Frugal Friday...

One of our many savings piggies & pots...

We've just made another small lump sum over payment to our mortgage - hurrah! This was once again "unexpected money" saved up over a few months so we really didn't notice the going of it, it's not a massive amount but will make a nice little difference to our mortgage, and will be of far more value to us being paid there than sitting in a savings account earning not-very-much interest at all!

One thing that people tend to forget is that financial products need looking after, and regular maintenance. I'm not talking just about feeding a savings account - although of course if you have excess income and the luxury of saving a good lump of it each month, that's great. HRH The Cat's insurance was due for renewal last week. I'd had a good look around, been through a couple of comparison sites (including managing to get a small chunk of cashback from one just for getting the quotes) and finally had rung the current provider to inform them that I wasn't too impressed at them increasing the premium by 20%! Because she's getting older we know that costs will increase over time but I certainly don't see that as a good excuse for Insurance Companies to be trying it on! Sure enough in the course of the phone call they dropped the premium right down to just 6p more than we were paying last year, too, which we were happy with. I even called from a freephone number so the call didn't cost a penny!

Another financial product worth keeping a close eye on is savings - particularly ISA's. Assuming you're a UK taxpayer you should have one of these - if you're nervous about locking money away then go for an easy access one and it's the same as any other savings account, except that you don't get taxed on the interest earned by the contents. In my book this is a bit of a no-brainer. You go out to work, earn money, and get taxed on your earnings. If you manage to save a bit, and earn interest, you get taxed again on that interest - I mean, the cheek of it! we have no intention of paying any more tax than we have to - we both pay what's due without quibble, but when it comes to paying more where we don't need to - no thanks, ISA's all the way! We just have the one ISA which we transfer about from year to year depending on who wants to give us the best interest rate. You can open a new one each year with a new provider but that could get complicated over time, and we don't have vast millions to worry about! (Shame!) A lot of accounts start of with a special "bonus rate" of some description - our current one has a bonus rate which expires in October so I'll be on the hunt again then for something better.

This one is all mine and does precisely what it says on the...ummmm...tin! 

Another one then - life insurance! Come on, hands up, who took out life insurance when they got their mortgage and hasn't given it another thought since? Maybe your circumstances have changed, and your existing product wouldn't even cover you any more, or you're simply paying for more cover than you now need having been OP'ing your mortgage, or clearing debt? It's well worth having a dig around to see what's out there - we went from paying over £100 a month a few years ago for several different policies to paying just £40 per month for one that definitely covers us and gives us everything we would need. As life, accident and illness cover policies aren't something that you renew annually, they tend to slip through the net when people are reviewing their finances. I've got a reminder set for a year or so's time to look again at this too - maybe it will reduce still further, who knows! In the meantime, that extra saving we made was added to the regular mortgage overpayment!

Finally, with holidays very much in mind, what about travel Insurance. I have a confession to make here - we haven't renewed our travel insurance for the past two years. Now now, stop sucking in air through your teeth like that - the reason is that we have our current accounts with one of the financial institutions who offer FREE travel insurance as one of the perks of having an account with them. best of all, the account is a free one in the first place! Assuming that you don't bank with the same people as us, then travel insurance is another thing well worth not simply renewing on auto-pilot each year - if you just go on one trip a year, then single-trip cover will probably work out far better for you than an annual policy. If looking at annual multi-trip cover, or of an age when finding an insurer to cover you is getting trickier and premiums are increasing, then a packaged bank account that for a monthly fee (typically £10 or £15 a month, sometimes more) offers you a range of other products bundled in with it - perhaps mobile phone insurance, travel insurance and breakdown cover - might be worth considering. The key thing as with any insurance though is the check that the policy will actually cover you. For us for example, there's no point in buying just any old breakdown cover policy for the car as not all of them (even the big providers) cover outside mainland UK - meaning that we wouldn't be covered while we are in the Hebrides - and we can be certain that one of these trips, that's going to be an issue. Just not this time though, please!

Hebrides Countdown 2013...

