EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

RelievedSheff

Looks beautiful. I do love the Scottish scenery. It is just the weather is so unpredictable

milann

It sounds an amazing break. Photos are amazing. 

Hope the car recovers 🤞and doesn’t cost too much money. 

Staffordia

Stunning photographs, makes me want to go there immediately.

leftatthetrafficlights

Fabulous piccies! 😍 Welcome back!! 😊 hope the car is okay!! 🙈

starnac

Pictures look amazing EH and sounds like you had an amazing time.

EssexHebridean

Thanks all! Weather RS - yes, unpredictable is the word! We had everything from sunshine that felt actually really warm, on the most perfectly still day without a breath of wind, right through to the 60mph+ winds on NYD.  

So… back, and it’s time to get the routine back. We had our start of year financial review while we were away. Sounds terribly posh and official but it’s actually just us, a few beers and a notebook! 😂 We debated increasing some extra money to a few of the monthly regular transfers - our food budget (which has been at £175 for ages) will increase to £200 a month - yes, we know we could do cheaper, but we don’t need to, we choose to buy good meat, free range eggs and chicken, and lots of cheese, if we needed to cut back again at any stage we most certainly could. Ultimately though the day to day cost of food is also increasing. We’re also increasing the money we put into our Christmas/presents savings by £5 a month simply, again, because of the way costs are increasing generally. Our Joint Fun category was a tougher one - we already budget a reasonable sum for this each month, and it gets subsidised from our own spends too. The decision on this is that MrEH is going to make a second transfer each month to bolster it - he has more disposable income than I do, and has been saying for a long while that he’s happy to pay for more joint entertainment stuff, so this is a good solution. 

The two “free” months for Council tax/water rates will be split 50/50 between more Premium Bonds and the long term savings. 

On the subject of PB’s, we had our first win! Just £25, but as that was based on holding less than £1000 of qualifying ones at the time of the draw we were extremely pleased! We’ll be continuing to bolster those with roughly 50% of any monthly surplus, plus one of our soon to mature Regular Saver accounts I’ll be put straight into PB’s too. 

On savings, we plan to use the other maturing Reg Saver to fund newly opened Nationwide Flex Regular Savers, and we’ll be opening new Coventry ones too. Any balance of money to be saved will be heading across to the Marcus account - we’re hopeful we might start seeing interest rate increases there soon too. 

The initial aims for this month are simply to keep day to day costs as low as possible - so continuing with eating food from the freezer and cupboards, bolstered with masses of fruit and veg. I do have an ongoing list which is building up with stuff we want to buy to stock up on various things, but currently my aim is to leave doing that until February. If the situation re covid restrictions starts to look as though it might change we’ll revisit that decision as needed. 

milann

All sounding good. Well done on the PB win 👍

girlatplay

Welcome back EH.  Sound like you had a great time and your pics are lovely.

Very lucky win with the PBs!

Your plans are all sounding good.

I've missed your updates, they give me motivation.

lucielle

Great pics. I gave you a wave from Skye
L

redofromstart

Lots of sound thinking and good news there.  Love the photos and the sound of the crispy salmon nub ends.