Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Cheery_Daff

Aw, you lovely lot :kisses3: :j :j You are so very kind PurpleFairy, get signed up for that 10k! :j Will you get a medal? (We only do races that give out medals :rotfl: ) You'll get to half marathon distance eventually if you want to! :j

I actually quite like the half marathon distance I am built for distance, not speed :rotfl: Once I start, I can keep going for quite a while, but I never go very fast... :rotfl:

First day back at work today :eek: It was fine actually - not least because someone had brought in some leftover birthday cake and left it in the kitchen with a 'please eat me' note :rotfl: Would have been rude not to

It was also my first day of cycling to work rather than walking :j Can't say it was much quicker, unaccustomed as I am to the faff of everyday cycling - lights, gloves, helmet, lock etc - and then there's a bike shed but nobody could figure out how to give me access to it, so I ended up locking it elsewhere til I'd emailed someone :eek: I've got access now though, and it's lovely in there MIght set up a little office in the corner :rotfl: Enjoyed cycling though, although it's rather uphill on the way back... but getting there was MUCH quicker! :eek: :rotfl:

Not much else to report. Freezer soup (carrot and parsnip) and home made bread for lunch, and similar defrosting for tomorrow (yellow split pea soup this time - mmmm). Home made biscuits are NOT made to be transported in a plastic ziplock bag in a rucksack on a bicycle :eek: and have somewhat disintegrated :rotfl: but I'm mostly sprinkling them into natural yogurt anyway for a more filling snack.

Mr Cheery did the food shopping, came in around £16 :money: will just need to top up with milk (which we use loads of) and sultanas and eggs (which @ldi had run out of :eek: ). All good He also made risotto for tea (and realised I'd forgotten to put risotto rice on the shopping list :rotfl: so it ended up a mix of rice types instead :rotfl: )

That's it I think! Spends to report today:

Thurs 9th
Food (Mr Cheery) £16
Work tea kitty £1

I've painted the first top coat on the kitchen cladding tonight, looks jolly :j Need to give ladder back to friend tomorrow so we might well invest in our own - obviously will check freegle/gumtree first Suspect we'll get plenty of use out of it though...

Right, must go to sleep! No breadmaker to wake me up in the morning - I sliced enough to last a week of lunches and put it in the freezer :j

Night lovely folks xx

Cheery_Daff

Evening :hello:

Well my split pea soup was NOT a success :eek: not sure what I did wrong, other than adding some extra water before the microwave but it wasn't ver nice at all! :eek: got two more portions - might defrost tomorrow's now and add *something* to it cos it was quite disappointing!

Went for a walk at lunchtime to replenish tea kitty. Looked for notebook for course but T3sco wanted £4 :eek: no chance! I'm going past B&M tomorrow so I'll check there.

Also popped into a couple of charity shops to check (no luck) but :eek: so many tempting post-Christmas cast offs! :eek:

I resisted, but it was a shocking reminder about the temptations of just walking into charity shops :eek: First time I've done it in Uber Frugal January and I shan't be doing it again just in case :eek: :rotfl:

Cycled to work again, marginally quicker on the way home.

Just had curry and rice off the meal plan :j using up a couple of reduced stir in sauce things we acquired well before Christmas. One more left! Saving that excitement for next week :rotfl:

Tonight I need to

- paint top coat in the kitchen
- sort out house insurance else it'll auto renew on Thursday
- check banks/Ynab
- take Christmas tree down :eek: :rotfl:

That'll do I think! I'd also quite like a bath, and maybe a sneaky bit of kettlebells!

PurpleFairy26

I got a barginous lovely note pad in whs1ths for £1.49 instead of £6.99 the other day if you've one nearby. Don't normally shop there but had a voucher;)

Cheery_Daff

Good tip Purplefairy :j :j thanks We've got one, but it's in town, not sure I'll be going there before I need it. Feels daft to be advanced planning a notebook :rotfl: But it's one I'll be using for my course for the next few months so it needs to be right!

Kitchen is painted :j :j :j Looks good And I finished a pot of paint too We'll need another one to do the entrance bit at some point, but given that bit still needs plastering, it can wait :eek: :rotfl:

Right. I MUST go and sort out the blithering house insurance. Gosh, I can't abide doing this :eek: But in the spirit of scientific inquiry I am going to set a stopwatch and see just how long it takes me (probably 5 minutes :rotfl: ) and just how much I can save (auto renewal quote is £156...)

Ready, steady.... GO! :rotfl: :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Ok, that's my limit :eek: 52 minutes and the cheapest I've found will save us a grand total of... £7 a year :rotfl:

**********

gave in and did one more check - found one for £118 with £33 cashback :j Except when I went through and corrected all the assumptions, it went up to £132 - and when I added the necessary things that I'd want insuring individually it went up to £162...