...It's getting ever so close now - we can hardy wait!  You'll know when we're actually there because blog posts will start appearing telling you so. ;-)

One of the biggest changes between going at this time of year, and our earlier trips up at Easter, is the number of wild flowers which have made their appearance by the time we arrive now. The machair is just an absolute carpet of them, the bright yellow Iris are beginning to appear, and the waterlilies are beginning to appear on the lochs too - these above being at Grimsay last year. Having spent the last few visits increasing our bird-knowledge, we realised last year that we were going to need to start working on our plant-and-flower knowledge, too! over time we'd like to visit at all manner of times of year - we've already done early and late spring of course, and mid-summer has yet more stunning flowers and plants too. Autumn is meant to be the time of the biggest seas and most impressive waves...but at the moment we're struggling to think of many reasons for winter to recommend itself!

Robyn

In The Garden...

MrEH was pottering about outside today while I was cooking up a big pan of curry, when he suddenly called me to come outside, he had something to show me...when I got out there he pointed out these to me...

Those are the Gooseberry bushes we planted last year, to replace the previous spiky hedge that the builders managed to kill when they made an appalling job of the major works on the flats a few years ago. The spiky hedge was useful because being on the ground floor, it's helpful to have a physical barrier in front of our windows, so we wanted to replace it, but with something both spiky AND edible - Gooseberries seemed to fit the bill perfectly! We're extremely impressed that they are looking like giving us fruit this year though - clearly they are happy little Gooseberry bushes!

Also going brilliantly, and just in front of the Gooseberries....

...tatties! We've got that row there, a hessian sack planted up with a few more, and another row, somewhere else, which could best be described as "Guerrilla gardening" as technically we probably shouldn't actually be growing stuff there. Oh well. they're growing anyway so presumably they don't have an issue with being potato-shaped squatters.

Now this next shot shows a bit of an unexpected triumph...look...

 ...what you see there is the currant bush that we planted about 6 years ago. It was so long ago that we've actually forgotten what sort it is - we think it might be a Whitecurrant, but as until now it's never fruited, we can't be certain of this. Until last year it barely even got around to growing leaves - then suddenly, in the middle of last year, it doubled in height and started looking distinctly perky and interested in life. A month ago flowers appeared, and now it's actually forming fruit.We are ludicrously excited about this!

Finally, a rather shorter-term project. The salad leaves....

...these were only sown last week, and are already coming on nicely. Added to that there are signs of life in the bits in the mini-greenhouse. We don't actually know what is showing though as we never quite got around to labelling anything. (You'd think we'd learn? Thankfully it's not actually that important as everything we sowed is stuff we like to eat!)

So there you go - you can quite literally say that everything in the garden is indeed lovely!

Robyn

"But it's not a proper camera...is it?!"

You might remember I treated myself to an upgrade on my phone a few months ago - going from the iPhone 3GS to the 4S. I use the phone a fair amount, saved every penny of the cost before I bought, and shopped around carefully before buying, and I love the new one every bit as much as the old one!

Traditionally one thing I've never used much on my mobile is the camera - I've used it for quick "grab shots" but nothing much more, as in comparison with the other gear I've got, the quality has always disappointed me. The old 3GS camera wasn't bad - it always did a great job of exposure  and never suffered from camera-shake (something which seems to let down a lot of on-board cameras in mobiles) but once I got the pictures onto the computer and started playing, there was always something lacking slightly, which frustrated me.  I've been pleasantly surprised with the 4S though - the results so far have been brilliantly sharp and crisp, and it deals with colours superbly - something else which I always found slightly "off" with the old one. As a result I thought I'd sing its praises with a blog post - the pictures here are ALL taken with the 4S camera.

I've been walking after work again - it makes sense as I have time to kill while waiting to collect MrEH, and when the weather is good it's hard to beat a head-clearing walk after a long day. The gorse is out everywhere at the lake I walk round some days - looking absolutely stunning...

...and this is a wider view of the lake and surroundings - not bad for London eh?

Closer to home - remember those ridiculously cheap plants we bought this time last year? They made our balconies (front and back) look absolutely stunning right through the spring, summer, and most of autumn, but they've not finished yet as these gorgeous violas reappeared a while ago and are flowering beautifully!

...and just to prove that the iPhone's camera can handle contrast as well as colour - this bush with its beautiful delicate flowers is just along the road from us - gorgeous aren't they!

Finding myself at St Pancras with some time to kill last week, naturally I popped upstairs to say hello to Mr B....

...now if it can handle the amount of detail in that scene it can handle anything!  It's no slouch at close up stuff either - one of the pots on the balcony has gained itself a fine collection of mosses and I thought I'd see if I could get a decent photo of some of it...

