The temptation to splurge on 'projects' - or spending money on home maintenance

I am struggling with the urge to buy things at the moment. It is all very well for me to get our day-to-day bills down to a minimum, which I've proudly done - and the process continues; yesterday J. negotiated a better deal for us for phone and internet for the next year - but that is of limited use if our one-off spending is high.  The problem for me comes in 'projects'.  Once a project is undertaken - and it can be anything, but is almost always something to do with the house - budgets and plans can go out of the window.  

Until a month or two ago, we had done very little to our house for some time.  Then, our fridge broke, and we decided to replace it with a beautiful, though expensive fridge which we will aim to keep forever. (I am very happy with this decision.)   

Next, we finally got around to getting a plumber to replace our dripping kitchen tap with one bought months' earlier.  Once that was done, we asked him to come back to fix our leaking bath, which he will do today.  He will also replace a cracked wash basin for us.   

We had to repair the fence between us and our neighbours - it is our responsibility - and while we were doing that, decided to get a quote to replace the garden gate which was rotting away. The price was reasonable, and so we went ahead.  

I am determined that we should stop here, having dealt with the main niggles, although the temptation is to carry on; we could add a sink to the washing machine area, we could build the bookshelves we have been talking about for years, we could get blackout blinds for our room to keep out the early morning sunshine which currently seeps through.  

And as I was hoovering this morning, I found myself casting a critical eye over some of our carpets, thinking that some of them could do with being replaced, and others with a professional clean.....

In my view, there are several problems.  One is the slippery slope; once a psychological barrier has been broken, it is only too easy to break it again.  Secondly, the imperfections that you get into the habit of ignoring daily - like being restricted to showers rather than baths for months at a time, or the fact that the kitchen tap drips - suddenly spring into focus when other work is done.   Finally, there's an illogical part of me which deep down feels that money spent on the house is acceptable because it is an 'investment'.  There's an element of truth in this, of course, but it is an argument to be used with caution.

Although I recognise it is bad housekeeping on my part, as well as wasteful of water, to leave dripping taps and cracked wash basins un-mended, there may be something to be said for an ability to live with less than perfect conditions.  I need to put my critical faculties away and be happy with what I have, while distinguishing between what needs to be done, and what it would be nice to do some time.  

Cooking ingredients: where to spend and where to save

Following on from her kitchen equipment list, here are my chef sister's suggestions on how to eat well, where to economise, and where not to, when food shopping:

It is obvious and much repeated but if you only shop in season you’ll get better value for money. Buy English strawberries only in mid-season and you can eat them every day. Asparagus just coming in is expensive, but hold on a bit for the price to go down.

Investigate the end of line baskets at supermarkets, they often have interesting random vinegars etc in their fancy foreign muck sections which don’t sell, so end up going cheap. The same goes for bin-ends for wine - you can find some interesting things.

Do what peasants around the world have been doing forever – just use a little meat in a hotpot/stew/whatever as a flavouring. One of the loveliest things I ate on a very greedy holiday in Andalucia was a stew of mostly potato, onion and pepper, with just a little pork, all cooked in delicious stock. The potatoes took on all the meaty flavour as they cooked.

Do not scrimp on:

Bread – it is such a major part of our diet but most people make do with the dullest, cheapest stuff.  Don’t put up with it! Buy the nicest you can, and then ‘something on toast’ is transformed.

Pasta – don’t ask me why, but supermarket value brand stuff is just not as good as more expensive versions.

Baked beans and tomato ketchup – only Heinz will do in my opinion.

Potatoes – have realized why the value bags are cheap – they sometimes seem to be a random selection of diff varieties and all cook at different speeds, so you end up with a pan of falling-apart and rock hard. Disaster.

Kitchen equipment recommendations from a chef

As mentioned in an earlier post, I asked my sister, a Leiths' trained chef, for her suggestions on where to spend money on kitchen equipment.  Here is her, surprisingly short, list.

Kitchen Equipment List

Knives! One big chef’s knife, one small paring/office for veg cutting, and one steel for sharpening – serrated is also useful for tomatoes and fruit, but not vital.

