September Financials Ins and Outs and Penny Savers

 Just the usual income of State Pension and Suffolk County Council Spouses pension and some interest from savings (and if the Labour party abandon the triple lock for pension increases, they'll be losing an awful lot of votes - I don't think they'll dare do it)

Above all the usual expenses there were just two known extras in September.................. DiL's Birthday and Amazon Prime. The unknown extras were for the repair place for sorting the car tyres, some camping gas cylinders and a wind-up/re-chargeable lantern..........just-in-case.

The usual regular monthly outgoings were  for Council Tax, charity, phones and broadband, monthly electric bill and diesel that came to £390. I topped up with diesel twice, didn't really need to but I found the Co-op garage in Stowupland was several pence cheaper than my local one. Everywhere is now creeping to £2 a litre. I wonder whose fault this is??!

Personal spending was low, only exercise group and a haircut, the Elvis dcuk and chocolate rabbits.

Other spending were mostly small things, except for getting the gutters cleaned....... there hasn't been a good rain since to see what  difference it's made. Food spending already mentioned. Organised YGDs birthday pressie ready for October. Then I got sunflower hearts and suet blocks for the birds and stocked up with paracetamol and ibuprofen for bad weather. Small spends for kitchen bits and washing soda crystals. The window cleaner came - thankfully, as the gutter clearing had made a mess of some windows and then someone told me I had a brake light out so it was back to the repair place where Ashley soon got a new bulb in for just £5. Also found a few useful things from car-boot sales which will be blog posts later.

image from google freepik

A few penny-savers

• Beetroot from BiL's garden
• Eating apples from my small trees
• Last of the tomatoes from greenhouse
• Peppers from greenhouse into freezer
• Gift of pears from friend
• Last of the courgettes from garden
• Bread loaves from bread machine
• Only doing one or two lots of washing each week
• Only use dishwasher every other day
• Lots of days not going out so not spending
• Free postage at Lakeland so I sent for a pack of their good quality freezer bags.
• Reading library books for free - no books bought.
• Make sure to always get the in town parking fee refunded by spending £5 in Asda
• Made up a tin of pre-prepared oranges to make 6 jars of marmalade.

Looking at October and there are more birthdays that need presents ....... YGS and Son as well as cards to nephew and great nephew. 

September 29th - Michaelmas

 Today is the Feast of St Michael and All Angels or Michaelmas, a Quarter Day when farm rents were due, annual employment terms ended, local courts were held and children would finally go back to school after helping with the  harvests. In some places it was called Pack Rag Day because the poorest farm labourers would be packing their few possessions to move to a new job.

 From my book Cattern Cakes and Lace by Barbara Deer and Julia Jones

In one of my books it says that Michaelmas day is the last day that blackberries should be picked. It is said that when St Michael threw Lucifer, the devil, from heaven, he fell from the skies and landed in a blackberry bush making the fruit useless. 

BUT in another book this story is given for October 10th, this difference will be due to the change of calendar when 12 days were lost. In reality it probably depends on the weather and how damp it's been to make the blackberries mouldy.

This year the blackberries here were poor due to the drought and heat of summer and have been finished for several weeks already.

There are several other posts for Michaelmas HERE

The September Food Shopping Photos...............

 ...............for food shopping photo fans and  to fill a blog post again.

First shop on the 2nd was a quick pop into Aldi for a few basics.

Mini pears were on the 'Special 6' offers at 69p; 2 peanuts £1.18; 400g extra strong cheddar £2.45; penne pasta 41p; 4 pints milk £1.65; 2 ground coffee  @ £2.59 = £5.18 (still no decaf); 2 x dried prunes  @ £2.79 =£5.58.

Total £17.14 + half a dozen eggs from a car boot sale £1.50. = £18.64

I'm not a fan of Lidl, they are the wrong side of the town and always seem in a muddle, with long check-out queues but I tried them for decaf ground coffee - they had plenty, same price as Aldi who haven't had decaf for weeks, so I got 2 = £5.18. I noticed they also had plenty of wholemeal bread flour and the wholegrain crackers that Aldi haven't had for weeks. So now I know what to do about Aldi's missing items!......Turn left at the traffic lights instead of right and go home the other way via Lidl.

£18.64 + £5.18 = £23.82

Then a big '4 supermarket shopping trip'.

I've never been to all 4 supermarkets in Stowmarket on the same day before but  decided to do just that three weeks ago, due to Lidl having nectarines on the special 6 fruit/veg offers and Tesco being the only supermarket that had the canned meat I was putting in the cupboard for the zombie apocalypse - or just bad weather! 

It took an age - won't do that again.

£37.75 spent

£18.64 + £5.18 + £37.75 = £61.57

 I forgot to take photo of a quick pop into Tesco when I was over by the coast, when I got a few things to see me through the week around getting the car tyres fixed. Spent £8.29.

£61.57 + £8.29 = £69.86

Then finally after tyres were sorted I had to go into town so went to Aldi (still lots of gaps including   de-caff coffee, tins of sardines, tins of salmon, multi grain biscuits, mini cheese bake biscuits) and Asda(to spend £5 to get £1 parking fee back) which together turned into a big spend because I didn't want to go shopping again....ever! .................well not really ever, but sometimes it feels that would be a good idea.

2 bags of pears, head of calabrese, mini cucs, tin mackerel fillets, 6 eggs, extra mature cheddar, feta, mayo, bacon bits, 4 pints milk, peanuts and cashews, cheese and onion rolls, 'hola' hoops and tortilla chip snacks, bread rolls, naan breads, tin fruit salad. 

Totaled £27.69. Making Septembers food spending £97.55.  

Although I must have missed something because in my accounts book food spending added up to just over £111. Oh well, still not too bad.