Not bad, eh? (To give you some idea of perspective, the pot is about 7" inches across).

I have certainly been using the compact camera less since getting the new phone - for anything that requires zoom I'll still continue to use it for sure - that's one thing that the iPhone camera really can't cope with (unsurprisingly considering it's digital, rather than optical, zoom) but for standard shots like those above, the phone will be seeing a lot of activity, I suspect!

Robyn

Frugal Friday

We're all familiar I'm sure with the sort of frugal blog that tells you that you should always buy the dirt-cheapest of everything, not "waste money" on good quality meat, and never treat yourself to a thing. For some folk this penny-pinching approach might well work, but for us, there are things that we are more than happy to spend our money on, so this week I thought I'd turn the Friday Frugality on its head, and talk about some of the things that we ARE happy to spend money on.

Food -well obviously you need to eat, but the recent finding of horsemeat in all manner of supermarket products really underlined for me the importance of knowing where your food originates from. Almost without question, the affected items were from the lower end of the market, or in "ready meals", which really brings home the benefit of cooking from scratch! We're quite happy to spend a bit more on the meat we buy, although we also eat far less meat now, than we used to. Meat comes from the farmer's market, or our nice local butchers which opened a few months ago, and very occasionally comes from the supermarket in the form of good quality sausages or bacon. We have also just bought another whole lamb for the freezer - we did this before you might remember, I blogged about it -for us with our two freezers, this is a great and economical way of buying some really good meat, and we will get our money's worth out of every single last scrap! I don't buy pre-prepared, veggies come either fresh or frozen for the most part - unless they are bean-shaped, in which case in tins or dried, and the only foodstuff I buy on a regular basis which says "just add water" is those handy little "Stockpot" blobs. Actually, that's are a good point - branded goods. We don't buy many things in a specific brand - instant coffee is an exception, Nescafe all the way for MrEH and yes, he has tried other makes/own label etc, and he could tell the difference, and he didn't like it much. If we were on the breadline, struggling from one week to the next just to put food on the table, then he would economise happily enough, but that is not the situation for us thankfully, so there is no point in making the small detail of day to day life miserable. See also "cheap toilet paper" - not going there, either! (We pay under 30p a roll, and as we only use just over 1 roll a week, that's not something we feel the need to scrimp and save on, either!). Other branded items include Baked Beans (Branston are delicious, and when on offer, are cheaper than supermarket own brand and nicer than value ranges), Marmite (no comparison), washing up liquid (with our hard water it's those Mild Green liquid fairies all the way) and crisps. Often shopping carefully means you can buy branded as cheaply as own-label or even Value - the Branston beans I bought last week were 32p a tin - and the comparative Value ones were on the shelf at 29p - I'm very happy with an extra 3p!

Car maintenance - definitely not one to be scrimped on this. MrEH's car is now 10 years or 170,000 miles old - we've had her for 3.5 of those years. Mine is 5.5 years old with 80k on the clock. Both will most likely continue until they start costing too much money to run and will then be replaced. We use a good, reliable and trustworthy local garage. They may not be the cheapest but we know their workmanship is excellent. For tyres we use a local independent workshop - again, we could get cheaper online but we know the other chaps, they'll squeeze you in if you're stuck and even stayed late on a Friday for me once to sort a tyre on the Clio. Puncture repairs are free for regular customers on tyres bought from them
.

The Holiday of course - not cheap. 2500 miles worth of diesel, at least three ferries, two weeks accommodation, more meals out than we eat for the whole of the rest of the year...but two weeks of enjoying one another's company, with perfect peace and quiet, in an environment we love? Priceless! MrEH's job can be incredibly stressful - his department is desperately overworked and this has an inevitable effect in him, so we feel that those two weeks are extremely important - yes we could spend them at home but this would almost certainly lead to him getting calls from the office - by going away he gets left alone for enough time to recharge his batteries! Being frugal is great for the finances of course but it's important to pay attention to your mental health also.

Fun - yes we do go off for weekends, for days out, and out with friends, and yes those things cost money. I'm quite certain that there are bloggers out there who would scathingly tell me that I'm "wasting" that money, that we should only do things that are free, or can be done on the cheap, but do you know what, I beg to differ. Not everyone chooses to live as we do, other people have different lifestyles and ways of doing things, but just because of that doesn't mean they are not our friends, or that we don't want to spend time with them. Imposing your lifestyle on others is unfair and unreasonable in our view - and we compromise by using the tent, by staying in Travelodges and by using discount vouchers. Our social life is worth every penny of the money we spend on it, and it shouldn't be forgotten that if all goes to plan we will still be rid of our mortgage 10 years earlier than planned. Thankfully we've never been in the position of running up huge debts, we don't have expensive tastes and certainly wouldn't borrow money to finance those tastes we DO have!

What do you happily spend on because you think it's worth it? Are there branded foods that you think can't be beaten, or have you found anything that is unbeatable within the budget ranges?

Robyn

Champions!

After a long tough season our rugby boys made it to their Cup Final, held at the St Neots Festival of rugby on April 27th. Their route there was far from clear - rather than playing with the other teams in their league, instead they and close rivals Renegades were both seeded into the competition for the league above, putting them up against some seriously strong competition!

Having beaten Saffron Walden in the first round, the 'semi-final' saw a draw against Renegades - a team who had already been beaten reasonably convincingly in the league and the boys were happy to be able to see them off again after a good match.

We took strong support up to St Neots - one thing that other teams always comment on with us is the numbers we have on the sidelines - wives, girlfriends and Mums plus spare and injured players - there's invariably plenty of us, and we're noisy too! At home matches our 4th team boys always have far more folk watching than the first team do! Arriving at an away match to find that there is a mini beer-festival happening at the same time is always good too, and those of us not playing got stuck-in to the ales on offer pretty fast! (Limited in my case by the fact that MrEH had already persuaded me to drive home - crafty boy that he is!)

Our opposition - Bury St Edmund's second team (their first team are semi-professional!) had gone through the season strongly - winning all their league matches (including one with the slightly astonishing scoreline of 133-0!) and several times putting 100 points past their opponents! In their League matches they had conceded just 44 points all year - a phenomenal record, and one which meant we were far from disgraced by our 84 -24 loss. The boys played extremely well, and by their own admission Bury were taken by surprise by how hard a match we gave them.

The fun and games wasn't over at the end of the match either - as we had the presentation for the league trophies which included our league win! Great to see Steve going up to collect our cup - although we only had JUST enough time to get photos done before having to hand it back for safekeeping! We were all delighted though - a lot of work has gone into the results that they have had this season and they thoroughly deserved their moment in the spotlight.

We're still waiting for confirmation of which league the team will be in next year. We've done a lot of travelling over the past few years - up as far as March, Ely and St Ives in Cambridgeshire, and sometimes the teams that are a distance away are reluctant to return the favour and play their match down at ours which is a bit unfair. we lost 4 home fixtures to this problem this year - and whilst we get awarded the match result (As a 15-0 win) this doesn't make up for the boys not getting a match (and in many cases we'd score more than those 15 points, too!) so a new league is being sought where we might stand a chance of more regular matches.

Robyn

Hebrides Countdown 2013...

You might recognise the building above...I've certainly mentioned it before and we do seem to spend a fair number of evenings inside when we're in the Hebrides...yep, it's the Pub! The Westford Inn, to be exact, Good Beer Guide listed, purveyor of fine ales and excellent food, and owned and run by our lovely friends Elisabeth & Alastair. They've put a lot of time and effort into renovating and upgrading the building over the last few years...

...there you go - you can see the new panelling to the ceiling, walls and bar, and the far lighter, brighter paint job than the place used to have. The two gas-lamps over the bar are original, and the beautiful wood-burner is just to the left and slightly behind where I was standing to take this photo (note MrEH posing with his pint glass, and Elisabeth trying to pretend that she really wasn't there at all, behind the bar!). Every year when we arrive one of the first things is our "guided tour" to see what they have managed to get completed over the previous winter!

We had been going to Uist for several years, regularly driving past the large imposing looking building you see at the top and mentioning how unusual it was (from head-on, it looks exactly as a small child draws a house, pointy roof with chimney atop and all!) and it wasn't until we can across a copy of the Highlands & Western Isles CAMRA branches magazine that we realised that we had been driving past a pub all that time! It's far easier to spot at the time of year we go now though - you wouldn't find it easy to miss this sign...