1 big saucepan, one small, both stainless steel, not non-stick, the best quality you can afford – they will last. A handle that isn’t screwed on, is part of the pan, or it will start wobbling and fall off.

A good big chopping board, wood is good as long as you don’t worry about hygiene! Just don’t use it for raw meat, get a plastic one and keep it only for that.

A frying pan – opinion is divided on this one. I like a good, solid non-stick one which, I admit, won’t last forever unless you’re militant about no metal utensils and watch other people like a hawk if they use it…Or some serious types get e.g cast iron and just season it very carefully. Never seem to manage it myself.

A good large mixing bowl; lightweight metal is good for most things.

A nice big balloon whisk, electric hand whisk also v useful., or see below if you have the funds… 

[Digital scales: I recently had to reprimand Penny for using old-fashioned scales for baking.  They just aren't accurate enough for cake-making...]

More extravagant items include

A lovely, solid, and supposedly lifetime-lasting Le Creuset. A casserole for 6-8 people is probably your best bet, in whichever colour you won't get bored of.

A Kitchenaid or Kenwood mixer. Kitchenaid is my preference, but Kenwoods are known to be v reliable and long-lasting, though just don’t have the glamour factor.

Bill-pruning and increasing my pension contribution

Despite all my recent efforts to cut down regular bills - as part of which we've saved considerably on home and contents insurance, joined an oil-buying group, and changed our AA cover to save £137 a year, and made various other changes, there was one insurance policy that I had not thought about cancelling.  It suddenly occurred to me, a few days ago, that it was something I no longer needed, and so I decided to cancel the plan, and divert the money saved on the monthly premium to my pension.  While I was about it, I also made a change to my clothes and spending allowance which I had been contemplating for a little while, cutting it by a quarter and adding that extra money to my pension as well.  

So today I rang the pension company and informed them of my increased contributions.  The young woman I spoke to congratulated me on making the change, wondering if I had had a pay rise.   

I am pleased to have taken this action; it feels good to have immediately diverted the money saved into something specific, particularly into the pension.  It does not feel very helpful to save money, if the difference is then swallowed up in general spending.

However, as I have mentioned before, I do like spending money on clothes, so the cut in spending money may be a bit of a challenge for me. I will see it as a test of my ingenuity....We will see how I get on.

One-off actions and easy habits

I can be lazy, so I like the kind of frugality where just one initial set-up action is needed, with maybe the occasional review.

Some examples of one-off actions that I have taken:

• Getting a water butt for the garden several years ago.  I like this because it is environmentally friendly, while also providing free water, enough for all our gardening needs. (Though my mother would say that I don't water the garden enough, so that may be why....)
• Working out the cheapest way to pay regular bills - for most bills this is by monthly direct debit- and setting up payment accordingly. I first did this many years ago, and do now review the situation every so often.
• Putting dryer balls (mentioned in an earlier post) in my tumble dryer.
• Fitting water-reducing devices into our lavatories years ago, which saves a considerable amount of water.
  

We also have some habits which are so simple, and so ingrained, that they are now almost automatic:

• Using second-class stamps for all non-urgent post
• Putting the end of a loaf of bread in the freezer for later use as toast, before it goes stale
• Using plastic carrier bags as kitchen bin liners
• Putting vegetable matter, tea leaves, and coffee grounds onto the compost heap
  
• Contributing a proportion of our income to our pensions, whenever we are paid, at the same time we save money for tax.  (This doesn't happen automatically, now that we are both self-employed.)

Many of these actions and habits won't result in large savings, but the effort involved is minimal, and over the years these small things add up.  What am I missing?  What habits or one-off actions have you taken?

Women prefer bonds

A few months' ago, I wrote a post about Japanese women and their attitude to money.  I was intrigued that Japanese women generally have control of their household's budgets, giving their husbands pocket money, and being keen, if conservative, savers.  As a follow on, I have just read an article about an advertising campaign for government bonds in Japan, in which a young Japanese woman states her preference for men who invest in government bonds. 'Playboys are no good', she says.

