Travelling On

Karmacat

Gas and electricity
Just logged in to my dual fuel account with my energy provider, and took lots of photos with my phone.  
- you can compare useage for the last 3 years - I've used much less this year than I have in the previous 2 years at the same point, good to know.

- looking at just this year, gas is around 90% of the fuel I've been paying for, oops.  So that's central heating last winter, about 5 hours worth since I started putting the heating on, plus the dishwasher and the washing machine, which are both cold fill, of course.  Hmm.  

- between 24 Sept, when I input figures, and today's date.  Hmm. 
Okay, the balance on 23 September was +£16.80.  After submitting my meter readings today, my balance is -£21.25, so I spent £38.05, in about 3 weeks.  And I'd been away for 4 days of one of those weeks. 
Okay, days: 28 days (it may be 29, but I'm not faffing about to that extent), less 4.  In 24 days, I used £38, about £1.50 a day.  Thats good then, though I'm not sure I've got that right. 
Update 18th October.  I'm such a nitwit.  Three weeks, minus 4 days, is 17 days, not 28. Bah!  Which means that the daily useage has been £2.25.  Still okay, but not what I thought.


Lessons
Gas is definitely a really high percentage of what I use: need to consider ways to keep it down as much as I can, short of falling ill, of course: "sometimes the cheapest way to pay is with money".
I wanted to increase the direct debit, in line with what I wrote on here earlier this week, from £62 to £80.  It wouldn't let me.  
Nor would it let me experiment with other tariffs - I wouldn't have switched, in light of what Martin recommends, I was just wondering.  
Since I got back from Hampshire, I've been a bit careless about how long I heat up shower water for: stopping that right now!  I'm going to go back to putting an alarm on my phone to take care of it.  And use my slow cooker more.

Karmacat

OCTOBER PLOT

ADMIN
New aim: £5,000 new money over the next year, for premium bonds/ car.
pay French taxes Tuesday 5th
send some euros to the UK

sort computer docs into correct files Thur 21st, more or less.

back up computer Thur 21st

cancel principality dd Monday 4th

make new principality dd Thursday 7th

fund principality accounts will have to do this monthly, can't seem to do an automatic payment.

send money back to current account Saturday 9th

buy more premium bonds Monday 4th

sort out bank regular saver Saturday 16th

check on elec and gas Friday 15th

sort out broadband bill  done 14th October, for 29th Oct

send London friend the genealogy info

join local horticultural society done Monday 18th Oct

U3A space group - should I go in person? Not just yet. Sat 16th October
Decide on what to knit for the new baby, with the wool I already have. And start knitting!
Purchases: Christmas cards Monday 4th
up to date Highway Code, Monday 4th
Christmas presents.  Good lord, Christmas presents!

GARDEN
Cut back, especially a few plants that do nothing for me or for pollinators 
4 sessions in 2 days, lots more to do, plus planting. 
Doing one long session a day, currently.
Carrying on with this, nowt else to do.

Prepare for winter's garden diy tasks: concreting near kitchen wall, gap filling near air bricks, painting fences, mending gaps in crazy paving.
Insanely optimistic, though I think I was copying from a longer list, to be honest.  Oops.  If I can do any of this, I will.

HOUSE
Cleaning.  It's now much better than it was, but some areas still look like a slum 😮
Doing bits: 2nd bedroom, kitchen, living room.  Less than 50%, some way to go!
Clearing away in my living room and my bedroom, so that I can get someone in to do quotes to replace the windows.
Much better: can't be crossed off yet, but I'm keeping on going.

18 small-ish tasks up there, I've done 10.
5 longer jobs (buy Xmas presents, cut back in garden, prepare for winter's DIY, house cleaning, and clearing living room and bedroom).  Working on 3/5 of those.  

Okay, thats good, especially as its only 15th October, and I didn't start till 10 days ago, because of Hampshire.

I was going to go straight out to the garden, but I'm hungry after all that  off I go to scoff something  

Karmacat

Amazon purchase needed: lovely little baby bootees, 2 congrats cards (grandparent cards are a thing!) and, um, 40g of white clover seeds  well, I thought, as long as I'm there ...  really wanting to splash the biodiversity thing and possibly have less grass cutting  

themadvix

I’m confused Karma - if wm and dw are cold fill, which they probably are, then they aren’t  contributing to your gas consumption…

I’m surprised they wouldn’t let you update your dd but know our provider, Octopus, won’t let anyone switch tariffs or anything at the moment - you have to ring them, which is unheard of for them!

