Light the fire...

lucielle

Great news on the money front
L

greent

Double lot of bonus money - fantastic! (insert jumping smiley! )

savingholmes

Great new on the gas fire bid - and the mortgage refund. You seem to be motoring along. We pay about £50 a month for water on a 4 bed house with a DD who has a deep bath almost every day....

coldcazzie

Just read your diary from start to finish! So pleased to hear you are recently settled in your Dream Home!  

coldcazzie

We are on a water meter - 5 of us (inc 2 teens) in a 3 bed semi, we don't really scrimp on water - the washer is on regularly, we all shower/bathe enough and we have multiple animals that need watering too - and we pay £37pcm.

woodfired

Thanks for all of the replies regarding the water meter, it seems to be a no-brainer! Very helpful, thanks again.
I'm having a quiet half hour with a coffee and some diary catch up.  Once again we have had a busy weekend.  This house seems to accumulate people, we seem to get loads of visitors - which I love - but it's nice to have a bit of peace just now.  

Friday was spent having a good clean of the house, dusted and hoovered right through, 2 loads of laundry washed and hung up and bathrooms cleaned.  Then we delivered some firewood to a little village in North Yorks - about 35 minutes away - and we have resolved to take the children back there in better weather.  A tiny, beautiful village but with tennis courts, playground, a small river running through, a cave/waterfall visitor center and a NT property.  It was lovely! 
Then on Friday night a few of my family joined us for a Chinese which was a nice treat.

Saturday, my sister visited in the morning and spent a couple of hours here.  I prepped dinner whilst we chatted (homemade chicken kebabs and chips with roasted veg and salad) and then made everybody lunch of bacon sandwiches.  In the afternoon we met friends in the local for drinks, got home about 6.30 and we were grateful for the prepped dinner, on the table in 15 minutes.

This morning has seen me do the order for the shop, 2 further loads of washing, clean the kitchen and utility including mopping the floors and now relaxing by the fire.  It's likely we will have more visitors this afternoon so dinner will be a quick to prepare but lovely; sausage, egg chips and beans. Back to work tomorrow for a rest!

woodfired

coldcazzie said:

Just read your diary from start to finish! So pleased to hear you are recently settled in your Dream Home!  

Ahh, bless you, thank you.     It is very different from the last house but we are loving the space.  Thanks for reading it all, I'm impressed!

savingholmes

Glad you are settling in well. North Yorks can be so beautiful. We've holidayed there and would love to go back.

coldcazzie

savingholmes said:

Glad you are settling in well. North Yorks can be so beautiful. We've holidayed there and would love to go back.

We are in Yorkshire too and it is beautiful here 😍

woodfired

Yorkshire is beautiful and I especially love north Yorkshire, my Dad's family come from over that way so I think it's bred into me to love it!

Admin this afternoon, usually don't mind it but this is lots of bill paying so I'm not as happy as I should be!  Have paid the final balance on our previous gas and elec and cancelled the DD.  It was £264 to close the account which is a lot, mainly because my previous supplier went bust and they moved me to a much more expensive one.  Plus they didn't take and DDs for a couple of months so we fell behind.  All sorted now and have been through MSE to find a new supplier for this house that will hopefully be reasonable.  I have just taken some meter readings for new supplier and rough calculations suggest we are on track to use about £93 worth of gas/elec this month.  This is almost half what I expected to be paying as previous owners suggested it was around £180 per month.  Happy with that and I can only assume they were very wasteful with their energy usage, obviously not MSE fans!

I have paid the invoice for the new boiler we had to fit at our rented-out flat above the shop the week we moved £1545 lighter but at least it's done.

I have also raised a couple of invoices for DH, at least that is money coming in, not out, for a change.

I'm still waiting for a rebate on the council tax for old house.  It's funny how the bill for the new place landed behind the door the day after they received the change of owner form but "it may take several weeks" for them to calculate the rebate owed to us!!  Honestly.

Finally, in more exciting news, the first mortgage payment went out this morning and my balance is showing in the H@lifax app.  I have also noticed that they are starting a new competition where you can win your mortgage paid off each month.  To enter you need a current account and there are funding/DD requirements to meet but I like the sound of that! So, I'm off to sign up for a current acc.