It all adds up…

Windows - Manchester

 Trying to refocus on the finances this month has looked a bit like this…

- Opting to terminate a regular saver account a month early in order to re-open the same issue of the account right at the end of its release- this means losing a months interest on the one as closed, but then keeping the 7.5% rate on the reopened one for the 6 months of it’s term AND being able to open the new issue account once that was released.

- Remembering that I was due a £25 Amazon voucher from a bank account switch I did at the end of last year, tracking down the email and claiming it while I remembered!

- Doing the quarterly review of our savings so we can keep track of where we are in relation to our savings goals - we’re fortunate to be able to save and so try to ensure that those savings work hard for us.

- Emailing to cancel a magazine subscription I took a trial on - 5 issues for £5 was a good deal, the main subscription is more than I’m willing to pay though. 

- Renewing my car tax as soon as the reminder came through - my car now costs me £20 a year in tax, but forgetting to renew could work out a lot more expensive! I write a quick note on the reminder confirming when I renewed too in case I need to check it later.

- Remembering to check my loyalty apps for shopping coupons and offers - the 20p off milk at the co-op is always useful, I made use of reduced prices for a couple of bits in Lidl and will claim a free vegetable item next week. I don't generally specifically plan my shopping around making use of offers, but once I know what I need, I will look to see if there are offers I can use.

- Ensuring I have a reminder set for cancelling a free trial of Apple TV before I get charged for it. We’ve had a 3 month run to enjoy watching some different bits and bobs, and may pay for a month here and there in the future, but right now it’s not a priority.

- Free seeds with a magazine subscription - 10 packs this month, and almost all things we’ll use. There will be some seeds we will buy for the season, but the freebies shape what we choose to grow. Yes, we pay for the subscription, but £35 a year for 12 magazines and lots of seeds is a decent deal.

- Free kindling for the fire - we save almost all our cardboard, and use a combination of that and MrEH’s newspapers (that he would buy anyway) for the base of our fire. On top of that we use twigs and short lengths of stick (always gathered from places to where the council would otherwise clear them up, never from woodland) or pieces of broken down pallet.

- Free fuel for the fire - MrEH’s newspapers again, pulped up then squeezed into a brick shape in a former - they then get placed on metal racking to dry out. We make a big stack of these through the summer, and use 1 or 2 each night the fire is lit - they give off stacks of heat and help to make the logs we pay for last longer. It also means we're re-using the newspaper rather than recycling it. 

- Sorting out a return for the new toaster we had to buy which turned out to be absolutely DREADFUL! Think toast on one side, plain slightly warm bread on the other, then burned edges within a few moments when you try to re-toast to even things up. Were we keeping it? Absolutely not - it will be winging its way back and we're searching for a better option! 

- More goodies from Olio- flatbreads and herbs, this time. 

All these on their own are small things, but it’s those small things, and doing them consistently that makes the difference. A few pounds saved here, finding a way to do something for a bit less cost there, and before you know it that’s money freed up to improve your quality of life in other ways. 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

A 3-tube day at Leytonstone…

A Friday with no other plans generally means I opt to get the shopping done, freeing up weekend time for far more interesting uses. This week was no exception, as we combined our usual Friday morning walk with a trip to Tesco to top up stocks of our preferred wholewheat couscous and also some branded orzo on offer at £1 a box. I don’t usually buy branded pasta but this price was very competitive indeed - and in the absence of the discount supermarkets stocking it at present it made sense to pounce. 3 packs of each = £6.90 spent, and were stocked up on two staple items that get well used in this house. 2nd stop of the day was the main shop - Lidl this week. An impulse spend of £2.99 of personal money for one of their beautiful miniature roses - a bright yellow one. We have a red one of these bought several years ago and it’s thrived, so I’m hoping this one will do the same. I made use of 2 coupons for free bakery items - one from a Moneysupermarket email gave us a free croissant, and the other was my free item from last week’s shop being over the first spend threshold on the app. That sorts out a nice treat after tea today! £25.75 spend on the shopping, with just a couple of items still to get over the weekend and a fair few bits and bobs stocked up on too. Finally for grocery shopping was Farmfoods - somewhere we visit occasionally mainly to stock up on a few particular items - this time round two big jars of MrEH’s coffee, 12 tins of tuna, 4 bags of sugar (at 2 for £1.60 this is by a long way the cheapest place to buy it, and this will stock us up ready for any preserving we decide to do) and a couple of tins of sweetcorn too, total spend £23.18 there thanks to another voucher for £2 off a £25 spend.

A planned general spend on Friday was a couple of frames needed for various pictures - some more black & white prints of my photos, and a mounted railway poster print from York last weekend (we wanted a souvenir of the weekend and this seemed perfect, and at £10, very reasonably priced too). The frames totalled £9.98. Final spend for the weekend was another £5.12 for the yogurts and tomatoes I didn’t get on Friday, plus a box of seeded oatcakes.

