Came and went in a flash

Georgie's ashes came back. I was expecting the usual plastic tub with ashes in a plastic bag and instead we got this. How lovely. Bit of choker. We were both dabbing our eyes and clearing our throats when we saw that. 

The Victoria plum tree has ripened a bit too quick for my liking so I’ve managed to put several pounds of those in the freezer, halved and stoned them then laid out flat on trays. Makes then easier to bag up and take a few out of the time for my breakfast. I’ve also been picking raspberries again for the second time this year:  both the autumn and summer raspberries have flushed again but they’re not really making it into the freezer, we're using them as I pick them. The blackberries have just started to come on and I've picked the first batch, so I'm hoping to get a few pounds into the freezer, and the Bramley apples trees are dropping their fruit, so some of those will be peeled, sliced and frozen soon. And of course, there's tomatoes.

My GP appointment didn’t quite go as planned. Although I’ve been asked to go and get a blood test to see if I have anaemia, there is a national shortage of blood vials at the moment and so I have to wait until after the 17th of September to book a blood test. For now only the emergency cases will be seen, which is fair enough, but for me I can’t wait that long to see what’s gone wrong and to get an idea of what is needed to make me better. So I have put myself on a bit of an DIY treatment plan. 

I've made the assumption that this probably is anaemia, as it starting after donating blood is too much of a coincidence. I have doubled my iron supplements and take one pill morning and evening, chasing them down with orange juice - you need vitamin c for efficient iron absorption as it keeps the iron in a format it can be most easily absorbed. As the seat of most vitamin and mineral absorption is the gut, I need to help it absorb well so I’m drinking half a glass of kefir and a glass of kombucha every day, which are putting vital cultures into my digestive in case they have become depleted. I’ve also got back on the exercise bike to help get the blood and oxygen through my body. My aim is that by the time I get to the 17th of September I may not need to have a blood test at all and can ring my GP and cancel it. I can see the benefits already, my eyes are no longer sore, gritty and red-rimmed and I don't feel so exhausted each morning but I'm still falling asleep in the afternoons.

I've been doing lots of annoying admin every day, from reading meters to sorting out broken IT, just normal life stuff that has to be done but for some reason there seems to be a lot of it this week. Every day this week there's 5-6 things on my list that have to be sorted to keep our lives ticking over. Just writing this I've realised I need to book the sweep to do the chimney, have the boiler serviced and get the septic tank emptied so I've added them to the lengthy list. 

I did a bit of charity shopping in the week at a nearby town for a bit of a change when I had a half day and found a few things, including this Royal Doulton plate called 'Holy Cow', which was one of a set produced as part of its folk series. I couldn't resist. I don't normally like that kind of thing, but I loved the Amish feel to it. At the same time I popped into a local Sainsbury’s and picked up some yellow sticker bargains for the freezer, mostly marinated chicken breasts. 

Then I went to a car boot sale on Sunday morning and managed to find a Peter Porter puzzle for £2, two copper picture frames for £1, a book on festive food from around the world for £1 and another book on art nouveau posters for 50p. 

Bargain of the day though had to be this William Morris duvet cover and pillowcase set for £1.50, which I'm going to make into a light bedspread for the spare room. This room has a bit of a Victorian style and strong colour scheme, but the bedspreads I’ve seen are far, far too expensive so I’ve been looking out for something to turn into one and this will do nicely. 

So Sunday was treat night; pizza, cider, a couple of films from amazon prime and the new puzzle, much to the delight of Baldrick and Missy, who have taken over puzzle rights from Georgie. But unlike Georgie I can get them off quite quickly by blowing on them. If I had done that to Georgie he would have beaten me up. 

I actually finished the puzzle last night, there was so many colours and features in it that matching them up was fairly easy, but I'm not starting another one. I'm going to take a break from puzzling for a week, do some reading and make some new curtains for the kitchen. 

I decided on an apple green gingham in the end (the picture makes it look sage green but it's not); blue didn't match with anything else in the kitchen and while light grey did match it just looked drab so apple green it was. I bought four metres for about £22 including postage and by chance found a complete extendable curtain pole set in the tool barn, all still sealed, which I think I got at a charity shop a couple of years ago. I'm going to keep it simple and do a cafe-style rod heading, as that's just folding and one line of stitches.

 Hopefully, by this time next week they'll be done and up!

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Steel Kitten

Mid-year financial review

I took two half days off work this week to tackle our finances. A lot of things have happened at once and I needed some solid time to review and organise things.

Savings

I've been trying to find places for our savings with good interest rates now our Coventry Building Society Regular Savers have matured. To compound this, I received a letter from Tesco letting me know they are ditching their current accounts in November. I've been using our account as a savings account, as it was offering 3% on balances up to £3,000, although we kept a lot more in there. This dropped last year to 1% and continues to fall so I have to find a home for those savings. 

Some of the accounts with the best rates are for existing customers, others are only for people living in a specific postcode. Some that look ok will only take very small maximum deposit limits and so are not worth the hassle of setting them up. 

We already have Stock and Shares ISAs which we use those specifically for investing for my retirement, and I don't want to reduce our annual limits by opening up a cash ISA.

