would love to be mortgage free!

coldcazzie

I tried to reply to this yesterday morning, wrote out an answer on my phone and then hit reply and MSE ate it... something about a token having expired? :undecided anyway...

Peonie: the garden is quite long, so I can see the far end behind the garage from the kitchen, just. To put them closer to the house would mean taking up some of the main lawn, and manwife doesn't want that. He's alright with my digging out beds round the edge, and using that strip to the right of the path but he's very keen to keep the majority of the garden available for the kids to play on. I understand where he's coming from - we bought this house specifically because of the big garden for the kids to play in.

In other news, manwife has been told his bonus from work this year is going to be at least 1% higher than he thought, so that's nice. Don't know what we'll spend it on, but I'm going to suggest the car rental for our holiday in August and possibly repaying some of the money taken from savings recently to sort out the bike. I'm sure he will tell me that's very boring, lol. He's also due a pay review sometime soon, but despite having searched he can't find out exactly when. We expect his wage to go up as he's currently on ~£6k less than the expected company wage for his job role.

I was also approved for a credit card, which is nice. I applied so that we both have one - good for credit record etc, but when I applied I didn't realise it had 13 months 0% on purchases, but now I've realised that it does we are considering using it to replace the bathroom.

Peonie

Are you still planning to replace the kitchen? Or, the the bathroom the priority?

That's great news about the bonus.

coldcazzie

We are yes, but the money we are putting away into the FD saver is our kitchen fund. It'll be available at the end of the year, so we plan to do the shopping in the January sales. For the moment the bathroom is the priority, simply because it's less costly, so we're able to do it sooner.

I've just got some email blurb through from the CC company who say that the 0% rate is applicable to transactions over £300 made within the first 30 days of the account opening, so I guess we'd better pull our fingers out!

Manwife told me that he would like to buy a laptop with some of the money he gets. I do see the value in this - having only one computer is becoming more and more impractical with 2 adults and 2 children wanting to use it. A laptop would make it easier for both him and I when we want to work away from the children (the computer is in the living room currently). We seem to have reached an agreement that that might be acceptable. We'll see how it goes - it all depends how much it is and how much tax they take from it.

coldcazzie

So, first day of the Easter holidays for us today.

Not planning on staying in though - going to try out a gym club just outside of the city centre and see whether Squish-pot likes it. We'll also be popping into Wilkinson or Hone Bargains for some toiletries etc - we're on our last roll of toilet roll, we've run out of tissues completely, Squish has no conditioner, I have no shampoo, manwife has no deodorant... :eek: :rotfl:

I'll drop an order off at the butchers too and pick up some veg from the market and then we're going to a friends this afternoon for a catch up. She lives near an Asda so I may pop in there too if we need anything supermarketish.

Plan on having baked stuffed hammock tonight for dinner - and I'm dead proud of myself for remembering and taking both the fish and the stuffing out of the freezer last night! I'll buy some spinach today from the market and we'll have that wilted with it, and crushed new potatoes mixed with butter and peas.

Today is the lowest point in the month for us financially. However, this month we are not overdrawn which is nice after the debacle a couple of months back. This month we'll be: changing energy suppliers, having a lower cc bill as our annual cashback was applied to the account, and hopefully buying a new bathroom. Never had a new bathroom before... excited much!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Morning Caz, sounds like you have a great day ahead. Good news on the money front, doesn't it make a difference to get to the lowest point in the month and not be overdrawn :j

Feel very envious of your abili to pop to a butcher - we don't have any independent butchers near us, just all the bg SMs.

Best wishes Tilly x

coldcazzie

Aww are there none even in your nearest city centre? The only thing I buy from supermarkets now is bacon and cheapy sausages to do sausage casserole etc. The price is only mildly cheaper but it's such a difference in taste and quality. Have you looked at online butchers?

coldcazzie

Kids really enjoyed gym club this morning, so we'll definitely be going again.

Got toiletries and meat/egg but didn't get veggies. Going to go to the supermarket tomorrow instead. In desperate need of bread for the freezer and extra milk - we are going through a lot of milk at the moment.

My ISA money came into the account today.... and of course I got home too late to be able to apply online for an 11/12 ISA so it'll have to be a 12/13 ISA instead. I know it doesn't make much difference really but I'd hoped to get it in before the deadline. I'll be checking back to the MSE site tomorrow to find out when they reopen for 12/13 applications.

Now I'm off to put our stuffed haddock in the oven, and settle down on the sofa to watch some Mentalist on Sky+ before Game of Thrones starts at 9pm have a good evening all

coldcazzie

I messed up yesterday evening my phone battery died about half 5, having been out all day using it. As a result I missed the reminder I'd set up to go to my friend's house and forgot. Discovered a text from her asking me if I was still coming when I went upstairs to bed

It also turns out I defrosted the wrong bit of fish. I've two packets of frozen fish in my freezer, one for fish soup and one for stuffed haddock....and I defrosted the wrong one.

On a plus note my parcel arrived from Amazon so I've now got an extra textbook to help with this module (and considering my TMA grade and the fact that the course is badly written and the support is basically none existent I'm going to need all the help I can get!) as well as A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons which were reduced as an aside... we're going to need a bigger bookcase...

Today we'll be doing a supermarket shop, hopefully avoiding the rain. Fingers crossed if I try really hard I might find the kitchen (downside to having a tiny kitchen is that a small bit of mess makes the kitchen look horribly untidy) and I want to try get some more work done on this next assignment too.

Hope everyone has a good day

coldcazzie

Rain avoided

Spent rather more than I planned in Morrison's though... like twice as much! :eek::eek: however, the extra was offers that I made the most of. So I bought a large gammon joint which was half price (£3.49/kg instead of £6.99/kg) for when a friend of mine from the States comes to stay with us for a couple of days in May, 3 250ml bottles of soy sauce which were almost half price, 2 packs of mini muller rices instead of just one, etc etc.

Am thinking that because I won't be using them all before this "month's" grocery budget runs out, I might roll some of the prices over to next month. I'll work out the price of this week's groceries - the ones I'll actually use - in a bit.

Anyway, I turned the computer on, sat down to do some work, and got a phone call from a friend who said "I've just finished work, can I come round for a brew?" Which is sod's law, right? ... except he seems to do it every week... I'm starting to think it's a conspiracy!!:rotfl::rotfl:

coldcazzie

Hmmmm, so I can't remember where I got up to with my grocery counting, but I know I'm over budget. I think I may need another spreadsheet to keep track of it better... :rotfl:

Spreadsheet now under construction columns each for food, toiletries, cats etc as they're all included in my monthly budget. Hehehe.. ooh I do love a good spreadsheet build... and I should be working! Bad Caz! :rotfl: