Blank Holiday

Being self-sufficient can cut down expenditure dramatically, but we still have to face the fact that we often have to pay money to 'get started'. Chickens may produce 'free' eggs, but the cost of first buying and housing them, plus later their feed will start by costing more than the price of the eggs if bought. Old chickens could end up in the pot, but would be 'old boilers' and not as tender as the ones we buy. A greenhouse costs money, bags of compost cost money, plants and seeds cost money. What we have to do is work out how long it will be before everything really can begin to save us money.

Yet it is not as bad as it sounds. As mentioned yesterday, it takes only £20 saved a week to amount to £1,000 over twelve months, so we could start a challenge to work within this amount to buy what we need, and start saving from today onwards. By spring we could have at least amassed enough money to buy seeds and plants to grow on and help save even more money. Again. remembering that anyone with birthdays - and of course Xmas on the horizon - could ask for a present that really will help to save money, rather than receive another box of chocolates, bar of soap or pretty scarf.

There are many ways of getting things without having to spend money and sometime back a comment was send regarding a site - think it was called freecycle.com (or similar) - where people give away useful items they don't want to others in their locality, and have themselves the opportunity of obtaining something free they would normally expect to buy.