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

milann

Foxgloves I’ve just started reading your diary…..I have a way to go yet though 👍
Your mug will pay for itself in no time EH. I’m pleased you found the one you like.

Cheery_Daff

EssexHebridean said:

Milann It's never particularly bothered me - and I even have MrEH trained now to pick up a couple of packs if he's in Al's and they have their own brand in stock - he's not phased by it at all which is lovely! 

I was bothered as a teenager, but haven't been for a long time. Fortunately, neither is Mr Cheery - in fact since I sewed my own sanitary towels a few years back he's been pretty chilled about having them knocking about drying on the radiators

Happy new mug! And what a nuisance about your delivery. 

RelievedSheff

Cheery_Daff said:

EssexHebridean said:

Milann It's never particularly bothered me - and I even have MrEH trained now to pick up a couple of packs if he's in Al's and they have their own brand in stock - he's not phased by it at all which is lovely! 

I was bothered as a teenager, but haven't been for a long time. Fortunately, neither is Mr Cheery - in fact since I sewed my own sanitary towels a few years back he's been pretty chilled about having them knocking about drying on the radiators

Happy new mug! And what a nuisance about your delivery. 

Neither of us is bothered either. Although I don't need them all that often any more due to having the contraceptive implant. It's only really the last six months just before it is changed that I need them again. Mr RS is happy enough to pick me some up if he is going into the shop.

Suffolk_lass

foxgloves said:

Awww, that's a kind thing to say about my diary, @EssexHebridean. I started out on the DFW daily small things board, then migrated over here to start a diary. I decided to start one because I wanted to show that it is very much possible to change even very longstanding bad money habits. I overspent my income from the age of 19 (student arriving in big city from hicksville), all the way through meeting & marrying Mr F, (who was even more endebted than me), a professional career, until my early 40s, when I was struck by The Lightbulb.....a real one that time, not a little flicker of something which had gone out a couple of days later (if it lasted that long!) I also noticed from reading other diaries, that a lot of people were using language like "I have no willpower". I think that "willpower" is almost a get-out clause, as in having an affliction we can't change. Getting rid of our debt took a change of attitude, but it was about choices rather than 'willpower'. I had spend almost all my adult life to date making the wrong choices with my spending, compounded by my dogged refusal to budget, it really was just a case of starting to make the right choices & noticing how much better I felt once I was doing this regularly & seeing my financial security grow. So I thought my diary would demonstrate that it is entirely possible to change from a terrible fritterer of money to a really quite responsible human being! 
F

I love this post @foxgloves. It encapsulates what I think too. I still have what I call my smug filter (ie - feeling slightly too financially secure triggers spending for me) and for many years I was too arrogant to think I could learn proper money saving from others and the techniques on here. I am living proof that if I keep doing the same things wrong, I cannot expect a different outcome.

EssexHebridean

For a lot of people debt comes from bad habits - but we dress it up as "bad luck" instead - "I'm not lucky enough to earn enough to save" being a prime example of this which I bet we can pretty much all identify with from some stage, at least! When we first arrived on here we were 5 years into our mortgage, and had been saying for all of those 5 years "we'll overpay it as soon as we can afford to" but in spite of for at least some of that time a reasonable, if not particularly high, income, strangely enough we never seemed to be able to "afford to". We were also paying out on a car loan pretty consistently - and in fact at time of first posting on here I'd just taken out a new one - not huge, but significant enough. we were also routinely in overdraft by halfway through the month but with all the casual comments around us about "being in the red" or having "too much month for the money" it just felt like normal life. Then a friend showed us his spreadsheet for overpaying their mortgage - we popped in our details, and, playing about, rounded our current monthly payment up to the next round £10 level....and it knocked a month off the term right away. Talk about a "Wait, WHAT?!" moment! The lightbulb flickered...friend also mentioned MSE - and we started exploring...then found the forum, and that was that, the start of a LOT of learning, a fully illuminated lightbulb and some realisations that actually we didn't have "too much month for our money" at all - we had enough money to last, and some, we were just using it badly and frittering a lot. Starting to change those habits really wasn't easy at all - but we got there. My only individual debt at that time was the bank loan for the car, and we worked to get shot of that before doing much else - IIRC it should have been a 30 month term and we killed it in 13. MrEH had some personal debt that we started paying down and then, in 2011 I think it was, we remortgaged and incorporated both our original "additional secured borrowing" that was part of our original Northern Rock 110% mortgage and the last of MrEH's debt (apart from his student loans - he was one of the fortunate ones who had the loans that actually ended up with NO interest being charged!). At the same time we increased the overpayments to the mortgage to take account of what would have been being paid to MrEH's debt, and some extra - this was the ONLY reason why adding that to the mortgage was in any way a good idea - it actually did save us money because we were already committed to clearing the mortgage early and we had a budget we'd already been living to for 3 years successfully. There were still huge risks - at the time I was fairly newly self-employed and still working to make a go of the business, had that gone wrong we could have ended up struggling a lot more. Initially the mortgage overpayments were made using "money we didn't know we had" - savings on utility bills where we found better deals, making decisions not to spend money - skipping a planned takeaway for example, and that sort of thing. Small steps...and a mortgage gone in 13 years rather than 25. There you go - that turned onto a potted history didn't it! 


