Cheery's country living adventure

rtandon27

Hello Cheery - happy Saturday - glad to hear your girls are recovering back to their former selves & soon will have some new little ladies joining them!:j:j:j

Wanted to report back on my query last month about YNAB - I ended up creating a new category of Work expenses & got the huge wack of money back yesterday - so a sigh of relief that I'm not in the red again - that negative number was really freaking me out!

In the meantime, went back and rejigged other amounts into that new category as well & realized over the past year I've paid out 300 in dribs and drabs & never bothered to claim back - it looks a whole lot more when it's gathered together, so next week first priority is claiming back for those bits! Then transferring the whole lump straight into savings when it hits my account. Need to stop funding work things out of pocket, it really does add up!

Must resolve to myself to keep on top of the pennies a little bit better! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Hi RT :hello: goah those work expenses really add up don't they?? :eek: glad you can still claim them - we have a three month cut off (I'm quite organised when it comes to expenses though...)

Cheery enough day here although still some residual grumpiness. Put on 1.5lbs at slimming world (gah!). Spent the afternoon outside though which was lovely, digging and wheelbarrowing and turning compost and supervising chickens :j

Plumber did return and has fixed the boiler :j going to let me know costs.

Had a nice email from the woman who made my wedding ring (a blacksmith in north yorks, it's made of iron). I measured a bit big... And then have lost about a stone... And I keep having to swap fingers as it feels like it's going to fly off :eek: anyway, she can resize it easily so I need to get it in the post :j

Didn't ask about cost but since it only cost about £25 in the first place I'm not anticipating too much :rotfl:

Off to do some plastering for Mr Cheery's family tomorrow. Could do with staying here and sorting the chicken run! But hey ho. We've put it off for an entire year :eek: did the first coat this very week last year - in between exchange and completion on our new house (like we didn:t have enough to do!! :eek: :rotfl: think we were putting off our own scary jobs :rotfl: )

Can you believe it's nearly a year since we moved house?! :eek: reliving the horror and excitement of those final few days this week and will have some kind of celebration on the anniversary itself I think :j

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and I set up all the standing orders yesterday so bank shuffling should be fully automated now :j :j will keep an eye on it for a couple of months to check I haven't done anything stupid...

Only thing left to check - I don't THINK I can set up standing orders from a PO savings account... So I'll have to transfer £500 a month from there to current account, and from there it will just wend its way to the regular savers via various other accounts.

I've set all the standing orders for payday so even if I forget that initial £500 there will be enough in the bank to cover it til I do my next check and realise what I've done :rotfl:

Karmacat

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Spent the afternoon outside though which was lovely, digging and wheelbarrowing and turning compost and supervising chickens :j
Plumber did return and has fixed the boiler :j going to let me know costs.

That sounds great

Had a nice email from the woman who made my wedding ring (a blacksmith in north yorks, it's made of iron). I measured a bit big... And then have lost about a stone... And I keep having to swap fingers as it feels like it's going to fly off :eek: anyway, she can resize it easily so I need to get it in the post :j

And this sounds utterly amazing. So, you're living in Game of Thrones! You must be! You've got an Iron Throne parked somewhere, haven't you :rotfl:
Seriously, it's a lovely idea to have it made specially, and made of iron at that.

Enjoy the DIY stuff with Mr Cheery's family

rtandon27

Cheery - THIS is the t-shirt for you!!!:D:D:D

Cheery_Daff

:rotfl:. RT that's perfect :rotfl: :rotfl:

Ha KC, never thought of it being like something out of Game of Thrones :rotfl: :rotfl: I confess I was more thinking about something practical that I wouldn't be able to ruin with my hands in the mud :rotfl: didn't set out looking for iron but was very taken with this lady's stuff and that's what I ended up with :j Mr Cheery went for Blue John stone, relatively local to here

Not sure 'enjoy' will be the word for tomorrow... But it will be good to have it finished I suppose!

edwink

So glad your little hens are improving every day Cheery. They will get over it but it must have been so tough for them. So good you are keeping an extra eye on them. Have either of them jumped in to the wheelbarrow as you are wheeling it along yet? Mine do especially if it is full of soil or anything they think they can find a juicy worm in. That makes a great photo if they do that by the way. Actually I have one somewhere I must remember to dig it out and show you it.

