Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Aha, you're right of course - I used the regular saver drip feed calculator but when I'd done the first one I just used the same amount for the second, conpletely forgetting the second was 2% not 5%

Thank you SO much for your help this morning, much appreciated :j :j

Lunch had (minestrone soup from the freezer) and I'm feeling far more human - especially as we found a scone in the freezer and shared it with a nice cuppa :j

Went to the library this morning to collect the book I reserved and ended up coming out with 7 books very much enjoying sitting warm and cosy by the window reading at the minute :j

Off to ponder UFM Day 5 and see what I can come up with :j

Cheery_Daff

I'm on it with the UFM waffling in a minute... just wanted to note that the post brought a letter from the mortgage company, confirming my overpayment, saying that the required payments had reduced but we'd opted to keep them the same, so we're now overpaying by £4.36 a month :money: So if we do no more overpayments, according to MSE calculator, that alone should reduce the term by 1 whole month :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Better than nowt!

Right, UFM waffling coming up (I bet you'll all be glad when I go back to work next week :rotfl: )

Tescodealqueen

Sent you a pm

Cheery_Daff

Uber Frugal Month Day 5


So, Day 5 is all about eating up the food in the storecupboards :j

We don't tend to keep very big storecupboards anyway... Mr Cheery prefers to run things down regularly and then be ingenious in his concoctions :rotfl: Although now we live a few miles from a shop we do have a bit of a 'proper' storecupboard of flour, sugar, oats, tins etc that doesn't get touched (it does get rotated, but we won't be running it down for the purposes of this).

Anyway, I had a look in the fridge/freezer/cupboards

FRIDGE
Cottage cheese
bit of cheddar
yogurt
milk
mushrooms
half a carton of passata
half a lettuce
bag of spinach

OTHER VEG
onions
carrots
potatoes
sweet potatoes
celery
swede

FREEZER
Breadcrumbs
Different types of bread (we don't eat much bread, so when we acquire it it usually lives in the freezer) - sliced, sandwich thins, and one naan and some pittas)
Blueberres & raspberries
Home grown basil - forgot about that!
Root veg for mashing
green beans
peas
small amount of peppers
spinach
corn on the cob
Christmas biscuits Hiding in here from easy access :rotfl:
2 bags of parsnip and lentil soup
1 bag of minestrone soup (just ate the other one for lunch)
1 bag green lentil and marrow soup
1 bag sausage casserole sauce (Whatever that is - I made it apparently...)

CUPBOARDS
pasta, rice, noodles
oats
tins of chick peas and kidney beans
red and green lentils
tahini
herbs, spices, gravy etc
9 eggs

A pretty well stocked kitchen for us! :j

I do want to get back into the habit of cooking though, and some of that veg in the freezer has been there for months, as have those home made soups... So in the spirit of UFM I shall

* cook something for tea every night, and freeze a portion of leftovers
* eat those freezer soups for lunches this week

Working at home mostly for the next few months so should be able to be a bit more organised about this... Fingers crossed!

So I'm at home tonight and have plenty of time so I'm going to make some gnocci which I can portion in the freezer, some sauce I can portion to go with it, and might also do a mushroom risotto to have with the last of the lettuce tonight :j

Karmacat

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

I'm on it with the UFM waffling in a minute... just wanted to note that the post brought a letter from the mortgage company, confirming my overpayment, saying that the required payments had reduced but we'd opted to keep them the same, so we're now overpaying by £4.36 a month :money: So if we do no more overpayments, according to MSE calculator, that alone should reduce the term by 1 whole month :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Better than nowt!

Right, UFM waffling coming up (I bet you'll all be glad when I go back to work next week :rotfl: )

I'm loving this, between UFM, your own repayments (£4.36 monthly overpayment and a month off the mortgage is a fantastic result for your overpayment this year, well done you!), and the whole shunting money around accounts to get the good interest rates, its a mine of information
:T:T:T

Cheery_Daff

Thanks KC! And there was me thinking I wouldn't necessarily get anything out of UFM this time round Just goes to show we all have things to learn :j

Done a good stint of batch cooking this afternoon :j

Potatoes boiled and mashed and in the fridge ready to make gnocchi tomorrow - should be enough for at least two portions

Lovely bottom-of-fridge risotto with cabbage, lettuce & all manner of bits - half eaten tonight with a bouled egg, other half in the fridge for tomorrow

4 portions of lasagne ready for the freezer (dead simple although possibly a bit watery.... Made it with frozen spinach & green beans...)

Not a bad effort!

Still at Slimming World - I'd lost just over a stone but put 3.5 lbs on over Christmas and new year. No, it's not really moneysaving... But for now I've decided to stick with it - and can make it a bit moneysaving by actually sticking to it so I can get to target more quickly and stop paying :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, been tidying out the study in preparation for going back to work on Monday :eek:

Doing lots of moaning as it's a complete tip in there :eek:

But it's worth it as I've just found about £25 of change bagged up in a drawer :j :j clearly been there a while as one of the bags also has an old £10 not :rotfl: :rotfl:

rtandon27

Second mortgage over-payment sorted!:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Indeed! :money: should be about £35 - will see if I can pay it in at the post office in the week :T

Also Mr Cheery found some currency from his trip away in the autumn - we'd both forgotten about it so have agreed that can go off the mortgage too, should be another £80 or so depending on exchange rate :money:

Off to a good start! :j :j

Then we've got the married tax thing when we sort it out, and I'm HOPING the car insurance will be less than last year (as I'll actually have a year of no claims myself by then) so I may put some of the extra towards it (although that might just go in the general pot, will see how the general pot is looking by then...)

rtandon27

Another 80! Well done!:T- at this rate you are going to find treasure - have you checked under the floor boards or under the oak tree?

We managed to scrounge up this weekend was 2.55 'laundry money' as OH forgets to empty his pockets of loose change!:D