Well I am officially back in employment starting December so I can now stop my resignation diary as I get ready to move on to my next job. This means that I will be unemployed for five days (after my holiday pay is used up). It is only a two month contract as I am still undecided what I really want to do career wise and didn’t want to jump straight back into the rat race. I haven’t had any amazing life revelations yet regarding my career path – watch this space! On the household front we are continuing to try to trim our finances – our goal is to keep under what we spent in the corresponding month the previous year and so far we are managing to meet that challenge. It will be a little more difficult of course in the following months until I get back into a permanent career. Yesterday and today was a day of Xmas and birthday shopping with a list after a session of budgeting and planning – I even have some of the birthday gifts for next year sorted out. We had a great Xmas last year sticking to our budget and planning ahead and it was the Xmas that people most talked about and used our gifts in the months following. Hopefully we can pull it of again this year.
Butter Prices
I almost had a heart attack this morning when I went to Pak n Save. 500g of butter was $5.27 and $5.11 – Rolling Meadows and Anchor I think. Luckily Tararua was on special at $3.88 for 500g. Seemingly according to Stats NZ our butter high price was in May 2010 with the price of butter falling 5.3% in July 2010. I obviously missed the whole thing! Butter has a very long fridge life (over a year) so when it is on special I stock up. I haven’t bought butter in ages and because we shop with a list we don’t stop to look at anything else so hence my surprise. The guy next to me at the supermarket also had a heart attack so I kindly pointed out the cheaper brand while we lamented over the price of butter. Coming from an agricultural country it seems obscene to be paying this much for what we have always considered a basic household staple item.
Magazine Mania
A few months ago I gave up buying my two monthly magazines to save some money. There have been some weeks standing at the shopping counter that I have been very tempted but I have stuck solidly to my shopping list. Last week grocery shopping we passed a mother and 12 yr old daughter near the bread/magazine section. Mum was getting bread, daughter was browsing the magazines, begging and begging her mum for a magazine. Mum stood firm that there would be no purchasing of magazines but it did remind me of my teenage years when I too was convinced that all the answers to my happiness lived in the information that could be found in women’s magazines. I am so glad that I am well past that stage now and can comfortably accept myself and where I am in my life – one plus for getting older!.
Full Price Phobia
The Dom Post this Saturday wrote about consumers having ‘full price phobia’. Consumers have come to expect discounts since the economic downturn. I know that’s how we have run our household spending over the last two years or so and I don’t really want to go back to full price spending.
When we see a sale advertised we don’t rush in and buy though. We sit down and go over our ‘need’ list for the year to which we add things when necessary. Then we go to the sale armed with the list. And just like grocery shopping only things on the list get looked at. Shops must hate us! Last week Briscoes had a sale – we made a list of birthday presents for the rest of the year and walked out in 5 minutes with the gifts we wanted on sale.
Even if the number of sales does reduce as the economy recovers as long as you are organized you can still take sensible advantage of them.
I think this may be one phobia I’m happy to live with for a while.
On-line Shopping
With Christmas coming it’s a good time to remember online shopping. It can allow you to compare prices and make more considered choices away from the hustle of the stores. In NZ at the moment only 1% of retail shopping is done on line but as time goes on more retailers will probably provide on-line retail stores as consumers indicate they want it. I buy Elevit from an online pharmacy as it is cheaper than any of our local pharmacies even when it is on special. For Christmas this year I shopped at IQ Toys http://www.iqtoys.co.nz/ for the first time. It is a user friendly NZ site in that you can easily set up a search for gender, type of toy, price category etc. The price category is useful because it allows you to only look at the presents in your budget which stops you from getting tempted by more expensive gifts as is often the case in a store. The goods arrived extremely quickly and the postage has very reasonable rates. Worth looking at the site if you have children to buy for.
Food Challenge Update
We made it! Tomorrow we get to shop after not food shopping last week and instead living the week from what was already in the house. I have to confess we did cheat for the cats and buy them cat food because they kicked up a fuss over cheese on toast when the cat meat ran out. Male cat got a little grumpy and started boxing female cat’s ears so we realised that perhaps not every member of a household is able to live within the confines of a food challenge. Hubby also cheated by buying his lunch for work –he will only go so far with food challenges. If I was living alone I could probably go a few more days without shopping but I will give in as hubby is hanging out for his weekend bacon and eggs.
This morning I whipped up a batch of anzac biscuits (see recipes A-L) as we have nothing sweet in the house and then went through the cookbooks to see if there was anything I could make from the ingredients we had left. Found Alison Holst’s recipe for scone dough and whipped up my first ever batch of scones, adding cheese and home grown chives. (I have made scones years ago but always from a pack!). When I got home later hubby had already sampled the scones and was placing his order that the next batch should be cheese and onion so I’m guessing they passed the seal of approval.
Basic Scone Dough
2C self – raising flour, 25g butter, ¾ C milk
Measure the flour into the food processor bowl. Add the butter cut into cubes and process until chopped into small pieces. Tip into a bowl and add the milk all at once. Cut and stir the liquid into the dry ingredients. Add a little more milk or flour if the mixture seems too dry or wet. The scones will rise better if the mixture has been lightly kneaded with your fingertips before it is rolled out. Pat or roll the scone mix into a 20cm square shape. Cut into 9 squares and place on a baking tray 1cm apart. Bake at 200 degrees C for 10-15 minutes.
Source:Alison Holst’s Meals Without Meat 1990
(I don’t use a food processor – when I was young my mum taught me the trick of grating cold butter into the flour and then rubbing the flour/butter between your hands. You get the same effect as a food processor and it only takes about a minute) .
They ripped me off again!
I was full of cold last week and didn’t check my grocery receipt that carefully. Looking at it this morning I realized that they had charged me twice for an item. At twice in three weeks that’s a 66% error rate – hopefully this is just a blip as I like shopping at our local Pak n Save. I’ll have to see next week if they believe me as I don’t really have any proof – how do you prove that they scanned something twice weeks later?
Check those receipts!
I wrote a while back (18/06/2009) about checking supermarket receipts. Glancing through my Pak n Save receipt from Saturday everything was fine until I got to the end and found a cheque fee of 25 cents – problem was I had paid by credit card. So after finishing my grocery shopping today I pointed out the error and received 30 cents back in coins – that’s technically a 20% increase.
Non-consumer train – be a voice (2)
Last weekend we were god parents at our nephew’s christening. I resisted the temptation to go out shopping for a new outfit and instead visited Save Mart and bought two lovely second hand skirts for $20. Both can also be worn to work so it was money well spent. Hubby wasn’t quite as ‘noble’ opting for new trousers as the ones in his wardrobe didn’t fit – but we may be able to make the money back by selling his suit trousers as I’m guessing that he won’t be returning to that weight again! There are lots of things at Save Mart that you wouldn’t dream of buying but there are often gems so it is worth a look before trying brand new.
Unit pricing
I popped into Woolworths yesterday for 5 mins to pick up a few items on special – Earth care toilet paper at 39c a roll and 2 x 6 burritos for $6 (cost me $4.74 the week before at Pak n Save for 6). It was so lovely to have unit pricing to check the best deals. At Pak n Save it’s the comparison that takes us the longest when shopping, even with a calculator. The Consumer Institute has been asking Foodstuffs to introduce unit pricing and they have agreed to introduce it in mid 2010 Foodstuffs introduce unit pricing – consumer.org.nz so am looking forward to that – might be able to get our weekly shop down to 20 mins!