Finally Debt Free After 34 Years, But Still Need to Live Frugally

foxgloves

Nice to see you back, HHoD. Hope the coming week will be less stressful. I think it doesn't help at the moment that we can't get out to do different things at weekends, so it all feels a bit samey. I am really hoping to get out into the garden over the coming week for a bit of a mental boost. 
F x

doingitanyway

Good to read you are more relaxed now. me too. I also had a few wobbly days but I got active today like you did and feel all the better for it.

Wishing you a good week.

beanielou

Hope the coming week is not too stressful.

badmemory

Please look at more than the headline on your pension figures - I know you probably have but just in case.  It is only those who started work in 2016 that need exactly 35 years contributions.  For those with defined benefit pensions too they may need many more or if they have lots of SERPS they may need many less.

Fidelia

HairyHandofDartmoor said:

I've had a day of being productive and relaxing...………..

......….noticed that my crocuses have small yellow flower buds on them and my hellebore (red lady) is a mass of lovely flowers, which is an encouraging sign of spring around the corner 🙂.

............I was craving chocolate earlier but there's none in the house, so I made do with olives instead which helped a lot. I think it's due to me feeling a bit tired and the horrid weather that's making me crave chocolate as I don't usually. The olives will be a lot healthier for me anyway. It's lucky I don't drink alcohol as I'd probably be an alcoholic by now after the stressful January I've had 🤪!

Sounds the ideal weekend for you, HHoD, given the strange circumstances we're all living in. Getting essential stuff done plus having time to relax is a good mix. 

Your garden is sounding lovely.  No sign of life from anything this far north yet except some snowdrops valiantly struggling through.  When I see buds on the forsythia bushes I know spring is really here but, sadly, only bare stems so far and it will be a good while yet before I see anything.

I'm not surprised you're craving chocolate.  I don't have a sweet tooth but I've been craving crisps recently and luckily for my waistline there are none in the house. Your olives sound good, I wish I had some of them in the cupboard. I've taken to spreading pesto on my morning toast.  No idea why, these are strange times!    I know of several people who have given up alcohol throughout Dry January.   If they normally enjoy alcohol it must have been a real trial getting through without any especially with all the stresses of this particular January.

Wishing you a good, safe week with nice weather over the  lunch breaks.  Take care xxx

Onebrokelady

HairyHandofDartmoor said:

The last week at school has been good, apart from two days where we had pouring rain and strong winds 🌬🌧☔ so we had to keep the children indoors at lunchtime. We had two days where it was sunny at lunchtime and it's really pleasant on those occasions being outside with the children and watching them play in the sunshine ☀️. In the classroom we seem to have quite a high proportion of difficult children, but they tend to be the vulnerable ones that have complicated home lives and complex emotional needs. It's good for those children to have the stablility of school, but it's very tiring for the school staff to manage their behaviour and keep them learning.

I have to take a lateral flow virus test at home twice a week because I'm school staff. Well, that was a stressful experience 😱! I asked DH to help me do it. He had to stick a swab down my throat and rub both my tonsils (which made me gag 😩) and then stick the same swab high up my nose and rub it around (which was so uncomfortable it made my eyes water 😩). It takes half an hour for the result to appear and then I have to email school with the result and enter also the result on a government portal and give them the number of the test. No pressure then! My test was negative so there's about a 40% chance that I'm not infected 🤣 (they're not very accurate and only pick up virus levels if they are quite high). It's quite a stressful thing to have to do twice a week 😟, but I feel like I have to do it. We were told that it's voluntary, but I don't want to get a reputation for being difficult and at least it will pick up some potential infections among staff.

I've found out that school will be closed at half term 🎉🎉🎉, so I'm very pleased about that as it will give me a complete break from all the virus measures and coping with difficult children 😃. Hopefully I won't have to self test for the virus at half term. I won't be able to go anywhere apart from the park or the supermarket so I'll probably be desperate to get back to school after a week 🤣.  But it will enable me to get on top of the washing, ironing and cleaning, plus I want to help DH tidy up the office as it's a right mess in there 🙄.

This morning I had to go to Mr M and get some bits that we'd run out of. I was very grateful to get my 10% school discount as it saved me just over £6 and we're short of money at the moment. DS3 said he would give me some money towards the food he wanted, so I was pleased about that as our food bills have definitely gone up since he's been at home.

The rest of today I want to finally unwind and do lots of washing. I hope everyone in Diaryland is have a good Saturday 🙂.

