March – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Thursday 31 March 2011 in growing, less than 12 clothes challenge, personal finance | 15 comments

March has been a rather expensive and stressful month as we’ve been having our bathroom fitted and a ridiculous amount of things went wrong. But at the same time, we’ve also learnt some new skills and had some lovely Spring days – just how fantastic is it that the world is turning green again?

Goals in 2011 progress

As in February, I’m working towards a few goals if not anywhere near completing them yet. I’ve sown a lot of seeds for veg – unfortunately lost a lot of baby seedlings to damping off and other bad propagator management but I’m learning all the time. We should have our first fully homegrown 2011 salad in the next few weeks.

I’ve not been baking that much but the four loaves we made each on our baking course at the weekend keep up my average ;) They were sourdough loaves and we also now have starters from them – not quite growing one from scratch but I’ll be satisfied if I can keep that alive and bake from it.

We’ve also been on a screenprinting course – which isn’t one of the simple living goals mentioned here but is on my personal goals list – and enjoyed it a lot. We’re booked in for another session the week after next and I’ve already got a few things worked out that I’d like to print.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

Even though I thought I’d cave this month, my tally is still at zero. I have been looking at things online but nothing has wowed me enough for me to get out my credit card. I did add some things to basket a couple of weeks ago but deliberately left it overnight to see how I felt about them in the morning – and in the morning, I was indifferent. I quite like that.

I think a Spring jacket may break my embargo – my short woolly swing coat is a little too warm at the moment but my hoodie is at the dog-walking stage of its lifecycle. We’ll see.

One other thing: one day, while putting away laundry, I sorted through all the t-shirts/tops I have in my chest of drawers. I didn’t get rid of anything, just tidied into related piles and refolded – I rediscovered a few tops which got looked over in the usual heap format of my drawers. Shopping your own wardrobe/drawers rules!

Growing stuff and the chickens

As I mentioned above, the growing stuff thing is going well-ish. I might live to regret it if there is a cold spell in the next few weeks but I planted out my broad bean seedlings yesterday. I’ve got two lots of potatoes sown in “bags”. My tomato seedlings – the ones that survived the Great Damping Off Crisis of 2011 – are beautifully leafy. My cucumbers and pumpkins look green and luscious. The chillis & peppers are growing slowly but looking good. The radish seedlings numerous, the cauliflowers hanging in there and various lettuce & salad leaves at varying stages of sprouting but looking very promising. On the fruit front, John B gave us some jostaberry canes so they’re in the ground too now. All our other berry bushes & fruit trees are budding/leafing well (the photo above is one of the apple trees), and the two strawberry runners that I thought had died have proved me wrong. Basically, it’s all go in the garden, greenhouse & propagator!

The chickens are doing well – they’ve met our nephew on a couple of occasions (our 4 year old niece comes to visit sometimes too, and John’s young cousins, but at 13 months old, the ‘phew is their youngest visitor to date) and got an new layer of woodchips to scratch around in. In return, they’ve given us a magnificent 200 eggs exactly (well, exact at this point – if I go down later, there may be another one). That’s an average of 6.45 a day, at a rough average of 8p per egg in consumables (£12 ish of food, and about £4 for straw, shavings, seed treats & powders).

Saving as much as I spend

Posted by louisa on Thursday 3 March 2011 in frugal, low spend 11, personal finance | 0 comments

Following the 20 Financial Milestones for your 20s(ish) list I worked through at the start of February, I’ve started a new separate savings account for “saving-as-much-as-you-spend” thing.

I ummed and aahed about adding it to my normal savings account but I like the idea of starting its own dedicated account so I can really see it add up.

I’ve decided not to include all of my spending in the “to-save” pile – just the stuff that feels optional or a treat/luxury: books but not bus fare, meals eaten out but not food for meals cooked at home, pretty craft stuff but not pet supplies. My very own VAT ;)

From the whopping £242.52 which I spent in February, £137.16 was myVAT-able so that’s the opening amount for the new savings account.

I’m doing this for two reasons: firstly, I need to get back in the habit of saving money regularly again as during my lean-wage/self-employment over the last five years, my saving has been adhoc at best but more frequently, for long stretches, not at all – the savings I do have now date almost entirely from when I was employed. To start saving though, I’m going to have to free up some money from somewhere and that’s where the second reason comes in: I’m hoping it’ll help me reduce my consumption and make me more mindful about what I do spend. Those myVAT-able things now cost twice as much as far as my current account is concerned – I won’t (I WON’T) go into debt or start putting things on credit cards so they only way to live within my means will be to cut back. Of course, the theory only works because I know there is plenty of slack that I could cut back on without it particularly affecting my life for the worst – it will be interesting to see how it is in practise though.

The end of my no spend (three) weeks

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 5 January 2011 in anti-consumerism, frugal | 2 comments

Three weeks ago, I decided to consciously not spend any money until the end of the year. I called it a “no spend week” for neatness but it actually was a fortnight and a bit – which, due to illness over the weekend, easily extended to three weeks, finishing on Monday.

I ended up spending considerably amount of money each week for the first two weeks. Since both the dog and boiler have been a’ok, I spent less this week:

• £1.40 at the laundrette drying a load of bedding. I would have waited until better outside drying weather to wash the bedding (since we don’t have the hanging space for duvet covers in the house) but it got damp when the water pipe burst in the kitchen the other week so had to be washed or it would get mouldy. I washed it at home but dried it at the laundrette.
• John & Strowger “bullied” me into getting fish & chips for lunch again the other day. They’re such a bad influence. John paid since he was the one with ready cash in his wallet.

From my exceptions list:

• £8.50 – cake & tea for two including a tip at a cafe. Part of the “birthday gift” exception I mentioned when I first started my no spend thing.
• Some more fresh food – just a few little bits, and some good steak for New Year’s Eve since we decided to celebrate the new year by both getting colds and couldn’t face going out for a meal as was the original plan.

My main temptation this week has been the same as last week: the endless emails about January sales and other offers. I’ve unsubscribed from as many as possible. Yes, it’s useful to hear about sales but sales are so ubiquitous these days that it seems less important to hear about each one; I’d rather seek out sales and offers when I’ve decided whether or not I need something.

(I did go online sales browsing for a new jumper one evening. I’ve been wanting a new warm woollie for a while and thought I’d check out the sales to see if I could find anything. I didn’t find anything even close to nice/suitable so I didn’t have to decide whether or not to break my no spend rule. I suspect having that rule though made me stricter with my criteria than it would have otherwise – for example, I also didn’t look at anything other than knitwear.)

So anyway, my “no spending until the end of the year” exercise is over. I found it surprisingly easy – it was nice to have a reason not to give into temptation when I was in shops for present-buying reasons – a “rule” to strengthen my will power. Consciously avoiding spending has also helped break my habit of including eBay in my “I’ve got a few minutes to kill online” list, to remove my credit card details from online shops to stop impulse buying and to unsubscribe from “buy our stuff” emails from shops I’ve used in the past. But the most useful thing for me has been recording all my spending in a weekly list so I can’t hide from my spending – and I’m going to continue doing this (probably offline) through 2011.

The boiler breaking and the dog getting sick were unavoidable “emergencies” and proved an earlier thought of mine right (that I mentioned yesterday about clothes): it’s hard to stick to total bans on spending or buying certain types of stuff because things have a habit of coming up just when you don’t want them to. That type of “emergency” spending isn’t the problem for me.

Broken boiler and sick dog aside, most of the money I spent was on food (at the supermarket or fish’n’chips thanks to the bad influence boys ;) ) or was related to socialising – a couple of drinks at a pub, a curry, a cake & tea outing — nothing excessive but stuff that’s a darnsight more frivolous than a broken boiler in the middle of winter. I could have been stricter with myself on these spends – I could have used the opportunity to suggest socialising activities that didn’t involve spending any money – but it wasn’t a lot of money so I’m not beating myself up about them too much.

I’d like to start doing no spend weeks/fortnights/months regularly over the next year – I’d like to see the difference of temptations at different times of year, when I’m not ill, when I’m leaving the house more etc. I’m also going to have some “eat from the pantry/garden” weeks over the spring and summer – that’s something that’s been missing from this no spend week since I had food on my exception list – we’ve not really cut back on food spending at all — it wasn’t the point of this no spend exercise for me but I think it should be for future iterations.

All in all, an interesting experience – if you’ve not tried it yourself, I’d heartily recommend giving it a go.

Spending in no spend week: week 2

Posted by louisa on Monday 27 December 2010 in anti-consumerism, frugal | 6 comments

I’m having an extended no spend week – starting a fortnight ago, lasting until the end of the year. It was a bit of an impromptu decision to start but I’ve found it very interesting, and these weekly summaries very useful. I’m going to continue tracking spending like this in the new year, but probably off line rather than on here all the time.

Lily-dog has been the cause of most of my expenses one way or another this week – she had a spot of food poisoning. Pets are expensive, there is no doubt about that, but for me, they’re worth it. If I could only have one luxury in life, it would be them.

This week’s spending:

• £6.20 at the laundrette washing and drying our duvet after Lily threw up a lake of vomit onto it one night – hurrah for machine washable duvets! It wouldn’t fit into our washing machine though – and even if it had fitted inside, the water inlet was frozen shut so I had to take all the bedding to the laundrette. It would have £11 for a service wash (which would have had it ready within 48hrs) but it only took an hour so wasn’t worth the extra cash. Like the boiler last week, this one was a not-quite-an-emergency but something that would have to be looked at sooner or later, would be more difficult next week and would make our lives a little more difficult (colder!) in the meantime.
• £56.55 at the vets with Lily. By Tuesday, she was into day four of the poops – much brighter in herself and running around more but still poopy – so we decide it would be best to get her checked for obstructions etc before it got into the Christmas period – when vets would be harder and more expensive to visit. While clearly improving, she was still running a temperature so the vet advised to go for some antibiotics & a sensitive-belly diet. Both helped a lot and she’s fine and dandy again now.
• £12 on a meal out with friends on Friday night. Curry + naan + rice + tarka daal = mmm. Like last week’s spending in the pub, it was a socialising expense – a group of us who usually have curries together including a few people we hadn’t seen in a while.
• I also had fish & chips last Monday lunchtime but John & Strowger bought that for me. ;)

From my exceptions:

• £64.86 on two bags of 15kg dog food (a special type of food, her normal stuff not sensitive stuff though and it’ll last 3 months) – again, if I’d planned to have a no spend period, I’d probably have bought this in advance but I didn’t so didn’t.
• Fresh food top up at the supermarket – mostly meats & cheese to cook with over the long weekend, more than normal as we had guests for two days.

I thought I’d spend money on bus fares but was feeling ill so didn’t go to a rehearsal.

My biggest temptation this week has been all the starting early January sales – lots of “save up to 50%!!!” emails dropping into my inbox. I’m using them as a reminder to unsubscribe from their mailing lists.

I also finished reading a wonderfully delightful book (Good evening Mrs Craven and other war time stories by Mollie Panter-Downes) and wanted to read more of her work – but instead of just buying it, I started a list of books to look out for – to buy new, find used or borrow at some later time.

Just a few days left of my no spend “week” now. I’m trying to decide how to incorporate conscious no spending periods into my life… What do you do? A no spend day each week? Regularly no spend days? Limited budget? Limited transactions?