Unseasonal home-made baked beans

It seems a bit unseasonal now, as it is really hot - for England - here at the moment, but last week I had a go at making baked beans in the slow cooker, something I had been meaning to try for a while.  It worked rather well; recipes abound, but I chose one from the useful site  All Recipes. Just don't do what I did initially when making the beans and forget to add tomato ketchup and mustard for the last hour of cooking, as without these flavourings the treacle flavour is overpowering, and the dish tastes rather odd.  Leftover beans went nicely with pasta and some grated cheese.

Ecoballs

I've recently bought some Ecoballs (shown here on the John Lewis website) in our local Oxfam shop.  They were advertised as an environmentally friendly, and economical, way of washing clothes.  They are supposed to last for up to 1,000 washes, and to cost therefore about 3 pence per wash.  (I actually bought them half price, so make that 1.5p.) They seem to be working well so far, after three weeks of use, though I have noticed that although clothes smell clean when they come out of the washing machine, they don't have that aggressively clean smell that commercial detergents produce.  That is probably a very good thing, chemicals-wise, but slightly disconcerting to begin with.  Also, the ecoballs can't be used at very high temperatures, though as I try to keep wash temperatures fairly low, that does not bother me.

I already try to minimise use of the tumble dryer, by hanging clothes out to dry on a drying rack as much as possible, and have long been using dryer balls to reduce energy use.  They may work - but they also produce quite a bit of noise when the machine is in use.

Saving nearly £300 on home and contents insurance

For the first time in ages, or possibly ever, I've been really thorough about getting a good price for our home and contents renewal.  We had a renewal notice through from our existing insurer, with what I felt was a very high price, as well as one or two solicitations from other insurers.

Today, I've worked through the process Martin Lewis suggests, involving going through a number of online brokers, as well as getting a few direct quotes, and it really is amazing how much difference it makes to the price.  I spent more or less a whole morning on the - boring but still quite satisfying - process.  The result is that the quote I'm about to accept is very nearly £300 cheaper than our renewal quote.  

This isn't the cheapest quote, however, but about £80 higher.  After the poor service I experienced from my car insurer earlier in the year, I've looked at some online reviews, as well as bearing in mind comments I had heard from others about service, before choosing whom to go with.  I found some very positive feedback for Direct Line - and the person I spoke to there about a query had also been very helpful - and made my decision accordingly.

So, a slightly tedious process, but thoroughly worth doing when I consider how long it would take me to earn the £300....

Some grocery items I can't bear to economise on....

I've been talking to my sister, the chef, about some posts she has written for the blog on food and equipment, and where to spend money, and where to save it.  (And we've been done some baking in my kitchen and she's been horrified at my lack of a set of digital scales; I have some beautiful, old-fashioned ones, but they are not terribly precise. They may have to be supplemented with something more precise.)

Her posts will follow soon, but in the meantime, here are my own thoughts on food and drink items where economising would be painful and, for me, not worthwhile except in a dire emergency.

Tea and coffee

I like English Breakfast, Earl Grey, and Ceylon, preferably leaf tea.  I have drunk economy tea in the past, but now would find it very hard to adjust back to it.

Coffee

I now dislike the taste of instant coffee, and like ground coffee made using a cafetiere or espresso machine.

Butter

Time was, I would make cakes using margarine, but now only butter will do.

Eggs 

I think I might, once or twice in my life, have bought non-free range eggs when nothing else was available, but buying non-free-range eggs is not an option as far as I'm concerned.  

Sausages 

We used to eat economy sausages, and J would still use them for toad-in-the hole or in a pasta sauce, but I have definitely grown out of the idea....The taste of the more expensive sausages is so much better, leaving aside the thought of the ingredients cheaper sausages may contain..

A review of 'The Spirit Level' by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

As mentioned in my last post, Jian has recently told me about  The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Although it is not wholly personal-finance related, it covers topics such as financial equality among others, and so I asked him to review it for the blog. Here are his thoughts..PF

As Penny knows, I hadn't heard of this book or its authors when I spotted it at Heathrow while waiting for our flight to Athens. However, it looked like my sort of thing, so off it went into the rucksack for later perusal.

Yes, I paid for it.

The Spirit Level (subtitle: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better) is basically a popular sociology book by two British researchers, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It is a summary of research conducted by the authors about the associations of various social outcomes and variables (including physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, and imprisonment) with financial equality in around twenty developed nations (such as the UK, US, Japan, and Sweden) and the 50 states of the United States. Financial equality being, basically, how narrow the distribution of wages are in that state or nation. It's not about social equality, or gender equality, or racial equality, though all those are discussed later. 

They're pretty clear about how they conducted the research, having mainly obtained the figures from objective censuses and United Nations records. The data is generally presented as scatter plots; there's a nice little chapter at the beginning about how scatter plots work, and how a statistically significant effect might be detected. 

(A quick aside for the statistically minded: Yes, this is generally cross-sectional, and so gives at first instance no chronological data, though this is covered in one of the chapters concerning increasing inequality in the US and UK and the effect on outcomes. No, scatter plots are not necessarily the best tool for detecting this sort of association. No, they didn't say how many associations they tested, and so they could have cherry-picked the significant ones; however, the fact that the vast majority of the associations shown are pretty straightforward and not statistically nudged for significance does make this very unlikely.)

The book therefore consists of two parts after a brief discussion of methods: results and conclusions, and what to do about said conclusions. First part: as you might expect, financial equality has been going down the tubes in the US and UK over the last fifty years. And financially equal nations are healthier (both physically and mentally), have less crime, less teen pregnancy (though, in an odd exception, Japan – a financially pretty equal nation – has high rates of teen pregnancy. However, it's almost all married teen pregnancy), fewer people in prison, less drug abuse, and higher social mobility, than unequal nations. Shocker, eh? In other words, there's good hard data that countries with a few very rich people and a lot of very poor people (top scorers: USA, UK, Portugal), are worse off in almost every way than countries with more even wealth distribution (top scorers: Japan, pretty much all of Scandinavia). The conclusion is, unequal countries suffer from an overall lack of trust and security: people don't trust each other, so they're out for themselves, so they commit crimes, cheat on their taxes, and vote for police and prisons rather than health care and drug rehabilitation. As a result, everyone suffers, including the rich. 

All the data is, as noted before, from rich countries (the top twenty most developed and wealthy nations); that's what the book is concerned with. So no comparisons with Cuba, for instance, except to note that yes, Americans generally have lower mortality and higher infant mortality than Cubans.

By the way, the same pattern holds across the different states of the USA. 

You might be feeling a bit depressed by now, I certainly was; while the analysis presented is hardly invulnerable to criticism, it's very difficult to deflect or write off the argument unless you really are the most blinkered kind of self-deceiving idiot. And I hope I'm not. So, I asked, what can I, or we, do about this? Isn't this the fate of all humanity, to develop less equal societies where selfishness and ambition are rewarded over altruism and co-operation? After all, the equal European way seems to be failing; the financial crisis is driving various European governments to cur public service funding and encourage less equal financial policies. 

Well no, say the authors. They cite a game where you form participants into pairs of offerers and recipients. The pairs never meet, and never play this game again, to avoid learning behaviour. All participants are told that there is, for each pair, a pot of £100 (or $100, or whatever). The offerer is asked to offer the recipient, by note or similar, a share of this money. If the recipient accepts this share, both get the money; if he refuses, neither do. The researchers were expecting an average accepted offer of about £30 (in other words, this would be about the threshold at which most recipients will accept a share, however unequal, rather than get no money at all. More would be more than most offerers would be willing to give, and less would be less than most recipients would swallow their pride in order to accept). Actually, the average accepted offer was about £48. It turns out, we are inclined to reward generosity and punish selfishness more than you might think.