Part of the reason meal planning works for us is that we treat it flexibly. For various reasons the original rough plan for Sunday lunch didn’t work this week - instead I opted to get some turkey chunks and bacon bits out of the freezer along with a lurking roll of puff pastry and made pasties - two of which were eaten on Sunday, with the others getting popped into the fridge for swapping in to the plan on Wednesday evening. A flexible plan - albeit one that takes account of ensuring that food that needs using gets eaten - is far more pleasant and practical than one that is so rigid it’s difficult to stick to.

We did end up with one unplanned spend this week as our poor old toaster finally toasted its last - can’t complain, it was a wedding present nearly 26 years ago so it’s given good service! We’re replacing with a “long slot” version, better to cope with different sizes of bread - our old one dated from a time when bread came in a fairly standard square-ish size, and we’ve often found ourselves having to repeatedly turn slices round to get them evenly toasted. If the replacement lasts as long as the old one we will be very pleased! 

Robyn

Frugal February?

Stunning rainbow over the river - Dartmouth, 2025

Shall we? I've debated about this the past few years but the month has always come along and had lots of plans in it, which involved (budgeted for, and so acceptable) spending, but that in turn feels like it slightly defeats the object of a frugal month! This year there ARE some plans - but nothing particularly major, and  so it feels like a good time to give it another go.

Aims this time are as much about being mindful around spending as around "not spending" as such - there might be beers on a Thursday evening after work, or a trip to the pub on a Friday, but that will be thought through and we'll ensure that we'll get value from it. We've got friends visiting mid month - and that will probably mean a takeaway. I may make a trip to Waddington later in the month to see the Reds training - hoping for more success on ALL counts than the last trip up! As usual the challenge will cover the food spending, general household spending, and my personal spending, but not anything that relates specifically to MrEH only. 

We still have plentiful food stocks, so are aiming to continue the good work of last month's careful shopping and detailed planning. I'm intending to turn my attention to the cupboards as well now - there are lots of odds and ends of things, and bits that have been hanging around for a while and that we either need to use or just to acknowledge that we're not GOING to use them, and to get rid. If it came with us when we moved house, and hasn't yet been used, then we will be taking a hard line! First step on this is going to be a bit of an inventory I think, and from there I'll start planning how we can incorporate various ingredients. The fridge is already looking a little barer than it was, and freezer 1 in particular now has very obvious space in it, maybe by the end of a month we can aim to get freezer 2 empty and turned off - that would be a win! 

Food wise then:

• Use what we have
• Audit cupboards and fridge and target lingering contents for use 
• Aim to get working through last year's home grown fruit and veg from freezer 1
• Remember that we still have kale in the garden to use
• Start gradually moving over stuff from freezer 2 as room appears!
• Continue to be considered and mindful about special offers and bargains
• Make sure that meal planning continues - it's not only cheaper, it's also easier!

If nothing else, I'm aiming to treat this as a bit of a re-set, and a good chance to stop and think before spending. A return to the "money mantra" of "Do we need it, do we have anything else we can use instead, have we checked whether that's a good price". The food account in particular is looking lovely and healthy at the start of this month and it would be nice to continue to build on that. 

Food spending this month has started off with a £20.97 spend in Lidl on Sunday - we opted to stop in and shop on our way home from the weekend in York which was slightly risky as I had no access to the meal plan - I took the approach that I could if needed modify things later though, and it was better to get the shop done rather than having to squeeze it in after work on Monday. It included the purchase of 3 packs of the Deluxe branded West Country butter which is a favourite, and I had the offer of 15% off, making it several pennies a pack less than the regular (not so nice) one - win! Also a pack of an interesting looking Polish (I think) cheese for £1.99, everything else was our standard sort of weekly purchases.  Awful traffic necessitated parking near my office on Monday so a purchase was needed to allow using the supermarket car park - that was one of my usual "defaults" - an 85p pack of noodles. 

Anyone else fancy making this a Frugal kinda February then?

Robyn

Happy Birthday Tony!

 

St Martins Lane

Last Friday we hopped in the car first thing and headed up to York to join our great friend Tony for his 60th birthday celebrations. He's among the first of our close circle to hit that age and we were never going to miss his weekend of celebrations! 

The drive up was through torrential rain - and that continued although at a slightly eased off level once we arrived in York itself. Original plan had been to park at a station a couple of stops out and get the train, until we realised that we were JUST going to miss the hourly train by minutes. I turned my attention to google streetview and we quickly identified a few spots further in to the city where it appeared we may be able to street park - and so it proved, leaving us just a mile or so to walk to the hotel to drop our bag off. Our original plan for the afternoon had been to explore the city a bit, but the weather really wasn't lending itself to that plan, so after a stroll round the Shambles and its market and a bit of lunch from a street-food vendor we decided to seek shelter, by which obviously I mean we went to the pub, yes! 

