Bricks Not Books

savingwannabe

Hello I am so glad you are at home. I've been off work for over two weeks from now. I hope you have since been told how long it is likely to last and don't book anything in the near future. I hope you all stay healthy and if you have do some subject writing. I am working crazy hours from home but am hoping it will calm down as the students calm down. We are lucky we have space like gardens I feel so sorry for those that don't.  Be safe petal and love to all your family.

longway2go

Just having a read of your diary and wanted to say hi and good luck you seem to be doing well at hitting your targets each month. 

VintageHistorian

Glad to see you back SW! And thank you longway!

March numbers are in, a lovely round £70 exactly for OPs! And we're out of the gate for April with £46.99, which includes £8.20 Delay Repay for DH (which was filed weeks ago!) and a genteel £1.09 TT.

I've done the first half of the money shuffle. Paid EDF and council tax (they could really use it right now!), did the OP, swept some extra cash in to my emergency fund and paid over the monthly new car savings. At least 3 of my talks have been cancelled as all WI meetings are postponed until June, but one of the ones I was meant to be speaking at in May have already rebook me for May 2021! And I'm saving money by staying home and trying not to order anything online, so I have the money and my car savings won't miss out. I would just like it to have been extra money that I earned, but we'll see who else books me for 2021, and what July will bring!

Everything fine in the VH household. Food shopping keeps making me really anxious as I just don't know what will or will not be available. Last Sunday I ended up going to Waitrose at midday "just to see how bad the queue is", and then queued up with no meal plan, or any other plan really. It was a lot better than I thought it would be, I ended up going round and just counting in my head how many meals I could make out of my purchases, and ended up with enough for 8 days. Then just had to go to Tesco on Monday morning before signing in to work, so I could get breakfast and lunch items for the week. That worked out well, but going at different days and times of day and fitting it around work is still stressing me out. What if I go at midday on a Tuesday and there's a huge queue and I can't get anything before I need to go to back to work? That kind of stress. The really unhelpful kind.

My completely random unplanned buying means that we've had a few luxury dinners (two with Parma ham!) this week, and tomorrow night we're having a very decadent chicken kievs with dauphinoise potatoes. In my defence (not that I really need one) it's because I needed a small pot of cream for two recipes, but they only had large pots left, so I bought a large one and decided to use it all. Gives me something to look forward to for a Friday night!

Money shuffle part 2 to come after the mortgage money goes out on Monday. Have a nice weekend everyone!

savingwannabe

Glad you are both ok. I am so glad the WI have rebooked. In a year's time things will be much better I am sure. It's good that you are able to go out to the supermarket. I do hope the anxiety stops. My neighbours are buying me food which is v kind. Well done on savings, I think mine may go up as all I am paying for is food at the mo! We may teaching online for a while I think. Stay happy ok. Think of when this is over. Make nice plans. hugs, swx.

VintageHistorian

Can't believe we're in May already. March went by so bloody slowly that April has sped along in comparison, and now May is doing the same thing!

OP for April was a nice and healthy £74.40. May has had the standard £37.70 plus a £5.46 TT to kick things off. Need to do the money shuffle tomorrow as I did the food shopping on Thursday, so there should be another TT after that. My emergency fund now has £3000 in it, so I'm putting a small pin in that for the time being and will instead focus on the new car fund, and start a house moving fund. We're not planning on looking yet, but I anticipate that moving will be very, very expensive (stamp duty especially) so it's best to start tucking the money away now.

Had a nice week off work in April, when we were supposed to go to Winchester. We had a Disney movie marathon day, and on our anniversary itself we had an afternoon tea at home. Bought everything we needed from Tesco and Waitrose, used some of the wedding china that we saved, and set it up on our dining table. We also had plenty of leftovers for lunches and desserts for several days after! Might have to find an excuse to do it again in a few months XD

Not much else going on here. Me and DH still working from home. DH is concerned that his place will reopen when we still don't feel it's safe for him to go through London. Neither of us have any health problems, we just don't want to catch it! My work place are a lot more cautious, they're releasing their plans next week. I'd be comfortable going in to the office one day a week and working from home the rest, my desk is in a corner and I can't get to it without going past people so that would take some co-ordination between all of us. But we're not going to rush out like so many others seem desperate to. I fear a second wave by the end of the month

Yesterday I did some gardening! Planted seeds for cucumbers, radishes, lettuce and carrots. Last time I planted carrots they came out miniscule, but radishes normally do well. We'll see how my first time growing cucumbers and lettuce from scratch works out!

I have no other plans for this weekend, just laziness XD Have a good weekend everyone!

savingwannabe

Well done on OP and on emergency fund. I envy your patience with seeds, I tend to use plugs. Im only growing tomatoes. Happy anniversary. I hope that health comes first rather than the economy. We can improve the economy as long as we keep our health. I hope you had good weather today. Happy resting. 

VintageHistorian

Weekend has been somewhat ruined by my absolute raging at the !!!!!! in the news over the past few days. Story has changed at least 7 times, and no apologies from anyone. People of this country make sacrifices that a small subset of others think are beneath them. Would write to my MP but he's a nasty sod and won't care.

Topped it off by trying and failing to start my first barbeque this evening Lots of paper and tissue but just could not get the coals to light. Didn't have lighter fluid as I've read it gives the food at weird taste. So disappointed that I nearly cried on DH, who then spent another 15 minutes trying to light it as well. I've bought a chimney starter off eBay this evening, we'll see if that helps - I just hope it arrives before the burger buns in the fridge go off.

Will have to do a money shuffle later this week. Still too fuming and too annoyed this evening.

Cornish_mum

Hi VH, I know also raging here.  The exact same scenario happened to us. I got sick with suspected CV (I am high risk so we were quite worried), we have 2 kids (age 4 and 9) and absolutely no family nearby to help us. However DH did NOT drive me and the kids back to Cornwall to be near my brother and parents just in case (they have an annex so we could have easily stayed with them). No we stayed put and toughed it out even though we ran out of b@&£dy food. Both of us had to deal with extremely difficult work situations during this time with no one to delegate too but didn’t consider this made us special, as pretty much everyone we knew was having to work 12-14 hour days sick or not those first few weeks with no childcare, just to keep up with what needed to be done. We just got on with it.

Hope you had better luck with the BBQ our first one of the season was a complete disaster too.  Afternoon tea sounds lovely I am going to steal that idea for my birthday!

thank you for your diary I do enjoy reading it.

CM

VintageHistorian

Oh Cornish Mum you poor thing! That must have been so difficult for all of you I have actually written to my MP this evening, even impressed myself by keeping the swearing out.

Absolutely take the afternoon tea idea! It was such a lovely treat and didn't need any extra going out to get bits, they all just ended up in my trolley with the rest of the food shopping! And make sure your husband is on washing up duty since it will be your birthday.

VintageHistorian

Total OP for May was £74.52.

June has already had over £40, and I've also got just over £2 pending from Quidco. I've been doing better at remembering Prolific this month so I'm very close to £10, but I'm not sure yet if I want to cashout at £10 and use it for OPs, or keep it going until closer to the end of the month, cashout everything, and then divide it between OPs and the new car. 

Not else going on here!