I've looked at premium bonds but I actually don't like the lottery aspect of it. According to MSE's premium bond calculator I could be looking at about £75 in prizes for the amount I would buy, but that is obviously based on chance. I could get more but it is statistically likely I will get less.

I've never been keen on tying my money up for a fixed term, in case we have an emergency and need the money, but I'm slowly coming round to the idea as some of the better rates on the market are fixed term accounts. 

After much research the only options that suits my specific requirements are a 12-month fixed term account with Oak North Bank for 1.23% interest and/or a regular savings account with Coventry Building Society at 1.05%. That's a lower interest rate than last year but it allows larger monthly deposits so is simpler to maintain, and crucially, I can still access the latter if I need it. 

-oOo-

Retirement accounts

Once that decision was made I turned my attention to Martin's accounts. His SIPP is being transferred to Vanguard from BestInvest, as the latter's drawdown costs were far too expensive. I'm looking to keep that invested for the rest of the year and start drawdown after April next year. Our aim is to keep Martin's income under the Personal Allowance of £12,570, which we won't be able to do this year due to him working his last two months in the new financial year. Once we add in his occupational pension the SIPP will put him over. 

However, I noticed last week that his monthly pension statement stated HMRC has given him a Basic Rate tax code, which is not correct and means he is being taxed at 20%, despite only having a small pension as income. That tax code is often given to people who have pensions and are still working. So, we rang up HMRC, talked through the issue with them and they have now changed the tax code to account for this. He should now get a refund on the tax taken from his pension since June and a refund of the tax he paid during April and May while working. 

-oOo-

Credit cards

Finally credit cards. One of my 0% rate promotions is coming to an end in September. If you've read my blog for a while you'll know I favour putting larger spends on these cards, paying back a set amount and keeping my savings earning interest. It's a technique called stoozing. Because I have savings I can pay off the debt at any time if I need to so I don't feel burdened by it, but I get the luxury of repaying it at my leisure over time. The card repayments come from our income every month so my savings and investments can sit there untouched from one year to the next. 

After searching the market, I found a Marks and Spencer card that offers 0% interest for 20 months and was successful with my application. The car we bought last week was purchased using our normal household credit card to get the buyer's protection, and originally I was going to use a combination of my bonus and savings for that but I've decided not to so that balance will shortly be transferred onto the Marks and Spencer card. I'll then set up a regular payment every month and just forget about it. We will be renewing our mortgage deal in a couple of years and so I'll clear the balance three months before our new deal. 

There is another technique to saving/making money using credit cards but it's not as easy as it used to be so I don't do it. It's called a Super Balance Transfer or Money Transfer. Basically, you get a card with a 0% interest rate on money transfers and a low fee, then do a money advance off the card, up to the credit limit you've been given, into your current account. You're effectively taking a cash advance from your card. You can then put the cash into a savings account and get the interest. This is not so easy to do as it was 10 years ago. Back in the day there were very little, if any fees, for cash advances and huge savings interest so it was quite lucrative, but credit card lenders didn't like people doing it so changed their terms and conditions, the fees have increased massively (lowest is currently 3%), and savings interest rates are low.

You can still do it, but you need a special Money Transfer credit card but really it is too much faff for no reward so I stick to the stoozing. The only way I would change my mind is if we had a recession and the price of the funds in my pension and ISAs dropped significantly, making it worthwhile to buy the lower priced units in anticipation of the day they increase in value. I've done that before during a market dip, using savings though not money transfers. 

It's still good to have that possibility in my back pocket. I may need to use every means available to me if I'm to retire early. 

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Steel Kitten

She's been persuaded

Yes, it finally happened. I finally accepted that we had to update our daily car to a more modern car. I think we felt the earth shift on its axis when I ‘gave in’ 😂 

Early on in our marriage I identified cars as a significant money drain and impediment to retiring early, and I still maintain they are, so this is very much an experiment. It's only because my recent bonus came in that we've done it, as while bonuses are lovely to receive they sit outside our budget as luxuries as they can never be relied upon. 

Martin and I had spoken many times before about having a more modern car but I've resisted. I refuse to lease a car, as I want to own something outright in case I need to sell for the money. I won't buy a new car, as the depreciation costs in the first three years are horrible. Also, I'm very suspicious of anything with CPUs and sensors. It annoys me that you have to spend £50 and get a garage to reset each sensor that trips and diagnose the problem, which may or may not be the real problem as sometimes sensors can trip other sensors into playing up. You could end up spending hundreds of pounds fixing something only to find it was a problem knocked on from elsewhere in the car. Finally, modern car parts come in units. You can't just fix a small bit like older cars, you have to replace the whole unit. It means modern mechanics are trained to put sealed units together like lego, rather than pinpoint the exact seal/pipe/part that has malfunctioned and replace that.

In all, I think it is a licence to pick my pocket and I've strongly resisted. However, I now accept that we had to make a move towards a modern car for our day-to-day needs, as finding an pre-sensor style car that is low mileage and in good condition is now very difficult and I need something smart and reliable for visiting clients. After a few years of trouble-free motoring our 20 year old automatic Nissan Almera is getting to a point where it is quite tatty and dinged, has 91,000 miles on the clock, and is needing a little too much attention every year. Audrey no longer drives her 19 year old manual Nissan Micra and neither does Martin now he's given up work so that is just sat on the drive. I don’t drive manual cars as I dislike the faff of gear changes otherwise I’d have it. The tax on both of them is high, nearly £360 a year for the Almera and about half that less for the Micra, and there are likely to be increases in the future to try and combat climate change by getting elderly polluting cars off the road.

