February Financials

Income in February was the usual State Pension and County Council spouses pension, interest on savings plus £20 from 'We Buy Books' .

Because of choosing to pay Council Tax over ten months rather than twelve, February and March have no payment due. Instead there was the half year for sewer and water charges - and that had gone up yet again. Other  expenses were the usual direct debits for phones and broadband, charity donation and the monthly electric bill. I filled the car up twice with diesel once at the beginning and once at the end of the month and read the meter and paid the monthly electric bill. That lot came to £435. Then on Friday I ordered a fill up of heating oil to arrive next month - 500 litres for £338.

I prepared for growing with seed compost, two packets of seed for here and two packets of beetroot seed for BiL to grow some extra for me.

Household stuff included some spare bulbs for my lamp, the bread-machine blades and bin bags.

I  have a bill still to pay due to  problems with the flush on the bathroom loo cistern. It started flushing all by itself! Problems here are usually caused by our hard-water area, limescale getting into the works . The cistern on the bathroom toilet is all built in but I managed to prise one bit of cupboard off and unscrewed the front cover on the cistern and stopped it flushing but it was still trickling in water so I got the guy who fixed my drippy tap last year to come and look and he capped off the water intake and took out the inside 'gubbins' and went off with them to track down replacements , which are now fitted. I was very glad it's a 2 loo bungalow! I think water might have been trickling in and out for a while and that would be the reason for the bigger water/sewer bill.

Personal spending was just two woolly winter hats, exercise group and the book I bought at the beginning of the month  

which  doesn't have anything in it that I didn't already have in other foraging and WWII books and seems to have some mistakes about the dates of the introduction of rationing. It does have some lovely pictures but I was a bit disappointed - although not sure what I was expecting

Penny savings to spend on more interesting things

• Turned a couple of bread crusts into dried crumbs for topping bakes
• Started to save apple peel etc to make some compost jelly as I'm on the last jar - I'll add some raspberries that are in the freezer and some sort of cheap bought fruit.
• Got diesel for car when visiting YD and opticians - it's always several pence a litre cheaper there.
• Had to use the tumble dryer once but managed to dry in 40 minutes - so not too bad.
• Usual bread in the bread-maker
• Dishwasher only used every other day.
• Lots of lovely books from the library
• No newspapers, magazines or make up etc bought as usual.

March, despite no Council Tax, is one of the expensive months of the year (along with April and Christmas) and there will be the bill for boiler servicing added to the list too and the car servicing and MOT. No way to have a low-spend March.