Changing digs and coming out of my cave... for a wee while atleast :)

Karmacat

Blimey! As a definition of "interesting", that takes some beating! The me time sounds lovely

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi El, it's lovely to see you posting about such positive things. Thank goodness the main job is not as stressful (because you won't let it be).

You are completely right about your true income. Many of us do stuff to bring in some extra cash and I get a real kick out of squirrelling it away.

Tilly x

elantan

Karmacat wrote: »

Blimey! As a definition of "interesting", that takes some beating! The me time sounds lovely

yeah interesting is in some ways an understatement lol ... the me time was amazing, and in a few weeks we will have rocket, spinach, lettuce and salad leafs as a result ...

I'm currently using the soil on one side of the poly tunnel as Mr El and i are going to be stripping the poly tunnel down and rebuilding it, was going to just move the soil from one side to the other but thought hey might as well use it up

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Hi El, it's lovely to see you posting about such positive things. Thank goodness the main job is not as stressful (because you won't let it be).

You are completely right about your true income. Many of us do stuff to bring in some extra cash and I get a real kick out of squirrelling it away.

Tilly x

It's great to be posting about some positive things after the whole house carry on, work is deff much better now that i am not doing any overtime, although i am doing one shift of overtime on thursday but it suits me as i had to go for a meeting anyway, this way i will get paid for the meeting and wont have to pay to park my car, so it suits me

yep true income is great name for it... when we think about it all us MFW's DFW's etc must have a higher true income than what we make from our job's etc

elantan

Just had an email from a friend that has a friend that has a farm ... i have met these friends with the farm and know they have very high animal welfare standards and are as organic as they can be without a certificate saying they are ( apparently those certificates cost a lot of money)

Anyway these farmers ( not sure if that is the right word tbh) have started selling their meat.. now i have always wanted a reliable organic highwelfare supply of meat, it is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination £12 a kg for the mince for eg... but i pay roughly £9.50-£10 a kg just now and i know the standards of this stuff, and i will also be helping out the local community ( not too local but not a multinational corp)

so i am going to try it and see, if it is tastes good then it will be worth it.. but it adds to our costs for food, its a quandary, we sacrifice quality for saving money but sometimes money has to dictate our habits.

If i had my way i would only eat organic but i know that that is not possible on the budget we have set ourselves, so if i can try and get something organic then that should be ok

And further to discussions on the OS board, we deff have far too big a portion anyway so maybe by cutting our portions down we can afford to go organic?

Karmacat

All good points, El - where do you currently buy it? Because you might find its got filler/bulker, and water in, where you currently buy - from your friend, presumably it wouldn't have that?

And just confirming what you've heard that the process of going organically certified really is *horrendously* expensive - I followed the news when I mostly ate organic, ten years ago now, and there were plenty of people even then not getting certified, between the money and the paper trail, and the depth of organicness of your feed for your animals, for instance, its prohibitive.

Great to support a local friend in that way!

elantan

Hey all

Well I did a wee shift in my other job, finally had someone take the time to explain what my role is ( only took till my 4th shift) I feel more confident now, I know I still have a lot to learn but I think now that I have a bit of a clue what to do I won't be such a drain on a team that I am working with

On the food front, I try to go to whole foods for my fillet steak ( theirs is just Devine) or my butchers for other meats... I tend to only buy from asna etc if it's on reduced as I don't like supermarket meat at all and try to in as much help the local businesses

However I did get 4 haddock fillets for 78p so stocked up on 4 packs for Mr El ( he likes haddock)

Have also managed to spend some time in my garden, I managed to sort the compost for another wee while and plant my tatties and a few other things ... Am hoping this year I might actually be able to grow some carrots, I have tried and tried but never manage to master it yet

In financial news managed to pay a wee bit off the mortgage through Tilly tidies and h@lifax money etc

All going in the right direction

Anyway loads to do and no time to do it so I had better get my skates on

Hope you are all well

skint_spice

elantan wrote: »

On the food front, I try to go to whole foods for my fillet steak ( theirs is just Devine) or my butchers for other meats... I tend to only buy from asna etc if it's on reduced as I don't like supermarket meat at all and try to in as much help the local businesses

I would just like to point out that your autocorrect has changed divine to Devine thus outing you as Sidney's biggest fan! Ohhh the shame of it!:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: Tiny bubbles...

Habibiboo

elantan wrote: »

had a conversation with my dentist yesterday about it, it was quite an interesting conversation in that he stated he did not have a clue about finances and had accepted that he will be working till he reaches at least 70, i was quite surprised as he earns way way way more than me ( next year if my wages dont change i will be tax free... possibly even this year when i go to uni) he is most deff in the 40% tax bracket so has way more money coming in that me, but he states that he doesnt have an idea how to sort it out, now he could ofcourse have been lying, i mean after all you dont share you financial business with just anyone you randomly have in your dentist chair, but we wernt talking figures, we were talking very broadly on things like do you think pensions worth while etc, do you see yourself paying your mortgage for the full term? he said that he has plenty of accountants in his family and he lets them sort stuff for him ... i thought well yeah thats a good idea, but wouldnt it be better if you could do it yourself?

Anyway, so whilst i was sitting in the chair, my mind wandered ( as it often does) to what money we have managed to save etc through simple things, i remembered that last year i started a wee savings app on my phone and had put in the amount of £1,000 thinking if i managed to save £1,000 over the course of the year it would be the equivalent to a £1,300 wage rise and i would be happy... i had to bin the app around about the end of March, end of April or something as we had surpassed the £1,000 barrier and i was happy

So there i was sitting in the dentists chair thinking how much could we save this year so far, and i worked out once again the mortgage savings, now last year sometime we were at £150 a month, we are more than that now but roughly say £2k a year... add the tax national insurance etc required to be able to pay £2,000 extra per year on our mortgage and we have effectively given ourselves a £2.6k payrise, without having to go without, without me having to work all the hours under the sun, in fact i have done no overtime for my main job since february ( have done 3 shifts for the new job)

If i was to take this further and add in all the savings we get through simple things like 5% discount from Asna 10% discount from Q&b , the reciept money i get from the inlaws who just buy what they want ( and good for them) but are not interested in receipt checking ...the money we save with gas and electrcity the money we get back from bank accounts ... it really must mount up over the year, my measley £10.5k wage must come in somewhere closer to £15k at least... only i only pay tax on the £500... so £100 a year in tax ( obviously not taking into account any overtime i may do)

Well it got me smiling anyway

:wave:

I love that you got so much out of being in the dentist's chair ... extraordinary the thoughts that can occur when there's no hope whatsoever of jotting them down!

Glad you've made your decision about uni, hope you get what you want from it, including the change from the current work situation.

Alchemilla

Its a damn fine way to get a payrise.

ZTD

skint_spice wrote: »

I would just like to point out that your autocorrect has changed divine to Devine thus outing you as Sidney's biggest fan!

Err...who?

skint_spice wrote: »

Ohhh the shame of it!:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: Tiny bubbles...

Well at least you knew him...