Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Thanks PurpleFairy. Mr Cheery will be wearing the damn thing as a hat if he gets his own way :eek:

teapot2

Aw no, sorry to hear about the girls and Mildred and Maud being traumatised still. It always seems so senseless when something like that happens.

So upsetting for you and Mr C as well.:(:(:(

ElmoR

:(Sorry to hear about your feathered friends Cheery.
I hope the two survivors recover well.

edwink

ElmoR wrote: »

:(Sorry to hear about your feathered friends Cheery.
I hope the two survivors recover well.

Cheery has posted on the hen thread and has said that the two surviving hens are taking food from her hand now, so that is a really good sign that they will be ok, thankfully. They are still understandably very nervous and subdued but it appears they are improving slowly.

Bless you cheery you are doing great. Although I know you are sad about what has happened you are doing really well and helping the other two so much. Well done x x

Edwink

Cheery_Daff

Aw, thank you lovely people, and thank you edwink for the update :kisses3:

The ladies seem brighter again today, although still a long way to go. Took them into the garden for half an hour to encourage them to scratch around a little but they were having none of it, spent most of the time hiding under a bench still at least they got some fresh air i suppose.

They do seem better though and have started to eat even when we're not in the room which is good. Slight chicken noises today too, and one of them put up a bit of a protest when we picked her up to take her outside!

In financial news... Well, there isn't really any :rotfl:

Spent £2 on cereal bars at Slimming World this morning, and pottered round the charity shops with Mr Cheery and spent £1.99 on a book about wildlife rescue - figured it might come in handy out here in case we happen upon an injured something-or-other.

Dosh should have cleared in the PO account now so I'm going to do some shuffling tonight and get all my new savings accounts topped up and standing orders set up. Be good to get it ticked off.

Also going to press go on the car insurance quote - £500 for 2 cars including commuting & business use ain't bad. Never had business use before but never really needed it as I usually do all work travel on the train. Now though the nearest sensible train station is 30 miles away :rotfl: (well, the one that is practical to use). So might be good to be able to claim a bit of mileage every now and then.

Also need to sort house insurance - not even checked comparison sites for that one (although on reflection the policy docs might be shut in the study with the chickens... So maybe that can wait for tomorrow...)

Cheery_Daff

Gosh, this is SO tedious! :eek:

Have to keep thinking of the interest cos this new account business is SO very boring and long-winded :rotfl:

PO is meant to be an instant access saver - except once you transfer money in there, it's not actually available to transfer out again for 8 days.

Finally transferred the required amount back out today - except apparently it won't get to my bank account until 'within one working day of 11th Feb' :mad:

How is any of that instant access?!

Hey ho. So I can't do my shuffling today, as my savings are now either vanished into the air, or presumably just sitting in the PO's own account gathering interest for them til they can be bothered to transfer to my bank on Tuesday next week - when I'll have to set a reminder to myself to go back to the bank and transfer them to the new savings accounts (which will probably have been closed down again through lack of activity) :mad:

Hmm, Cheery might be a tiny bit tired and hormonal tonight :rotfl:

Right - off to see if I have more joy with the car insurance :eek:

Cheery_Daff

Right, sorting YNAB instead

Been reading around their new forums and guidance, and realised I'm doing something daft that I don't need to be doing (not going into detail as if you don't use YNAB it won't make sense anyway)

Basically I've got too many different bank accounts, and it's complicating things. I'm not talking about the ones I just opened for savings (although that is complicated enough! But at least there are rewards there!)

With my normal bank I've got

(1) joint account
(2) my personal current account (which I never use - both just use the joint one)
(3) extra current account in my name (why?)
(4) joint savings account (which has barely any interest - just transferred the dosh from this to the PO)
(5) my own personal savings account (again, no interest)

All this does is creates a palaver for me having to transfer things between categories in YNAB and transfer between bank accounts. This wasn't really a problem until I just opened 3 other accounts (plus 2 regular savers) and now I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed

So I'm going to keep the joint current (obviously) and my personal current account (because I've got a card for that and it's an easy way of getting hold of money if I stupidly lose my joint account card again )

The rest I have no need for at all so I'll close them.

Karmacat

Thanks for the regular news on the chickens, Cheery - it really is heartbreaking what they've been through, and I do like the sound of them recovering a little bit, clucking when its time to go back inside



I think there's something going round at the moment, about simplifying accounts - Shanghai Jimmy was just writing about it, I was too a few days ago, and earthgirl - can an epidemic be positive? in some cases, I think it can I do have a bit more fiddling around, with direct debits feeding into and out of my rewards current account, and then its an isa to be opened - I really hope I can open a worthwhile one with someone I already bank with, but we'll see.


Have a nice evening

Cheery_Daff

You too KC :hello: definitely reckon a money-sorting epidemic can be positive! :money:

Reading back in here I've realised I've entirely forgotten to sort out the car insurance! Laptop is all closed down now and I've done a bit of flute practice and am considering a bath so insurance will have to wait

I did switch all those accounts into sensible places though, and separated my categories in YNAB a bit more

So instead of just having a lump of 'savings' (spread over several accounts) we've had a good discussion about what we need virtual savings pots for so we now have

* House maintenance
* Car maintenance
* New car
* Household emergency (new boiler, septic tank issues etc)
* Fixing joists so we can use upstairs rooms
* Holiday
* Income replacement

Obviously we had some of those categories, but new car, joists, holidays etc I'd just lumped into "savings" - it's good to see how much we can allocate to each, and to know we might actually get on holiday this year (not been away for longer than a weekend since 2014!)

After we've allocated everything though we do 'only' have enough in the income replacement pot to replace my income for less than 2 months.

Not a crisis as I have a very generous sick pay policy (6 months full + 6 months half), if I was made redundant I'd get notice + several months wages, so we only really have to worry if I'm sacked :eek:

If absolutely necessary we could cash in Mr Cheery's pension - not ideal at several years early but it would be emergencies only.

And I suppose if all else fails we could downsize and move back to a sensible house :eek:

Anyway, enough pontificating - I'm off for a bath.

gallygirl

Hope the girls are a bit brighter this morning