Emptying the Sealed Pot

It's that time of the year ... when the Sealed Pot spews forth it's undigested coins and the occasional bit of paper.

Filmed for posterity.

And then carefully counted.  

We had a grand total of £325.96, as you can see from Alan's workings out here.

Most definitely not for us the paying of a machine in the supermarket to count our hard fought for pennies and deduct ten percent for the privilege, although at this time of year you see loads of people doing just that.   I have heard that some banks have cash counting machines ... but unfortunately ours is not one of them so we did it  the old fashioned way  :-(

After counting the money, double checking it all and then bagging into the banks acceptable amounts for paying into our account ...

... we decided to put the odds and sods back into the tin to see if we can add any extra to round things up before we visit the bank.  You never know a little bit more would be very handy in time for next years Challenge   :-)

Sue xx

Evenings Out for Free

With next years penny pinching, frugal minded, cost cutting living in mind I recently re-read this book.  In it Kath lives for a year on just one pound a day ... as the title suggests ... she does it to save for a wedding present for her brother, we however, are cutting costs back to the bone to try and pay off our small mortgage taken out after paying off our main mortgage and still secured on this house.

One of the things she does ... apart from yellow stickered shopping and gathering in freebies ... is to look for events offering an evening or day out, where drinks or free food are available and a fun time can be had for absolutely nothing.

So when this invite popped into my emails instead of doing what I would normally do and simply deleting it, because we won't be ordering any Christmas food from Bodnant I made a note of the date and we went.

We really did get a warm welcome, the fizz was delicious and the mince pies equally so.  We had a pleasant mooch about the shop sipping on our fizz, oohhd and ahhd over delicious gift ideas, picked up the offered food order form and left feeling very festive.

Also on the email was this offer for the next evening. 

So we paid our donation to a very deserving charity and had another pleasant evening, this time sampling wines and ports.  I think we more than got our moneys worth and learnt a little bit more about some of our favourite wines in the process.  

During the day we had also called back up to Bodnant to try and have a word with the technical Aga people about something Alan wanted to check out to do with the power of the Aga and our solar energy system. 

There were even freebies on offer here ... I was offered a slice of ginger cake but on enquiring it had butter and eggs in it, so I said thank you but no thanks as I'm a vegan,  'ooh said the lady would you like some chips instead then .... they are really tasty they're cooked in goose fat' 

Haha, she saw the funny side almost as soon as the words had left her lips.

Our next 'evening out' is to the showrooms of the people who supplied the windows for the workshop.  We don't need any windows at the moment .... but Mulled Wine, a mince pie and some Christmas carols will go down very nicely thank you  :-)

We're treating it all as good practice for next year,  if celebrities can turn up to the  'opening of an envelope' to get their faces in the magazines we can turn up for free drinks and food and an interesting couple of hours out.

Have you ever done something similar?

Sue xx

A Meatier Than Usual Post

This week for the first time ever I ordered from Musclefood.  My son has used them a couple of times but I had always resisted temptation.  But now with not a lot of meat left in the freezer for my lovely hubby I decided to stock up in time for Christmas with the idea that this would form the major part of his Christmas dinner and keep him well supplied into the New Year.

I chose an offer that I picked up off a Facebook frugal foods page, which gave me 2.5kg of chicken breasts, with a 'hamper' of various mixed meats that were worth £19.55 but which were the 'free' offer, and then another 2.5 kg of chicken for £12.

It was delivered on time by courier in a chilled box yesterday and after it spent a night in the workshop, which is as cold as a fridge overnight, we set to this morning to get it all ready for the freezer.

I was surprised at the size of the chicken breasts, so I got out the scales and weighed them.  Not bad at all, they were well over 200g each.  Which means that following NHS guidelines there is more than enough in each one for two adults to have as part of a meal.

With Alan doing all the meat handling and me doing the wrapping it was all portioned out and ready for the freezer in no time.  The chicken breasts were wrapped individually and then put into boxes to avoid freezer burn, the sausages were snipped apart and wrapped with a layer of EasyLeave between but everything else was just checked for a level of separation and then popped into the freezer as  they were.

I was wondering how to work out the costings for each item at first, then Alan suggested to simply count the portions we would use for a meal.

So we counted :

24 chicken breasts x one meal each

1 x mince meal

2 x meatball meals

2 x steak burger meals

1 x sweet chilli chicken meal (these seem quite small)

2 x sausage meals

2 x chicken breast meals

So a grand total of 34 meals, which if I divide that by the total amount the order cost me to have sent (including delivery), would make the meat part of each meal £1.08. 

But after seeing the size of the breasts we now think that most of them will be used for two meals if it's something like curry, casserole, stew etc.  If they are to be the 'star' of the show, sliced meat for sandwiches, a large roast dinner etc, then they might be used for just one meal.  So counting three quarters of them as two meals, and using the mince for two instead of our original thought of one meal (it's very tightly packed, not loose like you get from a supermarket or the butcher, so seemed small, but after checking the weight it does weigh in at over 200g), we now have a working total of 55 meals.

Yes that's fifty five meals!!

Which brings our cost for the meat part of any meal down to 67p.

Bargain.

I know it's not very often that you get a 'meaty post' from me, but living with a meat eater is my life and something I can't change, so it means that we just make the best of things, and one of the things I am good at is saving money with food .... but I am glad I had Alan to help with the handling of all this well packed meat, otherwise I think a thick pair of rubber gloves would have been called into play   :-)

If you would like to have a look at the Musclefood site for yourself and see all the bargains there you can use this link to get you there:   MUSCLEFOOD

If you do decide to buy anything while you're there use my referral code ... which is SH731226 ... and you will get an extra freebie that can be chosen from one of four items ... and being totally honest I will get a 500 point referral fee.  I have also added a link to the sidebar for while so you don't have to keep coming back and finding this post.  Just click on that and you will have access to the site and my code.

Have you used this site before, what did you think of it?

  We were very pleasantly surprised and wondered why we hadn't taken the plunge before.  One thing for sure is that we will be ordering again in a few months when the 55 meals have been eaten and there is some more space in the freezer.

Sue xx

Coupons and Vouchers

It's the time of the year that the quarterly coupons and vouchers pop through our letterbox ... along with the charity begging letters containing 'complementary' Christmas cards, raffle tickets to sell and free pens, none of which even get properly looked at.  I choose who gets my charitable donations, and any organisation wasting that much money on postings are not included.

 Anyway in years gone by when we've been using our M&S and Tesco credit cards to pay for building supplies and larger items (always paid off in full at the end of the month of course from the money we had saved to make the purchases) the amount of coupons we received were brilliant and helped out during many a blog money saving Challenge.  Now with everything necessary purchased and our spending cut right back,  tbe coupons are much lower in value ... but still worth having in my opinion.

As you can see we have got £8.50 in Tesco Clubcard vouchers ...

...and our M&S card has given us a total of £6 in vouchers. 

We no longer have a Tesco credit card and just use a Clubcard to pick up points, most of which we accrue for fuel for the vehicles.  Although with Alan now predominantly working from home even our fuel bill has plummeted , thank goodness.

So my question to you ... what would you do with a grand total of £8.50 to spend in Tesco and £6 to spend in M&S?

Sue xx

Do I Still Do the Things

I've been asked a couple of times if I still do any of the things I used to post about on my various Challenge blogs and on here ... well the answer is a resounding YES  :-)

As you can see from the top photo I religiously check after I have shopped at Asda to make full use of their Asda Price Guarantee thingy.  They don't advertise this anymore either in store or on the receipts, but it is still very much in operation.  Nine times out of ten I get a voucher after I check my receipt online.  

We still get our Tesco Clubcard vouchers, and make good use of them to buy things that we can't grow or produce ourselves.  Although we have now cancelled our Tesco credit card and use just one credit card to keep things simpler (of course paying it off in full every month).

We went out to buy Alan some new jeans the other day as he has lost weight and was having real trouble keeping his jeans up, at the checkout we were given this voucher along with our receipt ...

... when we got home our latest quarterly Marks and Spencer's vouchers were laying on the doormat. 

So if I put one with the other and I will be able to get £35 worth of food for just £15.  Yes ... a little happy dance was danced :-)

Oh and although I have stopped buying this magazine on subscription, I just couldn't resist this offer when I was in Tesco the other night after the Trelawnyd Flower Show,  I must have had growing things still on my mind.

But I just couldn't say no to almost £24 worth of free seeds and a free dvd (which isn't brilliant but I did get a good recipe from it for Cucumber Pickle).

