MeandO's mortgage-free musings

Had to pay £6 this morning to DS's school for 'fruit money'. I wouldn't mind, but I know he won't touch the fruit with a bargepole and never eats any of it...

I've had breakfast at my desk today and have brought lunch in again too to save the pennies. The thought to buy a nice breakfast out did cross my mind, but I don't want to part with the money in my purse and really didn't need it. I'm quite glad I've used up the vat of soup I made last week as I was getting fed up with it every lunchtime. As tasty as it was it will be nice to have something different today!

I got some nice YS sausages out of the freezer this morning to defrost for tonight. I have lots of onions from a sack I bought at costco for £2.50 last week, so I will cook some onions, garlic and mushrooms together and steam a bit of broccoli from the fridge to go with it. Yum!

A few more surveys completed this morning, the points are building up nicely and I'm still very close to the £5 payout on one, just willing a couple more surveys to come along.

Annoyingly, I had a payment come out of the account that I wasn't expecting - it's a new life insurance/critical illness policy I took out in November and they've staggered the payments. Would have been nice to have been told though - I had to phone them a couple of days ago to say I still hadn't received the policy documents from them so they're going to 'resend' them... Anyway, I've transferred money from one of my other less important pots to cover it for now.

I've had a surprisingly rewarding weekend of getting things done in the house and feel really good about what I've achieved.

I removed the old tiles in my bathroom and re-tiled the remaining part that needed doing, managing to take all of the old tiles to the tip too. I filled walls that needed filling, removed the horrible electric towel rail and bathroom cabinet that has been there since I moved in; put up the new bathroom accessories and started to drill holes for the new mirror but need a new drill bit.
I even managed to strip and re-make both beds, do 4 loads of washing, put up a blind in the spare room that had previously fallen down, attempt to put up the other one in the other spare room (but failed), and hoovered through the house. Twice.
I even made sure I ate well, stuck within a daily calorie limit and felt pretty virtuous for doing so! A productive weekend...

Today a plumber is at my house, fixing a leak that was discovered on Friday (caused by the last plumber who did a cr&p job:mad:). He is also installing my new shower and replacing a rusty radiator for a really reasonable price.
I also have ordered UPVC panels for the shower, rather than tiles. The plumber pointed out that it will be a lot harder remodelling the bathroom as planned than at first thought, so he has suggested I do things a different way which means I can do most of the work myself and save the need to have a builder in. I have been waiting for almost a year for a builder who promised to do the bathroom within a couple of months :mad: and had saved the £975 it would cost. If I do the work myself this way, I will save around £500. :j
I'm up for that challenge!

The panels have cost me around £220 and the tiles and materials I needed this weekend cost me £23 after returning an item I no longer needed. The plumber is costing £180. Hopefully, the rest of the bits I need won't cost more than £50 and I'll have some new skills under my belt.
I had already bought some items for the original plan of work, but have listed these on gumtree to hopefully sell them for not much less than purchased.

I've just had an email to say my old mobile phone has been received by the company I sent it off to, I should hear today about the result of that and hopefully the £65 will be in my bank account very soon.

I purchased a few Christmas gifts on Saturday night (yes, Christmas! ). They were reduced from £25 to £10 each, so I purchased 3 which will mean 3 couples can be ticked off mine & OH's list and 2 more smaller gifts have been bought. One I will be giving to DS's Dad for Father's Day and one will be put away for OH's birthday. I've transferred the money from the savings pots to cover this.

I also received the £5 amazon reward ordered from surveys last week, so have credited that to my amazon account. Hopefully I'll earn another this week.

Ooh - just had someone ask to collect one of the bathroom items for sale, so that will be £35 coming my way, hopefully tonight.

£35 received from yesterday's sale and a big space cleared in my spare room. I would have like to put that money in one of the savings pots, but will keep it in my purse for now to pick up a few bits of shopping that we need. Any left will hopefully go in the bank when I get a chance to pay it in.

I ordered DS something else to go towards his birthday last night - £14.99 reduced from £24.99 and something I know he'll love. Just need to pick that up when DS is at his Dad's later this week.

Tea last night was chicken noodles and I made double the portion so that I had a portion for lunch today. I've got tortellini out of the freezer for DS tonight and smoked haddock for myself and OH who is coming round for food. I'm still eating well and feeling much more positive for it.

The low fuel light came on in the car this morning so will definitely have to get fuel tonight. I usually fill the car up but wll only be putting £25 in tonight as that is pretty much all that will be left in the main account once everything else is accounted for!

Still no email about the phone trade in, will contact them today.

YNAB all up to date.