End Of The Month Round Up

Seems to have been quite a long month with all sorts of different weather including hot enough for sitting out and then cold enough to wish I'd not altered all the boiler timings. Last Sunday was particularly cold and nasty....... I'm sure the cold weather was due to me buying new bottles of suntan and after sun lotions!.....Jinxed it.

 As predicted May was less spendy than April and there was extra income with that £150 government "help for price rises" going into the bank...............I was thinking how useful that would have been when we had 3 small children and a mortgage with interest rates much higher than now. Other income was the two pensions as usual and the State pension went up a little bit  - always handy.

Outgoings were the normal food, household stuff, direct debits for Council Tax, two phones and broadband and charity. The breakdown insurance was due for the car and two lots of expensive diesel plus the leaking tyre was sorted - a new valve needed. Hope that's cured the problem of slowly losing air and the pressure warning light coming on. 

Then I finally got round to buying myself a new bigger phone after originally going into the Tesco phone shop(the only place to buy a phone in the area) last November just as their computer went down - 6 months of procrastination! Luckily the sim card fitted.

I've now got all 4 water butts collecting rainwater so have filled in the forms to apply for a water meter.

Scottish Power electric bill was paid on an estimated reading. Seemed a lot but of course prices have gone up and I shall be reading the meter again this week so should find out the true cost.

My personal spending was on the various outings and a couple of second-hand books and two new bras.

Despite me saying last month that garden spending was virtually finished I still had to spend on some short canes and some wire for the greenhouse, the plastic things to fix the bean canes and the patio weeding tool, but at least all those things won't be needed again.

Only a few frugal things

 

• Several Children's Birthday cards from boot sales for 50p each
• Made a Wedding Anniversary card from stash
• Bought new schoolbag for Grandsons birthday present, but filled it with items previously found at boot sales.
• 2 tee-shirts for home wearing found at charity shops for £3 each.
• 2 items bought for Christmas Hampers from boot-sale
• Several things from boot sales that will save me money i.e foil, parchment paper
  
• Mostly picked the right days for hanging out washing but I did have to use the tumble dryer once
• No lights needed mornings and hardly any in the evenings now.
• Altered the heating thermostat timer to lower temps for the summer so it rarely comes on.
  
• Always mixing whole milk half and half with water
  
• Reading library books for free.
• Home made bread
• A cauliflower for 88p made me two meals of Cauliflower cheese and two times side veg to go with other things
  

 

 I bought 2 of these Coconut Bird Houses for £3 each from the car boot sale ready for the Christmas Hampers. They had a huge pile of them the week before but wanted £6 each but needed to clear out the last two - bargain!

 

Back Tomorrow

Sue