Inside the magazine was this, now the question is  ... can I resist the thought of another £36 worth of seeds and three copies of the magazine for just £5 ?  You just have to be very careful to cancel the subscription before they take the next payment out, something they are relying on you not to do.

So as this all shows I am still a sucker for coupons, vouchers and freebies ... but as hobbies go this isn't so bad  :-)

Sue xx

A Years Hair Care Sorted

        

     

A mystery parcel arrived the other day.

At first I was baffled, and then I remembered a short email the other week telling me that I had won one of the prizes offered for filling in a short vegan survey.

My prize was a years supply of Faith in Nature shampoo and conditioner.

Brilliant, that's something else we won't have to buy for well over a year ... we both have very short hair so each bottle of shampoo will last us well over a month each.  And as I rarely use conditioner one bottle of that should last to go with each of the three shampoos of that 'flavour'.  Meaning I can sell two of each flavour conditioner at the next car boot sale we do and use the money I get to buy me a couple of boxes of hair dye ... a very necessary expenditure  ;-)

With selling in mind I went on the Faith in Nature website to have a look at how much these shampoos and conditioners retail for and was astonished to find it is £6 a bottle!!  Then I checked with Superdrug and found that they usually sell them for £5.99 but at the moment they are on offer at £2.99.  Whichever way you look at it I have done very nicely  :-)

So that's us sorted in haircare for at least a year, and another thing we can't produce ourselves ticked off the list.

Sue xx

Bargains, Coupons and Plans

I splurged the other week when I was in Tesco, they had the latest edition of Gardeners World in a bargain bag with gardening gloves, six packets of seeds and a year long '2 for 1 entry' card to gardens all over the UK.  As we are going to the Eden Project soon and this was included as one of the 'gardens' it really did make sense to have this particular splurge.  It's £25 to get into the Eden Project for an adult, so my £6.75 purchase price of this special edition was well worth it.

And of course I have now have some more vegetable seeds to add to my ever growing stash, the flower seeds have already been sown, as this year we are working on expanding our planting to attract bees, ready for next years bee keeping plan.

We spent Monday morning planting shrubs in Nut Wood and already this is having the desired effect, the place is suddenly alive with bees, other insects and of course this in turn has meant that more small insect eating birds are to be seen flitting in and out of the nut trees.

It's nice when a plan starts to come together  :-)

Of course, as I used to blog about on a regular basis, we still get our money off vouchers from both Tesco ....

... and M&S for using our credit cards.

(We still pay the amount owed off in full every month to avoid interest payments.)

Obviously the amount we are getting has gone down significantly and will be going down even more from now on, but a couple of months ago I did persuade Lovely Hubby to make a large company purchase on the M&S card and then pay it off with company money hence the large amount of M&S vouchers this time ... every little helps ... to quote the other supermarket   ;-)

In our push for self sufficiency we have done brilliantly with vegetables and not too bad at all with fruit but obviously there will always be things we can't produce ourselves, so we have decided that coupons, vouchers and all the money from the sale of vegetable plants and surplus vegetables will form our money pot to buy the things that we can't produce ourselves.  Just things like various flours, brown and basmati rices, pastas, olive oil etc.   In that way hopefully we will be self sufficient with food, because the foods we can grow ourselves will finance the foods that we can't grow ourselves.

Anyway enough for now, time to get on with some chores in any shade that I can find.

Sue xx

Are We Still Scrimping and Saving

The last few posts since my unexpected foray back into Blogland have been about growing and sowing so I thought on this bloody chilly indoor job day (Hands up who ordered arctic wind with it's cousins, hail and snow for April?) I'd just write a post to answer a few questions that have popped up quite a few times in my email inbox recently, namely ... 'are you still frugal/money saving/clearing/the clutter/setting yourself challenges', and then there is THE BIG ONE  'has Lovely Hubby retired from the day job yet?'

We've recently had some large expenditure to equip LH's workshop with the machinery he needed for his future enterprises, so the bank account went down quite a bit.  Why is the 'needed' in italics I hear you asking .... well I'm a girl.  Who really needs a lathe and a big sucky up thing for sawdust or whatever, and different types of saws on different types of stands that all weigh a bloody ton and take up so much room, surely a Vitamix would have been better  ;-)

Then to top off everything we decided to do something that is long-term sensible but immediately shock inducing ..... we bought our future retirement property.  There will be a day in the future when this hillside five acres will be too much for us to either be able to manage or to want to manage. When that day comes we now have waiting a brand newly built ground floor 'semi detached apartment' ...that's a flat to you and me ... but I love the brochure description of it.  We completed last week and it's now officially ours.  Between then and now it will be rented out long term, firstly to pay off the small mortgage that we had to take out against our house to pay for it and then to give us an income to supplement LH's pension.

In true Challenge style we've given ourselves just TWO years to pay this mortgage off. 

SO to answer the questions .... yes now our splurging is done we are back to frugal living, yes we are money saving in every possible way and boy oh boy are we clearing the clutter.  If it's not nailed down and in reasonably constant use it is going to be sold at a car boot sale this year.  We will pay off this mortgage as quickly as possible, just as we paid off the last one, so that the rent from the flat will be in our account and helping us to keep our heads above water.  Because to answer the final question, Lovely Hubby has now reduced his working hours by one day a week and will be going down to a twenty hour working from home week at the end of June. 

Okay I can hear you asking "why the pictures of pastry and pasties?" ..... well it was just one of the money saving things we did at the weekend.  I took one of the four yellow stickered packs of pastry out of the freezer on Friday to defrost, made an enormous pan of vegetable stew on Saturday, we both had some for lunch, then strained out some of the vegetables and added them to a chopped onion that had been fried with some curry powder to use as a pasty filling for that nights tea, and then whizzed up what was left of the stew for soup on Sunday.

I can see lots more meals like those coming our way, but then it's always been how we like to eat ... and if it means that we can be mortgage free 'again' in two years or less it's very good in my book.

Sue xx

Leftovers .... and The Sealed Pot

Leftovers are brilliant, in fact I think I find more pleasure in making a meal or a treat out for us out of leftovers than I ever could browsing the aisles of the supermarkets for the former or the latter, and of course the post-Christmas fridge is veritable treasure trove of things to choose from.

The bananas were languishing on the worktop, they are the only fruit I don't put in the fridge .... poor lonely things!!

I knew there was half a tub of cream in the fridge and a tin of caramel in the cupboard .... 

... so it just had to be Lovely Hubby's favourite dessert in the whole wide world - Banoffee Pie.  It looked a bit plain as it was and of course we had  ...

... leftover Quality Street!!

Damn Tesco and their last minute reduction of the must have Christmassy sweets to two tubs for £6 ... I succumbed.

A quick grating later and it looked much more appealing, and we did really well and rationed it out over the last few days, a total of eight portions ..... good leftovers :-)

*** *** ***

And talking of leftovers, using things up and saving money my new blog 'A Year Without ...' went live yesterday.  Starting off with a film clip of the opening of the Sealed Pot, which netted us a grand  total of £328.71 which is my housekeeping money for 2016.

The blog will follow my progress as I manage with this, bolstering it up with vouchers, coupons and Nectar points, and of course home grown foods from all the free seeds I collected this year.  It will also chart our attempt to live for a whole year without buying any books or clothes or a lot of other things which we are adding to the list as and when we think of them.  

This is going to be my only Challenge during this coming year.  We have to focus long and hard on saving all the money we can and hopefully daily blogging about it will keep me accountable to myself.

Use the link to nip over and have a look if you would like to.

Sue xx

Saving and Splurging

I got these through the post the week before last, usually they would have been put into my purse and stayed in there briefly, tempting me to go to Tesco to stock up on things we perhaps didn't really need.  Not this time.  At the moment we are busy stockpiling, coupons, vouchers and Nectar points ready for next year ... because we've decided on our Challenge!!

We're doing 'A Year Without ....', a few of you might have noticed a new blog appear on my list of blogs, there's nothing to read over there yet, but I wanted to secure the name before someone else snaffled it.  We are planning a real push into paying off the mortgage and have decided a whole year of minimal spending will be the best way to do this and will also allow us to have a trial of living on a limited income, which of course we will be doing for good once Lovely Hubby gives up the day job.

It will hopefully, also be a way for us to see what our strengths and successes are, as well as seeing what else we need to do to get ourselves as self sufficient as possible for the years ahead.

I'm hoping to run the blog alongside this one and along the lines of last years additional blog which was '365 Days - £365'.  This link takes you right back to the start of that challenge and it's been where I started reading from over the last few days, trying to garner a bit of inspiration for next year.

One thing I most definitely will not be doing next year is spending .....

... £9.99 on a jar of pickles.

I couldn't resist these when I was out with Mum last week, and at first I thought I had really spent over the odds, but out shopping over the weekend I spied a less than half sized jar for £4  so not too bad really.  My main reason for buying them, apart from the fact that we love giant 'chip shop style' pickles, is that I will be able to use the jar over and over again in the future and pickle some our own larger onions.  

So not so much a splurge as an investment in our future ...

... well that's my excuse anyway and I'm sticking to it  ;-)

Sue xx

Talking of Coupons .....

My purse was full of bits of paper the other day, I hate this!!  

I usually carry minimal change, tipping all the bits and bobs of money into my Sealed Pot after every outing that I might have acquired some change from, and keeping credit, debit and loyalty cards to the minimum, although I do seem to have quite a few of these now.  Some of them Pets at Home and Holland and Barrett luckily hang from my car key quite neatly.

Well anyway looking through them there were quite a few bits of paper that actually meant money, including a reciept from Boots the Chemist that told me I had £13.65 in loyalty points to spend.

So I went out with the intention of seeing what I could get from my bits of paper.

I spent £13.64 in Boots ... phew how close was that then!!  You can only pay for your shopping with your points  if the total is within the amount of your points.  So all the items in the above picture cost me nothing at all, and I still have 1p on my card   :-)

Next I called to Asda with my new voucher (see yesterdays post) ...

... and got four tins of tuna for free :-)

I had a £2.50 loyalty voucher to use up in Holland and Barrett, at first I couldn't see anything I needed, but then I spotted the EasiYo selection of yogurt mixes, this one was £2.79, so in hard cash it only cost me 29p ... result  :-)

One voucher I decided not to use was this one, I simply didn't need £15 worth of anything and I wasn't just spending for spending's sake!!

So it went in the bin before I got tempted.

When I got home the postman had been, in amongst the bills and circular on the mat were my latest M&S loyalty vouchers.  I've got so many this time because we paid a rather large building supplies bill on the credit card (before paying it off immediately with the company debit card) which meant I got all these lovely vouchers, £71 worth in fact :-)

And along with these various 'double points' and 20% off vouchers it means that once again I have a purse full of paper, it's a good job I made some space in there.  But this sort of paper is well worth having.  So while I am flushed with success at my freebies I have decided on a mini Challenge!!

Can I last for the whole of June using only these vouchers for our food shopping and continuing to whittle away at the contents of the kitchen cupboards and the freezers.   Of course now we also have lots of lovely nibbles available in the polytunnel so I can spend less on salady stuff and things for the Nutribullet.

I think I can do it  .... do you?

Sue xx

Bargains and Coupons

I was in Asda the other day, I buy the dogs Iams dog food from there as it's the cheapest place round here for it and I wanted to use up the voucher I got the other week.

I spotted these humungous pizzas in the reduced chiller cabinet, so straight into my trolley they went.

.

Once home they were cut into quarters, individually wrapped ...

... and popped into a freezer box ready for future 'ready meal' use.

With a handful of fresh veggies, maybe some meat for Lovely Hubby and a bit more cheese sprinkled on top they will be tasty and quick meals for when the inspiration simply doesn't strike.  And it's always nice to have something to go with all the salady bits we are getting from the polytunnel.

They were on these two large pieces of white cardboard and I just can't bring myself to throw them away, they will come in useful for something.  A quick wipe over and they have been put into the cupboard, waiting for more inspiration to strike!!

The coupon I had was through doing the 'Asda Price Guarantee'.   I honestly thought the receipt that I checked would not have meant I qualified for a coupon but it did .... and for £6.13  I was amazed.  You get them if your Asda shop would have been cheaper elsewhere, and Asda guarantees to be at least 10% cheaper, if they are not you get the difference in the form of a coupon to spend next time you are in there.

Once I got home with my pizza shopping and the other things I bought while I was there, a total spend of around £30 I entered that coupon into the box on the website and guess what .....

.... I qualified for a coupon of £2.44.

Good stuff, every little helps ... or maybe that's another shop ... Lol    ;-)

Sue xx