Karmacat

themadvix said:

I’m confused Karma - if wm and dw are cold fill, which they probably are, then they aren’t  contributing to your gas consumption…
   oops.  I was confusing it with the hot water heating, when it's specifically **not** the hot water heating.  Thank you for reading the detail!  Dear me ... horrendous!

I’m surprised they wouldn’t let you update your dd but know our provider, Octopus, won’t let anyone switch tariffs or anything at the moment - you have to ring them, which is unheard of for them!

Ah!  That's probably it.  I'll leave it as is for the moment, then, I know I'll have to pay more, and I have the money ready for them, so no problem.  I'm not volunteering to contact them when I don't absolutely have to 

Still waking up here, a bit: watching a taped Graham Norton, with Jodie Comer displaying her BAFTA award on the tour of Liverpool pubs taken by her mum and dad   


ETA: I was looking for something really easy from the to-do list before I got up and started my day properly.  Turns out opening a high-interest regular saver with my bank was **extremely** easy.  This is at 3%, for £50 a month.  I have a big one at 1% for £250 a month, but it doesn't have the same name, and they didn't kick me out when I started the new one, so hopefully I can have both.  Very interesting and it now means 11 of the shorter 18 items on my October list have been done  


EETA: another item on the to-do list is whether or not to attend a new U3A group in person or on Zoom - I'm currently slated to attend on Zoom.  There's only 3 of us, but neither of the others has mentioned vaccination status or ventilation. They're presumably at least my age, as they're retired.  It would mean a bus journey there and back (its in a local village) plus the meeting.  Not going to do it, especially as I have a few family things coming up where we *are* talking about safety.  Rates are pretty high round here, and I want to know that people are at least as careful as the Healthy Walks group.  It's a shame, but I haven't had the booster or the flu jab yet.  So it goes. 

themadvix

Great progress!

rtandon27

Well done with the regular saver KC - every bit of interest helps!

Karmacat

Morning!  I needed to give myself a day off yesterday, walked round the block and chatted a bit, but did very little else.  I *did* poison myself with adrenalin overload in the early evening, though  from one of the humongous 'piders.  Vacuum cleaner saw to it, but I had to leave the all-plastic part out overnight, it was too heavy to shake out  And I'm still in bed, after drenching a good part of downstairs in Raid   

So, today:
- anti 'pider activities, including powder on the outside of the house, and filling huge gaps I've discovered between the wall and the top of the skirting board.  That'll make the living room warmer too.
- rescue vacuum cleaner part.
- 4 birthdays in the next week - my bulk card shopping on Amazon is paying off  
- I've started to back up the computer, now I need to distribute the saved documents (finance, family photos, genealogy documents etc) to the correct folders, then back up in finished format.  At least that's on the big list!
- I think I'll join the local horticultural society before I get up - that's on the list too, that'll be good.

Karmacat

Works in progress:
- I've done the Horticultural Society payment.  £6.75, including 75p to have my membership card sent to me, its a bargain   
- Update on SOA: mobile bill isn't £9, its £10, because they're sneaky about not mentioning VAT, and I always forget.
- 2nd Update on SOA: I forgot the water bill!  And I can only trace one of the water companies, £14 a month.  Different services supply different things here, and I don't even seem to be *paying* the 2nd one.  Bit of detective work needed.
- found out where the "standing orders happen here" bit is, on my bank webpage - which means I *can* do part of the dance-around with Principality automatically, hurray.  Not doing it right now, today's list takes priority.

Karmacat

Water bills and standing orders have gone by the board a bit at the moment.  I got a bit over-tired with all the physical work, garden plus house - though I have managed to start the anti 'pider activities - clearing away furniture, cleaning along the gaps, watching youtube videos and learning how to load a cartridge of sealant into the gun ... it would've been impossible without youtube!   

So, today is sort of busy:
- might go on the healthy walk.  I was out yesterday in all the blowiness, I'm a bit tired still to be honest - currently in bed with a cuppa and a laptop, which I like a lot  
- see if I can use the sealant gun, it would help with drafts too.
- tidy and clean kitchen on an emergency basis!  I'll just slip this into the end of the post - my gas boiler refuses to switch on, its bleating "0F" at me, which apparently means it wants to be serviced  I have to clear away the flowerpots ready to be washed etc so that the boiler can be reached.