Daffy's 'patchwork dreams' diary

DedicatedDFW

You take good care cheery And lovely of your friend to give you some chocs too

Hope you don't mind me saying - i understand how the 'small trips' you used to do so easily are so hard after an op. It is so good that you aren't trying to do too much

Cheery_Daff

Don't mind at all DDFW You're right though, it *is* a little frustrating - a little trip I'd usually fit in on the way to somewhere else is actually a whole day's worth of activity and energy at the minute, pah!

(although I must confess to sneaking out *again* this afternoon - Mr Daffs took me to the charity shop in the car There's 4 pretty much all next to each other, we were only out for about 20 minutes, and I bought a book about digital photography, and some woman's nature journal :rotfl: £3 and another few days worth of entertainment - not too bad going )

Have been curled up on the sofa doing pretty much nothing ever since though, honest

Tomorrow I've got a friend visiting at 2 - but I'd *love* to make it to the library in the morning! Normally I go to the library that's slightly closer, about 5 mins in the other direction, but I've been there *so* often and I *never* go to the other one, it feels like a proper treat! :T It's a trip I'd ordinarily walk, it's about 20 minutes each way... but I'm thinking a stroll 5 mins to the bus stop, the bus will drop me off and pick me up outside pretty much, then walk back from the bus stop. Reckon I can manage that

Cheery_Daff

Well, today's visitor surpassed himself in all elements of the test! Brought both flowers AND waitrose cheesecake, took me out to a cafe, and spent 5 hours talking in such a cheery and calm and serene way that I barely noticed how much time had passed at all AND he'd made an 80 mile round trip to see me! So he's the highest scoring visitor so far, by a long shot :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

(and I got an interflora delivery from work )

Cheery day :T :T

Cheery_Daff

Well, today's visitor surpassed himself in all elements of the test! Brought both flowers AND waitrose cheesecake, took me out to a cafe, and spent 5 hours talking in such a cheery and calm and serene way that I barely noticed how much time had passed at all AND he'd made an 80 mile round trip to see me! So he's the highest scoring visitor so far, by a long shot :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

(and I got an interflora delivery from work )

Cheery day :T :T

Cheery_Daff

Today's been all activity so far :eek: shower (that counts as an activity at the minute ), chasing wheelie bins up and down the street, writing a big list of things to do, buying a new tv licence, and now I'm about to tackle the internet banking :eek:

Wish me luck

(I've got 26 minutes of battery life left on the computer - it's not getting any longer than that )

Karmacat

Good luck, Cheery! 25 minutes to go ...

Cheery_Daff

Done it Just adding up and changing signatures and I'll let you know how I did for the year

Cheery_Daff

Sooooooooo...

in the savings pot we have...

£374 palace fund
£216 holiday fund
£800 emergency fund
£60 for car maintenance (next thing is breakdown due in May)

:T :T :T :T

Patchwork fund currently stands at £3338.45 :j :j :j :j :j :j

In total in 2011 I managed to save £6502.85, which didn't quite meet my entirely arbitrary £8150 target but still, was pretty good (this includes patchwork fund, emergency fund, and holidays fund - some of which has been spent, obviously, but still counts as 'savings' because it was actually saved before it was spent )

All in all, I'm pretty darn pleased with myself :T :T :T This is the first year I've worked full time in a decent paid job for the entire year, and my aim was to NOT spend to meet my income - which I haven't

My budget's not worked too badly on the whole - although I'm going to start keeping track of spending a little again to stay on top of it.

Aim for 2012 is to get that Patchwork Fund up to £10,000! :T :T :T Not entirely sure how right now.... :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Hang on - let me find a new post...

Cheery_Daff

So. Patchwork Fund needs another £6662 in this year.

I've still got 12 pay days left this year, so that's £555 a month.

(bear with me, my head's still a little befuddled, so I'm just writing ideas down for now rather than expecting them to actually make coherent sense :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:)

* at the minute I put in £400 a month - which would leave me £1800 short.

* I'll get a £100 a month pay rise/increment thing in June - that'll add £700 over the year (leaving me only £1100 short)

* When my emergency fund gets to £1000, I might drop the amount I put in from £1000 a month to £50 a month - there's £800 in there at the minute, so that'll give me an extra £500, leaving me only £600 short :T

* I budget for 5 weeks in every month, but there's 7 months of 2012 with only 4 of my weeks in (weeks run Mon-Sun). Theoretically the extra food/fun money (total of £50) can go in the patchwork fund for those months, giving me an extra £350 - leaving me only £250 short :T :T

* I currently put £70 a month in a holidays fund, which now has £210 in it, and no big holidays planned :rotfl: I might drop this down to £50 a month, which should be quite sufficient, and would give me an extra £240....

.... leaving me £10 short for the year, and I reckon I could probably find that round the house in loose change if I tried hard enough :T :T

actually - that sounds remarkably like a plan, doesn't it?!

Might come back to it when brain works - that seemed a little tooooo easy :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

(might also be able to budget something with train fares if necessary - currently i budget for £12, 3 times a week, 5 weeks a month, but often only travel twice a week, and sometimes there's only 4 weeks in the month anyway. But at the end of May my train fare will be going up from £12 a day to £20, so I still need to be able to afford that from somewhere. Nope - brain can't handle that one right now - will stick with the other plan and ignore train fares for now)

redsquirrel80

Wow that's all looking really good - well done! (nice working out with a fuzzy head as well )