Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Thank you for all your heating insights! :j We will do some experimenting over the holidays :j I think we're always going to spend a bit more cos there's pretty much always one of us in all day every day :eek:

Cheery day today :j Trotted into the local market town for a bit of last minute present buying (MUST remember I've still not got my sister anything! :eek: ) Then dropped in on the neighbours to say Merry Christmas. Ended up being there for well over an hour, and had a tour of the farm.

Ended up fessing up to 20 years of vegetarianism, which I'd been keeping quiet :eek: :eek: :rotfl: Also Mr Cheery had a long conversation about the badger cull :eek: We've been generally trying to avoid anything remotely opinionated, being the newcomers Mr Cheery is a hardcore badger fan, and our neighbour is a dairy farmer :eek: Fortunately I think the conversation was steered away before it got too difficult (or before Mr Cheery fessed up to being a member of the local badger group :rotfl: ).

Fortunately for me I was stood discussing family scandals and who lived in which house with the farmer's dad so I wasn't involved :rotfl:

All cheerful though And we are ready for festivities now :j

Today was the first day we left the chickens out of the run while we weren't here :eek: They usually have the run of the place when we ARE here, but are shut in the run when we're not. As we were only going up the road and knew we'd be back well before it went dark, we left them out. Obviously they were fine and still here when we returned - phew!

Cup of tea now and then a bit of festive wrapping

Merry Christmas lovely MSE chums! :hello:

rtandon27

:xmastree::xmassmile Merry Christmas Cheery & Mr Cheery :xmassmile :xmastree:
:xmassign:

Cheery_Daff

Thank you RT, and Merry Christmas to you and yours too :j :j

Having a lovely day here, just me & Mr Cheery :j Nice and relaxed, carols playing and candles lit, cheery lunch at the new giant table :rotfl: seriously, it's 8 foot long and far too big for our kitchen but we put some big candles on it and it felt like a banquet hall :rotfl: and you can't say no to a free 8 foot long oak table from Freegle :rotfl:

Started making plans for next year :j Now Mr Cheery's having a nap and I'm settling down with a film and a notebook Perfect Christmas day :j

rtandon27

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

...it's 8 foot long and far too big for our kitchen but we put some big candles on it and it felt like a banquet hall...

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Please tell me you sat at opposite ends like Morticia & Gomez!

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Sadly not :rotfl: one end is pushed against a wall and if we pulled it out enough to sit at we literally wouldn't e able to walk across the room. Sat opposite each other at the wall end and just surveyed the rest of it through a pair of binoculars :rotfl:

Karmacat

:santa2: Sounds wonderful to me too, Cheery Happy Boxing Day

Cheery_Daff

Thank you :hello: Happy Boxing Day to you too! :j

Had a cheery day here, a mix of plotting and scheming for next year and planting out some of the trees that arrived the other day :j Just elder, rowan and blackthorn at this stage - and I didn't get them all in, some of them are temporarily in a bucket for a few days.

Just been chatting to Mr Cheery about the mortgage, although now looking at YNAB and my signature I think I've got a bit confused about the figures

I *thought* I had abut £650 in the pot, and was planning to top it up to £1000 with the wayleave money and pay it off in one go (you may remember our mortgage has a ridiculous clause about any overpayment less than £1000 not being taken off the total til the end of the mortgage year - meaning they are both making interest on our overpayment AND not taking the overpaid amount off our mortgage). So it's not worth making an overpayment of less than £1000.

However, before I realised that, I already overpaid £130, which they've now had sat there for months... Hey ho - at least it'll come off at the end of Feb and it wouldn't exactly have made much interest in our account anyway.

I was thinking we'd top up what I'd saved to £1000, and then remembered the £130 already paid, so thought I might add another £70 to it to take the total in 2018 to £1200 - an average of £100 a month :money:

But I'd forgotten that my signature INCLUDES the £130 - which means I only have £500 ish in the pot right now - so to top it up to £1200 would mean taking £570 out of the wayleave money... which feels like quite a chunk...

Hmm. Might need to ponder.

The advantage of doing it before the end of 2018 is (a) because then it gets included in the annual mortgage statement, which is apparently sent out at the end of Feb, but only calculated up to the end of Dec (is our mortgage still stuck in the 19th century?! Apparently so!) and (b) because then we can say 'we paid off xxx in 2018' and start counting again at the start of the new year.

I suppose we could just wait til the end of Feb? But the money is just sat there anyway so I might just take the plunge...

Oh! And I've just remembered I cashed £21 ish out of Prolific the other day - haven't put that in the pot yet - and there's £30 sat on my desk from a birthday card way back in April so I'll put that to it too, and a £10 voucher that I can cash in (er, with myself by buying a present for someone else with it) - so altogether that's £60, so I'd only have to put £510 out of the wayleave (or £440 if we just make it up to the £1000 minimum payment, rather than a nice round £1200 in total).

Hmm.

Cheery_Daff

Morning MSE chums :hello: Not much to report although popping in here I've reminded myself that I meant to ring and pay a chunk off the mortgage this morning so I'd best get on with that! :j Going to take it up to £1200 so that will make me immensely pleased :j

Cheery_Daff

Right - overpayment made :money: I've rounded it up so we've overpayed £1200 this year :money: SO pleased :money:

Asked for a balance - before the overpayment (and rounded to the nearest £100 apparently) we were at £209,200 - so this will be another £1070 off that, effective immediately :money:

Poor guy confused me a bit Asked if I wanted to recalculate monthly payments - I said no, so he said 'right, you'll be making a monthly overpayment then' :eek: Eek - no! But actually yes, effectively, as we're now paying more each month than we need to to pay off the balance in time - meaning we'll pay it off early, which is what we want :rotfl:

Anyway, off to update signature and start saving for next year! :j :j

rtandon27

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

...Going to take it up to £1200 so that will make me immensely pleased...

:T Well done Cheery! - 100 per month is a nice tidy sum!:T