Cheery's country living adventure

themadvix

Good luck today with getting it all done Cheery.

I love how you always manage to incorporate a cafe visit, even when you're super busy!

Cheery_Daff

Ha - I'm not sure what it says about my priorities :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

In reality it's actually quite a good thing for productivity (or so I keep telling myself...). It doesn't open til 9.30, so I get an hour of work (of whatever kind, in this case diploma) done before we leave, a 10 minute break while we drive there, then a solid 1-1.5 hours done in the cafe, with minimal distractions, while Mr Cheery does a sudoku or something and wakes up slowly.

This morning I went over what I did (and what I missed) last week and made a plan of what needs doing this week, and cleared my emails, prioritised my to do list etc, and now am back at my desk at home with a plan :j :j

Maybe I'd be more productive if I just stayed at home... but it's a nice bit of time with Mr Cheery as well (who is often sadly neglected by me during the week) so all good :j

Cheery_Daff

Afternoon :hello:

Not much good to report finance wise this week although I did win £140 in one go on a MB slot game yesterday! :money: Up to a grand total of £173 for September now as I'd mostly ignored it while the other stuff was going on Back on the case now though, aiming for £600 each month so I'd best get my skates on!

Builder emailed to say he was looking at mid October but would give us an exact date nearer the time - that's fine with us and even if it's delayed a bit, we should still have a kitchen ceiling and some new windows well before Christmas, and might even have chance to do most of the decorating in there before Christmas too after they've left :j :j That WOULD be nice :j :j

Actually, not sure whether I said here - this is the cheery builder who came in at £5100, so rather cheaper than the other two quotes (£7800 and £11300) :eek: But they were both bigger firms, whereas he's a one man band (with an occasional pal) so doesn't hit the VAT threshold which helps...

In less good financial news :eek:

Just put in an order for chicken food, bedding and treats - £57 :eek: Cheap eggs my !!!!. We only had ONE this morning, and I put it on the floor as I was cleaning out the hen house and a beak popped between my knees and pecked a hole in it! Little feathery menaces :eek: :rotfl:

Also stupidly didn't remember to ask boss about claiming for something I'm doing at work, which isn't really part of MY work as such, so I'm not sure whether I can officially claim it - I suspect so but wanted to ask first, but never got round to it, and the policy is now that train tickets have to be ordered in advance, they can't be claimed back. So sadly I've cost myself about £40 unnecessarily there :mad:

What else?? Just having an afternoon of admin today, so emailing and replying to things and ordering prescriptions and whatnot. Apparently some friends have just texted Mr Cheery to ask if they can pop over later which will be nice, so need to do a quick tidy up and wash my hair before they get here.

Speaking of hair... :rotfl: It's doing my head in at the minute :eek: Just in the last couple of weeks it's started actually hurting when I tie it up for too long - and I can only assume it's because it's just grown TOO LONG :rotfl: I mean, it was long before, but it didn't actually feel like a second head on the back of my head, but this week it does :rotfl: :rotfl: So I think I need to get the scissors out...

In slightly more cheerful news, I picked some sweet peas from the garden yesterday and they are making the living room smell utterly glorious :j :j Definitely need to make more space for sweet peas in my life next year!

Cheery_Daff

Ok.

Prescription ordered, and request made that they update their details to avoid giving me half a prescription next time. I take 150mcg a day, and they gave me 56 x 50mcg tablets (which I'd expect) but only 28 x 100mcg. I can see why - when I very first moved here and ordered them, they only gave me 28 of each, and when I requested to have 8 weeks at a time, they just put a note for the doctor on the repeat prescription thing, rather than changing the number of tablets directly on the prescription. They've always managed to give me 56 of each until now, but this time clearly someone was having a dozy moment...

Replied to builder confirming mid October works - we'll need to get gas cooker disconnected before he gets here though so will need advance notice of specific date.

Checked meter reading, and I'm glad I did - they've been estimating our bills cos I hadn't bothered to send a reading and it turns out they've vastly over-estimated - actual reading is lower than what they'd estimated at the start of July :eek:

Perhaps now they'll let us lower our monthly direct debit which they recently increased to £95 :eek: :eek: I think they're still estimating based on last winter when we had three rooms without radiators and had electric heaters running :eek:

Anyway, hopefully that'll come down soon... Just need to work on the gas, which is up at £151 now :eek: That will be VASTLY helped by the building work as all last winter we were paying to keep the loft space nice and cosy :eek:

Right, best have a wash and do something to prepare for visitors...

rtandon27

:eek::eek::eek:
Wow Cheery - 151 + 95 a month is eye-watering!

I thought our 71 for electric & 45 for oil was over-the top, but then have to keep reminding myself we live in a converted hop-kiln so not really designed for human comfort!

Cheery_Daff

:rotfl: RT, didn't realise you lived in a converted hop kiln! :j

It's quite ridiculous isn't it?? LPG isn't cheap, especially in the second year of a 2 year contract when they can basically do whatever they like. But the giant hole in the ceiling isn't helping, and we keep quite different hours so regularly have the heating on from quite early morning til pretty late at night. Electric is leftover from the electric heaters so should go down. We're running an electric fence too while the cows are here so that probably doesn't help...

