Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Monday Money-Savers,
I'm trying to type this quickly as there are still a few things I need to do. So here are the money saving wins for today:
*No-Spend day. Didn't go out as intended as wasn't feeling well last night & this morning.
*2 loads of laundry done & pegged out in the chilly sunshine.
*Checked seedlings. Also stood October-sown sweet-peas out for hardening off. They will have a piece of fleece overnight for a few more days.
*Started off a new layer in the worm composter - shredded bank statements for bedding & plenty of scraps to tempt them into the top 2 layers so I can harvest the bottom tray of compost.
*Cleaned off more plant labels & took my bundle of recycled ones cut from spread tubs down to greenhouse as I have run out.
*Tidied up conservatory houseplants. Watered fed & took cuttings from 3 pelargoniums for some free plants.
*Fed sourdough jar ready for baking tomorrow.
*Did Monday morning budget updates - everything now straight ready for my Big Budget Day tomorrow.
*March's groceries came in at £31.39 under budget. I used £25-95 of that to pay for my sister's birthday present & sent the remaining £5.44 to Savings Pots for the Meow Fund.
*Did a few surveys. 
*Virtually no cooking required tonight as there was enough of yesterdays tagine to feed us two days plus some to freeze. Mr F says he's making some jacket wedges to go with it.
*Wrapped Easter goodies ready to post to nephews using packaging from my recycled stash.
Nice to see some sunshine this afternoon, but it is still chilly....the CH boiler has been coming on more than yesterday so we know it's a colder day.
Hope everyone's got off to a decent start to the week.
F x
P.S Oh, & it was Weigh-Day today. Exactly another 1kg off over the past week, making a total of 4.6kg since I started on 20th Feb. I'm pleased with that - I think the TRE element is kicking things up a notch, as that's a good loss for me.

themadvix

foxgloves said:

I think I have freezer-envy! We have just an under-counter standard size one with 3 deep drawers plus a small one above our fridge. And that's it, despite us growing quite a bit of fruit & veg.
F x

I'm the same - we just have an under the counter job (and only an under the counter fridge too). I thought I might need more when we got the allotment, but we've managed so far. And I intend to up the bottling this year, so less again for the freezer.

Sun_Addict

Well done on the weight loss and the food budget 👏 Hope you’re feeling better than you did this morning. 

foxgloves

Morning Campers,
Well, I've a few tasks to do first thing, including mixing up a sourdough & popping down to the greenhouse to uncover the veggie babies, then I shall be taking myself off to Foxgloves HQ for number crunching, as today is my Big Budget Day. I always tackle it in exactly the same way. I reconcile the previous month's budget by checking all the DDs/bills went out correctly & tick off all the receipts. Then I note down up to date figures .....account balance, how much left in our Personal Spends for carrying over, etc, before setting April's budget. It's quite time consuming, but it's a method which works for me & that's the main thing. I have 3 spreadsheets - 1. Household bills/DDs 2. Savings Pots 3. Personal Spends but that's the only electronic part of my system. Monthly budgets are written out in my trusty Money Book & updated/referred to frequently.
Anyway, that's enough writing about it....I need to get cracking.
Wishing everyone a decent day.
F x

Makingabobor2

Have a good day Foxgloves. I love doing the accounts and number crunching. Years ago I would have hated it, seeing all the CC's that needed paying & not having enough money. These days it is so much fun...lol  Will be even better in a few years when we have no debts left at all.  
Hope your numbers look good. x

Cottage_Economy

Suffolk_lass said:

It is why I processed 40 odd jars of passata last year. (It is a much more efficient way to preserve, BTW). However, I still have enough for this year but I know I will grow more, and need to freeze them, at least as a stepping stone before making more passata - so the freezer stays. 

How many tomato plants and what varieties did you grow to get that amount of jars? Do you grow in a polytunnel, greenhouse or out in the open?

Suffolk_lass

Cottage_Economy said:

Suffolk_lass said:

It is why I processed 40 odd jars of passata last year. (It is a much more efficient way to preserve, BTW). However, I still have enough for this year but I know I will grow more, and need to freeze them, at least as a stepping stone before making more passata - so the freezer stays. 

How many tomato plants and what varieties did you grow to get that amount of jars? Do you grow in a polytunnel, greenhouse or out in the open?

From memory I grew
Sungold F1 hybrid orange cherry, and
Black Opal (larger) purple cherry,
Costaluto Fiorentina (prone to blossom end rot)
St Pierre and
Cuor Di Bue (both of these are field grown in France and Italy) cooking tomatoes
Black Russian as a beefsteak slicing tomato.

I had 17 in the greenhouse (it is a 12x8') with all in pots, in trays that I filled daily, and mostly fed twice a week. And another 6 on the patio, against the house in the sunniest place. I had 40 large ziplock bags of cored and prepped (as in imperfections removed) in the freezer. I cooked the tomatoes in three batches exactly like the Nonna Gina (Here is the YT link if you want), except I blitzed mine in a liquidizer instead of sieving the skins and seeds out as we just use them in cooking and sometimes soups.
Sorry to hijack FG x

Cheery_Daff

Enjoy your big budget day! I love a bit of financial planning and budget reconciliation 😂

Elisheba

Its the day almost all my bills come out as well @foxgloves.  Lots of totting up to do tonight to sort it all out.  Generally I wait until after I have been paid for next month (last day of the month, except for weekends/bank holidays), and the two credit card payments are showing as paid before I confirm final figures though, so that'll likely be next Monday now.

foxgloves

@Suffolk_lass - Feel free! I only got my act together last summer to try a bit of tomato bottling because of your & Nonna Gina's encouragement! This year, I'm growing Roma, Oh happy day (blight resistant) & Alfresco (free trial pack of new variety from seed merchant).
@Cheery_Daff & @Makingabobor2 - Me too! So different from the Spendy Decades when I looked briefly at my bank statements through closed eyes before shoving them in a drawer!
@Sun_Addict - Thanks! The weight loss is certainly going in the right direction atm & Mr F doing well too.
@thermadvix - I haven't opened any of last summer's first bottling attempts yet, as still using up the tomatoes I zizzed up & froze, but if they have worked, I definitely intend to do more bottling this year.
F