Our lateral flow tests only have to go up each nostril we don't have to swab our throats 

mummytogirls

Ive decided I am going to do my LFT on an evening from now HHOD. I did mine Monday morning and it was awful!!!! xx

HairyHandofDartmoor

foxgloves said:

Nice to see you back, HHoD. Hope the coming week will be less stressful. I think it doesn't help at the moment that we can't get out to do different things at weekends, so it all feels a bit samey. I am really hoping to get out into the garden over the coming week for a bit of a mental boost. 
F x

Thanks Foxgloves 🙂. I'm so very fed up with rain, but hopefully the winter storms will end soon and we can get outside more.

doingitanyway said:

Good to read you are more relaxed now. me too. I also had a few wobbly days but I got active today like you did and feel all the better for it.

Wishing you a good week.

Thanks DIA 🙂. Getting active does help.

beanielou said:

Hope the coming week is not too stressful.

Thanks Beanie 🙂.

badmemory said:

Please look at more than the headline on your pension figures - I know you probably have but just in case.  It is only those who started work in 2016 that need exactly 35 years contributions.  For those with defined benefit pensions too they may need many more or if they have lots of SERPS they may need many less.

Thanks Badmemory 🙂. I'm a complete ignoramous about pensions. My personal tax account said that I needed to pay another five years of NI contributions to get my full state pension. I don't know what a defined benefit pension is? I've only got my school pension that has been running for nearly two years and apart from that I'll be reliant on a state pension when I'm aged 67. 

Fidelia said:

HairyHandofDartmoor said:

I've had a day of being productive and relaxing...………..

......….noticed that my crocuses have small yellow flower buds on them and my hellebore (red lady) is a mass of lovely flowers, which is an encouraging sign of spring around the corner 🙂.

............I was craving chocolate earlier but there's none in the house, so I made do with olives instead which helped a lot. I think it's due to me feeling a bit tired and the horrid weather that's making me crave chocolate as I don't usually. The olives will be a lot healthier for me anyway. It's lucky I don't drink alcohol as I'd probably be an alcoholic by now after the stressful January I've had 🤪!

Sounds the ideal weekend for you, HHoD, given the strange circumstances we're all living in. Getting essential stuff done plus having time to relax is a good mix. 

Your garden is sounding lovely.  No sign of life from anything this far north yet except some snowdrops valiantly struggling through.  When I see buds on the forsythia bushes I know spring is really here but, sadly, only bare stems so far and it will be a good while yet before I see anything.

I'm not surprised you're craving chocolate.  I don't have a sweet tooth but I've been craving crisps recently and luckily for my waistline there are none in the house. Your olives sound good, I wish I had some of them in the cupboard. I've taken to spreading pesto on my morning toast.  No idea why, these are strange times!    I know of several people who have given up alcohol throughout Dry January.   If they normally enjoy alcohol it must have been a real trial getting through without any especially with all the stresses of this particular January.

Wishing you a good, safe week with nice weather over the  lunch breaks.  Take care xxx

Thanks Fidelia 🙂. I don't usually crave chocolate, but on the last few Sundays I seem to be have been feeling a bit tired and down hearted. I think it's the January blues. Thank goodness it's February now 🙂. I haven't craved alcohol at all since I stopped drinking it two and a half years ago. Even on Christmas day I wasn't even tempted to have any, despite a bottle of prosecco being open on the table 🍾. We had to pour half the bottle down the sink in the end because it went off after a week.

 It is lovely to see my garden starting to grow. We do get an early spring in the south west. 

Onebrokelady said:

HairyHandofDartmoor said:

The last week at school has been good, apart from two days where we had pouring rain and strong winds 🌬🌧☔ so we had to keep the children indoors at lunchtime. We had two days where it was sunny at lunchtime and it's really pleasant on those occasions being outside with the children and watching them play in the sunshine ☀️. In the classroom we seem to have quite a high proportion of difficult children, but they tend to be the vulnerable ones that have complicated home lives and complex emotional needs. It's good for those children to have the stablility of school, but it's very tiring for the school staff to manage their behaviour and keep them learning.

I have to take a lateral flow virus test at home twice a week because I'm school staff. Well, that was a stressful experience 😱! I asked DH to help me do it. He had to stick a swab down my throat and rub both my tonsils (which made me gag 😩) and then stick the same swab high up my nose and rub it around (which was so uncomfortable it made my eyes water 😩). It takes half an hour for the result to appear and then I have to email school with the result and enter also the result on a government portal and give them the number of the test. No pressure then! My test was negative so there's about a 40% chance that I'm not infected 🤣 (they're not very accurate and only pick up virus levels if they are quite high). It's quite a stressful thing to have to do twice a week 😟, but I feel like I have to do it. We were told that it's voluntary, but I don't want to get a reputation for being difficult and at least it will pick up some potential infections among staff.