I also love the fact that other people's OH's don't mind buying sanitary products for them and are chilled about their existence - we're getting there with this aren't we. I read recently (I think on a diary on here) that school age lads are now far "cooler" about periods than they were when I was at school too - that's such a nice thing as it was definitely the way the lads reacted and referred to periods that sparked so much of the shame around the subject at that point I think.  

EssexHebridean

OK - so where are we at today then. I'd planned (and had time for) a longer cycle coming into work, but as I committed to the first bit on what was meant to be a roughly 5 mile loop the rain started - and within a few minutes I was drenched, so opted to take the "get out clause" turning back towards the office and ended up at just under 3 miles. My leggings are now drying out on the radiator behind me!   Planning to head to the gym tonight so hoping the rain stops by then - realistically I won't go if it is still wet as the route there and then back to the car is VERY trafficky and not suitable to risking with rain-covered glasses. 

I've discovered that UW have chosen to ignore my 31/3 meter readings (there's a surprise!) so I have just done a "contact us" via their website showing the readings I submitted then. Their estimate isn't hugely different in real terms, but they have underestimated the night reading by around 100 units which with the massive increase to the night rate is significant enough to be worth getting set straight.  As for EDF, I'm starting to wonder if they are ever going to get around to billing us - our DD review was meant to be in March but there is no sign of them having done it. Sigh. Oh well - at least my meter reading shows up OK there! 

Banking checked and all OK, and the random oddments swept across into our VSP accounts to keep things tidy. I've done the transfer from the food account to the CC as well - and we do indeed now have a clear month's "credit" in the food account so that's another mission ticked off! On that front we got an email yesterday confirming that the veg box will be going up by £1 a time from the beginning of May - it's still potentially decent value but does mean we will be a lot more picky about skipping the boxes that look less interesting we've agreed. once that money clears as a payment to the CC I'll get any remaining final bits sorted to make sure it's all squared away aside from anything we spend on the way down to Devon and on the Friday night before sailing - everything past that point will go on the "tab" on the island which we'll settle before leaving and which will go onto the following month's CC bill. 

Surveys:
Prolific is no change from yesterday
OnePoll: 1462 points - feels like it's crawling a bit now!
Ipsos:  474 points - hopefully will pass the halfway point today. Had several yesterday which I spent ages on and then only paid out 3 or 6 points though which was annoying. 

Tea tonight will be a chicken and butternut squash curry using the remainder of the squash I roasted last night. We scoffed vast amounts of veg with our couscous last night so there will be none to freeze! I think we just about got our 5-a-day in one meal! I need to remember to get the liver out of the freezer for tomorrow night too. 

A load of washing (bedding) was done overnight and MrEH hung that out this morning - our outside drying rack is undercover so it won't have got any wetter but it does usually struggle to dry when it's wet on the ground so we'll see. If the bedding seems to be drying OK by this evening then I'll try to stick a final load before we go away through tonight. 

Other MSE stuff that needs doing is checking the Shell account to see if the refund for the credit we are owed has been processed yet - they're really taking their time about this! 

milann

You are so right about a lot of debts being habit. It’s hard to break the habits but the best way to start getting sorted 👍

savingholmes

I hate getting wet - so think even a 3 mile cycle in the rain is pretty good going. 

