Thursday 21 April 2016

No spend on housekeeping week

What with many other expenses this last 6 weeks I decided not to spend on food for a week. We ran out of potatoes last Thursday - so what? We have plenty of pasta and rice (and cauliflowers!) and have managed just fine.

So now its Thursday again and I am preparing a shopping list carefully. I am noting all the things we have not got, rather than the things we "normally" buy and have discovered all ready I have not even started on  some regular purchases. But the freezer and fridge are now utterly devoid of meat or fish or eggs.

The biggest purchase this month was the car insurance. We have been with the same company for at least one of our various vehicles (the non commercial ones) for about 23 years and for the last 5 or 6 when we were not changing cars around so often any more went through the same boring routine of challenging the renewal notice and "negotiating" a better price. This years arrived with yet another large increase.  My eldest son with a sportier car, loads more miles per annum and a "bad" inner city post code was here and told us he paid less, and did we know that company got really bad reviews for settling claims?  My husband who takes care of all that stuff just gave up. He went to the house insurance company got a quote of £100+ pounds less and took it.  Want to know the punch line for this mundane story?  The same company own both insurance "names"!!! Go figure why one arm is expensive and the other arm cheap given the same data?


Beautiful day time weather, although we have had some cold snaps in the mornings. Completed digging over the veg garden and have 8 rows of potatoes in.  We try at least one new thing each year and we have just ordered our unusual veg grow for this year - Sweet potatoes.  Looking forward to these as I have brought them in the past as a luxury item.

Image result for sweet potatoes

6 comments:

  1. I let hubby deal with insurance I cant be doing with the hassle of it all, usually he finds a better deal then goes back to ours with the quote for them to better and they usually do why cant they all just be straight with people I never know

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    1. Me too, I wish they appreciated existing customers !

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  2. All these companies 'try it on' when it comes to renewal of policies. The AA quoted a rise of £100 on last year, but I said that wasn't on, we'd not even needed their services. So they had a look and brought the quote down, so I said that wasn't enough, I could go to another compmany who were charging much less, but the AA said that was just a new-member bargain offer. So I said that there were sufficient rescue services I could go to each one in turn and have a new-member offer each year. That did it. The quote then offered was just about a fiver more than last year. That seemed reasonable, so I took it. I have a bit more patience on the phone to my husband (who is hard of hearing anyway) so I deal with all this kind of stuff. I think they must think we're daft and will just pay up regardless of the latest quote.
    Margaret P

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    1. What a terrible waste of your time and patience!

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  3. I'm try to germinate the slips for sweet potatoes and it looks like I have one forming. I'm putting them in a tub in the greenhouse. How are you growing yours?

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    1. I think we will put them in the poly tunnel. It has net sides but should be warm enough into the autumn to get them to ripen.

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