Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy

longway2go

Love your monthly summary, might pinch it 

shangaijimmy

Pinch away, you would only be re-pinching it!!

shangaijimmy

Well a nice surprise this morning in that we've won another £25 on premium bonds. I've been using this a storage for a chunk of our holiday cash for 12 months (given we've ended up with no holiday this year). 2 draws and 2 small prize wins, so definitely justifies the decision. Very surprised considering we only have £2900 invested!! I'm not expecting this luck to continue and I know that I'm way above the odds, but hey ho I'm delighted!!

debtfreeoneday

Do love the 2nd of the month! 

Suffolk_lass

You're a bit quiet - I know it is school holidays but I was surprised you had not updated MFiT-T5 for this chart. I hope all is well with you

shangaijimmy

Thank you for the nudge in my inbox! I hadn't realised that it'd been 3 weeks since I'd logged on! We had a fair bit going on those last couple of weeks of school especially with DS1 being in Year 6 and leaving primary school. Its amazing how quickly you get out of the habit of logging on and posting. MFiT hadn't even crossed my mind!

So with tail between my legs I will scurry away again, make a late post on the challenge and I promise to return this evening with some SJ Towers updates.

Karmacat

Hurray!  We'll be watching (in a nice way, honest!)

Suffolk_lass

Yes indeed, I find it slightly unsettling when my favourite diarists go awol!!

shangaijimmy

Well I failed on my first promise which was to return with a post last night. Suffolk - your kind words make me feel like I am esteemed company, so I'm quite pleased at that!!!

I can't say that a great deal has happened over the last month. It feels very much like groundhog day. I'm still furloughed and seem to spending an extraordinary amount of time in the house. That despite dog walks and going for runs. The kids have been great. DS1 won an award at the end of years awards for basically being a 'smart a**e'. A great leaving present for him from primary school, and 2 very proud parents.

I've finally cleared all the sorted out stuff in the garage to the tip. The first time I drove past I counted 55 cars so I swerved that one. Trouble with that was I didn't want to empty the car and place things back into my streamlined garage, so it sat there for a few days and then I wasn't able to go anywhere with the kids as they had nowhere to sit!! I popped again a few days later 5mins before closing at 7.55pm and was straight in. I followed this by depositing a car boot full of stuff to the charity shop. We also had a very good load of ebay sales. Packaged a few items into 2 lists and made £154 so very happy there, and the money will get directed straight to DS2's birthday next week.

In the important financials we are just chugging along. OP's are now just TT's as all other cash is directed to pensions and ISA's. I have been toying with knocking a year off our term when we next remortgage but to be honest that's only me meddling rather than leaving things alone.

I've switched energy suppliers and gain 2 x £30 credits to bills alongside £25 cashback (so i'll OP this when it lands), and then we have £75 cashback to come from car insurance(s). The car insurance has gone down by about £4 a month. Pet insurance is next on the list for renewals but our re-quote seems very good and we many not get anything there.

We've had all our refunds from trips and stuff now, except 1 school trip which we've had the notification but the cash hasn't landed yet. We also have 1 event booked in Sept that I'm expecting to get cancelled because of the 'spikes' in cases that are springing up in the North West. If it gets cancelled I'm going to buy myself a new Garmin watch with the cash, as I never buy myself anything!

Apologies for the lengthy post...

South_coast

Great work on eBay, good to see you're hanging on in there generally