Cheery_Daff

Evening MSE chums :hello:

Well I am having a wave of intense period pain (sorry!) and trying to distract myself until the tablets kick in by thinking about finances and plotting and scheming :rotfl: so I'm afraid you'll have to excuse my ramblings (as usual... )

So. Matched betting dosh hit £3800 this evening :j :j :j I reckon we can easily get to £5000 (or even £6000!) By the end of the year - which means we'll have earned enough from MB to pay for the building work :j of course we've paid about £1500 of it off the mortgage already but still, if we've earned enough to cover it overall it doesn't matter which bit came from which pot does it?

I'm utterly delighted by this :j :j Yes it's a bit of a pain in the !!!! sometimes and it was a very steep learning curve but I'm slowly learning what I can and can't be bothered doing... I'm treating it as a 'self employed' side job and picking and choosing what to do depending on time. I had over a week off earlier in the month which was good for reassuring me nothing drastic would happen :rotfl:

If you're doing it yourself and are curious what I'm doing (and because I'm trying to distract myself...), it's pretty simple.

Sports wise...
No horses (or anything else that isn't human)
No tennis (because the rules are odd and I just can't be bothered to learn them
Mostly just football, with very occasional darts or golf or something that takes less than 1p mins to get my head round.

At the minute I do mostly 2ups (which I just back and lay and leave to run - probably not a great strategy but there's no way I'm getting involved in watching the game!) Not very lucrative (but if one does come in it can be a couple of hundred quid so it's worth it for losing £1 or so each time)

Also do straightforward bet x get y offers. Mostly avoid anything that needs doing on mobile (unless it's very lucrative)or anything in play (again, unless it's very lucrative - got £30 from one of these this evening.

Most of my dosh at the minute comes from casino offers - I've given up trying to work out what's good and what isn't myself and am wholesale following Team Casino instructions - I sort the 'low risk'ones by expected value, start at the top and work my way down until I get bored or run out of time.

Made £570 last month and up to just over £200 sp far in Sept, not bad considering I had a break from it :money:

At first it was taking forever because I didn't know what everything meant :rotfl: but now I've settled into a routine I'm happy with in terms of not trying to jump on EVERYTHING, but just sticking to what I know. For now, it's working :j

Much prefer laptop to mobile, and also MUCH happier when I've got a notebook with me to jot down starting balance and work out what I've made each time

Anyway, sorry, boring waffle but it's doing its job of distraction :rotfl: wonder what else I can waffle about?? :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Not done YNAB for ages :eek: at least since the start of the month :eek: payday tomorrow so that might encourage me :rotfl:

Should also be pay RISE day :money: but the union is in dispute so I'm not sure that means all pay rises are on hold, or that work will raise by what they think it should be, and if it goes higher later they'll backdate (that's what usually happens I think). Will find out in the morning I guess. Worst case I think is £80 a month (as I will hop up an increment on the scale regardless of any shift up of the whole scale which is what's under dispute) :money:

New mortgage fix should have kicked in now (of course I'd have checked if I'd done YNAB... :rotfl: ) so that'll eat up £30 of the pay rise...

Oh! And I had an email saying I'll find out about the first stage of the promotion by the end of next week :eek: They can either say no outright, or pass me on to stage 2 (if they do that I'll know by the end of October). I was expecting to wait til Christmas and had put it out of my mind but now I have to start thinking about it again and biting my nails :rotfl: If I get that I think it kicks in from January and should be at least an extra £200 a month on top of the £80 rise so that will make a HUGE difference and will mean we can easily start adding to longer term savings from the normal wages which we've not really been able to do since we moved :eek:

So fingers crossed! :j

Cheery_Daff

Sorry, still here

Two family members are selling houses at the minute and I am being reminded how utterly grateful that all that is behind us :eek:

First one had house on the market for almost 2 years :eek: finally found a buyer, everything going swimmingly, just waiting for their vendor to answer a small question then ready to sign. Only 3 in chain, they're in the middle, their buyer has already sold and is living with relatives, seller's house is empty so no complex negotiations of moving date etc.

Yesterday seller pulled out :eek: saying they had 'questions that weren't being answered'- except nobody has any record of any questions except for ones that have already been answered :eek:

Other relative is still on the market but quite desperate to go and has reduced house recently. Someone viewed and left very detailed feedback, including bizarre things like 'windows in good repair but they're wood so would need constant maintenance so would have to replace with upvc'. Unsurprisingly they rang later to make an offer - over 20% under even the discounted rate :eek: cheeky blighter.

Urgh. I do NOT envy either of them and do NOT miss my house selling and buying adventures ONE BIT :eek:

Right. Going to make an attempt to get back to normality, helped along by Mr Cheery making me a hot chocolate :j

(He doesn't know about that yet :rotfl: :rotfl: )

Cheery_Daff

Morning chums :hello: apologies for all my waffling last night I did sleep well eventually - not quite raring to go (didn't go to sleep til past midnight after all...) but am awake and feeling human which is a good start :j

New wages have gone in - increase is £66.22 :money: So I was out by about £12, which might be me miscalculating pension percentage by half a percentage or something. Or actually, given the dispute, who knows what figure they're using?? I know old employer was using the pay increase THEY wanted (not what the union was trying to negotiate) until the dispute is over, but it looks like current employer has just bumped me an increment on this year's existing scale?

Well, whatever - it'll sort itself out once the dispute is over (which may involve strikes) and they'll back pay from the start of August whatever happens so there should be a little more of an increase anyway I suspect. We'll see.

Right, up early enough to do a little bit of MB before work if I get my skates on... on a training course all day and then have a meeting (not work) in the evening so I'll be leaving about 7.30am and not back til about 10pm - long day :eek: