Put away your purse & become debt-averse
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Ooo New Diary!
Sounds right up my street too, have subscribed!Emergency Savings #73 = £1,500/£2,000
Savings Pot £1,440.00
Xmas 2018=£100/£300 Australia =£0.00/60001 -
Hi Debtbusters,
Thanks for a lovely welcome! Well, I'm still feeling very re-focussed & up & at it today, so decided to investigate the pantry. It's kind of an old one (1930s house) under the stairs, so I needed my little plastic step for short people & a torch. As I was also wearing 3 layers of clothing, including huge hand knitted jumper (because our house is cold & I'm a tightwad with the heating), I must have looked like I was auditioning for a lesser Scandi-crime mini-series! 'Death among the tinned tomatoes' maybe, or 'Some of my beans are missing'........
Joking apart, there was a small mystery - a tin of okra - 18 months past its 'best before' date. A double-mystery in fact, because firstly, 'use by' dates don't get past me, & second (weirder) I don't buy okra, ever. And if I did need some for a recipe (which I never have), I'd buy fresh, not tinned. I've no aversion to eating out of date food within reason, as long as it looks & smells ok. Opened it & prodded the contents with cat's serving spoon, found the inside of the tin had degraded quite a lot, with some not very appetizing black spots, so decided to bin it. Grrrr......I can't bear wasting food. Still no clue as to where it came from though. A free delivery from a little pantry gnome!
Other findings - a barely touched packet of the tiny pasta shapes which get added to soups. I've put those where I can see them & will make sure I make a big pan of chunky tomatoey soup at some point soon. Oh, & a bag of cornmeal which I bought for making a tamale pie. We really enjoyed eating that & I intended to make another one, but I forgot about it & so that's another thing which can be brought out & used up. Most of the big stashes in there were home made preserves. I do a lot of home made chutney, marmalade, pickles, jams, sauces, that kind of thing. Found an elderly jar of piccalilli which needs eating as it was made a year before the other stuff. Also found a big stash of pickled courgettes which I made last summer when we had a glut of them in our veggie garden. They're yum, but were right at the back of our cave-like pantry & I think we'd both forgotten about them. They are fab with things like pulled pork, so as soon as I jumped off my stool, I grabbed a pencil & started next week's meal plans (I have a monthly page for this in my bullet diary) with slow cooker spicy pulled pork for Saturday night, as I can get several nice meals from that & it freezes well. We like it in cobs with pickled courgettes, chunky home made coleslaw, etc. I'd got 'Make loaf' on my job list this morning, so thought I may as well double the ingredients & make some cobs for the freezer too, so I'll already have some ready for that pulled pork.
Felt motivated after pantry investigations, so decided to add to the arctic feel of today by extending forensic levels of analysis to the freezer. Made a new freezer list & found enough useful stuff in there (17 meals plus ingredients which would help make others) to get my meal plans finished. That pork shoulder is the only significant meal item we'll need to buy when we do our grocery shopping this weekend, as everything else will easily come from stores with the addition of a bit of fresh stuff. Also discovered what appeared to be the national collection of frozen rhubarb, so have stewed a big bag of that today, & it will help stretch our fresh fruit supplies, which are getting a bit low.
I always do meal plans & have written them everywhere.....in front of the TV, in bed, in coffee shops (often on their free napkins), in the car (only while as a passenger, I hasten to add!), in our tent.......but the best ones for money saving are always the ones which are written in the kitchen, allowing that little bit more time to assess what meals are potentially already in our own stores - it's that old thing of Shop from home first', I suppose. We've been doing really well at sticking to our grocery budget in recent months & I want to continue this, though of course we are all noticing the rise in food prices. I set our March budget yesterday, with all the different pots of money that entails. I've allowed £200 grocery budget for March. That is for food (there's me, a big hungry husband & large greedy cat), household cleaning stuff & basic toiletries. That's do-able The motivator at the moment is that if we go over budget, that reduces funds which could be added to our Loan Pay Down Fund, & that goes for all budget pots, of course, not just groceries. The sooner I can build this next instalment of £1000, the better.
It's been a snowmongous day here - stay warm all.
F x"For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)3 -
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Morning my little snowballs,
Ooooh, it's absolutely freezing out there! I was only out there about 15 mins feeding the birds, clearing the snowdrift from the back door & digging out a pathway from cat flap & I couldn't feel my hands when I got back in! Lovely to look at, but such a worry for those who need to travel.
Anyway, I thought I'd tell you about how our attitude to grocery shopping has really changed since pre-LBM days when we were naughty old spenders. Our finances were separate then, as we were both working. We would both kick in £40 cash each week for grocery shopping, giving us £80 in total. I did always write a shopping list, but not really one that was particularly based on what we needed & certainly I wouldn't have 'wasted time' checking supplies at home. So, we'd usually go to Waitrose & enjoy waving our trolley around, then when we got to the till (remember I'd got the £80 cash ready), the shopping would often come in at £90, £100 or quite frequently £120, so I would pay using visa debit & the 'grocery cash' would be used for something else. I didn't do a budget at all, for anything, not just groceries, so really, it was a bit of a free-for-all. I'd estimate that back then we'd have spent between £320 & £460 a month on groceries just for the two of us (plus cat) & I freely admit that this sum did not include top-up shops mid-week, buying lunches on work days, at least a weekly take-away & frequent coffee shop visits.
Before learning to budget properly, we did make a couple of worthwhile changes. Firstly, I worked out that we were spending around £2000 a year on buying work lunches, simply because we'd got into the habit. I decided from then on that I would make us both a packed lunch & even though we hadn't experienced our full LBM then, we did always stick to that.
The next thing kind of happened by chance. We were in town & noticed how lovely the fruit & veg looked on our local market. So we bought our week's supply then & there, which filled 3 big bags for life-size bags & were charged about £9. Amazing revelation! We'd got so much, we could barely carry it all. So that's something we always do if we can. Great for reducing plastic waste as well, as the stall holders will just pack everything straight into our shopping bags.
After the LBM - well, we do all the tried & tested stuff that's recommended on these boards, really. We changed our main shop to A*di & use Waitrose for the items we can't get there, we use own label products instead of paying for over-hyped brands (there are 2 or 3 I still insist on!) & we shop around if the best deals are elsewhere. For example for ages now, the best price on boxes of our cat's fave food has been at W*lko's & our local Co-op often has cracking prices on their coffee. We also have 6 fresh fish boxes delivered a year, from a wholesaler in Grimsby, as find it suits us better to order by weight then cut up the fish into the sizes/type of pieces we choose.
But helpful as these changes have been......nothing, but NOTHING saves us as much money as regular weekly meal planning. I now find myself unable to write a shopping list if I haven't done a meal plan first. I use my meal plan to inform what goes on my shopping list & check all the ingredients to prevent over-buying. I shop from home first, looking to see what meals or potential meals are already in my cupboards & freezer. Cooking from scratch wasn't a change we had to make, as we always did that anyway.
There isn't a magic bullet here......just a long-term sensible strategy, but everyone could make just one change today, even if, like me, it's just deciding that such a high spend per year on bought sandwiches has got to go.
But from people who regularly spent the high amount I've talked about.....I now set a budget of £50 per week, more at Christmas & on rare months where we are expecting family to stay, but even with prices rising, we are (at the moment) finding that this amount is fine. We would both describe ourselves as 'foodies', we love cooking & I will freely admit we can be a pair of proper greedy nackers!
I don't miss those huge 'shops' at all. Actually, I feel ashamed of what we used to spend on food & think how much of that money we could have saved, but none of us can turn the clock back & we did at least respond well to that major LBM & change our ways.
Has anyone else got a bit obsessive about meal planning? What else could I be doing? I love sharing ideas.
F x"For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)5 -
I'm really, really rubbish at meal planning so no tips from me. Any chance of sharing the fish wholesaler details?My mortgage free diary: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6498069/whoops-here-comes-the-cheese1
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Hi redofromstart,
Yes, the company is called DD Fish & they are up in Grimsby. I don't know if they deliver UK-wide though. We live a fair way from Grimsby but we're on that side of the country.
I wonder why you don't get on with meal planning? Do you think it's that thing where we can find our minds go blank when confronted with an empty sheet of paper? I usually start with Sunday dinner, as I know if I write 'Roast chicken' against Sunday, I will have enough leftovers for another 2 days, so that would fill in Monday 'Fajhitas' & maybe Tuesday 'Chicken & mushroom supreme'. We'd have fish from our bulk order on one day, so that only leaves 3 days & I would shop from the freezer for those, or make a big inexpensive veggie recipe. I aim to use my slow cooker at least once a week too, as it's so useful for cheap, warming meals.
The only time I find it more difficult is if I've left it till the last minute & have to rush."For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)3 -
I manage to meal plan some of the time, but what usually happens is that we decide on a meal that will keep/freeze well and we won't get bored of for 2-3 days in a row! I can easily get 8 individual-sized Italian thin crust pizzas out of a bag of 00 flour, and use little bits of strong-flavoured toppings and a rich sauce (so you don't need as much per pizza), and one of hubby's home-made chillis in a giant pan can last us three days as well. I went through a period where I would just shop in M&S on the way home from work for that night's dinner; I dread to think how much it ended up costing me! :eek: Ridiculous really because we both love cooking.Debt-free August 21, Mortgage-neutral April 240
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Hi One-step-at-a-time,
You're right, home made pizzas cost very little & you can do all sorts of lovely tasty toppings. One of my current favourites is a bit of onion & red pepper & tomato as usual, a sliced jalapeno (loads of chillies in the freezer atm, as I like growing them), then a layer of chopped leftover cooked chicken which has been dusted with fajhita spice. Cheese on top as usual & it's quite a good 'fakeaway' for anyone who likes Mexican-style flavours. Agree about chilli too. I'm happy to eat that 2 nights in a row.....with rice one night, then with home made jacket wedges the next night. Could eat some now!!"For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)1 -
P.S. I know what you mean about M&S food spends. I sometimes can't believe I am the same person where money is concerned. My attitude has changed so much, but I am a lot happier with my much more frugal lifestyle."For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)1
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Foxgloves - Your larder and freezer sound like mine - full to bursting!!! I try to meal plan but don't always succeed. OH can't resist a bargain and buys YS whenever he sees it. However, I am managing to restrain him to buying things that we actually use now. We do have jars and jars of pickles and sauces which he bought before I managed to get him under some kind of control.
My son bought me a slow cooker a few months ago. Would you recommend using one. I make lots of soups and bolognese and thought it might be nore cost effective.Have adventures. laugh a lot and always be kind.2
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