Cherry takes the reins

Cherryfudge

So, yesterday...
NSD
Had a run.
MS stuff:
Added to my collection of onion roots to grow!
Work dinner from freezer/cupboard

Cherryfudge

Another lovely sunny day; I had a run in the morning and generally a satisfying day.

We are now free of the huge insurance for Mum's house. The company have just changed their phone system and instead of being passed from pillar to post, I actually got to speak to someone who was able to process the cancellation. DH had tried the other day and it took so long, being passed from one person to another, that his lunchtime ran out and he had to hang up from being put on hold.

There have been a few spends: I went to visit friends this evening and took a pudding as my contribution, and I've bought some other food and stuff and had my piano lesson. Really must practise more but I suppose a hen weekend isn't exactly conducive to that!

MS stuff:
Cancelled that horrendous insurance policy!
Bought a £ shop version of a Moroccan meal to have tomorrow and will add extra veg instead of the full amount of meat.
Got the lower calorie version of 'cream' for the pudding - cheaper and less guilt!
Rescued a couple of begonia tubers which I'd never got round to planting last year: shrivelled but worth an attempt at revival. I've soaked and planted them.
Reduced price strawberries - saving of 68p on full price.
Spends:
Piano lesson 10.00
Seeds for garden 2.99
Felt to patch my beloved slipper socks 0.49 (which I guess is MS too)
Food for us 5.70
Food for friends (goes under gift budget) 5.27 (but we get some spare strawberries and meringues).

I think with a bit of organisation I could have improved on that - buy egg whites to make meringues and shop early enough to see if the greengrocer has a good price on strawberries. I would also make much better use of the piano lessons if I practised more, though I'm learning to practise better.

The damson and greengage trees are covered in blossom so maybe this year will be another good harvest.

Cherryfudge

No running today: I decided a rest day was a good idea. I hope to get back to it tomorrow. Instead I walked into town and carried heavy shopping home.

I spent a while going through the bank statements and found a load of stuff I couldn't identify but it turns out it was DH's expenses over leaving one job and starting another, so panic averted. While I'm rubbish at spreadsheets, I've now got one to track expenditure, so I'll move these findings over there. The idea is that if I know what I've spent, I'll have an idea of a realistic budget.

Today's shopping was pretty MS even if I did buy (yellow-stickered) avocados as a treat for DD. DS1 and his fiancee came to tea and I made a bit pot of chilli: good quality mince isn't very MS but the other ingredients were. I had a notebook and worked out how much cheaper the items I bought were at the cheap shop at the other end of town than at Mr T. I think there's another spreadsheet in that if I can stay awake long enough.

It's interesting that I can finally begin to get a grip on how much our 'entertaining budget is. Yesterday's dessert wasn't really entertaining because the theme of the evening was to bring a gift so while it was food, it was primarily a gift, but it came to £5.27 which fed four of us. Tonight's chilli, which fed five of us, was £6.28 plus stuff we already had in. In a typical week we feed DS1 and his fiancee once or twice (sometimes go to theirs), DFiL once, DD's b/f once or maybe a couple of times...

Spends:
Food/housekeeping 17.20

MS:
More onion ends saved to grow a field full!
Trekked to B for cheaper food and made a note of what's good.
Extra portion for DD's lunch tomorrow.
Argued the case with my manager and it looks as though she will give me my full pay claim for March, having queried it. It takes so long to sort out my extra hours amidst the irregular hours I do that I could almost claim extra hours just for putting in my timesheet! If I had been awake enough when I filled it in I would have realised that four hours extra should be claimed when they happened not later. D'oh.
Resisted three packets of seeds totalling £9! I'm astounded seeds have got so expensive. When did that happen?

Other than that I set out to deep-clean the bathroom. The tiles are now gleaming, though it's not perfect and I have a headache from the chemicals. New spray I bought is too powerful for me.

There's nothing really interesting to report tonight so I'll stop waffling and do that spreadsheet.

Cherryfudge

Today was supposed to be an NSD but instead has cost a fortune.

I've decided to bite the bullet and put the high food spend on this month's bill even though I'm buying for quite some time ahead, as it's an on-line order to go to Mum's old house to help my sister and deliver tinned stuff so I don't have to carry it when I go to do more clearing. My sister is doing her stint as one or two fell swoops as she lives so far away, and she will have her little girl with her. She offered to pay for her share of the food but I'd rather gift it to her as I'm pretty sure I will gain more in terms of keeping bits and pieces from the house in the long run.

I'm therefore splitting that bill between my gift budget and my housekeeping budget.

How I spent today? Well, my sister finally got a good Internet connection late last night so I was up late comparing notes with her. Useful but not good for my sleep. Thankfully I had today off and slept till eleven!

I therefore didn't do much with the morning.

Sadly, when I went to put my favourite jeans on, I found they have died a death. No longer useable. I will try to hold out replacing them till I've got a bit lighter. How many times have I said that?

