I went into town yesterday to post off OH's Ebay parcel, he wasn't selling, he had bought a not quite working tablet and wanted to return it.
Easy ,since I have no paid work now, I can always get down to the post office.
Anyway, on the way there, I thought I would pop in to the pound shop and see what seeds they had.
I already have 10 new packets but no Brussels or leeks, so I checked the shelves.
They had leeks in a combination pack but no Brussels.
After posting off the parcel (over £5 without extra insurance!!), I went to the 99p shop and they had different packs of seeds.
I bought 1 pack with Leeks included amongst others and 1 pack with 3 types of Beans.
As I was passing the pound stretcher store I thought I would just pop in and check on their seeds.
They didn't have much of interest but then I saw the fruit trees.
These are about 4 ft tall and they had apple,pear,cherry and plum so I selected a cherry and a plum and parted with the money.
I got a few interested glances as I walked back through town with a tree in each hand.
We have 4 fruit trees already, 1 pear and 3 apples.
2 of the apple trees were from woolworths
The other 2 trees were from wilkos and were about 18" high when we bought them,they had a good crop last year.
The new cherry tree is a Morello cherry, they are quite bitter but you can cook them and they make excellent jam and pies.
The plum will replace the one we cut down about 8 years ago . That was a heavy cropper but was over 25 years old and got very heavily damaged in a storm.
Superscrimpers
This is a program on Channel 4.
It is supposed to outline different ways of saving money or at least, not spending unnecessarily.
The family featured , spent £200 a WEEK! on food for a family of 5(one child,the youngest looked about 9).
They were challenged to spend only £50 for a week and they went off to Tesco and spent almost all of it.
Their bill showed they had made a saving of about £1.80 so they probably did spend all of it but incorporated a multi buy of some sort which brought it down.
Their dinners were planned out on paper and seemed to be chosen absolutely randomly based on how nice it sounded.
Their Sunday Dinner (they called it lunch) was beef and all the trimmings.
OH and I watched it with disbelief.
According to the presenter, they had 'managed' to produce dinner on Sunday for £16 !
What a Laugh!
Apparently the £50 was to cover only dinners or so I have heard.
That probably means school dinners and maybe breakfast club for 3 kids and the adults both eat bought food for work.
Our Sunday Dinner this week was Chicken,potatoes,greens and carrots with gravy.
Mondays Dinner was 1/2 a bag of cod pieces from the fish and chip shop (50pence) made into a pie with a cheesy breadcrumb topping, rice and vegetables.
Tuesdays was Chicken stew with Barley
Todays will be Chicken bolognaise and tomorrows will be chicken and ham and pineapple pizza.
Fridays will be left over bolognaise for 1 person and curried left over chicken stew for the others.
There is left over cooked rice or cous cous for the curry eaters.
Saturday will be home made fish and chips using the other half of the bag of fish and chip fish bits(50p) and home made chips with whats left of a bag of mixed vegetables and baked beans.
Bread for lunches is home made at 30 pence a loaf and fillings are typically sardines,baked beans,spreads
we drink tea mainly with milk
Chicken was £5
Greens around 80p
Carrots around 78p
Barley (half pack)40p
Pasta 25p
Cous cous 1/3rd pack around 30p
rice 1/2 pack 20p
Small amount of frozen veg 30p
baked beans 60p
Sardines 50p
Cheese £2.50/ half kilo
puree 25p
tin of tomatoes 38p
Reduced ham 80p
Marg about 1/3rd tub 33p
tea 90p a packet (lasts about 2 weeks)
Milk carton of uht is about 50p so around £1
Oats for breakfast about 80p
Raisins for breakfast 25p at the moment
Bananas around 1.20
Fish bits from fish and chip shop(easily enough for 8 portions but we made it into 6)£1
£18.09......our whole weeks food comes to only a little bit more than their one sunday meal
But be fair OSD
....I will divide it by person
we are only 3 at the moment as DD is away at Uni so it comes to £6.03 per person
They have 5 people so 6.03 multiplied by 5 is £30.15
They should be eating like kings on £50 a week for only dinners but they weren't given a lot of guidance about actually cooking from scratch or choosing less expensive brands.
Rip off UK again
There was also an article about extended warranty on electrical goods.
The presenter stood under a market awning with a collection of goods ,the price and the extended warranty price,alongside each other.
She pointed out that there are insurance companies that will cover your pricey electrics for less than these , however, she didn't once mention inbuilt obsolescence which the electrical industry is guilty of in this country.
The dirty truth is that in the rip off UK ,your washing machine is built to last 5 years and no more.
Once the parts are unavailable,you are screwed because how will it be mended?
Extended warranties are offered for .......oh yeah 5 years but the price tallies quite closely with the cost of a new machine .
It is like paying for a lottery.
Your machine goes wrong within the time and they will mend it or replace it, mending it isn't going to give you a new machine, it is the same machine with one less 5 year life-span part. If it doesn't go wrong within the 5 years, you get nothing at all even though you have paid enough for a new machine.
If they replace it ,you won the lottery and we know how likely that is.
We stopped buying these warranties when our last washing machine but 2, died exactly at the 5 year and 3 days mark.
The warranty was useless and we had to scrap the machine because you could no longer get parts.
Our last bought one , died as expected and we replaced it with a free-cycled machine for free,the person who gave us the machine was getting a new one as the part for her one was going to cost almost a new machine, funnily enough, our machine was the same make but a lesser spec so we could remove the part needed to mend hers,scrap the rest and have a higher spec working machine .
I thought I would sign up to the super scrimpers challenge.
So far it is only day two.
Yesterdays challenge was ..have a no spend day.
I didn't,I had 5 no spend days last week.
Todays was...find somewhere where you can get your hair cut as a model, free or cheap.
Hmm, I cut my own, I use mirrors and scissors and for the last year I have been using a Robocut but I can do it without too. I haven't had my hair cut outside our home for about 3 years and then it was a free cut using a voucher from a newspaper.
Previously to that it was around 12 years ago and my kids said it looked just the same as when I did it myself.
OH is the same. I bought him a phillips self cut type hair clipper about 3 years ago and he cuts his hair about every 6 weeks.
Easy ,since I have no paid work now, I can always get down to the post office.
Anyway, on the way there, I thought I would pop in to the pound shop and see what seeds they had.
I already have 10 new packets but no Brussels or leeks, so I checked the shelves.
They had leeks in a combination pack but no Brussels.
After posting off the parcel (over £5 without extra insurance!!), I went to the 99p shop and they had different packs of seeds.
I bought 1 pack with Leeks included amongst others and 1 pack with 3 types of Beans.
As I was passing the pound stretcher store I thought I would just pop in and check on their seeds.
They didn't have much of interest but then I saw the fruit trees.
These are about 4 ft tall and they had apple,pear,cherry and plum so I selected a cherry and a plum and parted with the money.
I got a few interested glances as I walked back through town with a tree in each hand.
We have 4 fruit trees already, 1 pear and 3 apples.
2 of the apple trees were from woolworths
The other 2 trees were from wilkos and were about 18" high when we bought them,they had a good crop last year.
The new cherry tree is a Morello cherry, they are quite bitter but you can cook them and they make excellent jam and pies.
The plum will replace the one we cut down about 8 years ago . That was a heavy cropper but was over 25 years old and got very heavily damaged in a storm.
Superscrimpers
This is a program on Channel 4.
It is supposed to outline different ways of saving money or at least, not spending unnecessarily.
The family featured , spent £200 a WEEK! on food for a family of 5(one child,the youngest looked about 9).
They were challenged to spend only £50 for a week and they went off to Tesco and spent almost all of it.
Their bill showed they had made a saving of about £1.80 so they probably did spend all of it but incorporated a multi buy of some sort which brought it down.
Their dinners were planned out on paper and seemed to be chosen absolutely randomly based on how nice it sounded.
Their Sunday Dinner (they called it lunch) was beef and all the trimmings.
OH and I watched it with disbelief.
According to the presenter, they had 'managed' to produce dinner on Sunday for £16 !
What a Laugh!
Apparently the £50 was to cover only dinners or so I have heard.
That probably means school dinners and maybe breakfast club for 3 kids and the adults both eat bought food for work.
Our Sunday Dinner this week was Chicken,potatoes,greens and carrots with gravy.
Mondays Dinner was 1/2 a bag of cod pieces from the fish and chip shop (50pence) made into a pie with a cheesy breadcrumb topping, rice and vegetables.
Tuesdays was Chicken stew with Barley
Todays will be Chicken bolognaise and tomorrows will be chicken and ham and pineapple pizza.
Fridays will be left over bolognaise for 1 person and curried left over chicken stew for the others.
There is left over cooked rice or cous cous for the curry eaters.
Saturday will be home made fish and chips using the other half of the bag of fish and chip fish bits(50p) and home made chips with whats left of a bag of mixed vegetables and baked beans.
Bread for lunches is home made at 30 pence a loaf and fillings are typically sardines,baked beans,spreads
we drink tea mainly with milk
Chicken was £5
Greens around 80p
Carrots around 78p
Barley (half pack)40p
Pasta 25p
Cous cous 1/3rd pack around 30p
rice 1/2 pack 20p
Small amount of frozen veg 30p
baked beans 60p
Sardines 50p
Cheese £2.50/ half kilo
puree 25p
tin of tomatoes 38p
Reduced ham 80p
Marg about 1/3rd tub 33p
tea 90p a packet (lasts about 2 weeks)
Milk carton of uht is about 50p so around £1
Oats for breakfast about 80p
Raisins for breakfast 25p at the moment
Bananas around 1.20
Fish bits from fish and chip shop(easily enough for 8 portions but we made it into 6)£1
£18.09......our whole weeks food comes to only a little bit more than their one sunday meal
But be fair OSD
....I will divide it by person
we are only 3 at the moment as DD is away at Uni so it comes to £6.03 per person
They have 5 people so 6.03 multiplied by 5 is £30.15
They should be eating like kings on £50 a week for only dinners but they weren't given a lot of guidance about actually cooking from scratch or choosing less expensive brands.
Rip off UK again
There was also an article about extended warranty on electrical goods.
The presenter stood under a market awning with a collection of goods ,the price and the extended warranty price,alongside each other.
She pointed out that there are insurance companies that will cover your pricey electrics for less than these , however, she didn't once mention inbuilt obsolescence which the electrical industry is guilty of in this country.
The dirty truth is that in the rip off UK ,your washing machine is built to last 5 years and no more.
Once the parts are unavailable,you are screwed because how will it be mended?
Extended warranties are offered for .......oh yeah 5 years but the price tallies quite closely with the cost of a new machine .
It is like paying for a lottery.
Your machine goes wrong within the time and they will mend it or replace it, mending it isn't going to give you a new machine, it is the same machine with one less 5 year life-span part. If it doesn't go wrong within the 5 years, you get nothing at all even though you have paid enough for a new machine.
If they replace it ,you won the lottery and we know how likely that is.
We stopped buying these warranties when our last washing machine but 2, died exactly at the 5 year and 3 days mark.
The warranty was useless and we had to scrap the machine because you could no longer get parts.
Our last bought one , died as expected and we replaced it with a free-cycled machine for free,the person who gave us the machine was getting a new one as the part for her one was going to cost almost a new machine, funnily enough, our machine was the same make but a lesser spec so we could remove the part needed to mend hers,scrap the rest and have a higher spec working machine .
I thought I would sign up to the super scrimpers challenge.
So far it is only day two.
Yesterdays challenge was ..have a no spend day.
I didn't,I had 5 no spend days last week.
Todays was...find somewhere where you can get your hair cut as a model, free or cheap.
Hmm, I cut my own, I use mirrors and scissors and for the last year I have been using a Robocut but I can do it without too. I haven't had my hair cut outside our home for about 3 years and then it was a free cut using a voucher from a newspaper.
Previously to that it was around 12 years ago and my kids said it looked just the same as when I did it myself.
OH is the same. I bought him a phillips self cut type hair clipper about 3 years ago and he cuts his hair about every 6 weeks.
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