It’s been fairly quiet here this past week. As I’m on a ‘no spending on clothes’ month I have avoided the charity shops on my lunch break, which may have saved some money…
- I turned the large gift of tomatoes into some delicious roast tomato and garlic soup, and took it to work.
2. I was gifted two butternut squashes from a friend. As they keep for quite a long time I haven’t worked out whether to turn them into soup or something else.
3. I borrowed a book from the library.
4. I had a good look at our budgets and started some forward planning for next year. In 2019 we have (potentially) two large financial decisions to make and I want to be sure we can afford them both. I also want to start saving towards having three months’ expenses put away in case of job loss or any other emergency. This is rather ambitious as it will take quite a while to do this but I fell happier having a ‘safety net’. Last year our car was written off and having savings really helped – ‘rainy days’ do really happen!
5. Following the UN Climate Change Report last week my husband and I have been talking about a couple of things we can do. We only own one car (which is a challenge in a small village – see here) and the girls and I use a bus or walk to school/work. I’d like to think our carbon footprint is fairly low as only my husband flies for work (usually once a year). But there is so much more we could be doing. I’ve been talking for ages about switching to a green energy supplier, but have failed to do something about it. We could also reduce our meat consumption. One of our children is vegetarian and we already eat a few meat free meals, but we could make more of an effort to switch to a plant-based diet.
It is good to have an ambition of further reducing your carbon footprint. Sounds you are already doing a lot towards that – certainly, thinking a bit more about your diet will squeeze that bit extra out of your efforts, but I think it also depends which meat you are eating. For example, I understand that pig and chicken meat cause fewer emissions. And local meat must also help.
Yes I was thinking that eating local meat is probably better. Living in a rural area we can buy village reared sausages and there is a lady who sells her beef locally (although I know cows emit a lot of methane which contributes towards greenhouse gases).
It’s a thin line when deciding what to do for the best but supporting local economies is in itself a good thing, I think.