Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

Cheery_Daff

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Kajikita - isn't Cheery counting backwards?  isn't it £77.09 remaining of the £350 budget (which is pretty darn spiffy, might i add), rather than £77.09 spent of a £350 budget?  I thought the figures were what was remaining in each pot.  Apologies if I have misunderstood and am misleading anyone.

signed a woman who has nothing left in her grocery pot..... Greying X

Yep, Cheery is indeed counting backwards Don't worry, we are not breatharians £77.09 remaining, of what is frankly a rather generous £350 budget, considering there are just two of us, and we don't eat meat, and one of us doesn't even eat fish So we've still nearly spent almost £300 on food, which isn't really that frugal...

So unfortunately I don't think it'll help to dial down the joint treats budget - we only have £14.90 left and we'll spend more than that on lunch today

I set these budgets looking at the average we've actually spent over the rest of this year (thanks YNAB ) £200 is at the low end of the range for the treats budget... Diesel is abut right at £300 - remember both cars have been off the road for at least a week this month, and we'd usually have at least one more trip to see Mr C Snr (a round trip of about 200 miles). 

So @ka@KajiKita I think you're right about sweeping the rest off to savings - that was indeed the point! 

I was thinking last night that I might sneak the mortgage OPs up a little again. I put the monthly amount up to £1070 (from £1051.57) but then had a payrise. Might slap an extra £10 onto the standing order, and sweep an additional £20 from the amount we've saved into an OP too, making it up to a round £1100 for the month. 

Slowly settling into a decision about pots and organising that we'll try for a month or two. Will do a bit of tweaking and discussing then report back. 

themadvix

Between 250 and 300 is about where we are for a comfortable (mostly) veggie food budget for 2, Cheery. Only able to tighten the belt quite so far recently because it’s been allotment producing time of year - and I’ve gone back to £250 for October. 

Also have £0 left this month GP - and a deficit if you consider we dipped into the ‘grocery savings’ pot, but a French hypermarket doesn’t come along every day (although apparently every month for us atm! 😳).

Cheery_Daff

Thanks @themadvix This has felt like a comfortable enough level for us. We can obviously spend more 😂 And could also spend less, but this still let's us have some of the more expensive things (halloumi!) rather than just lentils etc. 

Our food budget also includes booze, and household stuff (toiletries, cleaning stuff, batteries, lightbulbs etc) so I'm happy to leave it where it is. 

A very lazy morning here, watching videos about craft and gardening and doing my crochet 😊😊 I'm on the penultimate round now- half way round this one and then just the final flouncy one to go 😊😊😊 I MAY finish tonight, but I may not - there's probably 30 mins on this round, the final one will probably take longer, maybe 1.5 hours, and then a bit of darning in ends.... It might be tomorrow, but I'm SO CLOSE!

Quite annoyed that I have to stop to go out for lunch 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and I've been ignoring Prolific for the last couple of weeks after an initial flurry. Just checked and I'm at £44.78 for this month. Reckon I can get it up to £50 with a concerted effort over the next couple of days so that's what I'll do. Not right now though!

Baileys_Babe

Cheery_Daff said:

Anyway, a brief pots update before bed. Amounts remaining with 3 days of September left:

Food & household: £77.09/£350
Diesel & parking: £75.82/£300
Joint treats: £14.90/£200
My spends: £71.01/£150
Mr C spends: £120.35/£150

=£359.17/£1150

That's not too bad. Plans for the remaining days: 

Sunday - been invited out for pub lunch (so treats budget will definitely go over)
Monday - working at home, Mr C has an event in the evening, not sure if I'm going
Tues- in work, taking the car for MOT (not out of these pots though!)

Might need some more milk but we're fine for other food, i think. 

I think we've both enjoyed reigning it in a little. Got a few decisions to make:

* do we stick with this budget next month, or trim some of them a little?
* do we carry amounts over or reset?
* if we reset, where do the leftovers go?

And I want to make a decision about accounts and spending trackers too, but not tonight.

My twopence worth,

I would carry the remainder/deficit over because 
a) our spending greatly fluctuates - we are a household of 3 adults plus an adult size teenager (with a bigger appetite than an adult), all meat eaters, our average monthly grocery spends is £400, but this month we did a lot of restocking and have spent £750+, this doesn't bother me in the slightest as we had the money rolled over from previous months
b) without a specific reason ie window replacement fund, over paying the mortgage, going on holiday, what is the motivation not to spend all the budget?

You could also choose different options depending on the budget. 

My answer would be different if I/you were creating debt.

Cheery_Daff

Thanks @Baileys_Babe - a helpful perspective! Our incentive at the minute is feeling like we generally aren't saving as much as we'd like to, so it might help, once we've sorted our pots put properly, to have specific amounts to aim for. I probably wouldn't roll over the food budget (because we don't generally do massive spending on that) but I might be tempted to roll over joint treats (fat chance!) Or individual treats (to save for slightly bigger things, eg some kind of craft course or whatever).

Sunday lunch was just over £41 for the pair of us. We'd been to that pub before and they did a lovely veggie roast dinner, but it's clearly changed hands, they didn't even mention the veggie option on the menu, the guy didn't know what it was, went off to ask, came back and said 'we've got some veggie burgers' 🙄 Mr C wisely chose a chip butty instead, but I forged on, and was treated to a rather lacklustre Sunday roast, with 2 of those super cheap chopped-vpeas-and-carrots-squashed-together-and-loosely-coated-in-crumbs monstrosities 🙄 Obviously they still charged me £16 for my plate of veg with veg 🙄 They also couldn't handle each couple paying for their own portion of the bill 🙄 Probably won't bother again!

PennysIntoPounds

What a disappointing experience, if you can be bothered I'd put your experience on their website/Trust Pilot/Trip Advisor as us fellow veggies really appreciate knowing that sort of thing!

themadvix

That sounds like a very disappointing lunch Cheery 😏 How annoying!
With our food budget, I tend to scoop most off to savings, but I do have a small grocery savings pot that tends to have about £50 in it - for months where we’re entertaining (especially summer bbqs) or trips to French hypermarkets 🤪. I wouldn’t want to roll it over, but this just adds a bit of flex for the odd more expensive month.

Greying_Pilgrim

Oh how tiresome Cheery. I mean, if we were in the 1970's, I'd say "Yeah, you did well to get those 'delicious' chopped vegetable patties", that are more often than not, swimming in grease.  However, it's 2025, the world has moved on.  Presumably you'd have been doubly stuffed if you were a vegan?  <shakes head at hospitality sector intransigence>.... 😉

And heck, at those prices, couldn't the management have invested in a calculator to assist splitting the bill..... 

Greying X

beanielou

What a poor experience food wise. Imagine not being able to split the bill between 2 couples, poor.