Viking's Diary

Viking_mfw

becky170 said:

Hi Viking, just been catching up with your diary. Really hope you've managed to fix your bath. I'm embarrassed to say that we stopped using our shower 3 years ago as it kept leaking into the kitchen even after resealing it. We've been making do with a showerhead in the bath ever since. Think it's definitely time for us to have a new bathroom 

Our shower is over the bath so if one goes the other does! DH has sealed everywhere ruining the neatness... tomorrow is the big test day. 

Nothing exciting to report re finances, just trogging along to the end of the month. On the other hand, both my account and the joint account are still in credit which is good. Plus DH was the first to break and ask me to order new loo roll

Viking_mfw

The leak persists... although it is less... so *shrug*

Most exciting money thing today was getting notification that I was getting a £20 key deposit refund from work (??!) But the remittance advice does not have my bank details on it (as in, it has someone else's) and I don't recall giving a key deposit... so not sure that's actually going to materialise. Which is a shame as that would have made only £52.58 more house insurance to pay back to the EF...

Viking_mfw

Found my ancient iPad mini while tidying and have discovered I can sell it for recycling for £16 so today's job is to charge it up and delete everything then sort out getting it sent off tomorrow. Every little helps. 

Viking_mfw

Sadly it turned out that the £20 key deposit refund was intended for someone else, so that's off. However, I have managed to scrape together another box of about £26 for We Buy Books, so that's set to be collected tomorrow. iPad has gone off to iPad heaven. I'm hoping it's payday tomorrow given the bank holiday but I suspect it may not be til Friday. 

Have picked and eaten a handful of raspberries from the garden, and some homegrown toms. There are a couple of pears on our relatively young pear tree which look like they might be ripening so I need to go out there with a knife and get them before the wind destroys them. My four figs are stubbornly not ripening but they have grown to a reasonable size now. 

With iPad and Webuybooks the total for the house insurance which has not been repaid to savings is £30.29. I have £16 of personal spends left from the budget, but I also have my eye on a book which would be £11. So about £25 out of the full £268 not made up by extra earnings or personal savings this month, which is actually not at all bad. 

Today I have also sent off some ideas for potential online teaching next year that I've been invited to do - not sure if I have anything compatible with their ideas, but if so, will be useful money. 

Viking_mfw

Sold some stamps on tree of gum, plus a we buy books pick up today; overpaid the total of £28.81 which is just over 2 days' interest. 

savingholmes

It all helps. Keep it up

Viking_mfw

Having discovered last week that the local shed company we were planning to get our shed from had a minimum wait time of 18-20 weeks for delivery, I found a different shed company who will get it to us within 8. The shed is probably not the same heavy duty quality but we don't actually need a top of the range shed. This shed doesn't come with all the optional extras so DH is going to have put in his own workbench and storage, but even so, it's still £2k cheaper!  

Viking_mfw

After some serious discussion with DH we've agreed that the best time to move to a 'forever' home would be in 8.5 years, when DS1 hits secondary school. We want a bigger garden - ideally we'd like a couple of acres but it seems unlikely we can get that in the very expensive county where we live - and to be somewhere a little more rural (which is achievable while still living within 5 miles of work). This gives us 8.5 years to find about another £200k which is what we will need for the latter. And in 8.5 years I will have reached the top of the salary scale which gives some mortgage manouvreability. 

I am an academic so working harder doesn't result in earning more, and in fact I work such long hours that side hustles are difficult. One of the few things I can do which are both work and financially beneficial is write books, but frankly the earnings are unlikely to amount to more than a couple of hundred pounds a year even when you have several books out. I have a book coming out this month and a contract to write another one by the end of March. Both of these are royalties only, as is the usual case with academic books. I also have a half written non fiction book I plan to publish on Amazon which might make a few more bob, but I have been put off so far by the difficulties of sorting out the tax situation for self-publishing on Amazon. 
So: 
Goal 1 2021: Sort out US tax registration thingy for kindle publishing.
Goal 2 2021: Finish and publish at least the first non-fiction book on Amazon. 

I also occasionally get ask to review book proposals which can pay in money or books, which I always do, but it's not within my control to increase that. Similarly I can earn some extra money through consultancy, but that has to be with the permission of my boss, and it's limited, and it's mostly when people approach me. So I will continue to pick these things up as and when I can. When I do:
Goal 3 2021: Split 'bonus' earnings between OPs and PB savings.

Otherwise the most controllable thing is our family finances. I am trying to be more zero waste so hopefully we can reduce our food outgoings a bit. I am also getting more experienced with my gardening and being more strategic over food growing, which has the secondary benefit of being really good for my mental health. 
Goal 4 2021: Increase and record the amount of home-grown food.
Goal 5 2021: Eat vegetarian at least twice a week and reduce the number of meat-focused meals otherwise.
Goal 6 2021: Encourage DH to cater around what's cheap, not what he fancies on any given day. Includes keeping a stock of freezer pizza to avoid Pizza Hut raids, or other things that are quick and easy meals when we are knackered. 
Goal 7 2021: 'Declutter' by selling off the kiddy things as DS2 grows out of them. Send money to OPs.  

And finally, an MSE and planet saving win. We recently had a divan base delivered for DS1's mattress to save the back of whoever has to go in to him in the middle of the night. It was missing a corner to one of the drawers, and the assembly, which I paid for, hadn't removed the strapping which holds one drawer shut. I rang up to complain and the company offered to replace it! Since this seemed rather disproportionate I countered that they should send me the metal corner and refund a portion of the assembly fee. Full refund of £25 heading my way and a metal corner. Far more satisfactory!

Viking_mfw

Returning to add: £650 is about a month off the end of the mortgage. My total overpayments to date are £516.22 so I am going to see if I can find £133.78 by the end of the year to have overpaid a month before 2021 starts. (I usually think of OPs as whatever is most appropriate at the time - e.g. a day's interest, or portions of a month.)

savingholmes

Sounds like you are on a roll. Refunds are always nice.