Frugal Living: 2013 Budget - One Guinea Fowl Too Far

When we first decided to become rat race escapees we sat down and tried to work out just how much money we needed to live on, quite a challenge given that we didn't really know the cost of groceries in France.  What you spend on holiday - croissants, wine, steak, more wine, peaches, cherries, wine, beer and wine - doesn't really relate to the reality of actually living somewhere.  Not unless you have very deep pockets, anyway.  Now, although wine does appear quite often on the receipts, we buy considerably more loo cleaner and potatoes, although not for use together, obviously.  Beer is now largely homemade, and far better than cheap and cheerful Eurofizz that comes in little stubbies, and croissants are a treat only when we have guests.




So how has the budget panned out in 2013?

We allocated 44€ a week for food and general household stuff, toiletries and the like, for the two of us. It isn't generous by any stretch of the imagination, but is at least up from the 40€ a week of our first year in France.  And in that year we managed to have over a hundred Euros saved up by Christmas, which went on a goose and some other goodies. Including wine.  In 2011 the budget went up by those precious 4€ a week and by the start of 2013 we had over 300€ in hand.  Rather than just adding this figure into the weekly allowance, we put it into an emergency pot.  The emergency need for a leg of lamb from the butchers or emergency sticky tart from the pâtisserie kind of emergency.

This year, everything was going fine until we hit week 49.  I was unwell, depressed and stuck at home, and my partner decided to cheer me up by coming home from a day skiing with a bag full of local cheese and a shoulder of lamb from the local butcher.  Meat is something we don't buy a lot of.  I'd rather go without than buy unethical factory farmed rubbish, or stuff with a massive carbon footprint in terms of food miles and of dubious origin.  I love to cook, too, so we aren't seduced by ready-made products, either.  The general rule of thumb seems to be, that if it is good quality then we can't afford it, and if it is cheap, well the horse meat scandal says it all.

So week 49 left us with just 10€ in the kitty, plus the emergency fund.  And it looked like Christmas 2013 was heading into emergency territory.  Very judicious eating out of the freezer and the store cupboard in week 50 put us back on the straight and narrow for the year, and we accepted that the already ordered rib of beef for Christmas Day would just have to be an emergency!  Bloody good it was too, feeding three of us handsomely on the day and then cold, and arguably even better, for lunch for three for another five days after that.  Utterly delicious, and given that we can see the village where these animals are reared from the house, it firmly ticked the low food miles box, too.

And then disaster.  We had planned to go out to eat on the Saturday between Christmas and New Year, which comes out of the entertainment fund, obviously, but by then I was having twice daily injections for Lyme Disease and just couldn't face going out, especially as I was prone to fall asleep/feel sick/be in acute pain at very short notice! So we went back to the lovely local butcher and were seduced by a guinea fowl.  It cost almost as much as the weekly budget and although good, was not as spectacularly good as the beef had been.  But on the other hand, it again fed three of us on the night (salmis de pintade) with six more portions in the freezer, plus the carcass produced enough stock for several batches of cheap and cheerful pulse-rich soup for the winter.

After shopping today (22€ - apples, pears, clementines, soap, rice, bread flour, onions, muesli, cheese, butter and yeast) we are left with a 39€ overspend on the year, or in other words I was out by a week in my calculations.  And in my defence, that guinea fowl cost 41€ and without it we would have been laughing!

The budget has, as ever, been helped along by visitors who have either taken us out to eat or taken us out shopping, and often both.  It is very much appreciated, although just seeing you all is payment enough!