When I finally got up I got straight into my running stuff but what with one thing and another I never got my run. Instead a neighbour and I cut some overhanging branches and I did some weeding. Then I headed into town late and managed to miss the greengrocer's opening times so had to buy from the supermarket. Admittedly I rather went to town there: lots of fruit & veg to keep us going this weekend (I hope DH has enough in his budget to pay for any other weekend food? It's DD's birthday on Saturday - pizza party and cake - then Sunday lunch). I also bought some vouchers as a thank you to the driver who took us to the hen weekend and refused to let us help with the petrol money and some chocolate towards DD's birthday (she mostly wants money but it's nice to have something to open so depending on how I allocate my time tomorrow, she either gets another item off her list plus chocolate, or she gets money and chocolate).

Then I went home and sent a cheque to pay the lady who is keeping an eye on Mum's house and garden. We negotiated her hours down now that my sister and I are going more often but still need her.

Then I sent that online order...

And I still haven't found out the details of two supermarket spends from the beginning of the week but maybe I can find the receipts tomorrow.

MS stuff:
A new mini woodpile for next winter
Saved yet another couple of onion roots to plant
Careful shopping for groceries (e.g. buying loose veg. not prepacked unless it's sweet potatoes which for some reason seem to be cheaper in a bag)
Checked the price of something on DD's list before blithely buying it. £24.99 for a mug? :eek:
Used veg & chickpeas to bulk out tonight's tea and it was voted delicious (Lamb tagine)
Decided on overnight oats again for work tomorrow, and tuna for following shift(s).

Spends:
Gifts (vouchers, chocolate and food) 30 + 5.00 + 37.14 = 72.14
housekeeping (including cleaning materials and store cupboard food for Mum's house) 35.13 + 9.33 = 44.46 :eek:
Cheque for April housekeeping 120.00

Total spends £236.60.
Not sure about that. Adding up the receipts I make it £241.81. Maybe I'll have another look tomorrow, it's too late at night to think properly now.

Cherryfudge

Today is DD's birthday but she's away running a half-marathon so we celebrated a day early with a pizza party. DH paid for the food and baked the cake.

Most of the things on her wish list were ones she would be best choosing herself so she got money from nearly everyone. I felt it's nice to have a few things to open so I bought party bags and went on a quick scout around town for bubble bath, chocolate, a candle... that sort of thing. I gave myself a £10 limit and stayed inside it. I also revived an old tradition of giving the other 'children' a present so they wouldn't be jealous. Rarely can a room of twenty-somethings have been so excited about an 85p bag of chocolates each! So glad I did that.

So, spending - I'm going to have to revise Thursday's as I've changed the supermarket online shopping order.

Friday:
NSD
Had a run
Saturday:
No run but spent about 2 hours at work pushing someone in their wheelchair so I'm not totally devoid of exercise.
Spends:
Food: 3.28
Gifts: 15.54.

Other than that, I've been chucking stuff out of the fridge. I'm pretty good with not wasting food apart from in the fridge. Throwing out bacon, carrots and cranberries, all well past their best, is a shame but after a while it just ceases to be food and these were heading that way. .

Cherryfudge

Yet again too tired to do much of an analytical post but I have a day off tomorrow so maybe I can work out the money then.

Food shopping today: £11.13 (my favourite coffee was on a very good offer).

No running for the last three days though I've been active. I'm tired and this morning I discovered all my running stuff was in the wash so maybe I have an excuse.

Would you believe we got a letter this morning to say the cancelled insurance isn't actually cancelled?! I can see why: it's to back up the mortgage but those guys leave nothing to chance. They want to see the details of the new insurance before they will cancel the old one, which means another payment at the higher rate to provide cover while that gets sorted.

Very weirdly, the insurance letter came this morning with another, identical envelope. I did a double-take as they were addressed differently and were apparently from two different banks. The mortgage was taken out years ago with a particular building society and has now been transferred by the building society to another building society. That was one envelope. The other was from my bank to confirm I've set up a regular overpayment on the mortgage (don't get too excited, I've just rounded it up a little). However, the two envelopes - different accounts, different senders - were actually from the same building and it didn't take much to discover that the rip-off merchants who stayed quiet while my elderly mum paid over the odds for years are actually part of the same banking group as my friendly local place which gives me positive feelings because I can overpay my mortgage there and feel like a grown up.

Faced with the reality of the words 'banking group', I think I've revised my opinion. They really are all about getting as much of our money as they can (they are businesses after all) and it's in my best interests, and those of my family, to be savvy and proactive about my finances.

Having said that, I've started to search for info on overpaying my pension contributions. Nothing very useful found so far. As far as I can understand I can't make my State pension any bigger so maybe I should make some phone calls about my work pension, which is short of a mere quarter century of contributions. Eeeekkkk!

Good news in that I now have Probate to deal with Mum's estate. The bank account goes live tomorrow. I had better become organised.

I also had a good trawl through the mortgage account trying to work out why interest payments vary month by month and can go up even if I've overpaid, or go down when I haven't done anything. No clue. There are 3 sub-accounts so I thought maybe one was quarterly or something but they are all paid monthly and are all at he same interest rate, which hasn't changed since the middle of last year.