They’ve done well though. We bought the Almera in 2018 for £500 with 64,000 miles on the clock, as we needed something for me to drive and had strength to pull the car and animal trailer. The Micra 1.0 belonged to my parents from new and Audrey bought it from them in 2017 to update her even older last car. It had 56,000 miles on it when she bought it and now has 66,000. 

So, after doing some research, we decided to buy an automatic 2009 Toyota Yaris 1.3 at a local dealership. We found a few likely candidates in Lincolnshire to test drive over the last week, and finally settled on one that drives well, with a full service history, bank of first time MOT passes and only very minor advisories and 53,000 miles on the clock. It will be more expensive than what we're used to spending (around £4,000 compared to our usual £500) but the onus is on Martin to prove its worth. He talked the talk for a modern car and in his opinion this is a good one, so now he’s persuaded me it better walk the walk! The car tax will be £30 a year and insurance £190. 

The plan is that the Micra will be MOT'd before the end of this month and advertised for sale so we don't have to buy another lot of road tax. Also, we've just got the MOT on the Almera, and are aiming to replace that in 3-6 months with a classic car of the right engine size. A classic tow car will have no road tax, as it will be older than 30 years, can go on a classic car policy on a limited mileage for less than £100 a year and Martin can maintain it. 

I have to say, the new car it is very quiet and smooth to drive. Having only ever driven older cars I can see the technology progression between the older and newer styles. It's also a luxury to have a working CD player - the Almera and Micra only have tape players 😁

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Steel Kitten

The 'Do Not 'Disturb' signs go up

I was pleased to see the back of last week. It was very stressful for me but I'm hopeful I have resolved the problem, which my current reading list should hint at its identity. 

I start my working week on Tuesday but lately my brain has convinced itself it should start Monday evening at 11pm. It rolls around all the work issues I could face the following day until I fall into a fitful dozing session around 3am only for me to jolt awake 15 minutes before I am due at my desk at 8am. I reached screaming pitch last Tuesday morning. After having a week off I looked just as tired on my return as on my leaving. The problem - in a nutshell - is my own inability to say 'bugger off' when yet another impromptu zoom meeting/call/instant message rolls in from my colleagues. The constant interruptions and lingering meetings mean I am behind on my work. That is what is keeping me awake worrying.

I spent the whole week being ruthless with my time, blocking off my calendar, refusing meetings, not answering the phone, blocking everyone on video-conferencing software and cracking through everything I had been behind on. My entire calendar is now blocked off in chunks over the next few weeks to accomplish a list of goals to get my backlog of work completed. Anything else is secondary. I sellotaped this phrase to my screen as a reminder to use it: “I’m sorry I’m completely scheduled this week with no free time, perhaps we can put something in the diary for next week or the week after?” Funnily enough, it sorted out a lot of people who just wanted me to do their work/ thinking for them on the spot. The rest had to be dealt with by blocking on video conferencing software so they couldn’t get through to me. I set my profile to Do Not Disturb and now no-one gets through unless on a safe list, and only my manager and the CEO are on it.

The second step was resigning from a social committee at work. I was flattered to be asked a year ago to represent my department. In  all honesty I knew it wasn't a good fit for me but decided to give it a go. I hated it. The emails were never-ending, the zoom meetings impromptu and stretched out by extroverts who loved nothing better than to wile away the time yakking - meanwhile my workload was piling up behind me and I was behind on my promises. The final straw was volunteering me to represent an additional 'hobby' club at work. Enough was enough. I felt like a massive weight had been lifted the second I pressed 'Send' on my resignation message. They weren't that happy but I don't care any more. I can't do hobby stuff in deference to my revenue-generating work.

-oOo-

Despite the heat this weekend I decided to get out and go to a car boot sale on Sunday, the first one for quite a few years. I have got out of the habit of doing them, not sure why, Probably because I got fed up with bringing a load of stuff in and not having a place to put it. We really got back into the gardening again lately so I was on the lookout for anything gardening related. 

Didn’t find much in that respect, however, I did find a brand new leather belt for Martin (£1.00), six new handkerchiefs (50p) to replace some that are fit for the rag bag, two Oxford pillowcases (£1.50), a Stephen Fry book (50p), a piece of Laura Ashley fabric (£2.00, about 2m) and two dresses (£3 and £2). Total spend £10.50 plus sunburn. I got that for free.

-oOo-

Thursday was our 15th wedding anniversary and we went out  to the local Nepalese curry house to celebrate (coincidentally, it was also five years since we completed on the property). It’s the first time I’ve been out for a meal in 15 months and it was absolutely wonderful. But there were signs all around of the fallout from COVID-19. The food is very good and the restaurant used to be packed with tables crammed in cheek by jowl. Now of course with social distancing the tables had to be a prescribed distance apart and there weren’t that many people eating. In the old days  the place would be full, despite being a Thursday night. This time there were only six tables out of a possible 15 and by the time we left at 8:30pm just three tables remained. Another post-COVID change was with portion sizes. We normally have a Tandoori mixed grill, which comes out on a sizzle platter and is absolutely piled with meat. This time the meat was all neatly arranged on the platter with no piling - as sign of economies to avoid having to put the prices up on the menu (and probably incur more expense having them reprinted). There was enough food though, but I guess we'd used to taking some home in containers and having it the next day.

