQueen

Well it sounds like it's worked well for you since. I too have had the lightbulb in my 40s. (I'm 42 now and it's just this year I have started becoming serious about getting myself into a good position financially).

I hope you had fun at least while you squandered 😂.

foxgloves

@MillQueen - Well I think it goes to show that it's never too late to change our money habits, doesn't it? I think I was 43, so you beat me to it by a year. My spending wasn't on foreign holidays, luxury goods, expensive restaurants or any of that kind of stuff. I simply spent more than I earned. I thought budgeting was for boring people & that I didn't earn enough to save. Of course the reality was that I could have saved a pretty decent amount had I not been so busy spending it! I never put anything aside for emergencies or even the obvious stuff I could see coming from miles away like car repair bills, a new washing machine or fridge, etc, Christmas..... My parents bailed me out a few times from university days onwards - I was so grateful at the time, but with hindsight, I think this contributed to a later-in-life LBM, than might have occurred had I been left to stew in a bigger financial mess entirely of my own making.

The lovely Mr F also brought a wodge of debt to the relationship & although his LBM was a little later than mine, he did jump on board when he saw how my debts were decreasing & we tackled it together. I'm glad we were able to do this as he hadn't been too keen at first, but he was really positive about it as we moved forward.

Did I have fun while I squandered? Maybe. I did love shopping & but I also remember the 2nd half of the month when I would still be overspending but would worry every time about my cards being blocked.....& getting the 'Insufficient Funds' message when visiting the cashpoint.

Good luck with your new money habits.

F x

MillQueen

I liked hearing your story of how you got here and your LBM. It's nice that you were able to bring Mr F along on the journey too ❤️. I came from a background where managing money (or having any money at all) was not the norm, so I had no idea until quite recently that I could have much control over my wealth.

foxgloves

@MillQueen - I think that our backgrounds around money management do have an effect on us. I grew up in a middle class household & although my parents didn't splash money around frivolously, I wasn't aware of any budgeting going on so I never saw those practical skills in action while I lived at home. My Mum would sometimes say she 'wasn't buying' something because they'd had 'a lot of expense' that month but that was pretty much the extent of it. Now my Nana had known hard times growing up & she was very thrifty to the extent that we'd pull her leg about it. She couldn't believe how I could go out & spend all my Christmas or birthday money in one go in my teens & 20s (she died when I was 30…….my spending carried on for over another decade). She used to say 'Foxgloves, you should spend half & save half because then you will still have some money put by in times when there isn't any to spend'. It was good solid advice which naturally I ignored, though I love it now. I suspect that it was Mum's frugal-through-necessity childhood which led to her not really engaging with more formal budgeting once she had her own household. Having said that, my parents never took on any debt apart from the mortgage for our family home (we'd lived in RAF quarters before that) & a couple of car loans as Dad's job involved a fair but of driving & they did regularly pay into savings accounts.

You are right that we can have more control over our financial situation than we often think we can. We just need to get our heads in the right space for tackling it.

F

foxgloves

Hello Tuesday Readers,

Well, back to a bit of normality today as Mr F returned to work & I took a long look at the job list I wrote for myself yesterday & decided it was totally unrealistic. That's why I prefer 'general shape of the week' task lists to daily ones as I get a bit giddy at the thought of everything I think I can potentially achieve in 24 hours! Nevertheless, it's been quite a productive day. I was down the veg plot pulling rhubarb by 8 a.m - love the early birdsong this time of year. Anyway, budget-friendly efforts as follows:

*2 loads of laundry done & pegged out for free drying. Took advantage of not having much in the laundry basket by washing a big crochet blanket ready for Autumn. That too is very nearly dry.

*Low-effort nosebag tonight - intending to stir-fry some of the leftover chicken with veg, cannellini beans & tandoori spices & serve it in pittas with some home-grown sprouting broccoli on the side. Last of the blackberry & pear crumble to finish up too.

*Baked the sourdough I made yesterday so that's us sorted for bread for the next few days….though truth be told, not necessarily as Mr F can be a bit of a bread hoover.

*Did deferred Monday morning budget updates. Not a lot to do - a Savings Pot transfer, an alteration to my Personal Spends spreadsheet to log that I have taken £50 of it as cash this month. Also credited my Personal Spends with my combined March & April PA surveys earnings & sent the £6 refund for the leaky cat food pouches to the Presents Pot.

*Did a few surveys - am over £11 already for May's PA earnings so I'll see how that goes.

*Wrote grocery shopping list which doesn't look too enormous. Week 1's groceries came in under target weekly spend, so hopefully this is the start of a good month. I started a 'Groceries underspend' pot earlier this year & it currently has £37 in it which we haven't yet touched. The idea (from Mr F) was that it can be used when we see a really good deal, or to boost grocery spends at Christmas or when we have guests staying or whatever but for the time being, we are just letting it build as & when we have a monthly underspend.

*Watered front courtyard plants using already paid-for bathwater.

*Made a double batch of rhubarb & date chutney which just needs labelling. Good use of rhubarb before it gets any more triffidy.

*Fed a big bowl of kitchen scraps to the worm composter - I still haven't taken the 2 trays of compost that are ready but it is on the list as we want them for enriching an as-yet unplanted raised vegetable bed.

And that's it for today. I do intend to re-start my birthday knitting as I frogged the couple of foundation rows I did yesterday as I had the wrong amount of stitches. The yarn (kid-silk) is gorgeous but it is like knitting with gossamer!

Hope everyone is having a decent start to the week. Only halfway tomorrow so plenty of time for things to improve if not.

F x

badmemory

Our childhood memories of finances definitely colours our own. I remember taking bottles back to the shop to get the money back on them because it was needed. Then there was my mother's love of expensive clothes.