Much Less Spent This Month - And An Explanation for Ana and Others

 After the expenses of April with several annual bills falling due plus dentist and heating oil, May was much better. The only known extras above the normal monthly spending were ED and EGS birthdays and car breakdown insurance.

The normal outgoings are Council Tax, Phone and broadband, monthly electric bill, charity donation, diesel for the car (two lots this month as I've been out and about) totalled £375 and food of course. 

Then there is always something that needs buying in a house- this month I needed new AA batteries and some mastic to redo around the shower enclosure base. All was going well with not too much spent until the cold tap in the en-suite started drip, drip, dripping. BiL looked but said it's one of those new ones without a washer but with a 'cartridge' thing instead, and you have to have the right one. He didn't fancy the job - so I had to call in a proper plumber! Got a recommendation for someone local and it was soon sorted but cost £85! Yikes. - and that was someone reliable who didn't rip off old people!

Garden spending totalled £9.38 for parsley from aldi, courgette plants, bean plants, trailing thyme and a clay flowerpot  from car-boot sales.

A wide top small clay pot for the plant stand to replace one that was starting to be frost damaged

Food spending was up this month, after two lower spend months. Mainly due to replacing items that had been used up to restock the freezer and cupboards. Although prices of things like milk and other dairy products have gone up. I had a pensioners discount Fish and Chip meal for £5 as I'd not had one for a few months and coffee out three times. 

A few frugal notes for those who like to read the list.............

• Gift of bundle of  Rhubarb from my sister. Mine is not doing well.
• Big bundle of asparagus for £1.50 from boot sale, made me two meals with poached egg and wholemeal bread.
• Eggs from roadside stall are still just £2 a dozen
• Found a really good quality t-shirt for £3.49 from charity shop. Lovely jade green and looks hardly worn.
• 4 x 25L bags of free compost from District Council giveaways
• BiL had a small bag of tile cement in his garage which I borrowed so I could re-attach some of the quarry tiles on the front step.
• Reading library books for free
• Home made bread from the bread-maker - 50/50 wholemeal/white this month
• Dishwasher used only every 2 or 3 days
• Washing machine used twice a week only
• Tumble dryer not used all month
• Lights not needed until 8.30 in the evenings for reading.
• Two big bags dishwasher salt for £2 from boot sale
• New kitchen sieve from boot sale 50p
• No flowers bought - I've been bringing in a few roses from the garden.
• Given up feeding the birds for the summer as the huge starling family are clearing out the mealworms and fat balls in 10 minutes. Just leaves the starling proof sunflower heart feeder.
• Free referral to physio appointment for next month to look at my knee problem.
• Made 4 x Two cheese, onion, spinach puff pastry bakes  - instead of buying more 'vegetarian taste test' products.
• Cooked up a big batch of Quorn and vegetable korma curry - 10 meals total
• I put the refill filters for my water jug on my Amazon wish list and keep an eye on the prices because they go up and down. This month they went down by £3 to £9.99 for the pack of three so I ordered, I've still got one filter left in the cupboard so OK now for a year of good filtered water for the coffee maker and to drink with no limescale.
• I use Sensodyne small head toothbrushes and found packs with buy two get one free, so got two packs, 6 toothbrushes should last me a while. Sensodyne toothpaste is cheaper at Aldi than anywhere else.
• First few strawberries from my few plants and  handful of  Very early raspberries - they were a surprise find.

 Personal spending included the first  book find of the year from a boot-sale for £1 and then another for another £1, the old scrap book, mentioned earlier in the month. A much needed hair cut, exercise group, jigsaw puzzle and a new Puzzler Magazine. I also printed out a couple of grandchildren photos for my frames. The £10 spent at Sibton church for 5 books, a birthday card, coffee and sausage roll was added to the charity part of the accounts (clever accounting!)

Finally a special treat..........a   subscription to Discovery+ TV so I can watch the French Open Tennis. Just have to remember how to cancel after a month. Discovery+ has amalgamated with TNT Sports, and cost a lot more than last year , but I decided I'd rather have this than an outing to the Mid Suffolk Railway for their 1940s day, which I'd pencilled in the diary - especially as it was wet and chilly and I don't bother with the big Suffolk Agricultural Show now, so that's a saving of nearly £30 anyway. After the first 3 days of tennis there were still 6 Brits going into the second round of matches and Cam Norrie and Jack Draper both played well to get through. By Thursday evening all the women were out and just  three British men left, apparently that's the first time since 1968 that there have been three British men in the third round. There will be at least one of them in the 4th round as Cam Norrie and Jacob Fearnley play each other today. Still several Brits in various double matches which never get as much publicity.

Looking forward - June is usually a good low-spend month, the only extras above the normal are the annual payment for the Garden Waste Bin. But whenever I say it's going to be a low spend month something usually happens to upset that plan so I didn't ought to mention it - ooops too late! 

Have a good weekend and I'll be back soon. 

And here is my explanation of why I use the mobile library-

The mobile libraries (3 in Suffolk) travel around all the villages so that people can go on and choose books or collect books they have reserved on line, especially useful in villages that are many miles from a physical library building and especially useful for elderly who can't drive. We can reserve books on line and ask for them to be sent to any Suffolk library or to the mobile library. I have read so many books in my 70 years that most of what I read are new books by favourite authors and I rarely find books I want actually on the shelves.
If the books go to a library building they have to be collected within one week of arriving there whereas the mobile saves them up to bring all at once. Also I can keep books for up to two visits (that is 8 weeks) where as people borrowing from town libraries have them stamped for just 3 weeks.
Yes I could drive to a library but it seems silly to do that when I can stroll up the road once every four weeks to collect my books. If I was to use a town library I would need to drive to town (10 miles or 20 minutes) every week to collect my books.
The mobile library service is always under threat of stopping as it is gradually used less and less. When I worked on one we had 5 mobile libraries covering the whole County (several 100 villages) and visiting every two weeks. Now there are just 3 visiting every 4 weeks.
The mobile libraries have depots in 3 different parts of the County where they park and where all books waiting to go on the various routes are stored so my books are not actually somewhere where I can go and collect them at the moment. Hence hoping that the delivery van (a small van that takes reserved books and new books around to all 40 libraries in the County) will bring my books to my nearest library before the next mobile visit at the end of June.
For the last 20 years I have been using the mobile libraries as it's a case of use them or lose them.
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