It's All About the Beans - Part Two

 

Last week I posted on here about my bean shortage and the letter I received from Heinz in response to my politely worded email pointing out their short-changing a nation of bean lovers on a regular basis.  I apologise to any of you who are now obsessively weighing the contents of all your cans to see if you too are being short-changed ... and reading some of your blogs it would appear that you are!!

In response to my 'complaint' ... I was polite, honest I was ... they sent me six pounds worth of vouchers to spend on Heinz/Kraft products.  It didn't take me much looking around at the range of their items in the shops that I have access to, to realise that the best use of the vouchers would actually be on baked beans.

And then when I spotted them this morning as we passed the end of the aisles to go upstairs to the café in Booths for a coffee after my hospital appointment, and they were just £3.50 for four cans ... just I say, that is a lot of money when I am used to buying 28p tins of beans from Aldi !!  I decided over my coffee that I would buy two four packs with my vouchers.

Now as I am living on WWII rations at the moment and beans have to be purchased on the Points system these are going to last me a long time ... possibly into January.  😄

One pound spent = beans for months.  

Thanks for all the lovely comments on the last post.  💖

Sue xx

It's All About the Beans

I have beans on my menu twice this week over on my Getting Ready for Rations on Retirement blog, usually when I am splitting a can of baked beans I upend it for an hour or so before I open it, just so that the sauce distributes evenly throughout the can ... this time I forgot.  So to get an even distribution of beans and sauce I decided to tip it into the pan and then spoon out half.  I thought I might as well get a perfect split so I weighed the pan.

I was pretty shocked really that a good brand such as Heinz is still short-changing it's customers.  I have complained to them once before when I was doing a challenge and had cause to weigh my beans, they sent me a £2 voucher.  I have also complained many years ago to Asda about their Smartprice beans, they were seriously underweight, they too sent me a £2 gift card.

Now I didn't do this for any reward but more because I was really annoyed.  

Branded beans are now quite an expensive thing to buy, these Heinz beans were bought on offer at £3.50 for a four pack, usually they are £1.40 per can each ... obviously I was feeling flush that week whenever it was ... as I'm someone who usually buys the supermarkets basic lines at under 30p a tin this price is astonishing.

Anyway I ate my lunch, half a can of beans on two slices of toast, and then jumped on the computer to send a politely worded message to Heinz via their website.  Just pointing out that as beans are cooked in the cans there should be no room for any discrepancy of weights and if they knew that somehow beans magically lost weight on cooking they should start the process with more weight in the cans and then left it at that.

On the way to Mum's yesterday, with the car boot loaded up with Alan's carpet cleaner ready to clean Mum's carpets we were chatting away about all sorts of things and I mentioned the low weight of my beans and of the previous cans from this batch and Alan started doing the maths, as only an engineer would.  He worked out that if they are making millions of cans of beans per year and a good percentage of them are actually underweight the company is making huge profits from selling 'missing beans'.

Yes, we often have these sort of conversations!!  😄

And this was where this blog post was going to end, but ...

... I have just received this letter.

I only contacted them on Tuesday, so this is very quick work on their part.  I am now the proud owner of two £3 vouchers, I didn't do any of this for that but nevertheless I am happy to have them.

The big questions is now do I buy more beans with my vouchers?

Checking the prices of the Heinz beans and Sainsbury's own brand beans as I was a few minutes ago to get things right for this post, has thrown up that the packs of six Heinz beans are currently on offer in Sainsbury's at just £4.75 if you have a Nectar card, I'm tempted, but maybe that's their plan ... get me hooked on Heinz baked beans as I used to be many years ago.  😀

Sue xx

Valentines Day Shopping, Points and Vouchers

 

Very special shopping yesterday, ready for today.

Valentines flowers and a bottle of Port for Alan, including a tasteful bunch of flowers and a wacky multi-coloured rose to acquiesce to his garish sense of style.  

£32.50 spent ... GULP!!

But at least I collected some Nectar points and looking at my App it says that I have just over £15 worth of points.  They should come in very handy for restocking the vegetable drawer in the fridge next week ... perhaps if I had looked at it earlier I could have saved half the cost of this little spending spree.

Oh well what is done is done and at least I still have them.

I also have these.  😀

The two on the right arrived over six months ago and the three on the left last week.  That should help out with the cash flow very well, and luckily they have really long dates on them so there's no rush to spend them.

Sue xx

Acquiesce

And Not a Penny Changed Hands

 

It was a good job I was looking through the section of my bag that I use as a purse the other day and noticed that the date on my Booths voucher was about to run out.  As you can see in this photo I had until 29th of this month to use it and I was sorting through my bag on 26th.

Now I wasn't really going to get any more shopping this month, after all it's so close to being next month already ... how did that happen?

So I debated what I would get and shopped wisely, well I think I did.  😁

I got four more bread rolls to put into the freezer (yes ... there is actually space for them to go in there now), four baking potatoes, a pack of tomatoes and one of peppers and then I thought about making a salad as I have the lettuce that I bought earlier this week so I added a cucumber to the shopping trolley.

I bought the eggs, even though I was debating not buying any more as Suky has been really poorly this week, and the vet said to keep her eating eggs and chicken for a few days until her little tummy settles down and gradually reintroduce her dried food.  So I thought I would supply the eggs and Alan can supply the chicken.

I loaded the shopping on the conveyor belt and the cashier rang it all through.  I packed away the shopping and then turned to hand over my voucher, waiting to be told the amount of cash I would also need to part with and unbelievably the shopping came to exactly £10 and my voucher was for £10.

How very neat!!

So not a penny changed hands.  😃

Here's a bit of Weekend Watching for you, just a couple of the YouTube videos that I've enjoyed this month.

https://youtu.be/xCX3OofRha8

Someone who bought A LOT MORE food than me.

https://youtu.be/P8IHfLy7E0k

And rather weirdly, Sophie also found a single rogue veggie sausage while doing her Freezer Inventory Challenge.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Sue xx

Happy New Year ... Plans, Non Plans and 50p's

Usually with me now is the time that I buckle down to a New Year New Challenge, and I guess in a way it could be called that this year. 

 But there is a big difference this year, I am not challenging myself to see how little I can spend and how long I can make things last, instead I am simply monitoring how long the money that I managed to save through table-top sales and Facebook Marketplace sales, and the bits and bobs of money that I have popped into my little box and my pottery drawer will last me over the coming weeks and hopefully months.

 

There are so many people on social media doing No Spend or Low Spend years that it has become a bit same old, same old.  It seems that us long time bloggers have influenced the influencers to take up the baton and run with it ... making money for themselves in the process.  Good luck to them!

Well I am happy to be out of the limelight, living slowly and simply in my little home and using my savings from the past year to fund this brand new year for as long as they can.

I don't want to buy any clothes, shoes or books in the year ahead as I really do feel that I have enough ... but if I need to I can and I will.  I have food, toiletries and cleaning products that could easily last me a few months and although I wouldn't run my larder down to silly levels it would be nice to run it down to a level that means I don't have to catch flying jars of salad dressing as they fall out of the cupboard ... I actually missed that one and it landed with a crash and my Caesar dressing was no more.

I added up the money from my two little pots and emptied all the cash out of my handbag, and this is what it came to.  I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, I had sort of expected it to be in the three hundreds or thereabouts.

Now usually I would be seeing how much this gives me per day, per week and per month ... and yes you know me so well I did have to work it out:

£1.62 per day

£11.38 per week

and 

£49.35 per month.

Not a shabby amount at all and one that I don't doubt for a moment that I could manage on if I was just to use it for food.  I've done it in the past, I once managed for almost a full year on one pound a day, before I ran out of steam, but not money!!  Even with the rising prices that we are currently contending with here in the UK and in many countries of the world, I feel that I could just about do this, and if truth were told I am almost tempted to give it a go. 