When do you get you new hens? is it next weekend? I've lost all track of time to be honest as I have so much going on family wise right now. How many are you going to rehome this time?. You will have to be supervisor for a bit until they all get on and find their new pecking order. There is always one who wants to be top dog. But, they will settle down once that is established.

Have you thought anymore about getting a Cockerel? Did the farmer manage to rehome the one he mentioned to you? Cockerels are so hard to find homes for sadly. People don't realise that when they decide to let their hens have chicks 60% that hatch turn out to be Cockerels and as Cockerels often don't live well together invariably owners start to panic trying to find homes for them. So if you do decide to get one you won't have any problems finding one at all. I knew someone who wanted chicks and the three eggs that hatched were all Cockerels that's how we ended up with one.

Looks like all your money is going in all the right directions by the way. I am so glad you know what is what because when you were discussing it all on here I got completely lost. I would have had notes all over the place just to remind me what was what and what was going where. Good on you for taking the plunge and making the most of the better interest rates and your savings. Way too complicated for me so I think I would prefer to go and muck out my ducks or dig up some carrots instead.

I do love sitting down with a cuppa and catching up with your thread because of the way you have embraced your new country living life plus hold down employment too. It's certainly not for the faint hearted is it?. But, you will reap the rewards for all of your commitment and hard work in the end plus you get lovely real fresh eggs as a present from your girls. Who could ask for more eh?

As I always say, keep up the good work Cheery.

Edwink x

Karmacat

Yep, I'm kind of living in Westeros right now - I used some of those swagbucks vouchers to buy the DVD sets, rather than actual money And RT, omg, I love those t shirts, there are some very good sayings there

I'm also gobsmacked by edwink's sig - after my kitchen spends, which are really utilitarian, maybe I can splash a little on solar whatnots? I do like solar whatnots ... edwink, what thread do you recommend? Or shall I start one? Or is it straightforward pick your brains?

:j
Cheery, hope its all gone well today.

Cheery_Daff

Eek, meant to come back and reply to you lovely people but I've literally just promised to shut the laptop down Just popped in to say updated sig and mortgage overpayment fund now up to £139 :j back soon!

edwink

Karmacat wrote: »

I'm also gobsmacked by edwink's sig - after my kitchen spends, which are really utilitarian, maybe I can splash a little on solar whatnots? I do like solar whatnots ... edwink, what thread do you recommend? Or shall I start one? Or is it straightforward pick your brains?
:j
Cheery, hope its all gone well today.

Me too cheery, how did it all go? No rush to reply quickly Cheery we know you are a busy bee especially having to run around after your now, sort of, indoor hens, bless them. Glad they have perked up and are getting some new friends at the weekend.

Cheery, I hope you don't mind that I have included some info on solar panels on here.


Karmacat

Solar panels are a little complicated to explain fully on here but in a nutshell you would do a lot of research first, get some solar installers round for a quote, agree price, pay for them and up they go on your roof and then start to use any electricity that is generated. Sounds easy doesn't it?. But, it is a lot more complicated than that because you actually get paid through what they call the Feed in Tariff Scheme (FIT) for every Kilo Watt (kWh) your panels produce. The bigger the system in Kilo Watt peak (kWp) the more money you earn. So you basically you are getting paid back for your initial outlay plus more on top especially for the owners that took advantage of the original much higher FIT payment. Back in 2012-ish the FIT payment was 40p-ish per kWh but now it has gone way down to under 10p a kWh. But, then the panels were at lot more expensive than what they are now. So horses for courses really but payback was definitely much better years ago. So really if you were considering installing them you would only really do so for the green electricity they will produce that you would use within your home, as you get so little back in FIT payments now. If you are home all day you would benefit more because you are there to use what you generate but if not, you can put your appliances on with timers if you are out all day. Hope that makes sense as have totally squashed it in to a tiny nutshell.

There are quite a number of threads running on MSE on the Green and Ethical Board. Lots of mse'ers asking all sorts of questions which should be of help to you if you have a read of some of those, as quite a number of solar panel owners like us have had them installed for a while now. HTH

Edwink