22 Foxhole East

apple_muncher

Happy birthday to ds3 🍰🍰🍰

f0xh0les

Thank you!

2 sourdough bread loafs baked and cooled ready to be attacked by hungry people when they wake up.

I had Birthday cake for breakfast! lovely with strong coffee, to be fair, so did everyone else I have seen this morning. One slice remains.

PB wins came to £225 this morning. Yay! 1 x £25 2 x £100

£5 expenses have been confirmed, still waiting on the other £70. £50 of other expenses came in this morning.

Went to put the bin out, but there was nothing in it. We only use one bin bag every 10 days or so, but 4 bags of mostly cardboard recycling have gone out.

Today will be NSD 2 for February - meters read and energy readings submitted.

Cold here today, l predict lots of hot tea, masses of cleaning and clearing, and eating all the leftovers from the fridge for lunch, and finishing one book. Well, that is the plan anyway.

Viking_mfw

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81867954#Comment_81867954

Bliss.

f0xh0les

My slightly creative accounting did not get questioned, so I come out with a £15 profit. It is all swings and roundabouts because often I am too knackered on the way home to buy something for a £5/£15 receipt that I am 'entitled' to claim. Nice to be on the +side for once.

f0xh0les

A blessed morning without rain - well, it stopped raining at 8.15, so that counts. It has been so miserable weather-wise over here. Just cold, damp and dull.

Energy bill came in for January - £308. DH is home so the house has been heated to 17 degrees 9am-9pm. It takes a toll on my finances. All bills now out for the month. End of February payday will be £150, January was £1150.

Went off early and picked up my old man and we went volunteering, then after I dropped him home (for the benefit of the curtain twitchers) I went and did the food shopping. More Dull, but at least it has been done.

Baked 3 loaves of bread, 2 in a loaf shape and one in a round. They have all doubled in size in the oven, which bodes well, but you never know until you cut into one. All very exciting.

One glass smashed (oops).

f0xh0les

More rain, webbed feet, feel like I might start quacking soon. If I do, call a vet not a doctor.

36 hours until half term (ish!) cannot wait, and the weather forecast is much colder and wet - what a change!

Woke up to no bread, my loaf is still rising in the fridge, so had to do a run to the petrol station so DS4 could make himself a sandwich for lunch. I had planned on shopping today anyway, because I have £14.50 of Tesc0 vouchers and need more bread flour. The loaves are working out to around 70p each. I need to try out some cinnamon rolls recipes. Maybe this half term I should experiment.

Money limbo again. I think I should be getting ISA interest on 16th, and a R/S matures on 27th which will fill my £2,880 that I can pay into my SIPP for THE STATE to top up to £3,660, my SIPP is currently on an 18% return. Make hay while the sun shines. That will sort out the 25-26 allowance, and then I can fill the 26-27 allowance with the R/S that matures at the end of April. I do have plans you know. There is method at this time of year, when all the work dries up and I literally have one day of work booked in between now and July 1st….

Trying very hard to be sensible before the S0d-It-All hits, and I decide to spend it all on chocolate drops and bread flour. ** plenty of chocolate drops and bread flour bought with my Cl0bcard vouchers mid morning

** I made sour cherry and toasted almond sourdough this afternoon. Very nice.

6 bags of frozen fruit for £10 at F00ds from the Frozen Farm - bit annoying as 4 weeks ago they were 10 for £10 and the bags of raspberries were bigger, they were probably clearing old stock though. I have blueberries, mango, cherry, and raspberries. All looking very healthy in the bottom drawer of my freezer.

draiggoch

If you have earned more than £3600 this year then you can put more than £2880 in your pension.
Just in case you hadn’t realised.

f0xh0les

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81882747#Comment_81882747

Thanks, but I haven't earned terribly much more than that, and I have just opened a S&S ISA with 212Trading which I am going to shove money into as well as the normal ISA, I won't get any more 'free money' if I put over £2880 in so I am sticking with that for now.

Will post my referral link for 212 Trading to get free shares as soon as it comes through. I will get shares if somebody uses the link, plus they will get free shares too and will get their own referral link, more free money for free things. Who knows!

f0xh0les

https://www.trading212.com/invite/4DrwBqviDhd

One referral link for free shares (between £8-£100 worth .… it is random) if you open and fund a Stocks ISA. The referrer and the referee both get some free shares.

I know that the ISA allowance for cash Isas is going to drop to £12k in April 2027 for the under 65s, so thought I had better figure out how it all works.

I stuck £100 in, and have been looking at what kind of things and 'areas' I can invest in. I went for the environmental 'pie' in the end. It is all quite interesting and ultimately baffling, but I have an account, and after funding the SIPP, and winning the lottery, and riding my unicorn, it will be another new skill to hang on my tool belt.... or something!

f0xh0les

More pension news, I actually have enough money, now the R/S paid out this morning, to stick the nearly £3k into the SIPP for 25-26. I have asked them not to start the de-risking process for another 3 years. Mostly because I have left it so late to begin. It is doing well, so I will leave it there (investments can go up as well as down) for a bit longer.

I had a new builder round to quote, he has passed me on to a building surveyor before he says anything. Annoying. It is getting done this year. £18k in one account and an ISA account with £40k in it. That should sort it.

Will ring and book in Surveyor today. Note to self : Pull on Big Girl Pants and just do it.

I spent 6 hours cleaning and scrubbing before the builder came because my house is embarrassing . DS4 came home and said the kitchen/laundry/bathroom have never looked so clean. Shameful compliment.

I hate the back rooms of this house, the kitchen and bathrooms need attention, walls need to be removed. Builders just need to stop being so weird. They set my 'antenna' twitching. It is a conscious unconscious bias because so many of them (the 'I only deal in cash' types) have prejudiced my view of the whole breed.

Anyway, jobs for today, book in the surveyor, go to the Comm. Fridge, start off another sourdough, celebrate the byelection - not my party, but the alternative was so much worse. That 'Mr BadLoser' twit actually thinks the reason the birthrate is falling is because 'women' are being educated and going to university ………………. so his alternative is to what exactly??

….and don't even get me started on Danny Krueger and tax policies for rewarding marriage and fertility. Disgusting.