It’s all about getting the biggest bang for your buck

How’re is your February going?  Are you coping with the bad weather, the never-ending Lockdown and the inevitable tightening of belts?  I’ve always found February to be a tougher month, financially, than January.  In January, you run out of cash early because you were paid before Christmas and end up in debt/overdue on payments; February is when those debts have to be paid back.   (You may remember me mentioning that tough February 30 years ago, when Dumbo left me with little more £20 to get through the month. It was the inspiration for several years of the “£50 February Challenge”.)

We  went to the Butchers’ yesterday, spending £55.70 from the Meat Fund.  Since our meat shopping is all about getting the biggest bang for our buck, I thought I’d share what we bought, what the plans are for it and how many portions we’ll get.  The butcher doesn’t do an itemised bill, so I’m only recording prices where I saw them and can remember them.  Remember, there’s only two of us in this household.

• 1 large roasting chicken - £7.99 - dinner tonight (we’ll eat the legs), chicken fajitas on Tuesday and chicken risotto on Wednesday.  That’s at least 10 portions, plus stock.  
• 1kg minced beef - at least 16 portions when padded out with veg, lentils/beans, etc
• 1 rolled, stuffed, boned breast of lamb 1.2kg - £13.60 - minimum of 4 portions of roast lamb.  The butcher cut it in half for us, so we have two roasts.
• 8 chicken breasts, average weight 200g each - between 16 to 32 portions, depending on whether I double up in a recipe.   I usually only use one in a stir fry or chicken pasta dish that serves 4.
• 8 large chicken thighs - 8 portions of chicken tray bake.  
• 4 pork chops - two will definitely be served as chops, while the other two may get chopped up to make pork-and-beans and a stir-fry.  Either 4 or 10 portions, depending on the outcome.

That’s between 54 and 80 portions of meat-based meals.  As I said, it’s all about getting the biggest bang for our meat-buck.

With the exception of tonight’s roasting chicken, I have just finished shoehorning it all into the freezer.  Everything has been “bagged and tagged”.  I had to do it in stages to maximise space/freeze things in shapes that will stack and fit together, especially since the freezer was pretty full already with lunchboxes, tubs of soup/cooked pulses/homemade ready meals and sauces, not to mention the haggis that threatens to leap out at you... The mince was divided into 4 and carefully stuffed into freezer box to form 4 rectangles.  The chicken breasts and chops were bagged separately and frozen to be as flat as possible.  The chicken thighs were bagged in fours, while the lamb was stood on its end, to freeze upright.  

As you can see, once again, I win at freezer Tetris.

- Pam

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The little things add up

As every knitter knows, it’s the little things we do that add up to something big.  In the case of knitting, the “little thing” is creating one stitch after another, which eventually add up to a jumper.  It’s incremental.  The British cycling coach, Sir Dave Brailsford, makes a big thing about incremental gains.  It was concentrating on the small things that took British cycling from mediocre to world class.

I was thinking about this incremental effect on Thursday morning, when I put another 700g of dried kidney beans on to soak.  We didn’t need the beans immediately for dinner, but since there were none left in the freezer, there was space available and I had a few seconds to spare, it seemed sensible to put them on to soak.  Thursday evening, I took a minute to drain the beans, spoon them into a recycled bread bag and shove them in the freezer.  I’ll probably cook them next week in the pressure cooker, use a third for dinner then box up the remaining 2/3 and freeze for two more meals.  (700g dried beans gives 3x500g boxes of cooked beans. Approximately the same as 2 cans of beans from the supermarket).

What does this have to do with incremental gains?  By planning ahead, not only do I save time but I also save money.  It costs the same to process one can’s worth of dried beans as it does to process 6; about a penny’s worth of gas for 30 minutes in the pressure cooker.  The cheapest tin of kidney beans is 30p in Tesco, whereas they sell 2kg of dried beans for £4, which gives me the equivalent of 17 cans-worth for 24p a can, a saving of 6p.  That 6p/can saved can be utilised elsewhere.  It adds up, quietly, in the background of day to day life*. 

Small things add up.  The principle of incremental gains works whether you’re trying to keep your living costs low or attempting to tread lightly on the earth by keep your petroleum pollution down.  Dried beans aren’t just cheaper, they need less energy to ship and store than the equivalent weight of cooked, canned beans.  Plus there’s the energy saved from not having to manufacture the cans or mine, ship and smelt the metal.  Remember the recycled bread bag?  It’ll be washed out, dried and reused until it starts to fall apart, when it’ll go into the recycling.  (It’s labelled “can be recycled with shopping bags at bigger stores”.  Our council recycles shopping bags, so will recycle the bread bag.).  

“What’s the cost of one bread bag?” you might ask. Not a lot, but that’s not the point.  It all adds up.  Just as you can’t learn and become fluent in a language in a day, so you can’t expect everything you do to create an immediate “Big Bang” impact.  You hear people muttering “why bother? It’s only...” but if everyone does it, then it’ll have a big impact.  

- Pam

* In the UK, there’s at least two, rival television programs that demonstrate how much of an impact these small savings have to your grocery bill,  Eat Well For Less and Eat Shop Save. The participants always look shocked when the savings are added up.  (Schadenfreude TV, I love it.)

On with the Motley

Today is a special anniversary.  20 years ago, today, I joined the discussion boards of The Motley Fool.  The Fool has played quite a big part in making me who I am today: tech savvy; an investor; a knitter again (I’d given up in the ‘90’s).  I’ve made friends through it; discovered new places; learned how other people live and how other countries operate (tax, politics, etc).  The members of the Fool taught me to budget and how to put the “living” into Living Below Your Means (aka LBYM).  Their posts gave me a window into their lives, before Blogs became a thing and long before Facebook.  For all of that, I say “thank you”.  Yes, I am a Fool and so are they.

All of the above brings me to what I want to say today.  I think that we’re witnessing the start of the next Great Depression and we will need the wise counsel of the Fools more than ever.  No, it’s not because the stock market has crashed (the FTSE100 is down over 2,000 points).   It will be the unintentional consequence of The Big Shutdown that we’re experiencing in Europe:  everyone working from home who can;  flights cancelled;  schools closed;  hotels, pubs, clubs and restaurants shut;  shops closing their doors and hoping that their online business will keep them afloat.  All concerts and live performances have been cancelled.  So many lives are already disrupted and it will just get worse.  The British Government has stepped up for regular employees - if you are furloughed, you will get 80% of your regular salary*, paid for by a government grant - but if you are a zero hours employee or self-employed, as I write you are only entitled to the most basic of benefits (£92/week).

In all this, my thoughts turn to what we can do to help. I worry about how bad it will get and how many people will suffer.  I’ve already fundraised for the local soup kitchen and the food bank**, but I want to do more.   Since I am a Fool and a cook, I have decided that I will create a collection of recipes of really cheap meals, based on four principles:-

1. Tasty
2. Filling
3. Nutritious
4. Less than £2 for an entire meal

They will be posted here on the Blog, since it’s free to access, and possibly compiled into a PDF.  That will be my big task for 2020. 

- Pam

* There is an upper limit in the £2,500/month.

** How is it that, in the 21st century, people are relying on soup kitchens and food banks, institutions which disappeared during the majority of the 20th century.

Frugal Friday on Saturday - Housekeeping and the Grocery Bill

On MSE, someone mentioned that they were struggling to get their food bill down  and wondered how others managed to stick to such a low budget for two adults. I was thinking about this when I was soaking kidney beans yesterday, so I thought I’d elaborate a little on how we do it.  Our full housekeeping budget is:-

£120 - MSE Grocery Challenge/general groceries/Farm shop & supermarket shopping

£ 40 - Meat Fund (spent irregularly at the butcher’s and Costco 

£ 40 - Bulk Fund (used for Costco spends, WingYip and booze)

£ 20 - Christmas (for the goose (£107 last year), tree, chocolates, etc)

£ 10 - Garden Fund

——-

£230

====

That’s £60 up from when I started my blog in 2007.  (I think groceries were £100, Meat and Bulk were £30 each, Christmas £10 and we didn’t have a garden fund, back then.)

We eat really well:  plenty of home-made curries, stir-fries, stews, risotto, pasta, the odd roast, some vegetarian dishes.  For a stew, I’ll use about 300g of meat, plus onions, garlic, carrots, maybe peppers, and a (pre-cooked, dried) pulse or broad beans from the freezer.   I don’t do a lot of “meat and two veg” because, frankly, I find that boring.  

Most meals give 4 portions.  For portion control, I dish up the next day’s lunches as the same time as our dinner ( prevents my DH eating a second portion). 

A big secret is planning.  I don’t mean meal-planning, which I do rather badly. (I tend to stand in front of the fridge/freezer after dinner and think “what have we got in?  What needs to be used up?  What haven’t we eaten lately?”, when considering what we’ll eat for dinner the next day.). It’s about thinking ahead and cooking for more than one meal at a time - those kidney beans that I mentioned?  That was for three meals; two 400g portions are now in the freezer.   I’ll do the same with chickpeas, mung beans, black-eyed beans - dried the dried pulses we have in stock.  Since most of my recipes start “fry onion with garlic, add mushrooms”, I’ll cook up double quantities and freeze the second portion as “Base”, for those days when I’m time poor.

It’s also about thinking of the meal possibilities when you purchase meat.  A roast chicken is dinner one night (the legs), Chinese the next (one breast), then risotto (the other meat) on the third night, plus stock.  A 1kg package of cooking bacon from L!dl costs £1.39, will be split into 4 and  one portion can make any of the following:  Cuban Black Bean Stew, Breakfast Pie, Tuna Lasagne, regular Lasagne, “Bacon & Egg McMuff!ns”, Coq au Vin, etc.

Some of it is about buying in bulk, so I’d suggest you put £5-£10 a month aside for buying good storage containers.  (I use Lock-n-Lock; they aren’t cheap but are critter-proof and water-tight.).   Once you have those, save the cash for a large pressure cooker, in which to cook your pulses.

I only have one type of flour in stock - the bread flour sold as “chapatti” or “Atta” flour, which comes in 10kg bags and costs between £3 and £4 a bag.   It gets used for everything that needs flour: bread cakes (add 1tsp baking powder per cup to make “self-raising”); pastry; pancakes;  Toad in the Hole, etc.  A 2kg bag of kidney beans costs around £3.50, which equates to about 15p a can (NB each 400g can gives 250g cooked beans).   That bag of beans will last us at least 4-6 months. 

HTH

- Pam

Making the best use of what you have

It occurs to me regularly that one of the leading principles of frugality is making the best use of what you already have, rather than constantly chasing the “next big thing”.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking IT gadgets, houses, cars or clothes; if your jeans are perfectly serviceable, why waste the money replacing them?  Don’t waste money on unnecessary spending.

I think about this principle a lot, usually when I’m pottering around the kitchen or getting dressed in the morning for work.  I’m still wearing suits purchased  over decade ago.  Admittedly, fashion has been kind over the last two decades - no massive shoulder pads or exaggerated silhouettes - but, beyond stretch jeans, I’ve been ignoring fashion for years. My clothing purchases are driven by a) when something wears out, b) my size - I am fatter than I was in 2008 - and c) the capsule wardrobe concept, where I try to ensure everything goes with everything-else, for maximum wearability.

On the house front, our fridge-freezer died in August 2018 and the replacement annoys me because, while having the same exterior dimensions, the freezer section is smaller and less flexible than the old one.  It is thicker walled and better insulated, but the shelf positions are fixed, with no alternate slots, and there are fewer shelves in the door.  It holds about 20% less than the old freezer as a result.  In order to freeze the goose we purchased at Christmas, I had to remove one shelf and stand the goose up vertically, carefully packing everything else around it.

The goose is an excellent example of making the best use of what you have. We were away at Christmas but when we finally cook it, we’ll harvest 1-2kg of cooking fat, 2-ish litres of goose stock and enough meat for 4 meals.  Nothing is wasted.

- Pam

Recipe Tuesday: Bread and Cheese Pudding

One of the websites I frequent is MoneySavingExpert.  A couple of weeks ago, their weekly newsletter had a give-away/competition:  win a copy of somebody's new cookbook full of £1 meals.  Sounds great!  Just the sort of cookbook that I'd enjoy reading and stealing ideas from.  Until I read the small print on the blurb at the back of the book....  Each portion of food costs £1.  Then I saw red.

Let me spell it out to you.  Since your average recipe makes four portions of a meal, that means each recipe actually cost £4.  Not £1.

It was a book of £4 dinners, not £1 dinners.  On the basis of this book, any fool can make a beef chilli, using supermarket standard ingredients and have spent less than £1 per portion.  Hell, I can do it using beef from my (expensive) Kosher butcher and have cash left over.  Talk about misleading marketing!  Some poor person, who is struggling to make ends meet, will buy that book based on the title and the fact that it was mentioned in MSE's newsletter.  Instead of getting something that will actually help them save money, they'll just get a cookbook full of all the recipes that don't involve roast dinners.

So in the spirt of "beat them at their own game", I have decided to publish a series of very cheap-to-cook recipes, tagging them as <£2dinners.   Here is the first.  The cost of each item is in brackets after its listing. All items are supermarket cheapest, "value" own-brand.

Bread and Cheese Pudding.

Serves 4.  Total cost £1.89

Ingredients

Four slices of bread, cut in half diagonally (5p)
325g can sweet corn kernels, drained (35p)
200g can tuna, drained (65p)
2 eggs (12p each = 24p)
250ml milk (25p)
75g mature cheddar cheese, grated (35p)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Layer the bread, tuna and sweet corn  in a lasagne dish, so that the bread points stick up and each slice of bread has some tuna and corn between it and the next one.
3. Scatter over the grated cheese.
4. In a measuring jug, combine the eggs and the milk and whisk until well combined.  Add a grind or two of black pepper.
5. Pour the egg mixture over the bread.
6. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the egg mixture has set.

Yummy!

(As an aside, Blogger's reluctance to update their App is really beginning to wind me up.   I'm writing this on my iPad, via the web browser.  Uploading the photo for today's post was a nightmare.)

Money talks

I seem to be obsessed by money at the moment.  It's partially because I'm still finding my feet as a contractor - I'm still trying to work out how much money I need to leave in the company to pay the taxman and stay afloat if my contract with the Swedes ends.  Salary-wise, I'm paying myself £12k less than I was earning before BUT my take-home pay has only dropped £200/month. With a bit of rejigging and lower commuting costs, it's doable and leaves me with the same money-to-live-off each month.  (No, I don't understand it either.  While I used to contribute 9% to the corporate pension scheme, that was out of pretax income and doesn't explain the entire change.)

The other reason, I think, is that team I'm in at the moment are all contractors and they're obsessed by investing in shares and in property.   We had quite a discussion yesterday about the economics of rental properties.  I was surprised to discover that, in a group of accountants, I'm the only one who knew that mortgage interest will no longer be tax deductible on a privately owned rental property, thanks to George Osborne's misguided 2015 budget.  (He thought it'd force buy-to-let property owners out of the market, freeing housing stock for owner occupiers.  He is wrong.  The solution is to incorporate and own your rental properties through a company.  Interest will still be tax deductible and the company will pay 20% corporation tax instead of 40% income tax.  Those people who don't incorporate, will just put up the rents they charge, in order to compensate for the decrease in income.)

One topic that hasn't come up yet, is how people are saving.  Not the amount they save*, but the mechanics.  We've talked about car loans and leasing, but not saving.  Well, not yet. At least, for this I have an answer...Oddly, in the last six months, I have been put on the spot twice about the same thing.  Both times by bank people who wanted to know why I have so many savings accounts.  The first time, I was moving my savings operations to a new bank after the UK operations of ING were finally absorbed into Barclays.  (I can't abide Barclay's Bank.  They treated me like dirt when I was a customer of their's when I first came to the UK.).  The second was when I was setting up my business bank account.

Each time, the answer is the same:  "I micro-budget".  The response is usually a puzzled expression, so I elaborate:  "Each account has a purpose and is used for saving for something specific, so if I want to know how much money I've got set aside for my football season ticket, I can just check the account balance".

Usually, that's enough of an explanation and it's as if a lightbulb has light up.  Suddenly, they get it and want to know more. "What sort of thing are you saving for?", they ask.   I tell them that I've got accounts for the car's services and insurance, holidays, Christmas presents, the garden fund, clothing, crafting, etc, etc.

It's like a formalised version of the Sanity Fund, without the wallet card.  Partially, you can blame Anita Bell - the Sanity Fund is all her idea - and partially you can blame a poster on the Motley Fool years ago, who mentioned that they could have up to 10 sub-accounts when you opened an account at ING, which lead to a wider discussion about how people could use their sub-accounts.   Most people used theirs for saving for annual or irregular recurring expenses (such as car maintenance bills), and called the whole ING thing thneir "Freedom Fund".  "I've got $xxx in my Freedom Fund" is not an uncommon statement on the Fool.  (ING used to facilitate this by showing you the total balance of all your accounts, when you logged in.)

Eventually, I discovered that ING had a UK operation and signed up as fast as the pixels would carry me.  They paid the Bank of England base rate of interest, which was better than the majority of instant access accounts at the time.  Sadly, ING was one of the banks caught in the middle of 2008's credit crunch and their international operations were sold off.  I don't remember who bought them in the States, but Barclays bought the British branch and, about 2 years ago, moved all the accounts to their own online platform, which requires a card and card reader and is a pain because you can't just spontaneously check your account balances while at work.  The final straw in my relationship with Barclays this time, was when they reduced the rate on their accounts to below 0.1%, which in no way compensates for the hassle of dealing with their online portal.

Bye-bye Barclays.  The new bank is paying above the Bank of England base rate of 0.25% on an instant access savings account.  They have an easy to access on-line portal.  Their website is logical and easy to navigate (unlike yours).  Sod off.

- Pam






* This being England, you don't discuss salaries or day rates.  We know virtually everything else - what someone paid for the house, the size of the mortgage, etc, -  but not that.  (For once, I can't get this information from the finance system.  The Swedes aren't time-sheet-costed!)

Frugal Friday - five frugal tips that I've used in the last year

Happy New Year!  Did you have a good one?

In an effort to get blogging more frequently,   I thought I'd kick off 2017 with an injection of frugality:-

1. The cheapest liquid soap on the market is Tesco's Everyday Value (own brand) Foam Bath at 50p/litre.  (It was 40p until recently.)  Chemically, it's the same as body wash or liquid soap and virtually the same as shampoo, but it doesn't smell as fancy.  Use it to refill liquid soap dispensers and as a body wash.  You can even use it as a shampoo, if desperate, but it may be a bit harsh on your hair.  One litre goes a long way.
2.  Love to read and have a smart phone, tablet or Kindle?  There are thousands of free or very cheap books on Amazon.  Join the Bookbub mailing list to receive a daily email of books in your favourite categories, all on sale for £1.99 or less.
3. My local library has a scheme where you can "borrow" audiobooks for free via an app.  You get access to each book for two weeks.  You do have to prove that you live in the borough first, though.
4. They have a similar scheme with an online magazine platform that looks similar to Zinio.  Unlike the audiobooks, I haven't tested it.  (I'm drowning in free Kindle books thanks to Bookbub.)
5. Travelling for work and staying for several days in hotels that provide decent toiletries but only taking carry-on luggage?  Want to save all the free bottles of shampoo/hair conditioner/body wash/lotion?  Get around the airport security rules limiting you to no more than 10 bottles of liquid of less than 100ml each by taking empty 100ml bottles with you and filling them up with the unused contents of the sample-sized bottles provided by the hotel

- Pam

Enough is enough

This is the story of a pair of socks....

You may remember the craze for Jaywalkers, at one point it seemed that every knitting blogger/podcaster on the planet were making a pair. (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/jaywalker). Ravelry tells me that I knitted my Jaywalker Socks in 2011.  They were pretty:

I remember casting on the 76 stitches and thinking, this is an awful lot of stitches for someone like me with a size five foot (size 7 US/Australian), but the pattern mentioned that there was very little give in the fabric and that someone "with a high arch" (not me) might struggle to get the socks on over their heels.    Little did I realise then that putting the damn things on would be a battle every single time that I wore them.  Since I wear hand-knitted socks to work virtually every day, they became the last-choice-in-the-drawer socks.  Still, I reckon I must have worn them once a month for the last five years, battling to put them on and take them off 60+ times, until this happened last week:

A hole just below the cuff.  A hole that didn't run, even after I threw the socks in the washing machine. (I'd worn them to work that day.).  A hole that, frankly, I've been expecting ever since the first day I wore these socks back in 2011.   You can't blame the yarn, Supergarne Relax Sport Und Strumpfgarn, it knows how to take a beating.  It put up with an awful lot of hauling and stretching over the years, as well as the usual wear and tear from walking and shoes.  

I looked at the hole, today, and did something I should have done back in 2011.  I gave in to the inevitable, and frogged them.  I cut the toe, wriggling the thread through a few stitches

then ripped and ripped.  The yarn has stood up to wear and tear beautifully.  I hadn't realised just how tight the stitches were - it made quite a noise ripping out - and it's definitely more of a 3-ply now than a four.  Am contemplating giving it a gentle soak in warm water before re-balling it up and knitting it into a nicer pair of socks.

Any pattern suggestions?

- Pam

A lesson learned from a sewing machine

(As you may be aware, I am the proud owner of a Brother sewing machine.  It may be 24 years old now, but it does exactly what I always wanted; among its 21 stitches are a one-step button hole, a special stitch for sewing jersey fabric, takes a double needle, a sort of overlock stitch, etc. While it is in desperate need of a service - one of my 2016 challenges is to get it serviced and then to use it more often - this story isn't about it.  This story is about another sewing machine, not mine...)

I mentioned on Facebook yesterday, one of the few pieces of advice I ever dish out to people, when it comes to possessions, is to buy the one you really want.  If you can't afford it, then wait and keep saving up until you can buy the one that you really want, because if you don't, if you buy something cheaper that "will do", it never does.  You will replace the latter two or three times with another that "will do", because you'll always find a fault with it; and eventually it will cost you double what the original would have cost in the first place.  And you still won't be satisfied because what "will do" is never good enough.

This is a lesson I learned from my mother over a sewing machine.  My mum always wanted a super-duper machine that did amazing embroidery automatically, at the touch of a button.  Embroidery was one of her things, although she seldom did it by the time I was born.  It was too hard on the hands and the eyes.  Looking back I think that what she really wanted to do was make and embellish baby clothes - that was her great love - but it was never something that she pursued once I grew beyond 6 or 7 (I'm the youngest).  Her style for children's clothes was classic mid-20th century:  embroidered and smocked dresses, or velvet with a lace collar (she made lace, too).  It was a look that was well out of fashion by the early 1970's, by the time I was old enough to start to notice fashion.  Anyway, I digress...

The sewing machine was always part of our lives when we were little.  If we needed new clothes, they were home made.  A trip to the shops "for clothes" always ended up in the fabric department, selecting a pattern and some cloth, after we'd made a circuit of women's wear and children's wear.  Like knowing how to crochet, I do not remember learning to use the sewing machine or getting lessons on laying out a pattern on fabric, etc.  These are things I have always known, things I learned almost by osmosis.

The other place we would always visit would be the sewing machine department.  Mum would chat to the demonstrators, always checking out the latest models, occasionally giving them a test ride.  In the late 1970's, there were a couple of big home exhibitions at the Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne.  I remember wandering around them for hours with mum, always stopping at the stands run by the sewing machine manufacturers: Singer, Janome, Huskvana, Bernina, Pfaff.  (Oddly enough, I don't remember ever seeing a Brother machine.). We always looked at the high-end embroidery models:  some were confined to built in programs that were selected from a dial; others took an infinite number of cams that you dropped into a slot, which were expensive optional extras.  I remember Singer making the latter.  The machine mum lusted after, though, was the Pfaff:  it had multiple push-button programs and she was convinced that you could combine designs by pushing two-or-more buttons together at once.  

(Remember, this was before computers took over the world. Everything was mechanical or manual. (As an aside, one of the first conversations I ever had about computing was to discuss whether you could program a computer to drive a sewing machine to embroider a picture.  She'd got to me, too.))

Anyway, as I said, mum really wanted a Pfaff sewing machine.  Even if she didn't get one that did all the whizz-bang, you-beaut embroidery, she still wanted a Pfaff.  As far as she was concerned, they were the BMW of the sewing machine world:  German precision engineering, heavy duty but elegant and a dream to use.  They were also expensive, probably the most expensive sewing machines on the market at that time.  I don't remember the exact costs now, however I'd guess a top-of-the-range model was more than my dad's take-home wages for a month.

Somewhere along the line, mum convinced herself that her old, 1960-edition sewing machine just wasn't good enough.  If it wasn't the stitches, then it was too light weight for the type of sewing she wanted to do.   (Built into its own sewing table/case, it would literally bounce about if you went too fast.). That was her argument, anyway.  During my teenage years, she talked herself into replacing that machine. Twice.  Neither replacement was good enough.  Since she kept the original, I remember doing a direct comparison: beyond having a free arm (the original had a flat bed), there was virtually nothing the new machines offered that the original couldn't do; maybe a one-step button hole, but that was it.  (Frankly, though, as long as your machine can do zig-zag and change the length and width of its stitches, it can do a button hole.  I learned how to do that on the old machine.). If they had fancy embroidery stitches, I never saw them being used.  

I have absolutely no recollection of what was wrong with the second machine, that convinced her to purchase the third.  All I can tell you is that she continued to lust after a Pfaff.  Here's the heart of the matter:  mum couldn't bring herself to spend that bit extra on the Pfaff she always wanted and the substitutes never matched up.    

They weren't cheap machines, but individually each wasn't as costly as a Pfaff.  Collectively, however, she spent more on them than she would have done on the Pfaff she really wanted.  I remember discussing it with my dad, who found the whole thing as frustrating as I did.  Yes, Pfaffs were expensive.  No, they didn't have a lot of spare money to throw around.  However, if it doesn't match up to your expectations, why bother buying it?  Dad was prepared to spend the money, but mum would not.  In his mind and mine, mum already had an "it will do" machine, so if you weren't going to buy the one you really wanted, with all the bells and whistles on it, why bother?  Why not just continue to save until she could get the Pfaff?

This is when I learned an important life lesson:  if there is something you really, really want, don't try to make do with an "almost as good as but cheaper" substitute.  It will never do.  You will always find fault with the substitute.  Keep saving your cash until you can get the one you really want*.  I have no problem with you buying a cheap-as-chips "temporary" substitute/second-hand model if you absolutely need that piece of equipment**, but don't fork out two-thirds of the price of the one you really want on something that doesn't add up and then moan about it for years afterwards.  

Certainly, expensive isn't always better.  However, don't settle for something on the "it will do" basis when clearly it won't.  Just don't do it.  

- Pam

* Why do you think I waited and saved for years for a top-of-the-range-at-the-time iPhone?   It did exactly what I wanted, had a good camera and came with the most data storage.  (When it comes to computing, always buy the biggest storage.)   At that point, it's predecessor was 8 years old BUT 8 years earlier, pre-iPhone-invention, the predecessor was the exact phone I wanted so I was happy to wait.

** Of course, after using your "temporary" model for a while, you may decide that it is perfect for your needs and you don't actually want the other one after all.  At least you'll have found out without spending a fortune.

My Favourite Toy

There's something I have been meaning to rave about it on the Blog for ages.   Do you remember back in the 1980's/1990's, when you'd read science fiction books and the hero/heroine would reach for their "communicator" or "link" to look up something on the computer?  Or to make a video call/read a document/watch TV?  Or to record something?  I remember wistfully thinking "I wish I had one of those!".  Well, four years ago, I got one - I purchased my first iPhone - and, as far as I am concerned, my iPhone is the Best. Toy. Ever!   I use it for everything.

Really, I do. I currently have a 64GB iPhone 5, bought a year ago, and there's less than 10GB free.  As well as making calls or sending text messages via my phone network, I access my bank from it; quickly surf the internet to find out or confirm something; read my latest book via Kindle at lunchtime; chat to Our Man in the Middle East via WhatsApp;  chat to my sister in Australia for free on Viber.  It's my primary camera and stores most of my music.  I've written blogs on it (although the Blogger App is a bit clumsy).  I talk to friends and family on Facebook; visit Ravelry for knitting inspiration; download and listen to podcasts, as well as audio books while I drive.  Every morning, you'll find me doing my daily French lesson on Duolingo (which is free).   There are exercise programs I attempt follow (look out for the free 7-Minute Workout and RunKeeper).  For calorie counting, I use My Fitness Pal.   I use the BBC apps all the time, including iPlayer and iPlayer radio.

So much of what I use on the iPhone is free.  As well as podcasts, most of the 100+ Kindle books I have were free via BookBub (or discounted to 99p).  All the BBC content is free.  As is Duolingo and the Learn French videos on youtube.

The only thing that detracts from my iPhone is the network.  A year ago,  when I upgraded to the iPhone 5, I switched to Vodafone and I'm not impressed. Can't get a consistent signal anywhere.  Can't get a signal at all for large tranches of the day in my office - never had a problem with my old network - and even in the centre of London I've had problems.   I am counting the days until I can break the contract.

Excuse me.  I'm off to play with my Toy.

- Pam

Frugal Friday - Free language courses

With one eye firmly on my 2015 goals, I thought I'd share how I plan to achieve one of them: learning French.  My plan is to follow a three-pronged approach: podcasts (starting with Learn French By Podcast, available free on iTunes), the Earworm French books I bought on Audible a while ago (i had credits to use up) and (originally) the BBC's free "learn French" site which, although it says it has been archived, still appears to work (http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/).  However, I can't figure out how to make the videos work on my iPad - the BBC is insisting they need Java and Flash - so I took a look at YouTube, where I found dozens of free videos, from Learn French With Alexa to something presented by Eddie Izzard.  

The BBC site, I remembered from a campaign they ran a decade ago.  Their PDF's still download, so you can read those, and the links still work to the foreign language websites they reference. Besides the Beeb, what is surprising is how many free resources there are out there, entire series of learning materials that someone has kindly made available for free (although you may have to watch an advertisement from a sponsor).  Podcasts are an incredible free resource - many are produced by individuals as a hobby, for example, one of my friends learned Dutch from a podcast series started by a Dutchman trying to teach his girlfriend the language.  

I guess that is the point of my post tonight:  if you have the equipment/resources to access them, then before spending money on a course or a DIY book, check out the free materials on iTunes and YouTube.  You will be amazed at what you find.

Nickle and Dime-ing it

 (How annoying - I wrote this post and then lost it.)

Have I ever mentioned to you our coin collections?  How, every day or two, DH and I empty our wallets of 1p, 2p, 5p and £2 coins and pop those coins into various jars and a money box.  The coppers (1p and 2p) go into one Celebrations sweet jar; the 5p pieces into another; while the £2 coins, aka the "Running Away Fund" goes into a Maltesers phone booth money box.

 The coppers jar holds about £22 and takes a year or two to fill.  Ditto the Running Away Fund, which holds £600.  In the thirteen years since we started filling it, 5p jar has never been emptied.  The above photo is at least three years old and, even though we have been adding to the jar assiduously since then, it took forever to fill.

A couple of weekends ago, the jar was finally full.  And heavy (once they were bagged and tagged, I weighed the coins: 10.2kg).  It took the two of us over an hour to count them all.  5p coins are small, about the size of a dime, and the instructions from the bank was to put £5 in each bag - i.e. 100 coins.  We filled 32 bags.   DH lugged them into the bank on the Monday and added them to our Running Away Fund (holiday money) savings account.

Thirteen years of saving 5p pieces netted £160.

- Pam

How many meals?

This morning, I skived off work*, scooped up the contents of the meat fund and went to the kosher butcher.  It had been six months since my last visit, I had £230 to play with and a freezer that looked half full.  In the end, I spent £199.35 and bought the following:-

2kg roasting chicken - 3 meals plus stock
3 x 350g packets of chicken livers - 3 meals
2kg rolled turkey leg roast - 3 meals
marinated Tuscan lamb roast - 1 meal
1lb marinated stir-fry beef - 2 meals
4lb minced (ground) beef - 8 meals
Shoulder of lamb - 2 meals
5lb cubed steak - 5 meals
9 chicken breast fillets - 9 meals
Lamb spare ribs in honey - 1 meal
2 packs beef sausages - 2 meals
700g turkey schnitzels - 2-3 meals
6 packets stock cubes

So that's 41 or 42 meals where each meal feeds a minimum of 4.   The only thing I didn't buy was steak.  (I forgot.)

Let me restate it:  that's four roast dinners plus leftovers; three pre-prepared Chinese meals (just add veg and rice); nine large chicken breasts (250g each) which will make nine stir-fries/ risotto/pasta dishes or curries; five assorted beef stews or curries; 8 meals of minced beef and other possibilities; three of chicken livers; plus a bag of "I don't feel like cooking what have we got to eat?".

It will take us through to December by my reckoning.  Sometimes my ability to stretch out food amazes even me.  Of course, we eat the odd vegetarian meal - less frequently than you'd think - and a reasonable amount of fish (maybe 2lb a month if you include tinned tuna and pilchards), but we don't go hungry by any stretch of the imagination.  Nor do we eat out a lot.

Hmmm..... Do you remember back in October when I was toying with doing a Wartime Experiment but wondered about whether we could survive the food rations?  Dealing with the meat ration was really what was putting me off trying the experiment.  Well, www.whatsthecost.com's  UK inflation calculator tells me that £200 today is the equivalent of £3/17/9 in 1941 money (£3, 17 shillings and 10 pence).  In 1941, the meat ration was 1s2d per week.  Therefore, I reckon I've just bought 15 weeks' worth of meat ration for two people.  Food for thought.

- Pam








* More to the point, since I have done at least 40 hours unpaid overtime since the start of May, which includes unwilling working 5 hours on Saturday and our timesheet week runs Saturday to Friday, I told my bosses that I was booking that time in my regular 40 hours and not working today.  (At my grade, I can't claim paid overtime.)

Frugal Friday - Procrastination Costs Money

If there is one lesson to learn from watching athletes at the Olympics, it's to get off your behind and do rather than sit there and think about things, then over think about things, or put off thinking about them all together.  I am sure that every single competitor and potential competitor has had moments when the last thing they wanted to do was to go and train.  Whether it was having to get out of bed early and go out into the pouring rain, or having to go home early from a party so that they could compete in an event, every athlete will have had a moment when they gritted their teeth and did what they had to do rather than what they wanted to do.

That's the thing that sets them aside from the rest of us. The rest of us go "it'll keep" and put fun before obligation, usually to our detriment.  Or we procrastinate, trying to avoid the inevitable, possibly putting things off until just before a deadline or even missing the deadline completely.  Sound familiar?  Are you remembering essays left unwritten until the night before they were due to be handed in?  (Who hasn't done that?  Seriously, don't lie?)

So what does this have to do with frugality?  Our current house-and-contents insurance policy expires later this month so, on Wednesday, DH and I went online to Comparethemeerkat to find a replacement (and score another meerkat toy).   Last year, I'd thought about using a comparison website, but procrastinated and let the renewal date slip past.  To be honest, I saw the insurance renewal notice envelope, thought "must deal with that" then put it in a drawer and forgot about it. I'd never even looked to see what the payments would be.  (We paid monthly.)  When the first direct debit came out, I went ouch(!) because the payments had gone up by over 22%. 

Fast forward to this year.  This year, I opened the renewal notice and read the letter.  Another huge leap in insurance premiums.  The monthly payment was increasing by 30%.  We've never ever made a claim, not even when the kitchen roof was leaking.  A few minutes of our time - a few questions answered - and we've found a comparable policy for a much more reasonable price.  By acting, instead of procrastinating, our new insurance policy is £233.02 for the year instead of £1,100.74!  Yes, you saw that right.  The new policy cost 21% of the price of the renewal.

The moral of the story is:  be like an Olympian.  Don't procrastinate when renewal time comes around.  Don't assume that the insurance companies will act in your best interest and keep the price reasonable.  They've already got your business and consider you a captive audience to be milked.

- Pam

Update on the Use-It-Up Challenge

Makeup


The panstick is long gone and I'm now using up the final bottle of the famous Boots score from 2004. When I first started using it, it seemed a little watery but after 2 or 3 days it is back to the consistency that I remember. Since I started using it in March, I expect it to run out some time in December. Not bad for 50p.

On the blusher front, I finally chucked out the dregs of the Clinique powder blusher. There was a little bit left but it would not load onto the blusher brush. I'm now using up the Estee Lauder free-bees. The darker of the two shades has already been partially used (it looks good with a tan).

Toiletries

(Note: All my main toiletries get poured into 500ml recycled, pump-action soap dispensers. That way, I can get a consistent quantity every day, which makes it last longer. 3 pumps of shampoo. 6 pumps of hair conditioner. 2 pumps of body lotion, etc.)

I have a huge stockpile of those little sample-sized bottles you get in hotels: shampoo, conditioner, body wash and body lotion. They were all piled onto the lid of the plastic box we used to use to house towels in the bathroom. In March, in an effort to tidy them up and to organise them, I sorted them all into separate boxes/drawer inserts using the punnet-type boxes that mushrooms come in. They're now stored in our "new" bathroom cupboard (a cupboard I paid £10 for in a charity shop, which DH refinished).

So far, I've completely conquered the hair conditioner stockpile. Admittedly, it was one of the smallest since most hotels don't provide hair conditioner. We had 7 plus two Dove samples I scored elsewhere. One bottle went to Oman with me, while the others were drained into the hair conditioner dispenser. Since they were so thick, I added water to increase the volume by about a third and shook the dispenser like mad. The result was a thick and creamy hair conditioner that lasted me 6 weeks of daily hair washings.

My litre bottle of Value shampoo ran out on Saturday (it lasted 7 months), so I refilled that dispenser with hotel samples, which took hours. In the end, the easiest way was to balance each bottle in the neck of the dispenser and let gravity do its stuff. Seventeen bottles later and the dispenser was full. (There are at least 10 more.) I'd been a bit worried about the smell because I knew some of the samples were scented, however I gave it a good shake to blend and, so far, it doesn't smell of very much at all, just some sort of clean shampoo smell. It's quite thick, too, but spreads well which is a bonus. (The Value stuff was quite gloopy.)

I'm almost out of body lotion, so that is the next stockpile to use up. Then it will be the turn of the shower gel.

- Pam

Frugal Friday: Freezer Tetris

One day, in the near future, I am probably going to lose at Freezer Tetris.

You don't know about Freezer Tetris?  You remember the early computer game, Tetris, don't you?  Where you had to fit shapes into a finite space, without leaving any gaps?  Well, Freezer Tetris is a real-life version of the game, where you have to fit more and more food into a freezer that is already full.  This was my freezer two weeks ago, at the tail end of Easter:

Hard to believe that I'd taken an 18lb turkey out of it to roast for Good Friday. I took that photo after I successfully managed to shoe-horn in 6 x 600ml containers of turkey stock, as well as over 2kg of cubed leftover turkey.   In the interim week after removing and defrosting said turkey, I also added 800g home-wilted spinach and 1.5kg cooked chickpeas.  

With the exception of a couple of lunch-boxes of leftovers (and four haggis plus a whole black pudding), the contents of the freezer  remained static until I decided we needed more kidney beans, so I soaked a 1kg of dried beans overnight, bagged them, then shoved them into the freezer.  Somehow. (Freezing causes ice to form in the re-hydrated cells, which damages the cell walls and shortens cooking time.)  How I got them into the freezer, I don't know.

Last night, I couldn't resist the big bag of frozen hash-browns at Costco, so the beans came out of the freezer and I cooked them this morning.  1kg of dried beans cooked became 2.35kg.

 Half an hour ago, I stood staring at the freezer wondering how I was going to fit that lot in.  Last night's hash browns had been difficult enough.

Hmmm.... If I take these out and rearrange that......

 Victory!

Pam 3 :  Freezer 0

 - Pam



PS:  There is a serious point I want to make here.  One of the things that keeps our food bill low is the way we utilise the freezer.  Leftovers get frozen.  Before we went on holiday, all our remaining fresh veg was chopped up and frozen.  I batch cooked dried pulses, portion them up and freeze anything that won't be eaten that day.  At Easter, we nabbed a bargain on fresh spinach - an 800g bag marked down to 75p from £3, so I wilted it, portioned it into 4 and froze it.  We don't go supermarket shopping for dinner, we go to re-stock our stores.  When I think about cooking a meal, I start by considering what is in my fridge, my freezer and my larder.

PPS:  I heard a great quote yesterday from either episode 5 or episode 6 of A History of the World in 100 Objects:  "If the larder is full, the mind has time to focus on other things".  The presenter was explaining why art appeared after early man became farmers.  Previously, all their time was taken up with hunting and gathering food, but once they started farming, they developed surpluses of food which they could store.  Suddenly, there was time to do other things: become craftsmen, worry about gods, etc.

Free Entertainment: Kermode and Mayo's Film Review Podcast

I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of radio.  I'm also a huge fan of podcasts and audiobooks.  If you look at my MP3 player, half of its 16GB is occupied by music; the other half is occupied by either podcasts or audiobooks. Of course, podcasts are the free/cheap entertainment of the affluent - you need a computer/smartphone and internet access to play.

My absolute favourite podcast is Mark Kermode's and Simon Mayo's Film Review, which is their Friday afternoon radio program edited to remove the travel and news items.  Even if you aren't a huge film buff, the interplay between Simon and Mark will have you in stitches.  The only problem I have with them is that I have so many knitting podcasts on my playlist that I have to make a conscious effort to move  "Kermode" up to the top of the list each week, or I fall too far behind and have to spend a week catching up.

Last Friday, I caught up on the "Kermode" from 10th February, where they reviewed both the 3D release of Star Wars Phantom Menace and the new Muppet film, The Muppets.  Mark was justifiably scathing about George Lucas' latest attempt to extract money from a gullible public.  To summarise:  the original film was poor; the retrofitted 3D version was worse.  Lucas has only re-released it for the money to be made from merchandising. 

What cracked me up, though, was their response to the clip he played of Yoda ("Thank you Fozzie") because Yoda did sound exactly like Fozzie Bear.    Sadly, I can't find that clip but you should try Simon's Fozzie Bear impression  because it's very entertaining.  I'd just walked back to the car after a night out and had to lean against it to stay upright, I was laughing so hard.

I really urge you to try this podcast.  It's available globally via iTunes and there is an archive of several years' worth of podcasts.   Each episode lasts approximately an hour and forty five minutes.  You can get a flavour from this collection of clips. I'd particularly recommend their Twelve Days of Christmas if you want a laugh.

- Pam

The Use It Up Challenge

You may have noticed that one of my goals this year is to work my way through the small stockpile of "stuff" I have accumulated: a random collection of make-up, hotel shampoo bottles, cosmetic samples, herbs and spices, jars of jams and sauces, even clothes that don't get worn because they have committed the crime of needing to be ironed. It is an eclectic list. The only defining factor is that the item involved is something that is currently gathering dust but it is something that I use and therefore don't want to throw out, because if I did throw it out I will have to purchase a substitute. Does that make sense?

Another part of the challenge is that I don't want to waste something just so I can tell myself it is "finished". By that, I mean lipstick has to be used right to the bottom of the tube and not just to the point where you can't paint it on your lips without using a lip-brush. Ditto lip gloss and make-up base that comes in a stick. I still need to get my money's worth.

Here are the make-up stockpiles and what I propose to do with them:-

Make-up base. 

I have ten in my stockpile, including two tubs of PanCake (bought because it doesn't melt off your face in humid weather), four Avon all-in-one bases for travel (bought in bulk to take advantage of an offer) and the last of my famous Boots score from 2004 (when I bought 6 bottles of base at 50p each, thinking they would last maybe 3 months each - instead they lasted 10).

What I've started with, though, are the dregs of a tube of PanStick. Like lipstick, probably the bottom third of any stick make-up is inaccessible, so I gouged it out of the tube and dumped it into a recently emptied Avon make-up compact. I now apply it in exactly the same manner, using the sponge that came from Avon.

Lipstick.

Most women probably have a stash of assorted lipsticks, at least one for every occasion. I know for a certainty that I have only bought one lipstick in the last 4 years and yet a quick count tells me that I have 34! However, that includes my stock of 9 Covergirl lipsticks in the Bistro Burgundy shade, the brand (and colour) that I wear almost daily but which is unavailable in this country.  I buy them whenever I go to Australia or North America.  I have two on the go at any given time: one on my dresser and one in my bag for top-ups. When the one on the dresser is completely used up, I rotate the handbag one to the dresser and pop a new lipstick in my handbag.

Although I wear lipstick every day to work, each one lasts for close to two years, partially because I use a lip brush to apply the bottom third, and partially because I've solved the problem of keeping lipstick "on" all day, so that you don't have to constantly reapply it.  (There is nothing worse than having your lipstick come off on your mug or glass.)  The secret:  apply lipstick to dry lips, blot on a tissue and then apply a coat of Lipcoat. It will then last the whole day, unless lunch is really greasy, although the colour may fade a bit as the day goes on.  If your Lipcoat peels, then you didn't blot it well enough.  You have to apply it to dry lipstick.

Blusher.

I'm still using a blusher that I purchased in...... wait for it...... 1986.  That's right 26 years ago.  If that's not an advert for the longevity of Clinque's products, I don't know what is. Admittedly, for the first 6 years, I worked in a job where you did not wear make-up (I never wore make-up to work when I nursed - it'd come off on the masks).  And twice it went into time-out when I used up other blushers, but neither of those lasted longer than a year.   I have been expecting it to run out for a long time and purchased a replacement some time ago.  However, a quick count reveals I have six other blushers stockpiled, which includes the replacement, a "travel" blusher, the emergency blusher from this post, and two Estee Lauder free-bees from a "gift" (one of those buy "2 items and get a free gift" things, in this case the set of bags that are my knitting bags.  I was surprised to discover they held make-up).

The big secret to making your blusher last a long time is to use a proper blusher brush.  I think it is because the brush covers a larger area of you face per application than the one that comes in the compact.

Mascara.

Apparently, I have seven, including three sample-sized ones and the one I'm using now.  This is another product I use to the very end.    I am aware that "experts" say to only use a mascara for three months because of potential contamination but I have never had an eye infection from this product.  If I feel any irritation after applying a mascara, it goes straight in the bin.  (I can't wear Rimmel mascara.  It has something in it that irritates my eyes.)  I do not share my mascara or my lipstick so consider that any bugs that might be growing in them have cousins still on me.

OK, that's my "dirty laundry".  What's yours?

- Pam

Non-darning sock repair

Over Christmas, one of the things I did was repair the worn-out soles of a pair of DH's socks.  These were alpaca socks that I knitted for him in 2009 and, I've just realised, I've never documented.  (The closest I've got was in this post, when I ended up knitting on them in a traffic jam.)  The yarn is UK Alpaca's Alpaca Sock Yarn, a 60% alpaca, 20% merino wool, 20% nylon yarn.

Anyway, last winter, DH wore the ball of one foot down to the nylon.

I don't darn socks, but after the labour-of-love it took to make them, I decided I had to do something.  So I hit upon the idea of knitting a patch over the top.  (The rest of the socks are in good condition.) Using a latch hook, I picked up stitches along one side of the worn section and slipped them over a DPN.

Then I knitted a row and purled back.  On the next and subsequent knit rows, I picked up the stitch that was parallel to the patch and knitted it together with the end stitch from the patch.  (Not sure how clearly you can see that from this photo.)

 Basically, I knitted a pocket that was attached across the bottom and down both sides.

When I was satisfied that the patch covered the worn area, I Kitchener stitched the patch to the sole.

Finally, I wove in the ends, using them to invisibly tack the nylon to the patch. 

And voila! Not invisible - the yarn is from a different dye lot for a start - but it's soft, doesn't rub and will last for a long time.

- Pam