Cherry takes the reins

parsniphead

Ooh cherryfudge. Honeysuckle and clematis are both beautiful. I've just treated myself at the local farm shop to some plants. I find it really lifts the spirits.

HairyHandofDartmoor

I like buying plants for the garden too and half price is good .

You're doing really well on the mortgage overpayments and it must be making quite a difference to how much you owe.

Cherryfudge

parsniphead wrote: »

Ooh cherryfudge. Honeysuckle and clematis are both beautiful. I've just treated myself at the local farm shop to some plants. I find it really lifts the spirits.

You have reminded me of something I read once, parsniphead:

'If of thy worldly goods thou art bereft,
And of thy store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul'.

(I'm not sure I would go that far, but a life with flowers is undoubtedly a better life).

No run today, and a quiet day at work, though with an extra hour of training. Yes, more training... just a refresher though. The big achievment of the day was getting the washing on the line before my early shift, and there's another load on the line tonight. That means not too much washing on my weekend off.

Not a lot to report, though I'm going to log into the banking site at midnight to get a glimpse of my pay! Will I or won't I have the backlog of overtime from March?! I didn't get the chance to log on at work today to look at my payslip so if tonight's figure's aren't clear I'll try to print the payslip tomorrow.

Spending:
Housekeeping £6.45
MS:
Wombled 22p
Bought shop's own yeast extract instead of M@rmite, saving about 50p
10th coins 40p
Extra hour at work.
Decluttering:
Ahem... 1 piece of paper.

My thankfullness list for today: yellow poppies, pink roses. Chocolate spread, hummus and coffee.

Cherryfudge

I finally had a lie-in this morning! Woke at 20 to nine to the sound of L answering the door. The man who did the log burner has finally come to fix the slipped slate from when he was working on the roof. I am so pleased! Partly because it means I don't have to nag him any more, partly because it means the guttering is no longer being distorted by the slipped tile and partly because he's advised us that a couple of tiles are missing, the guttering is missing a connector to next door's guttering (we're in a terrace) and that someone in the past has filled a gap under the ridge tiles with cardboard! :eek: It could have been there many years but I'm pretty sure cardboard isn't recommended for roofing.

Today feels like a day off but isn't so I need to get my head round being ready for work in two hours. Meanwhile I've logged into the bank accounts and moved money round a bit. I think I have the backlog of overtime I'm owed but I'm not absolutely sure so will have a look on my payslip.

I have put £244.44 over into savings from my wages, which matches the mortgage OP for May, and also moved the rest of DH's money across to savings as his pay is also in. Nothing extra to go into the holiday account as we haven't reached the general savings target for May, but I'm amazed we can still expect to have money at the end of the month. It wasn't always so. I can remember the first time we had money in the account and I got really worried as I read it as overdrawn and told close friends I couldn't account for us being so far in the red! :rotfl: After a while I looked at it properly... such a relief! :rotfl:

So: money put into savings, and as the wages are in and I've now re-cottoned-on to paying interest by the day, I've made a bulk overpayment of £200 to the mortgage. Any extras I save over the month can be tidied across at the end of June but the bulk is better done now than later. I had a look through the money going out of the account DH pays into, to try to account for where it's gone and found a few things of significance so DH and I need to find a bit of time to look in more detail. So far I've found:

• £85 for piano tuning
• costs incurred going out with friends last weekend
• £6 OD charges on an account we don't use much - need to find a way to keep on top of that, which should be easier now DH has online banking
• decorating costs of about £35 for materials (L did the painting for us, bless him - saved us hundreds... which reminds me I was going to buy him some beer as a thank you )
• Some Direct Debits are higher than they possibly need to be so need to be reviewed.

It's really amazing how much all the smaller outgoings add up, plus I think DH is spending about £40 a week on diesel. His work travel expenses can be claimed back, though (I need to ask tactfully if this always happens!), and it saves hours a week if his visits to DFiL are done by car. As he is time/energy poor I think I need to take on getting out our weekly housekeeping money as DH has a tendency to pay by card if he doesn't have time to go to the till, and those card payments put us over budget. Mind you I still can't work out average spend for a family are so much lower than ours - my coffee habit and DH's love of fresh salmon can't possibly account for much, can they? :rotfl:

Okay, enough off-loading of thoughts for now... just needed to talk it through with myself and set a few things down for future reference. Now I need to get one more load of washing done (and it's raining steadily despite a good forecast) and do some pen-and-paper notes to work on. And yes, that bullet journal has absented itself again even though I put it on the dressing table to keep an eye on it.

Cherryfudge

I found the bullet journal in a bookcase with the spine facing inwards, hence invisible.

The laundry is all-but caught up (I won't mention the ironing) and work went okay: not too busy a shift but enough to keep me occupied. Afterwards I remembered I'm out of bread so I had a late-evening trip to the supermarket. While there, I resisted yet more plants (not a very good discount) then saw some bits ripped off a fuchsia and dropped by the discount shelf. There was a staff member nearby so I cheekily asked if I could take them and he said yes, so I now have them in water. Two of the four cuttings I took from the fuchsias at Mum's old place are rooted so I may do quite well for fuchsias this year.

I may also take more cuttings next time I go to the old house.

This reminds me, I thought I had three days off next week but it's only two so I have to make a decision whether or not to work at Mum's house. I don't really want to arrive mid-evening after an early shift as that would mean a walk on a lonely road, so I might go earlier on Tuesday and come back on Thursday morning. Decisions, decisions.

