The Big Adventure

Karmacat

There's a lot of good financial news, as well as enjoyment, in that post there lovely to read

greent

Goldiegirl wrote: »

We have spent today however, just the supermarket shopping. I needed a little more than normal, and spent £60.06. I happened to have a triple points voucher for a spend over £60 so was able to use that. My mental arithmetic isn't that good to add up to within 6p in my head, so it was luck rather than judgement

Fab piece of luck on that spend, though! x

Goldiegirl

Hello all.


I phoned Toyota Insurance about my £50 refund. They confirmed that they've received my letter, but they wait until I've had the policy for 50 days until they do the refund. That's a bit longer than I was originally told, but as long as it's forthcoming eventually, I'm happy to wait.


We did another bit of financial admin as well. We still haven't heard from the Inland Revenue about Mr Goldie's tax code, and they are still deducting £7.80 per month tax from one of his pensions, when he shouldn't be paying anything at all this year. It'd probably be better to phone, but neither of us could be bothered with hanging on the phone for ages, so we sent off another letter. If it was a larger amount, we'd have to make more effort, but for £7.80 per month, that's another thing I'm happy to get eventually.


I've been doing a bit of eBaying, but not as much as I used to. Last night, the first of my newly released jigsaws sold. My aspirational price for these jigsaws is £7 and I achieved £7.62, so I was pleased with that. The second auction finishes this evening, so I'll wait and see what happens.


I'm also selling a few of the postcards that I acquired. I'm currently £9.81 in profit (after all fees deducted). As it's just a bit of fun, the main thing is that I don't make a loss. I've got a few more that I hope will sell, then I'll have to see about buying a few more.


We've got lamb with carrots, parnsips and lentils for dinner, which I'm doing in the slow cooker. It sounds quite wintery, but I like using the slow cooker, and I had lamb in the freezer to use. I've also built up quite a range of home cooked 'ready meals' in the freezer, so I'll be using them up over the next few weeks.


We have a few days away at the start of September, so it'd be nice not to have to do a big re-stock until after we come back.

Goldiegirl

Well, the second jigsaw auction ended at £5.71, which is shockingly bad for a newly released, only done once jigsaw Someone got a big bargain


Nothing much to report here - we've been doing some local walking, and have been entertaining ourselves with Google Maps on my iPhone. We put in a starting point from our house and a destination that we've walked to many times, and it gives us a completely different route to the one we normally do. It just gives a bit of variety to proceedings


Oh, a bit more money spent, but this time a very mindful purchase, and something we should have bought years ago - a water butt. It's a slimline 100 litre capacity one, as the larger butts would be too wide for the position it'll need to go in. However, eventually we intend to get another one, for the overspill.


This is an Amazon purchase, so hope to have it delivered next week.


Hope everyone's having a good weekend, and the weather is good where you are. I've been in the garden for a while, but it is very hot out there

Alchemilla

Good news on your improved health, Goldie.

Karmacat

Between the google maps and the water butt, thats some good news! I started on a roundabout walk to the local village on Friday, but realised I was too hungry to go the entire distance so instead I did a circular walk to a waypoint where I knew I could do one route out, and another walk - I used the stopwatch on my little Casio to time it as well I would've sworn one particular route was shorter, but it was longer by a minute :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: small things, dontcha know

Goldiegirl

Alchemilla wrote: »

Good news on your improved health, Goldie.

Thank you - I'm really relieved about how things have gone in the last year

Karmacat wrote: »

Between the google maps and the water butt, thats some good news! I started on a roundabout walk to the local village on Friday, but realised I was too hungry to go the entire distance so instead I did a circular walk to a waypoint where I knew I could do one route out, and another walk - I used the stopwatch on my little Casio to time it as well I would've sworn one particular route was shorter, but it was longer by a minute :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: small things, dontcha know

It's really deceptive. We were walking to this particular location following the same route as when we drive there, convinced it was the quickest. The walking instructions seemed to send us in a completely different direction, but it ended up about five minutes quicker.

We like feeding the birds in the garden, and they seem to love berry flavoured suet pellets. But they are quite expensive at about £5 per kg in Dobbies. So I decided to buy some from eBay at £15 for 12kg.

I put some of the old pellets out, and a handful of the new ones. They've eaten all the old expensive ones, and left the new cheap ones!

I had no idea they'd be so fussy!:rotfl:

Let's hope they eat the new ones as well, otherwise that'll end up as a real false economy. . I will monitor the situation

Goldiegirl

The birds appear to be eating the new suet pellets - just not very enthusiastically. :rotfl:

Today has seen planned spending, with a large saving.

I've been putting away all eBay profits with a view to having a clothes splurge at the M&S late summer sales, in order to complete our new life/cruise summer wardrobe.

The email came through this morning, a week earlier than expected, the sale is on. We got there just after 9am, and picked up most of the things we had been wanting all summer. We spent £194.50 between us, which is a lot, but if it hadn't been in the sale it would have totalled £324.50, so that was a saving of £130.

In the last few years I've gone up from a size 12 to a size 14. Although some of my older clothes still fit, I've needed replacements. I've been wearing some of the 12's which are a bit tighter than I'd like, so I'll be eBaying some of the size 12's in September.

That just needs the winter wardrobe to be refurbished. I've still got eBay money left, so I expect I'll be out on Boxing Day in the sales.

Last year I barely spent anything on clothes, so all this has been overdue.

At least I won't need to buy anything next year.

Goldiegirl

Oh, I forgot to say, we made a cake today.

It was slightly unconventional. Instead of flour, it used tinned cannellini beans as a base!

I think it's a gluten free cake, but I wanted to try it as it's lower in salt. The only added sodium was a teaspoon of baking powder.

it said it'd take 40 minutes to cook ..... It actually took 90 minutes:eek:

It's got a more sticky texture than a normal cake, and it's best to eat it with a fork. It tastes ok, but I'm not 100% sure I'd make it again. Maybe we'll stick to more conventional recipes next time.

Karmacat

Excellent planning and experimentation there, Goldie!

Do you have a linkie to the cake? Sounds interesting, I wonder if it could be tweaked?