                                                                            -oOo-

I've been trying to propagate as many of our existing plants as possible in an effort to reduce our garden spending. Over the years the driveway has been a good source of thyme, oregano, poppies, foxgloves, gooseberries, strawberries, alchemilla, wallflowers, fleabane, lavender, bluebells, nigella, aquilegia, tomatoes, spinach, and buddleia. Every now and then I have a wander round, dig them up and pot them on. I find the occasional self-seeded sweet pea but that does not like being transplanted so it has to take its chances against the cars. 

It's very helpful on months like this one, which is shaping up to be a pretty expensive month. We’ve managed to have the house insurance, classic car insurance, an oil delivery and payment for having a Wills updated all come in the same month. I did start the Will process quite a long time ago but what with work being busy and the solicitor going off on holiday, we’ve only just now managed to go in last week and sign them so that’s one worry off my mind. 

I've had a few nice little frugal wins though (although not quite on the scale to balance the outgoings). 

The boss stumped up £20 per person to cover snacks and drinks for Euro finals night so we had pizza delivered. 

The regular savers matured so that was £100 in interest. 

Then I realised that the healthcare plan I have at work has a dental and optical component to it that I hadn't used so I quickly ruffled out my receipts for my sight tests, glasses and dental check-ups since February and put the claims through. That should pay me back about £120. My firm 'gives' us about £250 to ‘spend’ within the health plan, and you can shape different components to suit your circumstances. If it costs more than £250, you can pay extra out of your salary. I have a basic health plan, which reimburses me £60 for sight tests and £60 for dental check-ups and hygienist fees, as well private consultancies, hospital treatment if necessary for any illnesses, and complementary heaIthcare (physio, acupuncture, etc). In addition I've chosen critical illness cover to pay out a lump sum of £50,000 if I become seriously ill. That costs me £5 a month. Absolute bargain. 

                                                                            -oOo-

So, all in all, a quiet but productive week. I successfully cracked through a load of work and accomplished all but one of my goals. Tonight will tell...will I sleep or not...?

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Steel Kitten

A week of roses and financial planning

My week of annual leave passed by all too quickly and work looms tomorrow. 

Still, I managed to get done a lot of the things I wanted too, including a trip on Thursday to David Austin's rose gardens and plant centre over near Wolverhampton. Beautiful roses and now was definitely the right time to visit, as almost every rose was in bloom. I have a ridiculous amount of photos of my favourites to pore over for ideas.

The one above is stunning - a ground cover rose called Raubritter.

This one was a lovely mauve colour with yellow centres called Blue for You. Very strong fruity scent.

And this one - Old Pink Moss - was a very close match to the rose that I found in the churchyard when scattering my mother's ashes. Again, very strong scent.

I was incredibly restrained and came away with only one rose - Blue for You.

I do intend to buy Old Pink Moss at some point. Raubritter is also a contender just for its sheer exuberance. It is ridiculously prolific - it immediately cheers me up just looking at it. David Austin does have incredibly healthy good quality roses. I've got some in the garden already. This is Gertrude Jekyll out by the back door. 

-oOo-

 

I was in Lidl's on Friday and I happened upon one of these - the £1.50 fruit and veg box. 

I'd heard about these mythical creatures on various frugal blogs but never actually seen one in the flesh. That's because I was looking in the wrong place. My local Lidl keeps them by the tills, not in the fresh produce section where I had been looking. I decided to road test one. 

Absolutely gob-smacked at the sheer amount of stuff here, especially the amount of fruit. There were  another two large potatoes that aren't in the picture because I put them to the side out of shot when unpacking. This will last us most of the week. I already had a cauliflower in the fridge so today I'm going to use all of it up by doing a large dish of cauliflower in white sauce. I'll freeze half and the rest will be for dinner tonight to go with a lamb casserole I made yesterday. I've also got a vegetable lasagne to do for the freezer to use up some aging veg so I might lose the aubergine in there, perhaps slice it up and use it to replace some of the pasta sheets. 

-oOo-

After my last post Maria asked me about the gluten free cake recipe I used. 

It’s a basic mix that I used for non-gluten free Victoria Sponge cakes but I swopped in Doves Farm self-raising flour and made up only about a quarter of what I normally do, so only 2-3oz of butter, sugar and flour, 1 egg, bit of baking powder and vanilla essence, 1oz of flour for ground almonds and the fruit sliced on top. I gleaned from the internet that the key to gluten free baking is to make it a bit wetter than you think you should so I thought in this case the fruit would add the needed liquid as it cooked down. However, it seemed to make a very damp cake and while very tasty it was thin and fell apart easily. I decided to go back and do it again, this time doubling the amount of mixture to make it sturdier. In effect I was making one layer of what would have been a Victoria sponge.

I should add I also had a plan B, which I believe is essential to successful cooking. If it didn’t work I could dump it in a bowl with some cream and make it look like a deliberate effort at a dessert. 