Shambles Market from the Market Cat pub.

Another good pal Sarah joined us in the Market Cat and we had a good catch up before wandering back towards the hotel to check in - Sarah and I decided that MrEH could cope with that bit just fine, we'd just pop into this nice little pub and wait for him... ;-) A short while later once check-in was completed and MrEH had joined us we were joined by Ian and his Dad Ken, and then Catherine...the clan was assembling! Time then to head to the station and the excellent York Tap to meet Tony and a good many of the other attendees - lots of people we hadn't seen in an age too so that was good! The night ended back in the second pub I'd headed to with Sarah, before MrEH and I headed back to our hotel.

“Mallard” at the National Railway Museum

Saturday dawned far brighter and more cheerfully than the forecast had suggested which was a bonus. We were heading for the National Railway Museum, and decided to walk part way there around the City walls which turned out to be a great decision even if it did take slightly longer than we'd expected, with photos to be taken etc! The Museum was as good as ever - and we passed a pleasant couple of hours looking at trains before needing to head back to the station to get on one, as the afternoon was to be spent in the Taproom of the Brass Castle brewery at Malton. A nice train ride out, good company and some very tasty beer! The main event of the weekend followed that back in York itself as Tony had booked a room at the rather brilliant Brew York taproom! Somewhere I've wanted to go for a long while - their innovative brews are a bit legendary in the craft beer world - and it didn't disappoint! The beer was excellent - a big range of both cask & keg offerings - and the food from the in-house street-food people included some of the best loaded fries I've ever eaten! (Hoisin Duck, in case you were wondering!). As much as anything else it was great to have a group of people that included SO many good friends all together in one place - great fun!

The Minster from the City Wall

Sunday again started bright and sunny - another nice surprise for any of us who actually believed the Met Office! Once again MrEH and I made the most of the free unlimited breakfast at our hotel before leaving the bag with them and setting out - around the walls in the other direction this time, to complete the bit that we hadn't done the day before. We stopped back in at the museum again too - as there was an entire hall we'd failed to get to on Saturday - before the final pub of the weekend where some of the others had met for lunch. Just soft drinks for us this time as we were driving back of course, but good to have the opportunity for further farewells.

A very full river Ouse! 

An excellent weekend - not the cheapest, but we’d budgeted for it in advance and employed small but impactful money saving approaches like filling up at breakfast, making use of free parking, using our insulated mugs to take tea/coffee from home for the journey up, and utilising a free drink code from our energy supplier for one for the way home - the other was just a cup of tea for £1.50. We also grabbed a Too Good To Go bag from the station for an on-the-go tea on Friday evening. The bonus was being able to fill the car with diesel at a full 10p a litre cheaper than at home- bargain! 

Robyn

January Reading…

 

Starting the month with the book which was the header photo for last months post - Lee Child - The Hard Way, another in the Reacher series - we’ve been reading and enjoying these for years, and now we have added space in the house we are working on getting the full set, previously lack of bookshelf space demanded that they were returned to the charity shop after reading! This one is set partly in England, and a bit of the country I knew well, so an additional layer of interest there, but they are always a rollicking good read. Reacher emerges victorious of course - he always does, that’s no plot spoiler, but in spite of his extreme levels of violence he also manages to be likeable, a measure of Child’s writing talent I think. This will be joining the others on the shelf!

Next up was Liane Moriarty - Big Little Lies. Big subject matter too with its twin themes of bullying and domestic violence and played out in a small community in Australia. Moriarty writes brilliantly - this book is punctuated throughout with little quotes from the various characters, written as though they were given in interviews with a journalist, and all alluding to the "the event" that the book pivots on but without ever giving away the "whodunnit" aspect. The gossipy cliqueiness of the primary school parents giving the quotes shines through and I suspect many people can recognise that sort of behaviour from groups they have been part of! When "the event" occurs towards the very end of the book it actually comes as a shock in the way it plays out and it is all the more impactful because of that. I probably won't be keeping this one so it will either get passed to Mum, or returned to a charity shop. 

Linwood Barclay's Never Look Away kept me absolutely gripped. Started with the apparent abduction of a small child, the twists in the tale came from the very beginning, with things taking a deeply dark turn as the story unravels. Main character David Harwood is well written and likeable, making it easy to feel sympathy towards him, and the author has cleverly wound several mysteries into the  storyline without making it feel cluttered, they all intertwine perfectly and conclude neatly in the final chapters. I didn't want to put this one down and read it in a matter of days - I'll be keeping my eye out for more from Barclay, and will probably pass this one to my Mum for her to read. 

