Double or Quits

afoolandhermoney

brizzledfw - hello, sorry its been a while, I'm only on here intermittently.

afoolandhermoney

Luckyinlife - thanks, its amazing. We regretted the terrace almost straight away but it would have been too big a stretch to get a semi at the time and we didn't want to keep on renting. Hindsight is 20:20 vision as they say and it turned out we'd bought at the peak, but we're settled now in our forever home

afoolandhermoney

No OPs to report so far, the boiler packed up last month and that hit the OP fund pretty hard, plus the car needed work for its MOT. The MOT was due sooner than I'd thought - hadn't updated my calendar when I changed car, oops - so that meant a bit of urgent re-juggling of priorities. And we decided to finally order a new mattress - will be enjoying a more comfortable nights sleep in just a few more days :j.

Mind you, before my MSE journey this would all have gone on the credit card or interest free, it felt so good to be able to pay cash (or at least debit card) - oh, and I remembered to look for a voucher code on the mattress and got 10% off.

afoolandhermoney

Time for an update.
Finally starting to get to grips with the bills, needed to top up the heating oil in April (at least that was before the prices started rising again, and our usage should drop over the summer now that the heating doesn't need to come on and we only need the boiler for hot water).

Having managed the first few months in the house with only 11 channels (which is all our local freeview transmitter manages) we had planned that we'd upgrade to freesat in the autumn - not needing to have so much TV choice through the summer as we'd be enjoying the garden.

Well, best laid plans and all that, our aerial packed up and we were down to intermittently getting 3 channels, just as the new series of peaky blinders was starting on a channel we no longer got! We debated spending the money on a new aerial (which would have got back the 9 channels we'd lost and no more) or getting the freesat box early and plumped for the latter. Unfortunately as freesat boxes all have HDMI sockets now this also meant buying a TV that has a HDMI port (our old one was still a cathode-ray tv with a scart socket). So some more big spends in May, but although they've hit the MFW-plans and scuppered the dream of a last minute holiday this month, we're still on top. And there's £10.52 in my virtual MF pot, as well as funds in the other virtual pots (except the holiday one).

We've started on some of the DIY jobs too - investigating whether we could re-open the blocked fireplace (answer - possibly), and sorting out the hall cupboard to make more use of the space. This weekend will be spent painting the hallway (paint already purchased on offer at Homebase), which will be officially the first room decorated! And then the next job on the list is replacing the manhole on the septic tank.

afoolandhermoney

A lovely weekend in our part of the world. Spent the (cloudier, but still warm) Saturday painting the hallway (then clearing up) and did the big grocery shop for the month - we're over a week behind with when we normally do it so it was a VERY big shop, but it will last to next payday with just top up shops for veg and milk.

Sunday would have been a NDD, we went for a long walk in the sunshine and explored the area - only met one other person all day, apart from him you'd have thought we were the only two people left in the world at some points. It was heavenly, we heard a cuckoo and got to look down on a kite as it was circling and then watched it land in a field further down the slope - too far away to tell if it managed to get some lunch or was just having a rest though.

The ball-valve on the upstairs loo has packed up, so a replacement has been ordered (hence why yesterday ended up a spend day) and the inflow turned off - luckily we've not had to turn off all the water and we have the downstairs loo to get by with. Hopefully the part will be here in a couple of days and we can get it fixed without calling out a plumber.

afoolandhermoney

Ups and downs to report this month
down - AA renewal was £250 and they wouldn't budge on a discount despite hubby being with them 15 years
up - we cancelled his membership and I signed up as a new member getting the same cover for £160, got our money's worth already as my car broke down at home last Monday (another down £120 garage bill, the up being that I had that money put aside thanks to YNAB)
up - kept to my budget for drinks at my friend's hen party (a big success for me)
down - overspent on clothes for the hen do (just need to juggle some priorities, and return the (multiple) outfits that didn't get past the trying on stage

on the house, curiosity finally got the better of us and we stripped some plaster off the chimney breast in the living room and located the old bricked in fireplace :-) it will take some work to reopen but we might be able to fit a proper fire before the winter which will help keep the heating bills down