 But I don't need to prove that I can to anyone, not even myself!

I also have a couple of coupons that I will be using to bolster out my cash, and I've just checked and I have Nectar points available too.  I'm not adding them to my cash total as hopefully I will get a couple more over the course of the year, they will just be used up as and when they arrive and should help my money last a bit longer.

I found a couple of unusual 50p's in my little stash of coins.  

I did check online as I've heard that some can be quite valuable

But mine are of no great value ...

... and I would rather pass them on in my spending and let someone else have the thrill of seeing an more unusual coin in their change.

So as it's no great challenge this year I have just put some of my cash into my handbag along with the coupons and I will spend as and when I need to, in any amount that I need to.  All I will do, is perhaps  count my money at the end of each month, monitor how it's going and write it in my diary ... just out of interest of course.  😉

Good luck to anyone that is Challenging themselves over the coming year and I wish you well with whatever you are doing.  Leave a comment if you are blogging about a Challenge and I've no doubt whatsoever that me and my readers will come over and cheer you on.

New Years Resolutions - None

New Year Goals - to read more books, lose some weight ... and have fun.

Sue xx

An Extra £5 ... and A Good Store

 

Yesterday I got my latest Booths voucher through the post, now it's only for £5 but when you're doing a ten pounds a week housekeeping Challenge, suddenly £5 seems a lot of extra money.  

As any vouchers or coupons that arrive after the start of the Challenge are outside the Challenge total funds this can be used for anything I want.  I have one £2.50 Tesco voucher still to use up within Challenge funds and of course there are the Sainsbury's Nectar points still included for now.

 It didn't take me long to figure out that this particular voucher would mean I could buy myself a little treat for my birthday, which is next month ... something to look forward to.

What would you buy yourself for your birthday with a £5 supermarket voucher bearing in mind that this particular one is a slightly more upmarket supermarket.  If you don't know Booths, it's along the same sort of lines ... and prices ... as Waitrose but is a family owned supermarket that specialises in local produced products and supporting the local area that each branch is in.  They are a good store.

They have already removed all foods that have any connection with Russia from their shelves and have started a cash collection point for the people of Ukraine in every branch, which they are going match pound for pound up to the value of £15,000. 👍👏💖

As I said they are a good store!!

Sue xx

Shopping ... just for food honest ;-)

 

We called to Mum's yesterday and on the way home we briefly stopped at her local Marks and Spencer food shop.  It may not be the closest branch to us but it's the easiest one for us to get to, just a quick detour, a ten minute stop and then we can hit the motorway for home.

My £5 voucher was burning a hole in my bag and while I was close to a branch I knew I might as well stock up on the Garlic Kievs while I could ... I might have gone mad and bought some little cheesecakes too!!

At first this is what I wrote on the receipt when I got home.  The crossed off item is Alan's milk, obviously not a part of my Challenge.

But then I remembered that this particular voucher was counted as part of my yearly budget when I did the initial calculations, so I altered it to show £12 spent.  I was also able to use a voucher to get £3 worth of points on any food spend towards the next quarters award, plus of course I have just paid for the holiday on my M&S card so I should be in line for bonus vouchers that will be over and above my Challenge budget next time.  (My credit card bill is always paid off in full at the end of every month, so no interest is ever paid ... M&S Bank must hate me. 😂)

So this months total spend is £56.59, which although over the allowed £50 per month is in fact okay as I can take the £6.59 overage out of the money that I had over from last months really low spend of £24.32 ... phew!!

So I still have overage of £19.09 as an emergency back-up, and I can now put my £50 for March into my bag.  😀 

I'll take some photos of the fridge, freezer and cupboards today ready for the new Months Food Stash photos that I will post about tomorrow.  It will be interesting to see if there is much difference ... I think there might be.

Sue xx