The authors continue to discuss how to make society more equal. One way is to encourage companies and organisations who treat their employees more equally or are genuinely co-operative, and discourage those that don't: they cite the Co-op (shocker!) and John Lewis in the UK as good companies to support. Another way is to shake off the Cold War idea that we can't have both equality and liberty; as we have seen, less equal societies are less free societies, with less social mobility and more prisons. We should encourage our politicians and business leaders to stop bandaging the cracks; a measure to reduce drinking by increasing the cost of alcohol (to get all topical in the UK) may reduce drinking a little, but really all it does is increase profits for the government and for drink manufacturers. People drink themselves blind at the weekend because they're stressed, and it's a good escape; and they're stressed, for instance, because they have no money, are in debt, and can't leave their jobs. And these things are worse because of inequality. Change that, and they might stop drinking so much. Similarly, there's no point kidding ourselves that we'll reduce our carbon footprints and save the planet with advances in green technology; if we save ourselves a bit of ecological resource with low-energy light-bulbs or electric cars, we'll just spend it again. And again. Because of the way our societies are.

There are two ways, say the authors, to improve financial equality in societies. One is the Japanese way, which is to have more equal incomes before benefits; in other words, have a society where the most highly paid aren't paid much more than the least well paid. The other is the Scandinavian way, which is to have benefits, taxes, and other governmental measures to increase the effective incomes of the least well off. The second options requires more state input and control, but does at least allow for those who are unemployed to be supported by society. And from our starting point of wide disparity in incomes, it probably makes more sense.

Phew! Sorry if I've been a bit long-winded. Basically, it's a fantastic read, and very well communicated. Whether you agree or disagree with its agenda and conclusions, give it a go. Personally, I think it's a bit thin on practical solutions, but that's hardly very surprising, and it would make a whole separate book in itself. Maybe that's due.

Back to reality with a bump - and a general catch-up

We got back from holiday at the end of last week.  The day we returned to the UK, the sun was blazing, much as it had been as we travelled home from Italy, so the transition to home was quite easy.  (We took the overnight train from Venice; a great experience which I thoroughly recommend, by the way.)  Yesterday and today, however, it has been raining - a lot.  Oh, the joys of the English summer.  

Now we are home, we are trying to readjust to not eating out,  to having chores to do, and of course to work.  We're back on our £50 a week food budget, and it is actually quite nice to be cooking for ourselves again, although I'm occasionally missing the seafood pasta and prosecco of Venice.

I'm planning to start a food growing project shortly, hopefully when the weather improves a little.  It is rather late in the year,  of course, but I didn't want to leave seeds un-watered while we were away.   

Another summer plan is to do some fruit picking, to make jam and for freezing.  Strawberries are available now, and gooseberries and other berries are coming soon; my sister made amazing gooseberry jam last year, so I am hoping that she and I will make some together this year.

Finally, J and I both read quite a bit while away; one book that I have not read yet, but which I have been discussing with J. since he read it, is 'The Spirit Level', a book about equality, of which more in due course.  In the meantime, because of it we may change some of our shopping habits, and have already opened a new bank account.

On holiday

In the hurry of preparing to go away on holiday last week, I failed to post a note about my absence. So I am now writing from a hotel computer in Cyprus. I will be back at the end of next week, hopefully full of energy and enthusiasm, with some new ideas to write about. I have to say that I have not been giving personal finance, or many other issues for that matter, any deep consideration.



My main personal financial preoccupation at this moment revolves around the cost of drinking water. Here, the tap water is supposedly not drinkable - at home I always drink tap rather than bottled - and the hotel water from bar, restaurant or minibar costs a huge amount, say EUR$4.50 for a large bottle. So we are taking every opportunity to stockpile bottles of water wherever they can be bought cheaply, at shops away from the resort, or in the nearby supermarket.



That is about as deep as it gets at the moment...... Back soon.

Smart shopping tips revisited

Thanks to those who commented.  From feedback received, my own ideas and habits, and some reading I have done, I have come up with the following:

• Buy-one-get-one-frees: only buy if you have cash, space to store, and the items won't go off before they can be used.
  
• If you haven't much space to store bulk-bought items, consider clubbing together with friends or family to buy them between you, and share the benefit of the discounts.
  
• Consider own brands vs branded items: compare the price per 100g, but generally own brands will be cheaper, and taste just as good.
  
• Plan meals, even roughly, before you go shopping, bearing in mind how many meals you need to cater over the week, and buy only what you need for those.
  
• If you eat a lot of ready meals, consider cutting those down and cooking more; this will be cheaper as well as healthier.  Something on toast, e.g beans and poached egg, will cost less and be quick to prepare, as an alternative to a ready meal.
  
• Keep a running shopping list on the fridge and add to it as you run out of things, so you don't forget anything when you go shopping.  
  
• Don't go shopping when you are tired, hungry, or in a hurry.
  
• Set a cash budget for food per week; take cash out at the beginning of the week, and use this to pay for groceries until it runs out. (This will help with budgeting, and also it is psychologically harder to spend cash than use cards.)
  
• Try to last one day longer than you think you can manage without going food shopping, and make that last meal with what you have left in the cupboard.  
  
• Try and make enough food for two or three meals, in one go: e.g make enough spaghetti bolognaise to turn this into chilli the following day, or freeze half of what you make for another day.
  
• Pick-your-own fruit and vegetables when it is cheapest, and store in the freezer or use to make jams or chutney.
  
• Even if you don't do PYO, then still buy fruit and vegetables that are in season.
  
• Keep cleaning products to the basics: supermarket own-brands will generally be much cheaper and no less effective than branded products.
  
• Buy Christmas paper, cards, and birthday cards when you see them on special offer, if you can store them.  (Or make your own.)
  
• Check washing instructions before you buy new clothes, and avoid those which need dry-cleaning.
  
• Buy shoes with soles which can be repaired or replaced.
  
• Sign up to receive nectar or clubcard points, don't buy things in order to get extra points, however. 
• Processed cereals are expensive and not very nutritious; porrige or homemade muesli are filling, cheap and healthy.
  
• Avoid, or minimise, fizzy drinks.  Squash, or one nice idea I read, lemon juice and sugar, make an alternative soft drink.
• Compare prices online before you go shopping, e.g at http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
• Watch the cash register and look at your receipt before you leave the shop, to avoid mistakes.
  
• If you are going to the shop to buy a pint of milk, don't pick up a basket; if you are planning to buy a few items, take a basket rather than a trolley.
  
• Toiletries will likely be more expensive in a supermarket than chemist.
  
• Check whether loose or packaged fruit and vegetables are cheaper; loose generally cost less.
  
• If you do buy bags of fruit and vegetables then weigh them to ensure you are getting the correct weight.
• Instead of cooking large portions of meat, cook pasta, rice or beans to accompany a small amount of meat. 
  
• If you are a meat-eater, try having a few meatless days a week.
• PS - If carrier bags are charged for where you shop, take your own.  Otherwise, use the free ones for reuse as bin liners.

Smart shopping: any good tips?

As part of the financial capability scheme I'm volunteering for, I've been asked to prepare a 40 minute presentation on 'smart shopping'.  I need to get this done before going on holiday in ten days' time, and am quite busy with various other projects in the meantime.  While I gather my thoughts, I thought I'd - rather cheekily - invite suggestions....  I would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions for tips you think I should include.  The audience will be a group of older people living in sheltered housing; the main things they need to pay for from their pensions are food, clothing, entertainment, and Christmas and birthday presents.

Some good web resources on personal finance

As part of my financial capability training, I've been directed to various good financial resources online which were new to me.

Everybody uses Martin Lewis' excellent site, of course.

Other useful sites I've started using, which include various calculators and resources, are:

The BBC's raw money site

The FSA's money made clear 

Money Matters to me

Spring de-cluttering

I've been working quite hard on de-cluttering our house, over the last few days.  Although the house generally looks reasonably tidy to me, apart from the study, which tends to be full of pieces of paper, I've realised how much junk we have accumulated over the last few years.  This is I think one of the disadvantages of having a reasonable amount of space, and not having moved house for seven years.  I've also realised that as we've bought replacement kitchen equipment, bedding and so on, we have often not got rid of the items we were replacing, hence our increasingly full home.

Now, I am trying to imagine that we are about to start packing for a move, and to try and picture what we would want to take with us, and what we would want to give, or throw, away.  This has been quite effective so far.  I've managed to de-clutter several kitchen cupboards, including the baking tin cupboard, the worst, which has now been thoroughly cleaned, pruned, and organised.  We've also identified a pile of clothes, books, saucepans, bedding, and other miscellaneous items which need to go.  At the moment, I've put everything we no longer want into one room; the next stage of the project is to determine what is worth giving away or selling, and what is just rubbish.

As part of this project, we've also decided to buy a few new things, where we were using things that were unsatisfactory or didn't work properly; a new cake tin, as I was using one with a lid which didn't close properly; a new duvet cover; and a new filing cabinet.

The filing cabinet is needed for the next phase in our project, which is to sort out our office; at the moment our filing system is so complicated, having grown from one concertina file to several plus two lever arch files and several box files, that I only catch up with filing very occasionally, and with gritted teeth.  What I am aiming for is one central system so that things can be easily filed as soon as the post arrives.   (I would be interested in comments on how others manage their filing, by the way....)  I've added the Unclutter blog to my reading list, as well.

My sister, and spending money on food and kitchen equipment

My sister has been staying us for the last couple of days, with her baby girl, as my brother-in-law, whom I interviewed in an earlier post, has gone away on a job for a few weeks.  

As I may have mentioned before, my sister is a - very good, though I'm possibly rather biaised -chef.  She is therefore slightly horrified, though I think interested, by our £50 a week food challenge, as her standards of food and cooking are rather higher than ours.  We are still sticking to our food budget, by the way, although occasionally it is a bit of a stretch.   

My sister and I talk quite a bit about food, what is worth spending money on, and where economies are feasible.  Despite her training and general preference for use of the best quality ingredients, my sister and I are both influenced by our grandmothers' wartime and austerity Britain recipes.  Yesterday, we attempted to recreate one grandmother's flapjack, which had a treacle-y, chewy toffee-ish texture that we have not found in flapjacks eaten since.  We read through dozens of recipes, then made two batches, using slightly different proportions of fat, sugar and oats, in an attempt to create the perfect flapjack.  We do not yet know if we've achieved it, as one thing we can recall about our grandmother's method was that it involved leaving the flapjack to go chewy for several days before being eaten.

I've asked my sister to contribute some thoughts in future posts on economical eating, areas where she feels it is particularly worthwhile to pay for high-quality ingredients, and also to comment on the best, minimal, kitchen equipment she can recommend, and where it is worth spending on high quality. Whenever she cooks at my house, I'm always a bit ashamed of my rather blunt knives and scrappy baking tins, and so once she's formulated her list, I'm hoping to persuade her to come shopping with me to help me choose a few new pieces of equipment.  

More to follow in due course...

Thoughts on growing your own vegetables for the first time

This is a guest post from my friend Polly, whom I interviewed earlier in the week.

As I'm a keen amateur gardener, Penny has suggested I write a piece about the joys of growing your own. I should make it clear up front that I'm hardly a qualified expert, but having acquired a garden a few years ago I can testify to the trials and tribulations of a new vegetable grower.

 

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that it's already April so a post about growing your own is perhaps a little late. But that brings me to my first tip - I think that one of the main things I've learned is not to be put off if I don't do things exactly as it says on the instructions. If you're using seeds, it's well worth taking a chance on a late sowing as the price of a packet of seed is not a large stake. And with the late spring this year, seeds planted last year are only now germinating, so it's not too late to get started (as I finally did, today - ahem).

 

The other factor which works in your favour is a greenhouse. There's no need for a fancy glass walk-in one - I use a very basic plastic one which you can get for around £10 from discount stores (it's also great for small gardens as it doesn't take up too much space). Failing that, a sunny windowsill is perfectly good for getting your seedlings off to a good start. Once it gets to June and there's no more risk of frost, seeds can be planted out into the ground or else transplanted into containers if you don't have much space.