Spending:
Mortgage overpayment (for June) £200.00
Housekeeping £4.04
MS:
free fuchsia cuttings (I've only learned to spell 'fuchsia' for the first time today and am determined to write it as often as possible).
Mortgage OP will mean less interest to pay
10th coins saved 22p
Soups from the freezer for dinner
Decluttering:
Handful of paper into the log burner.

My thankful list for today: cake, having a laugh at work, having housekeeping money left so near the end of the week.

Honeysucklelou2

Good idea to use the bits of fuchsia as cuttings.

Onebrokelady

Just caught up on your diary Cherry, well done on the bargain plants,there is a hedge on my dog walk with Honeysuckle growing through it, I often stop for a sniff, I would like one for my patio but I think the chickens would eat it

Cherryfudge

A really productive day off and nothing to show for it! DH spent time with his Dad, J and L are away overnight, DS2 has been at work.

DH voluntarily sat down with me to go through the bank accounts which is a big step and progress has been made in knowing where we stand but nothing has actually been changed. Imagine if he was happy to pay off the remainder of the mortgage!! We have the money but it wouldn't leave us with much buffer, and we need more buffer not less. Oddments of what we discussed were

• What is that insurance company and how do we contact them, as they aren't on either of our emails?
• Can DH get a better rate for his phone?
• Can I get my photos off the iphone remote storage and save 79p a month?
• Those little payments on debit cards add up, yes they do.
• Can we get cheaper broadband?
• Is there a cheaper alternative to paying for a landline?
• We really need to look for a cheaper energy provider.

Other than this, we discovered DH's pay is split four ways:

1. 1 part on bills we can't change (CT, Water etc.)
2. 1 part on bills we need to look into
3. 1 part on discretionary donation
4. 7 parts on everything else

We then looked at 'everything else' and I reminded him to keep claiming work travel expenses (fuel is about half a part, see above). There's nothing really outstanding to show how we spent all the rest... going out with our friends and feeding them over last weekend accounts for another half a 'part', piano tuning only happens every couple of years or so and while it seems a lot at the time, it doesn't account for huge amounts. The other big thing was the trip we are having for my birthday (a show in London), which has come off May's money. Everything else was 'small' things adding up. I did manage about one and a half 'parts' into savings though.

All that out of the way, we went out to have another go at choosing carpet for the lounge but no luck. then we went to the police station for the items that were recovered after the shed was broken into, but they are in store somewhere.

So errands run, but no result. We went for the weekend food shop and actually came in within budget again. I am not sure why - we haven't been massively living off the residue of last weekend's food, but I suppose it made a difference.

Lastly, DH borrowed ladders and had a look at the roof. Turns out the cardboard was his patch when he discovered rain dripping through a little while ago! I am pretty sure the tile is replaced in the wrong gap as DH thinks the gap under the ridge tiles is where it belongs. We are going to have to get someone in to look at it as the ridge tiles are looking a lot more battered than next door's and would appear to need some sort of mortaring in. The guttering also needs a part (it's a pain to get the slope of it right, too) but DH is quite keen to do that. I wonder if I can talk him out of it?

Spending
Housekeeping £10.00 (plus DH spent about £14.00 form his share).
Gift £5.25
Toiletries £4.00
MS:
Supermarket fish with our chips
Spent nothing on carpet
Spent nothing on roof or gutters either
10th coins saved 40p
Decluttering:
Turfed out and repurposed a drawer, throwing out a few jigsaw pieces (puzzles probably long gone), a badge saying 'I am 5' (youngest child is in his twenties), a curled up recipe, a couple of plastic wrappers, two contact lens cases for a type of lens I've not used in years, two catalogues and the remains of a pack of cards. A few items have also gone into a bag for charity but I'm not allowing myself to count them till they leave the house.

Today I'm thankful for time with DH and prep done for moving forward on a few everyday things.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Well done on de-cluttering that drawer, it's odd the things you find .

The financial talk is always useful so that you know where things stand and can identify potential savings. And you know another place from where you DON'T want to buy carpet .

Cherryfudge

We are short of carpet shops round here though! Well, there's a very good discount one where we've always been before but they're the ones who haven't got what we want...

Today, once again, we seem to have got a fair bit done but I'm getting a bit anxious about getting things in order here before I go to work on Mum's house, which I'm intending to be on Tuesday.

So far we've been to church and had a light lunch then took a load of garden waste to the tip. Honestly, the garden's growing at such a rate I just want to be out there working on it! However I've now got the cough that DH has had for three months. I know it's viral so all I expect I can do is try not to cough too much, but I think it's possibly affecting my mood.

I've also packed the gift for my great-nephew, so that should leave the house tomorrow if I have enough energy after work.

I don't like to shop on a Sunday but took advantage of having a driver to spend a garden centre voucher on compost, and somehow managed to get a beautiful, sturdy pelargonium and a tray of mixed succulents as well. DH pointed out the garden centre is advertising alpines as native to New Zealand and other high areas of the Northern Hemisphere. How we managed to miss that relocation I have no idea. I expect it was when they had the earthquakes but I must have been going round with my eyes shut. *Sigh*

Other spending has to be done soon: train tickets will go up tomorrow for the journey I want the day after so I want to get them bought. I'm hoping to sneak in a visit to Primarni as I love the lightweight trainers I bought there and could do with some in navy if they have them. I've also broken a favourite pair of sandals which I'd like to replace.

DH has bought a connector for the guttering but it's windy out there so we're hoping it calms down before he goes up the ladder. I also spent £1 on snacks for his lunches.

Well, I'm going to tidy the dining table which mysteriously grows things when I'm near it, then I'm making Moroccan chicken for dinner for us, H and A, and some saved for DS2 when he gets in from work. there will be a bit to add to the decluttering list later but facing up to it seems to be harder before it gets easier.