I've found out that school will be closed at half term 🎉🎉🎉, so I'm very pleased about that as it will give me a complete break from all the virus measures and coping with difficult children 😃. Hopefully I won't have to self test for the virus at half term. I won't be able to go anywhere apart from the park or the supermarket so I'll probably be desperate to get back to school after a week 🤣.  But it will enable me to get on top of the washing, ironing and cleaning, plus I want to help DH tidy up the office as it's a right mess in there 🙄.

This morning I had to go to Mr M and get some bits that we'd run out of. I was very grateful to get my 10% school discount as it saved me just over £6 and we're short of money at the moment. DS3 said he would give me some money towards the food he wanted, so I was pleased about that as our food bills have definitely gone up since he's been at home.

The rest of today I want to finally unwind and do lots of washing. I hope everyone in Diaryland is have a good Saturday 🙂.

Our lateral flow tests only have to go up each nostril we don't have to swab our throats 

Thanks OBL 🙂. Our instructions that the school emailed to me said we were to swab our tonsils and up one nostril. I wonder why the instructions aren't consistent 🙄.

mummytogirls said:

Ive decided I am going to do my LFT on an evening from now HHOD. I did mine Monday morning and it was awful!!!! xx

Thanks MTG 🙂. It's awful doing it isn't it? The eight page form we have to fill in on the government website doesn't help 😡 Why can't they save our details instead of having to repeat EVERYTHING twice a week 🙄.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Sorry I've been awol again. School and life generally seem so tiring at the moment that I only seem to find time to post at the weekends.

This last week at school has been quite good. It's rained almost every day but not badly enough to keep the children indoors. We seem to have more children coming back to school all the time and there is talk of splitting them into two classes in year two if the numbers keep growing. The staff have been joking that the difficult ones are being sent back to school because the parents are getting fed up with having them at home 🤣 . One parent wanted their child to come back because he was refusing to do any work at home and we had to laugh because we struggle to get him to do any work at school and sometimes only the threat of having to finish his work at playtime will get him to do anything! Most of our children are lovely though and it's a pleasure to have them in school 😃, it's only a few that drain our energy and make us lose the will to live 😖. We did more artwork on two afternoons which the children and I enjoyed. It's very messy to clear up but I don't mind as it's fun for a change and the children love it. Also those who struggle with numeracy and literacy sometimes get a chance to shine when we do art and crafts.

I managed to scald my arm on the kettle at school on Monday and it came up in a blister which then burst so my arm is quite painful 😟 🤕. We didn't have any bandages at home so I've been putting a plaster on at night to stop it being rubbed and leaving it exposed in the daytime to let the air get to it and just putting germolene on it. But it's not healing up very well and is still very sore, so I bought some sterile dressings and bandages at Mr M last night. I'll keep a sterile dressing on to keep the burn clean and protect it from knocks but it should be able to breathe better I hope. I should have dressed it at school I suppose as we have a first aid room but I it didn't even occur to me to do first aid on myself 🙄, I just rushed off to carry on doing my job after holding it under a cold tap for a few minutes.

This morning it's beautiful sunshine and my crocuses, narcissus and snowdrops from my mum's old house are showing more and more buds 🌺🌻🌻🏵. I do feel as though spring is in the air and it's only week until half term 😃.

Renewing our working tax credits claim with our actual income figure has resulted in us receiving £800 from them 🎉🎉🎉, which is very welcome as we were short of money to pay the bills. That will cover March's mortgage payment and other bills until I get paid again.

On 25 February it will be two years since I started my MTA job at school 😃. Apart from self-employment that's the longest I've ever worked anywhere. I'm not a natural flitter from job to job, but moving to different parts of the country and lots of temporary jobs before I had my children mean that I've never worked for any employer for longer than a year before now. Also this is the first job that I've actually enjoyed. It also means that I will have more employment rights of course. I've suggested to DH that it would be nice to celebrate the two year anniversary of me having this job so we're going to buy a cake 🎂 😀.

I've started off this sunny Saturday by putting my school clothes on to wash and cutting DH's hair. His hair was very long so he's pleased that I've cut it. Although I hate doing it as it's tiring and he's a terrible critic, so I'll be very thankful when it's safe for him to go back to the barber again. Me cutting his hair may save money, but it's not good for my mental health or our marriage 😤🙄 .

I've finished drinking a Costalot latte made with my fancy coffee machine ☕, so it's time to see if the wash has finished and do a few other Saturday jobs.

I hope everyone in Diaryland is having a splendid Saturday 🙂 .

Parkyp

Happy anniversary, can I asked what jobs you’ve had in the past and what made you do mta. You do always sound as though you enjoy your time at school even when the children are trying your patience 😁.  Good getting your tax credits sorted- nice to know the bills will be paid. Enjoy the rest of your day .