 

Third tip in, and you'll have noticed that I've been talking exclusively about seeds. It can be very tempting to buy the 'baby plants' which are everywhere at the moment, but personally I've never had much success with them and have consistently had better results from seed which is of course also much cheaper. But I can't speak for every gardener, so you may want to try both to see which works better for you.

 

It's been a matter of trial and error as to what will grow in my garden and what won't. I've really struggled with brassicas (I've tried sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli) as they get decimated by caterpillars, but I've found that peas and beans are easy to grow. The other plus for peas and beans is that you can plant them outside directly without having to start them off in the greenhouse. In previous years I've grown some vegetables in containers and some in beds, but due to a glut of slugs and snails the last couple of summers I'm opting for containers as much as possible this year for damage limitation. I've sown peas and beans in large round pots, and radish and little gem lettuce in long troughs. The courgettes will need to go into the ground when they're big enough.

 

One of the tips I've seen elsewhere is to grow what you like to eat, which seems rather obvious. What wasn't perhaps so obvious to me though is that it's worth thinking about the quantity you want of the vegetable and when - so I've kept back a few pots for subsequent sowings so that I don't end up with just the one crop. The instructions on seed packets are very helpful in this respect, though I've often found them over-optimistic about how late you can do a final sowing.

 

Finally, if you are on the late side with sowing your seeds, don't despair - I've quite often been surprised by what's germinated in the spring, such as a beautiful patch of honesty which I'd forgotten I'd sown as it had failed to germinate the previous summer. And I've overwintered cherry tomatoes on my kitchen windowsill before now.

 

So what do I get out of gardening? I can hardly say that I'm self-sufficient, but growing my own does mean I spend a bit less buying veg, and I probably do end up in profit. But the quality of eating my own veg outweighs the financial savings for me. Eating a freshly cut salad, or a handful of peas straight from the pod, can't be compared with produce which has travelled hundreds of miles to get to the shop. And, food aside, it's a very cheap and healthy hobby which gives me a new appreciation of my environment - from the beautiful Jersey tiger moths in my garden last year (quite possibly the same caterpillars which ate the broccoli) to the pair of robins who are currently nest-building in the neighbourhood. So I would heartily recommend growing your own for both economy and quality!

Interview with Polly, my super-frugal friend and future guest-poster

My friend Polly, whom I've known since university, has always been extremely frugal and good with money. I've asked her to contribute some guest posts, beginning with the subject of vegetable growing. In the meantime, I've interviewed Polly about her money habits.

 

Q -You've always been careful with money; where did you learn to be so?

 

A- I learned the value of money quite early on through the influence of my parents who had a strong belief in the need for responsibility when dealing with money. I remember having to save up for a tape recorder at the age of 13 and appreciating it all the more because I had had to choose to save my pocket money rather than spend it on magazines or sweets.

 

Q-What do you most dislike spending money on?

 

A- I find it incredible how much money goes on utilities, insurance etc. I could probably save money by shopping around more, but constantly changing deals and limited time mean I feel I'm always playing catch-up.

 

Q-What do you enjoy spending money on?

 

A-This is easy - holidays. I wouldn't say I'm a big spender, but I enjoy making the most of my time off work and love trips to interesting places such as Syria and Russia.

 

Q-Do you have a top money-saving habit?

 

A -Until a couple of years ago, I used to record everything that I spent, cash or electronic payment. I'd then regularly review what I was spending money on, which meant that I could target areas for savings if I felt I was spending too much on eg clothes or nights out.

 

Q-What has been your biggest financial challenge so far?

 

A -I think my biggest challenge was being a student - really having to count every penny as I didn't have a huge amount of savings. That said, this was before tuition fees, plus I was lucky enough to get a grant - I find it sad that these days students start their adult lives with the expectation that it's normal to be in debt.

 

Q-Do you have any financial goals that you are prepared to share with us?

 

A-My big goal is to pay off my mortgage - I recently calculated that I should be able to do this by 2015. Then I'll be looking to enhance my pension arrangements (not that I'll be needing them for some time yet!).