And lastly - I tried to get into our online phone/broadband account and didn't succeed. User name and password both missing. At least it's secure!

Cherryfudge

Just found DH's receipt for his tea (will try to womble his loyalty points tomorrow - he's lost his loyalty card). It appears I'm not the only one who forgets to get cash out before I go into the shop: he paid by card then got his share of the food money out as cashback - result: an overspend of £2.78 before he starts. I think the same happened last week.
So if this happened every week for a year, there goes £144.56 without his even noticing. That's before you take my similar slip-ups into account.

How to organise ourselves so we have the cash before we go into the shop?

Cherryfudge

Tuesday: rarely a no-spend day as I have a piano lesson.

Some unexpected spending as I'm almost out of decaff coffee and hot choc, which amounts to a (very small) crisis, especially as neither was on offer. I also topped up my sister's phone and did a top-upon line shop for her: she's going to pay me back but hasn't got internet while she's in the UK so it's easier for me.

I continued my foray into down-shifting. The down-shifted decaff has been replaced by a couple f brands better though still not my usual one. I debated downshifting on the hot chocolate but realised I can afford the 'best' one and it's fairtrade. I've gone for a much cheaper laundry liquid again as the previous cheap one seemed to work well enough. I'm no longer at the stage where there is deeply ingrained dirt to remove from the kids' clothes!

Still, the housekeeping shopping was a bit much - usually I manage to juggle it so I'm not replacing 2 coffees, a large hot chocolate and the laundry liquid at the same time.

Spends:
housekeeping 7.48
stationery 1.50
toiletries 1.00
Piano lesson 10.00
Sister's phone 20.00
Sister Mr T order 40.13 (TBC)
Piano music 2.95? Used part of a gift voucher, so free to me.

I've also given myself a bit of a headache researching credit cards. Do I really want one? I think so - take a leaf out of my friend's book. She's very money savvy and pays back on the same day, but it's a supermarket credit card so she gets loyalty points. That could be a triple win for me - not only the points and the stronger credit rating, but also now that I'm keeping track of housekeeping here instead of juggling the cash budgets in my purse, I wouldn't need to be constantly owing things from one budget to another. That's what happens when I feel I need to pay exactly to help the shop out, and believe me, I do that all the time and end up unable to sort out how to pay the general money back 74p because I only have a fiver in housekeeping.

I can only give it a try. I do quite like reconciling the books at the end of the day (I'm odd like that).

Cherryfudge

Credit card application approved. Never had one before, need to learn how to use it! Let's hope I never get a major break in Internet access, as I haven't worked out how else to keep it paid off.

And it took about 50 minutes from start to finish: so much for my early night.

MS stuff that I forgot earlier:
Chickpea curry for tea - under £2 for 5 portions, and that's DD's and my work lunches sorted for a couple of days.
Still collecting onion roots for growing!
Proper Martin Lewis run of the dishwasher - half load and half a tablet! Only need a full tablet if the stuff is 'properly dirty'.
Bought some music using gift voucher I had for my birthday - and got it 2nd hand at about 1/12th the price of new!
Saw the online shopping was approaching the amount where I could reduce P&P charges so spent the difference on breakfast bars and the like which will keep. I'm spending the money anyway - I'd rather have something to show for it.

Cherryfudge

So, credit card sorted out with minimal bother so credit rating must be okay.

One down, x? to go...

Been looking at what all our bank accounts are - funny how I didn't know all of them. Two savers, three currents and an ISA with N. One current with H. Somewhere in the depths of the PO is another current and another saver, probably with relatively small amounts in.

I've transferred bits into the general saver and the holiday saver this morning. DH won't notice unless I tell him! He is still uber-busy with the new job - today will be a 13 or 14 hours day by the time he gets home. I'm working late then early today & tomorrow so there's not much I can do to help. I noticed he is paying with his debit card at Mr T, meaning he's not had the chance to get the cash out, but that's how little extra expenditure gets in. I need to give that some thought - maybe add him to my new card so at least we get points for spending! He has his own but it doesn't get us anything.

The money tips mentions a savings account which pays better interest if you save £100 a month. That sounds do-able - it would still be there if needed but at a better rate than the current account. Trouble is, it would involve a credit check and I've just had one done. I understand too many of them in themselves have a temporarily negative effect on credit rating. One to bear in mind though.

Pension: that's the other thing I ought to do something about. Searching the pensions stuff at work isn't telling me much about overpaying so I either need a phone call or a forums search, or both.

Today was going to be an NSD but I haven't bought Easter eggs yet...

I still haven't reconciled the accounts either, though I have lots of notes towards them. Then I should update my signature, but I haven't worked out how to factor in the advance payments for food which is going to be at the other house and not much will get eaten for a while. If I count it in this month's food money, we will be eating out of the freezer and hedgerows for at least a week!

And... the Executor's account still isn't showing on my online banking? Why not?