Lois_E begins a long MFW journey

gratefulforhelp_2

Yay for the meerkat!

Hugs for the stressful building work.

CathT

Glad the building work is getting there, it must be so stressful.

Lois_E

gratefulforhelp wrote: »

Yay for the meerkat!

Hugs for the stressful building work.

CathT wrote: »

Glad the building work is getting there, it must be so stressful.

Thanks both of you. Having done quite a bit on Mon & Tues, he then hasn't turned up yesterday (Wed) or today. I've had enough of it and just want to get it finished now.

I've got a babysitter booked for tonight and have offered supper - I like to make sitters feel my place is a nice place to go and babysit, whether they're teenagers or other non-working types (whom I pay) or my friends with jobs (who occasionally do it for free). Must go and start cooking soon - and cook something half decent, too, since there's going to be another adult there to eat it.

summerday

Hi Lois,

Just keep focused on how lovely it will look when the building work is finished, the stress will be worth it.

Well done on saving so much money on your insurance, am sure you'll find a use for that £300

Peonie

£300 is a really good saving. I hope your bathroom is finished soon.

Isca

Hi Lois, just wanted to say hi and thanks for the comments on my diary!

I'm sure living with the building work will be well worth it when finished, but it can be a bit of a pain at the time!!

I need to look for new insurance too. Hope I find a saving like yours!

Lois_E

Hi Isca - nice to see you over here on my diary too! :wave:

I was reading Isca's diary today, and ended up posting quite a long explanation of what I've learnt from my spending diary this month. But now it occurs to me that that would be relevant info to put here in my own diary, so here it is:

Lois_E wrote: »

Yes, I find my spending diary very helpful, especially the stacked bar chart that goes with it. I have one for income, and one for spending that's right next to it with the same scale. So I can see where the money's come from and where it's gone to.

I can see at a glance that the reason last month was such an expensive one was because there was loads more than usual on "insurance" (car insurance paid in a lump sum for the year), "special occasions" (two of the three of us had birthdays) and "buildings & equipment" (for the bathroom and the electrician). "Basic food etc" was much the same as the previous month, but "entertaining & eating out" was less and there was nothing at all for "canteen at work", but more than usual for "petrol" and "family activities" - those last three all easily explained by the school holidays. I can also see that because last month was the month I sold off some useless but expensive wedding presents that X and I received years and years ago, my income was OK to cover the higher than usual expenditure.

Have spent some more money on the house today. I got a water-saving aerating shower head for the new shower, and a pot of paint for the wall over the stairs. (Also a takeaway for supper - sshhh - but at least I brought that in for less than £12 for the three of us, so could have been worse.)

pammyj74

I am thinking of getting a proper shower put in, would love a walk in shower but havent the room and at the moment we have a mixer tap shower. It does the job I suppose.

Its good that you are still keeping up the spending diary, I always forget. I started jotting down all the xmas pressies I was buying and how much full price/ sale price / saving / how I paid for it and then the amount against each child so I can compare and try and be fair. I then buy stuff and put it away before realising I havent jotted it down grrr.

Lois_E

Thanks pammy. This last 10 days I think the spending diary's been the only thing I have been keeping up! I haven't had much time to come on here, and I'm doing terribly on the Christmas challenge - I'm supposed to have only 1 take-away a month, and I succumbed to the temptation to have a second one when there was nothing in the house and I was tired and not feeling very well and just gave in and took the kids to the chip shop. Only £10 for the 3 of us, though, so could have been worse. And I although I've done my "walk up the hill" thing a couple of times, it hasn't been quite as good as weekly. And I'm on course to fail to make my 6th October deadline for getting the building work finished too, which is a challenge in my sig rather than for Christmas.

So I could do with some encouragement to pick myself up and keep trying!

Lois_E

The electrician has been today. He has finished off everything that needs doing to the electrics. So now I only have one tradesman left to chase up. It's not the "everything completely done and dusted" point I was hoping to be at by now, but it's a significant step, so I'm going to enjoy the feeling of making progress.

Also, a couple of lightbulbs have gone in my kitchen. My kitchen has huge numbers of lightbulbs, all of them the old energy-inefficient ones, so I need to try to track down something that'll last longer and not use so much leccy. Now's the time to do that, I think.