So after 1 hour 13 minutes I am officially defeated and will let the damn thing autorenew fo £156, which now seems like a bargain :rotfl: :rotfl:

Right, got to be time for bed I reckon! Damn it - didn't make the soup more tasty :eek: Oh well, might just add a bit of cheese and be done with it :rotfl:

rtandon27

Cheese to the rescue!

(Sorry about the struggle with the insurance! We too are finding it harder and harder to find a deal when we renew - maybe it's because we've already put the hard work in last time round?)

Cheery_Daff

You're probably right RT. When I first did the comparison stuff on Mr Cheery's house insurance (which he'd just let renew and renew and renew for about 16 years) it was £800!! :eek: :eek: So to have it down at £156 is a complete bargain :money:

Just done banks/YNAB - SO much easier when you don't spend anything :rotfl:

Today's spends to declare

£1 milk for the tea kitty (not putting any more in this week!)
£1 satsumas for work - wouldn't have got them any cheaper in the weekly shop anyway.

Couple of other things relevant to Uber Frugal Jan

* just got some work expenses paid - £47.20 :j :j Will be spending another £25 next week so I'll just leave that in there for now

* realised I've got a 'spare' £52.10 as the water bill doesn't go out Dec-March. No idea why - even they didn't know when I asked them :rotfl: I'll leave that where it is for now then add it to the total to go into the savings at the end of the month :j

* I've got 3 transactions from 3 different supermarkets in October that haven't gone out yet :eek: There's two options I suppose - either I've entered it into YNAB wrong/twice (the most likely scenario :rotfl: ) or they just haven't claimed it :eek: I've had this happen before and assumed it was me, so I'll be keeping a much closer eye in the future. If it's not gone by the end of Jan, I'll be adding that to the house fund too - total is about £45 :money:

* suspect I may need to up the energy DD at some point. I'm on a flexible thing that I can change myself and we had several hundred quid in credit so I reduced it to £67 a month for both. However, we've only go £65 left in credit now, so I suspect that'll be eaten up this month and then they'll want me to up it to cover the whole thing... Might top up to £100 for a while - will make them happier and also build us a stash over the next few months - it's 3% interest so why not? MIght just transfer my savings into there :rotfl:

Made it into PJs but just remembered the pesky cheese....... Ooh, and there's Mr Cheery arriving back - must go and look like I've been doing something useful :rotfl:

EssexHebridean

Oh well reminded - of course we've got two months coming up with no water rates and no council tax - that's a bit over £300 that I need to remember to shuffle to savings then! :T

How was the cheesy soup?

Agree completely about making the right decisions about whether a particular saving is worth having - and no, 52 minutes to save £7 is probably not worth it, particularly as there will then be added admin to do in setting up the new policy and cancelling the old one. Good decision to stay put. I think RT's right about diminishing savings, too - it's like the thing of it getting harder to get cashback on insurance type stuff, as by the time you've been doing it for a few years you've already been with several of those that pay the best!

Cheery_Daff

Didn't need to put the cheese in the soup in the end as Mr Cheery did Soup Rescuing while I was in bed :j :j but you've reminded me the cheese is still in my rucksack - must retrieve :rotfl:

Declared spends for yesterday (11th)

£1 donation
£1.59 notebool for course
99p milk

Not bad.

Having a sort out of desk and shelves at work today :eek: desperately wanted some magazine files and was about to order my own as I felt cheeky orderig so many through work (even though I'm actually using them *for* work). Nipped for one last look in stationery room - and there was a brand new pack of ten! :j :j is it mean that I've swiped them all?? :rotfl:

Still in the middle stage of sorting out so it's a complete tip :eek: but it's getting there! :j

Cheery_Daff

Evening :hello:

Well I sorted out the office :j And got a million other things done - a nice productive but gentle day :j :j

Enjoying cycling to work Tis uphill all the way home :eek: and at the minute takes me slightly longer than walking once you factor in all the faffing with the bike shed and waterproof trousers etc :rotfl: :rotfl: but it's MUCH quicker on the way there, and a 10 min downhill ride certainly wakes me up first thing :rotfl: Going to start adding extra bits on as the nights start getting lighter :j

Got the evening to myself tonight, Mr Cheery is off out in an hour or so :j Got plans....

HOUSE
* weekly home blessing (including changing sheets)
* wipe stove top and kitchen cupboards (trying to keep up with Flylady, AGAIN :rotfl: )
* FINALLY took Christmas tree down this morning :rotfl: Need to put the damn thing in the cellar out of the way!
* put shelves back up in kitchen - will free up living room floor :j

ONLINE
* banks/YNAB
* blog post

OTHER
* 10 mins kettlebells
* yoga
* nice bath

That's probably plenty for one evening :rotfl:

Spends to report today (12th)

£12 discount card through work (worth it as I save 80p a time on bus fares alone - I don't get a bus regularly these days but I only have to do it 15 times in the year for it to pay for itself, and I get discounts on other stuff too )

Must remember to check gym membership tomorrow - couldn't see anywhere online that said when it runs out! Don't want it to automatically renew... :eek:

Right, back when I can cross something off :rotfl: