Our beautiful recycled life: a patchworking income, green living, dfw adventure!

Lemon_Tree

enjoy your day at home. how's the packing going? we've got rain today which i don't mind as it helps the garden and the pond (which was looking a bit low yesterday)

Pippilongstocking

Up lt I'm not minding this rain as its sideways so it's cleaning the windows

Packing going ok, I have a giant list which I'm slowly working through. Inside stuff today

Pippilongstocking

Freezers now combined into one, defrosting the upright, which I'll refill once cleaned and then will shift stuff over and defrost and clean the chest freezer.....

That's a start. Machine on for first load.......

Minging outside, so best crack on indoors.

But first, breakfast....dippy eggs I think

Pippilongstocking

Ok

Phoned child benefit as DS claim stops on 3rd sept and he starts college on 28th - chancing luck really see if we keep the three weeks when he's still here. Answer, no, so reduction in child benefit from sept3rd. I can live with that. Goes down to 81.20......know where we stand there.

Nice lady also updated WTFC at same time for DD staying at school, so saved me the next call. Now In the system will wait and see what miraculous delights they work out for us. Main thing is DS is definitely not off the claim up here til end August, phew.

DDs EMA now applied for which will be £30 a week for her from late August, so that means I cut her allowance from £60 (her child benefit for lunches/toiletries/clothes/buses etc) to nothing, evil mother. Well she has her own money from end august.....

So lose 54 from child benefit and 'gain' £60 in household budget for being evil and stopping dds allowance. So I'm quids in.....lol

Must do a new budget......

Just investigated food spends for month, not as bad as feared...although its not great...£107.83/200 on what can only be really termed as crap/treats and DVDs. And I'm not even half way through the month and I'm here alone......must do better.

And hurrah to new car, half way through month and petrol costs are only £61.81 (would be well over 100 by now)

Enough in bank to pay dd's which are out tomorrow.......big tick. Cancelled electric dd as moving so no more to them.


On the down side, no wages still. Who knows when they'll turn up.

Might need a lie down after all that lot.

lucielle

Well done on the list. Need to keep a beady eye on my grocery spends.
L

Pippilongstocking

L mine too. Waves hello must pop over da fence.....

And as for phoning all that lot, now I just close my eyes and wait to see what on earth they come up with, I think WTFC use a magic 8 ball to calculate claims......

Or am I just an old cynical bag lady.

Probably that too.

Pippilongstocking

Busy today.....
Ema done and filed
School lunches (free) miss out by earning 67 too much last year, bah. Called, no chance.

Right you money gurus......


I've got a 0% free balance transfer offer on my lloyds cc. (£1500 limit) lower apr than my capital one card of craziness.

Thinking clear this card with whole of wages and use the 0% interest free for 9 months to help reduce capital one card and interest charged.

Use the full amount available minus the 3% charge to pay off a chunk of capital one card (2800) which is 39% apr or something crazy and currently monthly interest is over £72 each month....

Then pay off transfer balance on lloyds card in 9 months with no interest. And crazily pay of remainder of capital one with less interest.......

Think it's pretty doable but it will be tight.

Rent sorted for next month by next week.

Any thoughts, never done this before....

Pippilongstocking

Final blabber of today.

Freezer defrosted, so need repack it and defrost the other. Not sure what I'll find lurking at the bottom of it, but I'm sure it will be interesting!

If I don't fall in, I may blabber more tomorrow. Feeling so much more upbeat now it's less than a week til kids return from their monster summer away.

gilligansyle

Pops in and *waves*

Can't help with the cc stuff, that is always beyond me. New car seems to be earning its keep, with the less tax, insurance etc as well as reduction in fuel costs, it'll pay for itself in no time.

Keiss_21

Pops in before heading for bed. :hello:

Glad to see you are getting loads of packing, defrosting and money-matters done, so impressed Pippi!!!

Been a bit of a chilling out week, with DH home on his Stay-cation Hols, and me havng almost a whole week off work.:D

DH and DS2 had a great time at the Olympics last Monday, then he had fun mending his new (free!!!) telescope toy with a friend during the week..almost fully mended now :j
DH and I had a lovely wander round a little nearby village we'd never been to before...amazed to find a huge lake and park hidden in the middle (16 acres in all!!) Turns out they were once monks fish ponds centuries ago...there were hundreds of mega-carp in there...easy pickings for the anglers

Managed to get more gardening done too, so near to the mega-planting stage now...cue drought for the next month then! :rotfl:

Need to head off, out early again tomorrow. Taking dog to vets @ 9am for her (hopefully) last acupuncture session for a bit. She's much improved, so really been worth trying it out for her.

I'll try and get on later in the week and catch up with more on MSE...life just gets in the way some time