What a Jump !!

On Monday me and Himself popped briefly into Tesco's - not a thing I like doing with Himself in tow, he sees things everywhere we 'need' - such as bags of toffees, poppcorn, crisps, biscuits, if fact if he sees it, well we must 'need' it, so I much prefer him not to come with me, but as we were getting milk for his work, he popped in with me, and nearly had a heart attack at some of the prices !

I think he still thinks that bread is about 15 pence a loaf and his brief whizz round the store was a bit of an eye opener.

I didn't buy anything other than the milk as I had planned to do a shop on my way up to home when I knew I would need to stop for petrol, but in all events I didn't.

I wish I had now ! The butter above, when we went in to Tescos on Monday was 1.10 per block, when I went back to do my shopping on Tuesday it was 1.27 !!!! A 17p jump - prices really are getting scary, they aren't just going up in pennies and tuppences, they really are leaping up in double digits.

I am lucky enough that for the moment I still have some wages coming in before I am laid off and I want to stock the store cupboard as well as I can, but I will be doing it not just to stay ahead of redundancy, but also to try to keep up with these huge price increases

Cheap Evening Meal

Like many other bloggers, finding recipes that are both economical, nourishing and filling is something that I have to think about every day. The money that I hand over to shopkeeper has been hard earned and had to stretch as far as possible. This month I have extra bills to pay so the food budget is the only area that I have any wiggle room with, so it has to be trimmed even more than normal.

I dropped into a Netto store today, not a shop that I usually frequent, mainly because there isnt one any where near to me, but I was by one so I thought I would pop in.

I bought 3 tins of manderin oranges for £1, 3 tins of carrots and peas (himself likes them) at 39p each and 2 packets of microwave rice similar to the 'Uncle Bens' 2 minutes in the microwave rice that number 2 son likes to take to work for lunch occasionally. The rice was 49p per packet instead of UB's at £1.25 in my local shop. I'm sure number 2 son will give me his verdict as to whether it is a good substitute pretty quickly.

The other items that I bought were 2 packets of bacon pieces as I wanted to make pizzas later in the week. The bacon packets were 2 for £2.50.

When I opened them at home I was really suprised to find that they weren't full of small mis shapes but several large pieces, almost the size of bacon chops that are sometimes sold in some of the supermarkets. So 3 of the larger pieces were cut in half and I shall boil these and then oven roast them with roast potatoes and veggies (we often have a boiled/roasted bacon joint for Sunday dinner.)

The other 2 smaller pieces were shopped into small pieces, fried until nearly cooked and then I added a can of chopped tomatoes, a generous helping of dried oregano and a good shake of black pepper. While this was cooking I boiled up some pasta and served the bacon and tomato sauce on top. A grating of some drying up cheddar and more black pepper and we had a great evening meal which only cost:-

Bacon 45
Toms 25
Pasta 20
Cheese 10
Oregano 0 It was grown here and dried last year
Pepper 5

Total £1.05

Number 2 son and I had a large helping each and there is another one left for him for work tomorrow so each portion came to about 35p. Now thats the kind of meal cost that I like !!

Budgeting - Gas and Electric

Well in my last post I wrote about how I had reduced the family's insurances by £420 per year (a current saving of £35 per month. So, pleased with my results I thought I would go further and see what else I could either reduce or save on.

I looked on one of the price comparison websites to check whether gas and electric would be cheaper with another supplier. To be truthful I found the whole business so confusing that after about two hours of scribbled notes and fruitless calculations on my trusty calculator, in the end I contacted British Gas (my current supplier) to ask if they could supply me gas and electric any cheaper than I am currently paying as I was thinking of going else where.

Low and behold, of course they could. Apparently I wasn't on their cheapest tariff anyway (why not) My fault for not asking before or theirs for not telling me? Anyway as of that phone call I was switched to another tariff, which should save us about 200 pounds per year ! Great news I thought, more savings to save towards the dreaded debt.

Well it appeared to be great news at the time. This morning I received a letter from British Gas confirming the changes made etc but also informing me that they had carried out their usual 12 monthly review of our account and that due to the rises already announced in the price of gas,our monthly direct debit would be going up from £60 per month to £104 per month !!!!!!! An expected spend of over £1200 per year on gas !!

When I had picked my self up of the floor and re read and re read the letter I realised that this amount only covers gas, there is still a letter to follow regarding electricity increases for the year!

Bloody hell what would it have been if we were still on the 'old' tariff??

My potential savings of £200 have now gone totally out of the window, plus we now have to find an extra £300 plus............time for more drastic measures me thinks.......

Debt 2

STEP 1



The first thing I have done is contacted insurance companies to get quotes for the cars, caravan and house to see if there are any possible reductions to be made.



I used one of the online search engines and was quite supprised to see what a difference could be made just switching like for like policies to other insurance companies.



In the end I switched to the AA for both cars, caravan and in total saved £420 a year across the 4 policies !! I am chuffed to bits.



Now £420 is not to be sniffed at, but what I have to do is be strict with those savings whilst we still have the same income coming in (may only be for the next two months) so, £420 over 12 months means a saving of £35 per month.



So, I must save the savings !! Have made a note in my budget folder to make an extra payment to one credit card of £35 at the end of each month (while I can)