Good that I had that plan because it didn't work 😁

Well, it sort of worked. The fruit disappeared into the depths of the cake. I see now why sponge flans were invented. 

Still tasted lovely but I may not worry about trying to perfect this. I think this is a case of how fruit behaves in a sponge unless the sponge is baked first and you add the fruit later (i.e. a flan). 

-oOo-

I was heavily focused on financial stuff this weekend. I've worked out that to retire at 55 (in seven years) I need to have a minimum of £350,000 and we're already a good part of the way there, which is encouraging. I used Guiide and Firecalc for the basic calculations, which showed me that £350000 will give me a 91% chance of retiring without running out of money. For a 98% chance of never running out of money I need £400,000. Up until last month I couldn't see how it was possible to build this because we needed the money we had saved to cover the shortfall between Martin's former salary and current pension income. However, a combination of my recent pay increase, Martin no longer having work expenses and our reduced spending has shown me that actually it is possible. This month we are on track to pay all of the bills without touching any of our savings. Every month that the savings stay the same or increase brings my retirement that little bit closer. 

I've not included everything in the figures. Inheritances are excluded, even those we have been told we should get later this year, as to me that is an added bonus. Until that money lands in our bank account it isn't real. I have also ignored the house equity, keeping that 'in reserve'. The plan is that sooner or later Martin and I are going to downsize - perhaps 7-10 years - at which point the remainder of the mortgage will be paid off and we will have some extra cash in the bank for our retirement. If it all goes wrong over the next few years, if the markets take a heavy downturn and take years to recover, if I become ill and can't work or lose my job and can't find another, then there is always that to fall back on.

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Steel Kitten

Thank goodness for yellow stickers

Yellow sticker food bargains have played a significant role in our efforts to save more and retire early. Week in, week out I’ve snuffled the aisles of every shop with food I go into, even though pickings have been pretty slim lately due to my schedule, looking for things that are reduced. 

My lunch yesterday was a huge cheese salad with shredded spiced mushrooms, all yellow sticker. My breakfast banana came from a pack of eight reduced from £1.35 to 50p, and my GF bagel was from a four-pack reduced from £2.00 to £1.00. My dinner this evening was lemon and herb marinated hake (which I bought at Tesco the other day and forgot about when doing Wednesday's post), a big salad and the rest of the shredded spiced mushrooms. Even the lemon and herb marinade was from a bottle reduced from £2.00 to 2op. I paid full price for the mayo though...well, I bought two 800g jars on a 2for1 at Christmas and decanted one into a squeezy bottle. 😀 

Oh yes, there's no doubt that yellow stickers are a big help with the food budget. I have a pretty simple yellow sticker pricing strategy; I buy things that are reduced by 40% off or more. For example, if something is £3.00 reduced to £2.50 I’m not interested. Once it goes to £2 I start to maybe consider it. If it is £1.70 or less I’ll get it. I don’t buy pork or lamb (for obvious reasons) and don’t do exotic fruit and veg. I try and stick with things I know we all will eat. 

I also look at sections in a specific order. I look in the discounted sections of the meat and fish aisles (as they are generally the most expensive part of a shop), general refrigerated goods, the deli, fruit and veg, bread, ambient and frozen then homewares and flowered/plants. Then I loop back and pick up the rest of the stuff on my list, making adjustments as I go depending on what I managed to pick up reduced. 

I very rarely buy anything in homewares but occasionally snuffles have turned up printer paper, stationary and the odd packs of seasonal goods that I tuck away for the following year. Plants and flowers can sometimes yield interesting stuff; I once found a mini spruce tree in a tin for a £1 reduced from £4. That lives outside and every year gets potted on in spring and decorated at Christmas.

This approach has allowed us to consistently pay a vast amount less for our groceries shopping every week, which I combine with bulk buying items when on offer, finding the non-reduced bargains regardless of which shop they are in, and checking all the supermarkets weekly for offers through mysupermarket.com. 

We're lucky in that we have quite a few food shops in close proximity in our town, including Iceland, M&S foods, Lidl, Aldi, B&M, Sainsbury's, Poundstretchers, and Morrisons. Tesco is well out of town, about 15 minutes away, and so is ASDA and Co-op, at about 30 minutes each. Waitrose is about an hour. Those get occasionally snuffled when passing. I love having so much choice, although it can make for a bit of work keeping up with them all.

It can be worth it though. For example, Martin likes a box of proper Jaffa cakes every now and then (not found a generic version he likes), and Sainsbury's has a box of 10 for £1 or 20 for £1.60. However, in Iceland you can get a bulk box of 10 packs of 10 for £4. No contest, although I have to keep them hidden otherwise he eats the lot!

On the smaller end of the scale, I like having a cappuccino once a day and I have a Dolce Gusto machine. I can sometimes find bulk deals online for the pods, which is especially good if I can find a discount voucher to combine them with. The lowest I've ever bought a pack of 16 pods was for £2.85 a box and that was with a store discount coupon. Most of the time Poundstretcher has a box of pods for £3.50 compared to £3.69 in Sainsbury's (although at the moment they are £3.50). Unfortunately, neither Aldi nor Lidl in my area do their own branded-compatible cappuccino pods otherwise I'd have those instead. A 19p saving each time I buy may not sound a lot but if you made the same saving on every item you buy you can start to see how that would build up over the months and years. 