An old favourite author next in the shape of Val McDermid - a truly excellent crime-writer in my view and well deserving of the bestseller status she enjoys. A Darker Domain is part of the Karen Pirie series - and I realised within a few pages that not only had I read it before but in fact I already own a copy - clearly I need to add McDermid's books into my note of authors who I am collecting to avoid duplication in the future! That said, I was quite happy to read this one again - and long enough since I read it first time that I had largely forgotten the storyline, so all good! This copy will head back to the charity shop, and I’ll retain the original one. 

Time for some non-fiction then - and a history of British Rail, by  Christian Wolmar - this one we spotted on the bookshelves at Blackhorse Road Station early last year I think - we always stop and have a look there if heading back from the taprooms on the Blackhorse Beer mile, and have often found some interesting stuff for the taking. I don't read huge amounts of non-fiction, but every now and again fancy something a bit different, and this ticked the box, particularly with the part re-nationalisation of the entity happening currently. It was a fascinating - if slightly heavy read - and corrects many of the misconceptions about the perceived poor reputation of pre-privatisation BR. This has gone aside for MrEH to read, and I suspect it will get kept.

Robyn.

Frugal Friday…

 You would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps meals have been a bit stingy over the past few weeks, but there there you would be wrong. As much as the challenge has been about keeping costs low, it was also about the fact that we had an awful lot of food in stores and frankly it seemed like a good way on focusing on using some of it! 

In the course of the month the meal plan has included leftover Christmas turkey in roast dinner form, and as an ingredient in a stir fry and a risotto, a rather tasty cottage pie using venison mince, a stew made with some of the meatiest lamb “bones for stock” I have ever encountered - only £1 for the bag of them and they produced three good portions of stew. That was a very budget offering actually as the veg involved was mostly from the Christmas veg wars! Also a quick cheaty biryani which combined a yellow stickered  sachet of sag aloo rice plus a reduced price chicken breast, along with some added veg - one of those meals that delivered way more taste than the sum of its parts!. I made katsu curry sauce for the first time on Friday - just a BBC Good Food recipe…well, actually 2 recipes which I sort of combined, but very tasty, and it’s nice to have a different form of curry to add to the repertoire. 

For this final week of the challenge spends started a little earlier than anticipated - on the way back from the theatre we called in at Sainsbury’s and spotted a couple of packs of branded falafels reduced down to 71p a pack - not much debate was needed about that, they went straight to the freezer when we got home and will get used as part of a couscous/veg bowl over the coming weeks. £1.42 well spent. The first main shop was done the following day - £7.46 in Aldi including a couple of packs of toasting muffins with 30% off - straight to the freezer for those, too. Other than that, the regular citrus fruit and apples, a pack of peppers as they had the “wonky” ones with plenty of red included, and a bag of coriander to use with the curry on Friday evening and through the week too. 

Saturday saw a trip to the farm shop as of course it is marmalade season- Seville oranges were required! I took the chance to buy a bulb of smoked garlic - and ingredient I use a lot but not easy to get- and MrEH made a convincing case for one of his favourite brand of yogurts - this is the only place he can get the brand locally. We also pounced on a decent looking rustic bread baguette reduced to 50p which got eaten through the day. Total spend £6.88 there, and we called in to the supermarket on the way back for milk, tomatoes and a couple of bananas- another £2.82. 

Only other spend of the week was another couple of bananas - but MrEH bought those and must have paid cash I think so they’re not forming part of my calculations!  By my reckoning that is a total of £18.58 for the week, and there will be no further shopping trips this month, so that is us officially DONE! A quick tot up suggests a sub-£60 spend which quite frankly I’m really pleased with. The grocery account has started the year with a nice little boost, we’ve made a bit of a dent in our food stocks, and it’s made us get our act firmly together with meal planning, too! 

Now- time for February, I wonder…can we have another go?

Robyn

Small pleasures…

 

I’ve mentioned before that I always try and get out for a walk at lunchtime - the fresh air does me good, at this time of the year in particular the daylight is much needed, and it also sets an expectation that my lunch break is a time I value. Sometimes simply escaping the office for 20 minutes or so can be a bit of a blessing, too! 

On a day like today it is just a delight to be out in the sunshine - and I’m always grateful to have a little patch of green space to walk to as well - in the drier summer months the nearby edge of Wanstead flats provides a network of paths to wander, part of the Epping Forest, it combines a patch of shady woodland with a large area of heathland alongside. Muddy in winter, dusty in summer, it’s still a magnet for dog walkers, runners and just anyone wanting a break from the urban streets. 

I’ve pretty much decided that Frugal February will be  happening by the way - although it will mainly be angled towards the food aspect again. I’m not expecting - or wanting to- keep the spending quite as low as this month, there are a number of bits and bobs we definitely need to stock up on now. I’m sure we’ll find plenty to talk about though over the course of the month! 

Robyn