I wish I'd had a proper LBM earlier - as even after joining MSE we had periods away and restarted our debts having previously cleared them. Hopefully this i my last time...

EssexHebridean

I just managed to dodge getting wet again last night you'll be pleased to hear SH - although that did mean the gym visit that was planned got sacrificed. It was the right decision though - the rain started minutes after I got back to the car and at the point I would otherwise have been cycling back from the gym it was absolutely torrential, to the extent that I drove the half a mile to collect MrEH from the station rather than waiting for him to walk back to the car!

I reckon those of us who have stuck around with diaries and made consistent inroads into sorting things out and getting straight - even with the occasional wobble due to circumstances - are probably about there with the LB being fully lit now. There are generally a handful about on the boards who you can just see haven't quite "got it" - either they're tremendously defensive when anyone points out that there might possibly be a different (subtext - better!) way of doing things that they hadn't thought about, or they're "rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic" by consolidating and then building more debt - while assuring us that it's all for "really good reasons"...yes yes, of course it is!   I've said a few times elsewhere lately though - you can't have a LBM for anyone else - it HAS to come to them, in their own time. Or indeed not - in which case they will struggle on through life always with that cloud of debt hanging onto them and always with the same excuses being used. I know which route I'd prefer!  

Managed a fraction under 4.5 miles cycling this morning in a really gusty wind - I got buffeted fully sideways a couple of times and when it was blowing straight at me, especially when I was on an uphill stretch when I almost felt like I was standing still trying to pedal against it! Hopefully it might have dropped a bit by the time I cycle back later although at least it ought to be behind me by then! 

Did a quick visual sweep of the fridge last night ahead of going away - and discovered a half-tub of soft cheese that had got missed. A bit of quick thinking and MrEH cooked off a couple of rashers of bacon each, and we each have a soft-cheese and bacon roll for our lunch today which should be tasty. It's made a normal sandwich filling stretch as well as the beef we'd been planning stayed in the freezer. The chicken and butternut curry was delicious - I used a spoonful of the red curry paste that's been kicking around in the fridge for a very VERY long while - it's long past its best before date but equally it's not yet grown fur, still smells like red curry paste, and neither of us are dead yet! Also used the end of a block of creamed coconut so that's another thing gone.  Tonight will be liver, bacon and onions - and I got MrEH to grab a bag of frozen blanched cabbage out of the freezer when he got the liver out so rather than just mash I'm going to do bubble and squeak with it I think. The only thing remaining in the fridge veg drawer now is a rather sad and sorry for itself lemon - but I might just squeeze that for juice tonight and freeze the juice. worst case scenario is the lemon will go to the compost, so not precisely wasted, and the rest of the bag DID all get used! 

Banks checked and all OK - a couple of bits of minor money shuffling done this morning to clear off the tiny remaining balance on the CC so that will be all square. I've also reviewed the amount we've got in the relevant account to budget for spending on Lundy - the balance our friends owe us for the overnight accommodation for tomorrow will cancel out our share of the house tab I think, but we'll have our own tab from the shop, and the one from the Tavern as well. we have agreed that we'll look to reduce a little the amount of meals eaten in the Tavern this time though as we know their prices have increased a fair bit - so it will likely be a lunch OR a dinner, but generally not both. 

Front room heating got turned down again last night - and I over-rode the hallway one this morning to turn it off which also meant it stopped charging immediately - this left us with just under £2 of electricity use overnight - that included a WM load too. Not great, but could be worse. Both heaters are being fully switched off tonight anyway - I'm not playing any more! we've also agreed to turn off the immersion heater tonight - there seems little point in reheating a full tank for tomorrow when we'll only be there half the day. 

Jobs for tonight then will mostly be packing I think. we'll need to do a quick check of the email account for our voluntary role but it is set up with an out-of-office now which will deal with anyone contacting us next week. I also want to do a secondary backup of that to make sure we have it backed up outside the house - safety first! 

Suffolk_lass

Re the lemon that's left. If you cut it in half and leave it on a piece of kitchen paper (or toilet paper) cut sides up in the fridge, it should stop any stale smell or worse (should that paste reach tipping point for instance) while you are away. Have a lovely time