Saying that, for a while now I've been drinking Kenco Duos, as they've been on offer for £2.00 in many places but they've now gone up to £3.50 everywhere but Asda (£2.00). That's too much for six coffee pods so I'm back on the Dolce Gusto until I can find them cheap again or pass by an ASDA.

Yes, I know I'm getting a bit anally retentive about prices, but apart from the love of a bargain there is another, more personal reason for doing this. Martin has been up at the crack of dawn for 25 years. Come rain, shine, snow, dogs, nasty shouty people and broken bottles of ink in parcels (the curse of the dyed hand) he has delivered the mail conscientiously. 

I want him retired. I want him to enjoy waking up every morning and sinking back under the covers, knowing he doesn't have to go anywhere. 

To do that I need to stretch his salary. It's very hard-earned. 

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Steel Kitten

Getting back into the serious frugal groove

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Before I start this post, Brisbane Susan has mentioned that she cannot see any comments (is that right Susan?), although she can leave them. I'm not sure why this would be, as all the correct settings are turned on from my end. It may be something to do with your browser compatibility - perhaps Internet Explorer or Firefox have issues recognising the code - or maybe you have an older version of a browser that needs updating. Those are the only two options I can think of right now.

Anyone else having issues?

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So, I sat down and worked out the year's normal and additional expenses last week and I was not happy with what I saw. I won't go into detail in the post - I'll save it for next time - but suffice to say we have A LOT of things that need fixing and repairing this year.

I realise that DH and I are going to have to get a bit frugal to meet these expenses. I no longer do any freelance work for extra cash, as it is too much for me to cope with on top of this place, a full time job and my hobbies (hobbies are now a priority for me, as I had let them fall by the wayside and suffered for it). I still maintain a lot of frugal actions and tasks that I've always done but one big thing that has been greatly reduced is yellow sticker shopping. Travelling to the office every day used to provide me with ample opportunities to nip in to local food shops for a quick snuffle as I went past. Now I work from home, I am restricted to when I go out - usually the middle of the day - and there isn't necessarily much on offer at those times.

So, I've realised I need to go back to doing it. Somehow. The idea of an additional trip out in the evenings doesn't fill me with joy, as there is the expense of the petrol, but then again if I end up with the amount of food I used to I would save much more than the petrol costs.

To give you some idea, yesterday afternoon I dropped into two Tesco's on the way back from visiting my parents. The time was about 7:30-8pm, and this is what I got.

The salmon was cut up into six then cooked, three frozen and three put in the fridge. The salad produce and fancy shredded mushrooms will see me through lunches for the next seven days - I just need to add some protein to it, say, salmon 😋. The whole mushrooms are going to go into a soup, perhaps with a dash of the smoked bacon, while the sliced mushrooms will be sprinkled into various dinners over the week. The unsmoked bacon will be teamed with our hen's eggs for breakfast while the veggie mash will go with sausages one night for dinner. The two mangoes are destined for fruit smoothies. Finally, the teacakes will be eaten by Martin as an after work snack while the scones will be in Martin's lunches and as puddings after dinner.

The sum total of this lot was £9.45. It would have been £37.54 full price so I paid 25%. I already have enough meat and other bits to use for dinners so apart from a few little bits like tea bags, milk, bananas, apples and gluten-free bread, that one shop has topped the fridge and freezer up so I don't need to do a weekly shop.

Result!

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Steel Kitten

A mixed week

Goodness me, we've had some horrible days weatherwise here (not as bad as further north of England though). I've woken up a few times in the night this week to hear the rain lashing down and one night I ended up putting my heated blanket on at 4am I was that cold! We have an all year 10 + 4 tog duvet and at the moment we have on the 4 tog plus a quilted bed cover. Look like I'll be switching to the 10 tog duvet this week. 

In addition to having fires most nights, to combat the cold on Tuesday I put the joint carcass from the weekend into the slow cooker overnight with a slightly worse for wear onion, carrot and some leftover gravy plus some salt and pepper and used the resulting stock to make leak and potato soup with a bit of GF spaghetti chopped up in it. That was dinner for us all one day, for MIL and I on another day, and for three days on the trot I had a big mugful for lunch as well. I also did slow cooker sausage casserole from the BBC Good Food website. I had everything in the recipe bar sweet potatoes but I substituted in butternut squash. I also added a tin of baked beans to thicken it up a bit more as they cooked down, plus five gluten-free suet dumplings. Haven't had dumplings for ages and they were lush. That was dinner for all of one night, Martin the next night and today I'm going to liquidise the remains for soup and have it for my lunch 😁 I'm really stretching the food this week, which is a good job as I spotted an offer on the recipe page and ended up treating myself to 5 issues of the Good Food magazine for £5! I'm usually pretty good with cancelling offer subscriptions before I'm due to make a full price payment so that is a nice treat for me coming in for the next few months and will hopefully give me some inspiration. 15 years of cooking almost every night has left me a bit jaded. 

Unfortunately, this bargain led on to me finding an offer of 5 issues of Country Life for £5 😳 😁 I do like Country Life but it's quite expensive so I only ever buy it when it is on offer or sometimes someone buys me a quarterly subscription for xmas.

