Does ‘cash stuffing’ to budget make sense?

I ENJOYED reading Lisa’s Woodley’s money-saving tips (Mail). But her remark about best-before dates made me smile. On my last visit to Sainsbury’s, which has scrapped best-before dates on vegetables, I struggled to find any leeks that weren’t black with mould. It seems that instead of supermarkets discarding out-of-date vegetables, we are paying full price for them.

LINDA PERKS, Portishead, Somerset.

I WAS fortunate to be brought up by a mother who cooked everything with fresh ingredients (I was born in 1939). At school we were taught needlework and domestic science, which also helped us to stay within our budgets in hard times.

Out shopping yesterday, I noticed a young mum buying three packets of three trifles for over £6. If she’d known how, she could have bought a cheap sponge, a packet of jelly and made custard to create a large trifle.

JOYCE HEPHER, Great Baddow, Essex.

BEING in our 80s, we have always paid with cash. But last September my husband Maurice was denied entry to our nearby racecourse because he could only pay in cash. I mentioned this on a local website and someone from Doncaster racecourse got in touch to offer him compensation of free attendance at a meeting of his choice, plus a pint of beer and a free bet. He gladly accepted.

M. HEMMINGS, Doncaster, S. Yorks. USING cash to budget is just a reinvention of ‘jam jar accounting’. Working-class households without access to banks have used cash in separate containers for the rent money, gas, food, etc since the mid19th century. If Lisa Woodley can persuade prospective buyers of her book she has made a revolutionary discovery, then best of luck to her.