On the two nice sunny days we had, the chickens got a good old scratch in the pig pen, and I managed sweep the patio and paths, remove the saucers from under the plants and wind up the hosepipes for winter. Martin cut the front lawn but couldn't get to the back lawn before spots of rain started. Due to my fatigue I had temporarily stopped going to the gym in September as it was exhausting me further, but this week on the nice days I went back and eased myself in gently with two 30 minute sessions on the treadmill. It's important for me to keep up the routine of walking, as it strengthens my dodgy knee, helps me lose weight and contributes to my health self-care.

Talking of health, my 76-year old mother had her hip replaced last Friday. It's remarkable how hip replacements have come on so far now they are treated as a routine procedures. Her operation was at 1:30pm, she was out by 3:10pm, and she had sedation and a spinal block so she recovered quicker. She was taking herself to the toilet that night, was up and around by Saturday, had a physio assessment and was tackling stairs by the Sunday morning, and home by 3pm that day. She's only taking paracetamol for wound pain and has a single anti-coagulant pill to take every day for three weeks. Every now and then she goes to the GP for a wound dressing change. Remarkable. To be fair, she has been doing her exercises to ease her hip pain for a few months and we think that's why she's doing so well now. Her leg muscles are strong. If she had to do it again, I think she would have added some arm strengthening exercises into the mix as she has to put her weight on crutches and then two walking sticks, which requires a bit of upper body strength.  

Anyway, she was discharged from hospital before I could get up to see her so yesterday I took the day off and visited.The journey down was ok but coming back was frightful. Took me nearly three hours to get home in the dark instead of the usual 1hr 45 due to the howling rain and traffic. 

Stupid me thought it would be ok to drive back around 4pm on a Friday. Of course, a lot of people leave work early on a Friday so it was chocker on the main routes. I was going to go out into town today to do a bit of charity shop snuffling and buy a few bits of food but I'm still in bed drinking tea with the heated blanket on and sore shoulders from gripping the steering wheel so I'm giving it a miss. I've asked Martin to swing by the supermarket and buy the few bits we need.

I might catch up on some knitting, reading and do the finances, the latter of which is giving me a little cause for concern. One of the funds we have some investments in is an Invesco fund, and Invesco is in the news at the moment as the fund manager has been following Neil Woodford's investing rationale - the Neil Woodford whose funds have collapsed recently. So I need to do some research and reading, and see if the risks have increased beyond what I'm happy with to continue with Invesco. 

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Steel Kitten

Where is the money going?

As part of the 31 NSD trial, I went through our expenses over the last few months and had a closer look at what we were spending money on.

A lot of money goes out every month on smallholding feed, equipment, fencing, medication and vet bills. I can mostly plan for the things needed but not emergencies requiring vets or fencing because the sheep have executed a mistimed Fosbury Flop and hurt themselves or got their heads stuck and thrashed until a fence post snaps. It is still worth keeping livestock as the quality of the meat and eggs is much better than what we could buy in shops.

The car is always springing something on us. February was two tyres for £103, neither planned, because we noticed the sidewalls had cracked. March was a new light unit for £15. We got away lightly last month.

The cat's vet costs are just ridiculous at the moment. Georgie was diagnosed with a thyroid problem at the beginning of March, had two sets of blood tests, expensive medication and a tooth extracted plus tooth cleaning. Fleagle has a problem with a lump under her tongue, which has necessitated three vets visits and two lots of meds. She goes back next week for an examination of that lump under anaesthetic and a tooth clean plus blood tests. The insurance should cover some but not all the costs of these two - Petplan would only offer us a shared responsibility policy for two elderly cats - so that's something but vet bills are now shaping up to be a regular expense so I need to find cheaper sources of medication for them instead of shelling out full price all the time.

I have discovered that we seem to pick up the tab for things more often that we should and overspend on people's birthdays and anniversaries. £30 for a relative's birthday lunch for the two of us turned into £90 last month because we picked up the tab for everyone. I can't even pretend alcohol was involved in the decision making on that one, we were drinking lemonade. I have realised we need to be a bit meaner because I can't remember the last time someone paid for us. If I budget £30 for a gift, we'll end up spending £40 by the time we take into account a card, maybe flowers and a birthday cake.

Finally, charity shops, car boot sales, etc. I've said before that these two end up not being such a cheap hobby, especially if you don't need the stuff you buy. You just end up piling more stuff into the house. I mostly gave up regular Sunday car boot sales before we moved here, as I was spending £20-£30 a week on bags full of stuff and cluttering up the house. Done the odd one as I've come across it but nothing planned. Unfortunately, regular charity shopping took its place. Analysis of the receipts shows I'm not just buying stuff in the charity shops, I might go into Savers or Boots and buy something, then I'll find something in the library in the For Sale section, then I'll have tea and cake at a local hospice cafe to support them and finish off my 'cheap day out' looking around Sainsbury's. Breaking that habit in Feb/March was the best thing I could have done, because that was shaping up to be a £20-£30 a week habit as well plus whatever I bought in Sainsbury's 'off-list'.

In all I can see where economies need to be made and habits need to be changed, because we're spending our early retirement. If we continue like this we will miss out on retiring early together, which we will always regret.

We need to refocus our commitment to our long-term plans.

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Steel Kitten

Is FIRE possible for us average Joes?

There’s been a lot of kerfuffle in the press lately about FIRE (Financial Independence and Retire Early). It seems that some FIRE advocates have either been writing about or been sourced for comment about it and it's caused a big fuss. The newspapers, typically, have published articles based on the far extreme of FIRE and suggested that it is possible for us all to retire at 30/40 financially independent and never need money again if only we practice extreme frugality (or something like that). This is just click-bait ruse and to generate comments that keep the newspaper at the top of Google. The comments are as expected, depending on which newspaper you read, from the polite scepticism of Telegraph readers to the no-holds barred outrage and insults from Daily Mail readers.

The trouble is, the newspapers do no-one any favours but themselves by reporting in this way (perhaps reporting is too strong a word, story-telling may be more apt).

The consensus is the average Joe couldn’t possibly do this so why bother trying? To be honest, they’ve probably got the first bit right to a certain extent but it annoys me that it is seen as a binary choice. Either Financial Independence or bust! Suppose some of those people had a go, and the most they managed to accomplish was paying down all their debt and building up some savings so they feel more secure. Surely that’s better than throwing their hands up and not bothering?

A lot of the comments on the Daily Mail site were very telling. One man commented that “I might as well enjoy it as I could be dead tomorrow” because he earned £17,000 a year, his rent for a one-bed house cost him 40% of his salary so financial independence for someone in his position was ridiculous to aim for. No-one has said to him that if you earn £17,000 a year and spend 40% of your take home pay on your housing you should not be renting a one-bed house. This guy is renting so he has flexibility that homeowners don't have. Rent/mortgage should not be more than 30% of a take home salary. That’s what the banks work to when assessing mortgage affordability and it’s a good starting point for personal finances. If rental on a one-bedroom property is crucifying you, either downsize to a studio flat and save the difference or go up to a two-bed and share with a friend. Either way, the percentage of your take-home pay spent on housing comes down and you can breathe…and save.

I speak from experience. Years ago, before I met DH, I rented a two bedroom house on my own and my housing costs were 43% of my salary. Ouch! If this guy got his housing costs to 30% of his take home he could save 10%.

The attitude that “might as well enjoy the money, you could be dead tomorrow” is short-sighted and defeatist. Statistically you are NOT going to die tomorrow. I think averaged out across the entire population (taking into account age and health) it is something like 0.002% or 1 in 50,000 chance of dying tomorrow. If you spend everything you earn on consumer goods and services you will get to retirement age and have nothing but a state pension and a poorly performing private pension (if you didn’t opt out). If you’ve bought a house you might have that to fall back on and/or if you are very lucky you might have an inheritance from relatives. If you have neither and you opted out of a personal pension you’re going to endure a lot of financial pain at an age where it’s hard to ride that out. 

Anyway, it's no secret that DH and I want to retire early. I’ve explained my reasons why here.  I have a few FIRE advocates in my blogroll that I keep up with, HOWEVER, that does not mean I am going for Financial Independence. I realised some time ago that Financial Independence is not possible for us.

Financial Independence is defined as the point where the ‘income’ from savings and investments pay your monthly outgoings. You are considered to have reached Financial Independence when you have accumulated 30 x your annual expenses, which you can then take 4-6% a year of as your income. DH and I will not accumulate enough money to achieve those kind of numbers, which for us is around £600,000 without mortgage payments. Why?

• We started late – I didn’t even think about retiring early until about 2009 at 36. 
• We earn the UK average salary for a two-person household. We’re unlikely to ever earn megabucks because we’re not keen on the idea of the stress and responsibility that goes with it. We generate money on the side here and there when opportunities arise but generally we do not have the drive or energy to chase larger sums of money or climb ladders. That’s a conscious choice on our part.
• We like the occasional meal out and want to have some interesting holidays over the next few years. I consciously cut some things to the bone to enjoy others.
• We made the decision to take on another mortgage two years ago.  If we had stayed at the last place we would have been mortgage free in 2021. And miserable. I hated that house at the end. We moved to achieve a dream, albeit an expensive one.
• We’ve benefited from rising property and financial markets over the last 10 years, which won’t last and we may be in for a bumpy ride during the next 10 years.
• I only started a proper pension in 2010 and, due to probationary periods and redundancy, only have about 6-7 years contributions.

Taking into account all of that, what we can do is achieve financial comfort (and a nice chunk of FU money) earlier than 65, so that is our aim. We’re going to use whatever tips and tricks we can glean from every possible source, and combine that with solid budgeting, saving, tax and investing principles to secure a better financial future for ourselves. That better future is DH retiring at 62 and me at 55 and then carefully running down our money (we may work after this but the crucial point is it will be because we want to, not need to). 

This is different to true Financial Independence, in that we are not living off 4-6% of the total retirement pot every year. We’re living off a lot more than that every year so it will deplete over time. At some point we may have to do an equity release or downsize – we’re not living in penury when we own a house outright. We’ll use it if we have to and enjoy a comfortable retirement. 

I don’t believe the average Joe can achieve Financial Independence, but I do believe they can achieve financial comfort with no debt and a nest egg of FU money. That’s got to be worth going for.

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Steel Kitten